On Sunday 25 April 2004 11:52 am, JoeHill wrote: > On Sun, 25 Apr 2004 07:25:59 -0700 > > John Wilson disseminated the following: > > Sorry but Walmart boxes are security problems waiting to happen. And > > this is something that the entire Linux community needs to address. > > Security problem? Yes. However, Linux boxes, even with no root password and > the user running as root, are still not going to come *anywhere near* to > causing the egregious effects of the worms and viruses and trojans that > plague Windows machines, choking networks with malicious and illegitimate > traffic. I would be more concerned that these Walmart/Lindows boxes are > going to be an example that people with an anti-FOSS ideology are going to > use to propagate yet more of their FUD. > > > That said, the situation is no worse than Windows which happily ships W2K > > and XP completely unprotected and most users don't even know that there > > is a administrator password waiting and needing to be set up. Sadly most > > don't care either. This applies to some of the dimmer MSCEs out there > > who feel that it's easier to telnet into a box than ssh in. > > No worse? No, it's infinitely better. On it's worst day, *nix and OSS are > far superior to Win on its *best* day. Is GNU/Linux perfect? No. Will it > always need improvement and development to make sure it is as secure as > possible? Yes. But no matter the sickly and wasted arguments that come from > people like Mr. Hanson, it is the future, whether they like it or not. > Proprietary, closed standards and code are a dead concept economically, > only the political punditry hasn't caught up with this fact. > > The fact that the writer of this column uses Linux/FOSS as an 'example' for > his 'theory' is telling. It is quite clear to me that this dolt wanted to > write an article critical of Linux/FOSS, and then slapped on some > lightweight dogmatic meanderings to mask that fact. He provides no evidence > to back up his argument, which is not surprising, since there is none to be > had; this is of course why all the 'columnists' who write pieces like this > are a little weak in the empirical knees. > > "Ship it now, fix it once it's sold" is *not* the same as 'Release early, > release often', it's comparing apples and oranges. 'Release early, > release often', in fact, is a philosophy meant to overcome the problems > with releasing a so-called 'finished product' that one knows is buggy (that > pretty much describes MS perfectly, but of course Mr. Hanson never mentions > *them*). It's a completely different model for software development that > you either get or don't, and this guy doesn't get it. > > This is most clearly evident herein: > > "Viruses, generally speaking, are written to target popular systems. If we > consider the number of end user systems (popular targets for social > engineering viruses), it is likely that a large majority of these systems > are running Windows. It seems to me that Unix and Linux users are relying > heavily on security through obscurity, in that the number of Linux/Unix > systems deployed are not great enough to warrant learning how best to > manipulate them." > > Bullshit. Apache is the most widely used web server on the 'Net. Is it the > most exploited? No. IIS is, even though it has a relatively very small > market share. Viruses are written for Windows because it's easy to do, not > because there are more Windows desktops. I'm so fucking sick of hearing > this shit, I think I'm gonna lose it. there there joe go here for peace of mind http://www.userfriendly.org
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