4 ms·

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,

by 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.

by sid0 16y ago

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.