Gene Heskett wrote:
On Wednesday 11 June 2008, Jim Allan wrote:
[...]
This is the kind of ranting that makes people tend to disbelieve Linux
folk on every issue. If they are already prejudiced against Linux, then
this only confirms their prejudices.
And your obviously biased view is whats wrong with actually ever getting
anything M$ based fixed. You are obviously convinced that if its windows, it
must be the right way to do it.
My next door neighbor works in a business where nearly all the software she has
to use is windows based. She bought a new box a year ago cuz the old one was
crawling, and when it started slowing down she bought another in February, with
vista on it. It turned into a dog in 2 weeks. So she bought another with XP
on it a couple of months ago. I took one of the older ones to a friend that
has the tools to clean up infected winsuck systems, and watched while he
removed 17 keyloggers And about 43 viri, one of which was making new copies of
itself at the rate of 3 for every one we removed, so that required highlighting
them all and deleting them in one swell foop. But several reboots didn't bring
that copy of xp back to speed, so we wound up re-installing xp from scratch.
Which did restore it.
I'm not saying our linux boxes are perfect, far from it, but we tend to think of
security as pretty close to the #1 job, unlike M$ where it might be 40th down
on the list despite their public pronouncements.
Who in their right mind would run a system that can be owned by an email you
didn't even open, or just by visiting the front page of an interesting looking
URL? And who's author takes 6 months to a year to fix it, breaking 3 other
usually more important things with their fix? Yet windows user seem to be
brain washed into thinking that is just how it is & nothing will change it.
Sorta like death & taxes I guess.
Yes, we linux folks also have problems occasionally, but generally the fix is
out there to be installed in anywhere from 2 hours after discovery to maybe a
week for a distro to repackage the fix and put it in their repos.
Just because you M$ type own the 'market' (so far anyway, vista may actually
change that), you think that 6 months to a broken first fix is how it is done.
Ask a TJX admin what server system they were using that let 2 million credit
cards be compromised nearly a year ago. And according to a slashdot story a
week or so ago, that breech has yet to be fixed by TJX. Business as usual.
Made-up example: “I’ve never had any problems with automated banking
under Windows, don’t know anyone who has, but this crazy Linux fellow is
terrified of using Windows for banking.”
And he is fully justified in his terror. The M$ track record sucks the big one
IMO. I run dd-wrt on an old box with everything but the nics & net cards
pulled. It is reasonably secure, and its been months since there was a record
of an attack being dropped on the floor with an inaudible thud in its logs.
My address has been attacked with both satan and nmap in the last few months, at
my request, and neither can find any hint of a machine at my address, and no
mention of it was recorded in the dd-wrt logs, not important enough I guess.
FWIW, I do 99% of my banking from this keyboard. I'm far more worried about the
banks security than I am mine, mine has proven itself many times over.
I know there are windows folks here on this list, probably the huge majority of
them in fact, but if you're gonna come in here and spout the M$ line, then I'd
suggest you don some nomex underwear first, because you are gonna get flamed by
the 'other guys' like me.
OS politics really doesn't have a place in a mailing list that serves all comers
like this one, and is probably considered off topic. I'm even making bets with
myself that this post will not make it to the list, and I AM a list member.
To Gene Heskett, et al: Thank you for this message/comment! I wish I
could be better at Linux, but with people like you on this forum, at
least I can learn more as I go along! :-)
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