About Macs and AV software

Since he asked, exercising my capability of choice, I choose to use OSX10 with Windows Vista and Seven around. Makes the most sense to me and it makes Paul no different than any other partisan fanboy of either the Mac OS, or anything else. Dealing in absolutes is not the hallmark of a rational mind.

btw: The reason I say "commercial Unix" is because I believe there were two "government use only" specialty stripped down Unix-based products produced by Mitre Corporation and SUN that were rated C2 but were never available to anyone but the US Government.

I hate to say it, but for the first time in a very long time Paul is right. Mike and the rest of you followers of the Evil Empire are wrong. @mikegalos: Where are you chiming in here actually saying that you think that Paul is wrong? Instead you say you agree with @tayme. Nice way to avoid flack from your master.

Look at all you Windows users getting all worked up because you've spent your lives in the threatening shadow of viruses and spyware that you can't accept that there are safer options out there. What a sad, sad lot you all are.

@mum: Well you don't come here for the "journalism" do you? It's more like switching on to Fox News for the biased "journalism" than anything else. If it's unbiased and serious, then look elsewhere. You have a chance of less biased commentary if you read the Slashdot comments for pro-Microsoft stances.

School must have let out...I see our resident zit faced teenager is here. What, no band practice tonight, robertsjoe? --tayme

@tayme: You'd better go and make sure your anti-virus software is all up to date. You don't want to get caught out - especially running such a magnet of an OS for viruses and spyware. Vista 2 - now with more anti-virus support.

@tayme: Obviously you are not sure of the sites you visit or have doubt in your own abilities with computers to know enough that you need to run anti-virus. Either that or it's just that you're running Windows.

I'm convinced now that robertsjoe is the same old bonch.

"Seven beta in January? What about public beta?" Oh my God! Seven delayed? All because Paul wrote that unflattering article about simple v. easy? And that after they gave him a free laptop? Tssk, tssk.

I wasn't posting about a delay. I just read that a beat was probably coming in January and never knew of any expected date. It mention disc for a conference, so assumed that it was not a public beta. I was just wondering if any of you guys knew when a public beta [for my $400 Vista laptop] would be available. I did not read of any prior promised dates, so I assume that there is no delay. How can there be a delay if MS did not announce a beta release or public beta release date? OT. This FreeAgent Pro ext HD lights up like a christmas tree. All the yellow in the ads is led [I thought it was going to be paint]. Pretty but possibly annoying.

DRWAM A pre-beta release was given to PDC attendees and it was announced that the Public Beta would be in early 2009. The jokes about a slip were due to Randall C. Kennedy from Infoworld making a complete idiot of himself by claiming that the beta (announced for Early 2009) was being delayed until Early 2009 as a result of Microsoft going back to the drawing boards to resolve his issues with the OS. Later his editor, trying desperately to save any shred of reputation Infoworld had left, claimed that the posting was a joke that nobody got. We discussed it mostly in the topic "Windows 7 public beta in 2009 ... as previously announced" which is at http://community.winsupersite.com/blogs/paul/archive/2008/11/25/windows-...

Thanks Mike. I never read the article. I glanced at one today stating that a beta would available at some developer conference in January and was wondering if a public beta would shortly follow. I need more toys and Windows 7 sounds like a good one for that laptop. It may be a little over my head, but I like a challenge. I hacked my iPhone last weekend and need more. Especially when I work out. I take 3 to 5 minutes in between sets [ it should be shorter if not power-lifting, BTW]. Dang I would like the beta, but not the pre-beta.

DRWAM If you want some new toys to play with, I'd suggest spending some time with the new Windows Live Wave 3 releases that came out yesterday afternoon. Very cool. Very integrated both with Microsoft and 3rd party services. Liveside has a fair amount of info on the sites.

To add to Lindy's comments. He is spot on with the market share that MS has. But also Windows makes themselves a target based on the vast capabilities the OS has. Windows allows programmers an enormous amount of control. For all the locked down code you can't get your hands on, you can still hack through/around it. Or better yet through the available applications that can be ran on it. You have app's calling to weakly written drivers and dll's. Yes a flaw but also a blessing for legit app's. What do you think would happen if Windows was as locked down as OS x? We already seen how well UAC was taken with Vista. Cheers.

DRWAM What riddle about Amalga?

Google it.

@Doc; May I remind you that Google is evil.

"I'd still be fine with them offering me the Governor General position even with having to cut a trip short to decide on a political no-win situation. It's still a cushy job." It's a no-win for her. It all depends on the choice she makes. In either case, we're open to some political turmoil ahead. I'm not a big fan of GM though. They've been frivolously p!ssing away money for years. If they go down the sh!tter, that's their problem. I don't want my taxes bailing them out. Flood the market with cheap Asian imports instead. It's better for consumers. Our economy isn't nearly as bad as the US (which started it all), but nations relying on exports (we export most of our commodity products to the US) have to reevaluate our positions if other nations aren't buying. I've said before that Canada should've started trading our currency on the Worldwide market instead of comparing it to the Greenback. Other countries have done it already and came out ahead. They're the same countries that aren't having any troubles now too. BTW: The PM speech tonight had a record # of Canadian TV viewers.

@Lindy - No...for you juvenile comment regarding Canadians and going blind...That was really below anything I have seen posted here in a long, long time. --tayme

Waethorn Just an aside, I seriously p!ssed off Former CIA chief George H. W. Bush back in 1979 when he was running for President against Reagan by asking him whether the reports in Time Magazine were true that the CIA had a contingency plan in place to invade and annex Canada in case of a successful Quebecois sessession vote. He did NOT want to answer that one and sidestepped it.

"AV companies don't actually." So how long before you go blind? http://www.symantec.com/norton/security_response/threatexplorer/index.jsp http://www.symantec.com/business/theme.jsp?themeid=threatreport http://www.mcafee.com/us/threat_center/default.asp Oh look they have one in your neck of the woods... http://www.csis-scrs.gc.ca/index-eng.asp http://www.us-cert.gov/ http://cyberinsecure.com/ http://www.ca.com/us/anti-virus.aspx http://www.microsoft.com/security/portal/

BTW,those who use the term "jihadist" so flippantly over here to describe Windows users, do you even know what it means? You've either disconnected yourselves from the rest of the world or are insensitive to the feelings of the victims of some of the attacks. I find that sad and unfortunate.

I did not think that you would know. My apologies. The end of the story, but the beginning of our digital 3 hospital system of the future is...Microsoft Almalga, the unified health enterprise informatics platform designed to retrieve and display patient information from many sources. Couple other Microsoft offerings, Exchange and Sharepoint for better physician and management communication as an example, and you get a solid digital system with capabilities of safe, secure healthcare delivery, reducing medical errors by at least 50%, and increasing quality and good outcomes. We're all pretty excited. I told my wife that I had one on you Mike. Now I gotta tell her that you knew what it was. But, I shall return! Doc

"Sorry that's just not true. Look up the definition of Remote Code Exploit. Anybody that has ever had Blaster or Sasser infect their system can testify. As far as that Mac code goes, the malware in question does look for Samba support as one of the attack vectors for infection." You or tayme to provide statistics? I am not saying that there are NOT holes in the OS and that AV is totally useless. Hell once a month you see holes being patched on Windows, they keep my Shavlik servers busy once a month pushing patches out to thousands of Windows servers. The point is for joe consumer these days the vast, VAST majority of crap that can take you down comes from a user doing something to let crap in, going to web site, clicking yes to crapware, opening email and clicking on a link etc. That firewall on XP wont do anything if your running as a full admin and click on a link in a email that then downloads all kinds of junk to your PC with a full admin privileges. I have seen so many home XP users that dont even have a password, running as a full admin, the default install for Windows XP home if I am not mistaken. Vista, OS X, and Linux will at least prompt you to before you slit your own throat, and OS X/Linux will require you to enter a password before the knife starts cutting. Viruses.....Un-patched Security holes.........or Privileged user self initiated attacks..........which causes more damage these days?? They dont make AV for stupidity. Straight from Wea's god.... http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/cc507867.aspx "With Windows XP and earlier versions of Windows, any process that an administrator ran automatically used administrative privileges. This situation was troublesome because malware could make system-wide changes, such as installing software, without confirmation from the user. In Windows Vista, members of the Administrators group run in Administrator Approval Mode, which (by default) prompts administrators to confirm actions that require more than Standard privileges." XP firewall good stuff!!! Yeah that would be a link\facts to back my point up Tayme. Only if I could find that going blind link, it probably in the same folder as the Mac Worm takes down corporation NO news at 11 very hush hush.