Open Letter to a Digital World 545
jg21 writes "Exasperated after spending 5 hours removing spyware and trojans from his wife's Windows PC, sysadmin Chris Spencer has written an impassioned Open Letter to a Digital World. In the letter he reviews the 'elephants in the closet' - i.e. unfixed bugs and glaring security vulnerabilities - that Microsoft in his view hopes ordinary users will ignore, including some discussed in previous Slashdot stories."
Troll (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:We are so much smarter than the rest of the wor (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:I don't get it. (Score:3, Interesting)
I think its the boot logo that did it (tux)
Re:I don't get it. (Score:5, Interesting)
My wife Was using Win98 and IE6.1 SP whatever up until six months ago. Her IE installation got so corrupted with spyware that it wouldn't even launch, so I installed Firefox and Thunderbird with my favorite extensions (AdBlock, TTLO, User Agent Switcher, etc.) and it took her all of 3 days to fall in love with it.
I then picked up a cut-price generic Athlon box, that was some 12 times as fast as her old machine at Fry's for about $200.00, installed Fedora Core 2 on it and gave it to her. To make her feel like she had a safety belt, I also got her "Linux for Non-Geeks" which she has barely opened. Her first question when the box booted up after the install was "where's Firefox?"
She now snipes at Windows almost as much as the most zealous penguinista at your local Junior High. She will occasionally run into content on the 'net that won't load, but when she asks me about it, it's usually something designed to exploit Windows' poor security model (like ActiveX controls and browser hijacks).
She's happy with her newer, faster machine and is learning to love the penguin, but I would NEVER have done it if she wasn't: 1) willing to learn, and 2) pre-conditioned by a few months' favorable experience with Firefox and Thunderbird.
Re:Chris is wrong. (Score:4, Interesting)
You seem not to understand the difference in security models between *n?x and Windows applications, and the security implications of Microsoft's obsession with backward compatibility. Over the years lazy coders in Windows development shops have built up such a bank of apps that REQUIRE Admin privileges that Grandma must run as Administrator, or at least be a member of the Admin group, to do what she wants to do.
*n?x apps, OTOH, are designed to function properly under the "least privilege" model. They do not require Admin privileges because they will only store stuff in the use's $HOME and they don't require privileged access to the hardware. They don't require direct access to the kernel. In short, they are "secure by design." The few apps that DO require such access have their permissions set so that normal users can't run them.
I'd be tickled to death if OS X would topple Windows, but don't hold you breath. The price point just isn't right since one company controls both the hardware and the software. Additionally, I doubt that Apple has the marketing clout that IBM and Novell have in the corporate market. The home market is peanuts compared to the Enterprise, just ask Microsoft, they've been trying to get into the data center for YEARS.
Re:I get so tired by this kind of stuff (Score:3, Interesting)
Obviously you are a good user, and apparently your girlfriend is too (some heavy computer users are not, and some light users are; just depends). I suspect the main vectors for crapware installation are: IE bug exploits, ActiveX controls installed by users clicking through the security dialog, and piggybacking on semi-legit software that you would never download such as weatherbug and crappy off-brand IE toolbars. If you patch, click "no" on security dialogs, and don't install stupid web search toolbars or form-fillers from flashing banner ads proclaiming "FREE", you won't get hit.
If shareware or freeware programs install spyware, they almost always give an opt-out option or at least tell you. In my experience, warez almost never contains viruses or spyware; I'm not sure why. Installing shareware and warez really doesn't put you in much danger of getting spyware or a virus. It's the stupid stuff like free search toolbars that causes problems, but you would never install those because you know they're stupid.
I am in the same situation as you until two weeks ago. That week I downloaded a .zip attatchment from a mailing list archive, and double-clicked on the contents before I even realized it was a .scr file with a text file icon. All it takes is one mistake for your machine to be hosed. Lucklily I caught my mistake and did a free virus scan right away [google.com], which was able to remove the virus.
Windows Addiction is hard to.... (Score:3, Interesting)
There are several people whom I have cleaned their system from running IE on the internet. If its bad enough, where I have to do a fresh install, I set it up with a Linux partition, but in any case I install firefox as a default browser, etc...
90% of the time they go back to polluting their system.
Its frustrating, considering I'm doing the cleaning as a friend. But as soon as I find out they are contridicting my efforts, I tell them it up to them to clean it from now on.
Recent
Weaning off Windows (Score:2, Interesting)
Now my family uses Linux to surf the web and download MP3s. My wife copies selected files (over our LAN) over to Windows. My daughter continues to use Macromedia Dreamweaver and FlahsMX on Windows.
No more spyware, no more time wasted keeping virus definitions up to date. Ahhhhh! peace.
Re:I don't get it. (Score:5, Interesting)
The sad part was realizing how many people were friends solely because I could fix their computers. Once I stopped being their free 24/7 tech support line they disappeared.
Heard of this before.... (Score:1, Interesting)
Yet another reason for Firefox..
Re:5 hours!? (Score:3, Interesting)
But, to be fair, one reason why we can't put Firefox as standard is because we can't control it through Active Directory policies. And we're not about to to start writing scripts to handle any mandatory settings for users either.
I think it would be a lot easier for companies to use Firefox if it also had a way to store user settings in the registry so it can integrate with Group Policies.
Re:Maybe Better TCO... Maybe... (Score:1, Interesting)
"Could you name some of the Applications that won't run on Linux? I have yet to find an app without a suitable Linux alternative."
In the audio production world, there is a good amount of highly disorganized, incomplete, and difficult to install software for linux. There are a few very promising projects. But today, there is nothing to take the place of Adobe Audition, Nuendo, Cubase, Logic, Sonar, or Digital Performer. And the people who should be making linux versions of their software, such as FLStudio, Magix, or EnergyXT aren't doing it. I'm not even going to mention Protools, because it's more of a religious argument that keeps people using it (but there's no Linux version of that either).
I need a PC to do multitrack audio, audio mixing, audio editing, and live use as a VSTi musical instrument, as well as a VST/DX effects rack. I have actually had some very good experiences with some of the software that exists for linux, but what's good, is mostly at the driver level. There is a long, long list of audio software for linux, and some of it is very good and very mature. In fact, I have a machine that is for the express purpose of encoding audio and burning discs, and it also gets used as a file server, and a test bed for audio stuff.
But none of that software, not even Rosegarden, is really anywhere near the point where we can recommend to someone setting up a DAW that there is a Linux alternative. At best, one could recommend a Linux box as a supplement, for some of the things where it has strengths, but only to someone who already has substantial drive and skills, because it's a pain, and there is no complete solution. There is at least one turnkey product that makes a linux DAW, and as long as you color inside its lines, it appears to be pretty good. There's also one commercial product that is a VSTi host that runs on linux with a proprietary application. It's as expensive as an equivalent PC, and it's not possible to duplicate the proprietary software with anything else. (It does work well, though, the "Receptor").
But, in the sense that you can suggest Mozilla and OpenOffice to an office worker and they can get their work done with something like the same workflow on software with an equivalent featureset, this situation does not exist yet in the Audio production world.
Don't even talk about Video. Again, the inroads that Linux has made (Film GIMP,etc.) are exceptions that illustrate the rule. There are niche areas where a linux box makes a good solution.
But, Audio production is a pretty popular segment, with a great number of hobbyists and hackers, and yet, not enough to drive much of a demand for software.
Can it be any better in industries that have less geek appeal than that?
You asked to name applications that are missing, but I think you and I both will ignore wide swaths of industries that are not interesting to us, that have computer software needs, that have zero appeal that would drive people to develop alternative software for platforms others than Wintel, and maybe Mac.
Some businesses *barely* have windows software available to them, and they take what they can get. Even some of the areas of business that you'd expect to be flush with software options, don't have that many choices; Accounting comes to mind. Even the best Accounting and Finance software tends to stink to high heaven.)
Now, granted, my example (Pro-level Digital Audio/Video Production) has a tight binding to hardware and is very sensitive to performance issues, while many applications can work fine under emulation, this is one area where an emulation layer would be deadly to performance.
Bottom line, as much as I'd like to have my DAW and my musical instrument rack be all Linux, the sacrifices I'd have to make, in order to make that happen, are not anywhere near worth it.
Now mind you, we are one application away from changing my mind on this. Bundled with an ALSA/Jack driver that could actually run every VST out ther
Re:I don't get it. (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Look and Feel (Score:3, Interesting)
Works great for families. (Score:3, Interesting)
Which ISP? (Score:2, Interesting)
It's not as if (for most people) changing ISP is difficult or traumatic.
Which Linux-compatible ISP is as inexpensive as NetZero or Netscape? The amount that a NetZero or Netscape subscriber saves over a year compared to a full-price ISP such as AOL is nearly enough to pay for a Windows tax. Besides, some people can't even get as far as starting the dialer because many winmodems have no driver.
Man, he is a nice guy (Score:2, Interesting)