On Friday 07 May 2004 11:03 am, Shannon Roddy wrote: > On May 7, 2004, at 9:53 AM, Will Hill wrote: > > Those are not computer problems or user problems, they are Microsoft > > problems. > > Malware, spyware and all the things you have to do to get around it > > are 100% > > Microsoft. Why is the campus jumping into more of the same? > > It is not a 100% Microsoft problem. Even I will admit that. In fact, > the one time I had an active hacker in my network (not just a script > kiddie type) it was coming from a Linux box on a DSL line. Obviously > the person with the DSL was not the hacker, but the linux box was a > proxy for the hacker. The ISP was not willing to deal with it. So, in > the days before I had a firewall this person made me wake up to reality > and realize that while 98% of the problems are microsoft, the other 2% > are very real. The annoyances are all M$, but the real damaging stuff > is not. Now we have a layered defense. Firewalls, host updates & > patches, etc. etc. etc. This includes my Solaris, Linux, & Mac boxes > just as much as it does my M$ boxes. >
Sure, there will always be the pros and not much you can do about them besides getting rid of your weakest link. The easiest way to own a linux box is to put a keylogger on Windoze boxes to catch IP, login and passwords from putty sessions. Regardless of what you do, they will come. The only solution to that kind of trouble is to cut your lines, but even in that case trouble happens as Nachi getting onto Dibold XP run ATMs. http://slashdot.org/articles/03/11/25/1611227.shtml?tid=126&tid=172&tid=98&tid=99 There's a kind of diagram, I've forgotten the name, used for setting priorities. It's an easy process and most of use do it in our heads anyway. What you try to do is see what your biggest problems are and then get rid of them. When you say that 98% of your problems are Windows, it should be obvious what needs to be fixed or removed first. I just don't understand. How can any reasonable person say that the answer to all the problems that Microsoft has given LSU is for LSU to go exclusively Microsoft? I've been specializing in Linux desktops for the last year now and I know how much better it is. People on this list know that every individual service Microsoft offers is done better by some piece of free software, email, web service, databases, and the combination. How is it that the University, which should know better than anyone, is rocketing into such an ill planned and second rate IT solution?
