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It's a shame some HN users down vote people just because they disagree with their opinion. I didn't seen anything in this comment that would be considered offen

It's a shame some HN users down vote people just because they disagree with their opinion. I didn't seen anything in this comment that would be considered offensive to anyone. I didn't even see any FUD. Can any of you really disagree with "No more viruses, worms, trojans, piles of malware..."? In all the time I have been using Linux (OpenBSD now) I haven't had this sort of problem. I am not saying this systems are invulnerable. But OSS/*NIX system users will probably not have this sort of problem and even if they do it won't be as often as Windows users. P.S. Maybe the title attracted only Windows and C# people?

sid0 16y ago
I downvoted his post because I found his argument to be completely off-topic. "I hate Microsoft" has just about nothing to do with a post describing what is new in C#.
- jacquesm 16y ago
  Thank you for the explanation. The title says "Get Ready for C# 4.0". That's a pretty all-inclusive title, it apparently also addresses me. But I won't be 'getting ready for C# 4.0' and I think that I'm within my rights to say so and to explain why. Maybe you don't like my reasons. Maybe you think I 'hate' microsoft (I don't, actually I think some of their products are pretty good, notably excel and visual studio, but I can't stand 'word', 'outlook' and 'clippy'). But I think they as a corporation still have to show they understand that they've done some things wrong in the past and until they change their ways (and deal better with the virus plague on their machines), and convince me that they mean it I will not be switching back, even though that probably would save me a bunch of headaches when communicating with customers that still think attachments in proprietary formats are a valid means of communication (it is to them all their buddies are using microsoft, I'm the odd one out). I remember IBM handing out little flashlights on a trade show a few years ago, they were labelled 'we've seen the light'. It took them being beaten within another 3 years of their lives to finally 'get it', if not IBM could have easily gone the way of SUN and SGI. Microsoft still hasn't reached that phase. I wish microsoft and all those that support them the very best, meanwhile I'll be playing over here with other, almost equally shiny toys.
  - sid0 16y ago
    I ignored the title and read the actual content (you generally need to tell me to RTFT, not RTFA :) ). I see what you mean now. About the virus plague -- yes, I was hit by Blaster on XP too, but MS seems to have really started getting security around 2003. The only explanation for your product having more malware than your nearest competitor's, even though your product is objectively more secure, is that the amount of malware is a function of market share. I agree with you about the downsides of using proprietary formats. However, the power of a general-purpose computing platform like Windows, Mac OS X or Linux is that you can choose to lock or not lock yourself exactly as much as you want to, so I consider it a non-issue. Given that the platform gives you the freedom to not lock yourself into it, to my mind technical specifics and personal preferences for tools become the deciding factor. I really like the Visual Studio debugger and C# as a language.
    - jacquesm 16y ago
      > I ignored the title and read the actual content (you generally need to tell me to RTFT, not RTFA :) ). I see what you mean now. np. > is that the amount of malware is a function of market share. I've heard that a lot, but it may very well just be bad design. By the time another platform displaces windows we'll know. Whether it was 'objectively more secure' I don't know. The number of exploits that have been found over the years is alarming, I don't think that the various unix based desktop systems are that vulnerable. One argument why I think that is true is that if the number of windows hosts is 100x as large as the nearest competitor (and it's not, it's much less) then the 'niche' of the competitor is large enough that for a few of the entities targeting windows and getting only a small share of the machines because of inter-viral warfare (and that's pretty much the norm) the competitor is actually 'low hanging fruit'. Assuming of course that the platform is equally easy to exploit. The fact that we're not seeing something like that to me suggests that there really is a real difference between the various platforms in exploitability.
      - sid0 16y ago
        > I've heard that a lot, but it may very well just be bad design. By the time another platform displaces windows we'll know. Talking in terms of "may" and "might" isn't particularly useful. Do you have concrete examples? > I don't think that the various unix based desktop systems are that vulnerable. Could you cite this, please? For Mac OS X in particular. > Whether it was 'objectively more secure' I don't know. It is. For instance, Windows has a proper ASLR implementation, while the Mac implementation is useless.
rbanffy 16y ago
> It's a shame some HN users down vote people just because they disagree with their opinion I strongly suspect you would see lots of downmods on comments like this from the vicinity of Redmond.
- jacquesm 16y ago
  You seem to be on the receiving end of some of that.
  - rbanffy 16y ago
    All they can do is to hurt my karma.
stonemetal 16y ago
Perhaps because I have used windows for about 20 years now and never had piles of malware. I have never reinstalled the OS. I have never paid license fees, subscription fees etc. It is almost as if he were living in an alternate reality from the one I inhabit.(Note I have been dual booting Linux for around 10 years. I like both sides of the fence.) Two all is comments are about Windows OS not a single one about C# which is presumably the topic at hand.
- jacquesm 16y ago
  I've used microsoft products from before 'DOS' was even around, and I quit around 2003. I would have quit earlier but I still had to support a bunch of stuff that was running on windows (the webcam.exe client side stuff to connect to our websites), and a bookkeeping program that was windows only. I've had to re-install machines numerous times because they became unusably slow or infested with malware. We had one machine to which this never happened, nobody really understood what made it different from all the other ones (as much as 25 machines at a time at some point), that little machine just kept chugging away. Maybe it needed an occasional reboot, but even that must have been rare because I don't recall ever having to do that. It's not like it was build with premium components either, it was mostly built from leftover bits and pieces. I was a licensed MSDN developer for a long time, it cost a pretty penny. You've never paid license fees ? Ok, that's your decision, I always paid for the ones we used, in fact I probably paid for plenty that I didn't use (aka the microsoft tax). For the most part though, windows was nothing but trouble for me and the people that I worked with, and since switching to linux I haven't had any experience even remotely comparable to what used to be my lot when still using windows. The machine I'm writing this on was bought in December, the 'vista' installation that came with it was wiped and replaced with Ubuntu. It's a fair sized machine, 10G of ram and an i7 processor, this is still the first logged in session on that machine since I got it. That's amazing stability. It's possible that microsoft has comparable stuff now but I won't be seeing any of it until I either absolutely have to or they do something unthinkable today to prove that they really get it. (Such as, for instance really opening up the source to windows or some earth shattering move like that). I'm happy you're happy with either, I'm more happy with FOSS stuff, it feels like it is a more natural and democratic approach to computing than having my capabilities granted and removed by some corporation, especially one that has been a bad little boy in the class of corporations.

sid0 16y ago

I downvoted his post because I found his argument to be completely off-topic. "I hate Microsoft" has just about nothing to do with a post describing what is new in C#.

jacquesm 16y ago
Thank you for the explanation. The title says "Get Ready for C# 4.0". That's a pretty all-inclusive title, it apparently also addresses me. But I won't be 'getting ready for C# 4.0' and I think that I'm within my rights to say so and to explain why. Maybe you don't like my reasons. Maybe you think I 'hate' microsoft (I don't, actually I think some of their products are pretty good, notably excel and visual studio, but I can't stand 'word', 'outlook' and 'clippy'). But I think they as a corporation still have to show they understand that they've done some things wrong in the past and until they change their ways (and deal better with the virus plague on their machines), and convince me that they mean it I will not be switching back, even though that probably would save me a bunch of headaches when communicating with customers that still think attachments in proprietary formats are a valid means of communication (it is to them all their buddies are using microsoft, I'm the odd one out). I remember IBM handing out little flashlights on a trade show a few years ago, they were labelled 'we've seen the light'. It took them being beaten within another 3 years of their lives to finally 'get it', if not IBM could have easily gone the way of SUN and SGI. Microsoft still hasn't reached that phase. I wish microsoft and all those that support them the very best, meanwhile I'll be playing over here with other, almost equally shiny toys.
- sid0 16y ago
  I ignored the title and read the actual content (you generally need to tell me to RTFT, not RTFA :) ). I see what you mean now. About the virus plague -- yes, I was hit by Blaster on XP too, but MS seems to have really started getting security around 2003. The only explanation for your product having more malware than your nearest competitor's, even though your product is objectively more secure, is that the amount of malware is a function of market share. I agree with you about the downsides of using proprietary formats. However, the power of a general-purpose computing platform like Windows, Mac OS X or Linux is that you can choose to lock or not lock yourself exactly as much as you want to, so I consider it a non-issue. Given that the platform gives you the freedom to not lock yourself into it, to my mind technical specifics and personal preferences for tools become the deciding factor. I really like the Visual Studio debugger and C# as a language.
  - jacquesm 16y ago
    > I ignored the title and read the actual content (you generally need to tell me to RTFT, not RTFA :) ). I see what you mean now. np. > is that the amount of malware is a function of market share. I've heard that a lot, but it may very well just be bad design. By the time another platform displaces windows we'll know. Whether it was 'objectively more secure' I don't know. The number of exploits that have been found over the years is alarming, I don't think that the various unix based desktop systems are that vulnerable. One argument why I think that is true is that if the number of windows hosts is 100x as large as the nearest competitor (and it's not, it's much less) then the 'niche' of the competitor is large enough that for a few of the entities targeting windows and getting only a small share of the machines because of inter-viral warfare (and that's pretty much the norm) the competitor is actually 'low hanging fruit'. Assuming of course that the platform is equally easy to exploit. The fact that we're not seeing something like that to me suggests that there really is a real difference between the various platforms in exploitability.
    - sid0 16y ago
      > I've heard that a lot, but it may very well just be bad design. By the time another platform displaces windows we'll know. Talking in terms of "may" and "might" isn't particularly useful. Do you have concrete examples? > I don't think that the various unix based desktop systems are that vulnerable. Could you cite this, please? For Mac OS X in particular. > Whether it was 'objectively more secure' I don't know. It is. For instance, Windows has a proper ASLR implementation, while the Mac implementation is useless.

rbanffy 16y ago

> It's a shame some HN users down vote people just because they disagree with their opinion I strongly suspect you would see lots of downmods on comments like this from the vicinity of Redmond.

jacquesm 16y ago
You seem to be on the receiving end of some of that.
- rbanffy 16y ago
  All they can do is to hurt my karma.

stonemetal 16y ago

Perhaps because I have used windows for about 20 years now and never had piles of malware. I have never reinstalled the OS. I have never paid license fees, subscription fees etc. It is almost as if he were living in an alternate reality from the one I inhabit.(Note I have been dual booting Linux for around 10 years. I like both sides of the fence.) Two all is comments are about Windows OS not a single one about C# which is presumably the topic at hand.

jacquesm 16y ago
I've used microsoft products from before 'DOS' was even around, and I quit around 2003. I would have quit earlier but I still had to support a bunch of stuff that was running on windows (the webcam.exe client side stuff to connect to our websites), and a bookkeeping program that was windows only. I've had to re-install machines numerous times because they became unusably slow or infested with malware. We had one machine to which this never happened, nobody really understood what made it different from all the other ones (as much as 25 machines at a time at some point), that little machine just kept chugging away. Maybe it needed an occasional reboot, but even that must have been rare because I don't recall ever having to do that. It's not like it was build with premium components either, it was mostly built from leftover bits and pieces. I was a licensed MSDN developer for a long time, it cost a pretty penny. You've never paid license fees ? Ok, that's your decision, I always paid for the ones we used, in fact I probably paid for plenty that I didn't use (aka the microsoft tax). For the most part though, windows was nothing but trouble for me and the people that I worked with, and since switching to linux I haven't had any experience even remotely comparable to what used to be my lot when still using windows. The machine I'm writing this on was bought in December, the 'vista' installation that came with it was wiped and replaced with Ubuntu. It's a fair sized machine, 10G of ram and an i7 processor, this is still the first logged in session on that machine since I got it. That's amazing stability. It's possible that microsoft has comparable stuff now but I won't be seeing any of it until I either absolutely have to or they do something unthinkable today to prove that they really get it. (Such as, for instance really opening up the source to windows or some earth shattering move like that). I'm happy you're happy with either, I'm more happy with FOSS stuff, it feels like it is a more natural and democratic approach to computing than having my capabilities granted and removed by some corporation, especially one that has been a bad little boy in the class of corporations.