DevUrandom wrote: Hm... Something tells me that the author is slightly pro Vista.
I don't see him really convincing me to buy that thing, either...
And I like coding for Mac a lot more, simply because of Single Unix. Windows has no such thing shiped with it and even SFU is years old and abandoned.
That Microsoft simply floods the market was known before...
Windows is at the center of attacks, which was also already known before. And that they improved security doesn't make them superior. And I don't know who applauds Vista being the most secure OS. Maybe the music/film industry? If I were them I would also applaud to anyone keeping the users from what I percieve as basic rights and defending my business model.
Additionaly:
Maybe it's a different philosophy that lies behind Linux. No controling person, no single, monolythic piece.
What he says about fragmentation is actually not very far from the truth. And I think it is by choice. It's what the philosophy calls "do one thing and do it good". Some projects are trying to break with that, but I think they'll notice that this idea doesn't fit into Unix.
i think that's a very accurate statement, though having worked with both, windows and unix extensively, while i agree that if everybody stopped using windows without exception that certainly other operating systems would come under frequent attack, i don't agree that such attacks would have nearly as high a success rate. the main issue with windows security, ignoring the one or two inherent and hard-to-secure rpc exploits that they have said that they'll never fix (at least in xp, but possibly vista because windows software is now often dependent those interfaces), is that, by default, it is configured with effectively zero security (i'd imagine this is in the interest of user-friendliness). since window's target audience is most especially too incompetent to secure their systems beyond anti-virus/firewall installation (this just tapes a piece of paper marked "please don't enter" on to the security holes), it would be up to microsoft to change this strategy, and if they made "very secure" the default, even given the capabilities for security that already exist, the success of attacks against their operating system might drop by 90% or more. at least with vista, not that i'll touch it because of the drm stuff, they finally make it hell for any given program to run as an admin, which is definite progress.For Windows users on the other hand, the success of the operating system has as a logical consequence, the downside of running on the most attacked platform on the market. The simple fact that Windows is a large and facile target, in terms of the volume of potential victims, focusing on the threat environment is synonymous with insecurity.
This is a common point people miss, and just let the MS PR spin to the best of their ability. The targets which are most commonly attacked, strongly targeted, and exposed the most are servers, which are also data rich and serve vast volumes of information. Client machines, by comparison, are small fry, and much more easily exploited via social engineering, such as trojans; Their spotty connections are good for little more than unreliable botnets, not information harvesting on a massive scale. '*nix has a minority share' is a compelling argument, until you look at the actual facts presented by the article: 2/3rds of servers, as estimated by Gartner, run MS operating systems, while the other 1/3rd run *nix systems. Yet, as they say, not a single major threat in the top ten towards these OSes - given their popularity and much greater exposure as forward-facing interfaces, shouldn't they have at least 1/5th the malware? Or 10%? The fact is, multiuser by design is inherently more secure than multiuser by addition, and a minimization of the amount of services and code running in kernel space yields a minimization of consistently exploitable holes (microkernels can do this very well, since even core components can't affect each other).Chojun wrote: Also, the "windows is not as secure as linux" argument is invalid. If the numbers were to be rotated, and Linux were to suddenly have 96% market share, Linux would have the same problems. In fact, judging by the amount of money that has been spent by Microsoft toward security, I believe Linux would be in a far worse position to serve the PC community at-large.
bremac wrote:
...........I think I'd rather read a professionally written report myself, instead of something which is an opinion piece with references to make it look like an article.
everything i saw used only ms products when ms makes a given kind of software (or other 3rd party commercial when ms doesn't cover an area), but i saw nothing actually promoting ms products in comparison to the competition, and thus far, i would have to say they're more of a "buy windows and use what's bundled with it instead of buying even more software" site.Rman Virgil wrote: * You mean like these White Papers on Win Security issues sponsered by an outfit (TechGenix Ltd.) that has absolutely no affiliation with MS ?
What do I think? Well, after knowing how they put together vista, this might just shed some light on this:Rman Virgil wrote: ------------------>
* Just read this excellent article:
3 Reasons Why Mac OS X and Linux Won't Succeed against Windows Vista
- Dislodging Windows is harder than it might seem
By: Marius Oiaga, Technology News Editor
* Whataya think ?
* Those statistics really leaped out at me - especially in light of a recent conversation I had while eating a yummy chicken sandwich.
- RV
