On Fri, Jan 30, 2004 at 01:55:36PM -0700, Collins Richey wrote: > On Fri, 30 Jan 2004 14:43:58 -0500 > Peter Wu <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > [...] > > > Today viruses stimulate ppl switch to linux, and > > > therefore are BIG catalysator for linux growth. > > > > I really doubt switching to Linux can stop virii from spreading. > > > > BS.
Sorry to hear this acronym...
> 1. No one has any objection to a software company making money. People have
> objection to M$ because of the crappy (but user friendly) virus-prone product and
> the monopolistic techniques they employ.
As an etiquette on a public mailing list, can you please configure your
mailer to set width of your posts? Not every user, esp. UNIX user, can
read lines longer than 80 characters.
Back to your remark, well, you have choice not to use it. It is your
right. Maybe you are a UNIX guru but most people that have money may not
know any much computer knowledge than you do. You may be smart enough to
detect a virus just by your experience but other people do not. They may
open an attached executable, which could be a worm virus, and the plague
starts from there.
Well, Microsoft started as a software company that aims at desktop and at
home users. Most of those users know much less than you do. The
technologies Microsfot employ may not be the best but must be the most
popular ones, which has been proven for years.
Few people never touch Windows but many people never see Linux.
> 2. No one with a lick of sense (except maybe Lindows users) processes mail as root.
> Almost all viruses rely on the wide open nature of windows to inflict their harm.
> Converting to linux (or even to Apple OS X or xxxxBSD) will eliminate 99% of the
> problems.
Forget about Windows 9x, which is simply obsolete and quite crappy. Let's
look at the Windows NT/2000/XP/2003 series.
I do not know whether you have ever used this series. If you don't, then
I'd like to let you know that on those Windows products, you have an
Administrator account, which is equivalent to the root in UNIX, and,
surely, you can create your own account, say joe, on the machine with less
privileges.
You do not have to log in as Administrator all the time but log in joe to
check your email. It's all the same as you do every day on Linux/UNIX.
If a normal user, joe, on the Linux happens to run a script that can send
tons of junk mails to others by looking up joe's address book, that joe
would be a source of virus, too. I do not think the OS is the culprit in
this case.
Sure, we must admit that Windows has a lot of security problems, some of
which were made use of before. However, AFAIK, some Linux distros had such
miserable experiences, too. Say, the holes in Debian some days ago that
brought many sites down or unavailable.
People play a more important role to make computer systems secure.
--
,,,
(o o) Peter Wu
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