What is your OS -- windows, mac, linux?

[marshmat]

I also think one of the reason Pc's get viruses is because a lot of people dislike Bill Gates way of doing things, apart from him being rich and the tall poppy syndrome I think a lot of people aknowledge the way Microsoft operates is not really good but are forced into PC's by market saturation.

It's always been cool to bash the big guy. A related theory I've heard from a lot of people with industry connections is that certain security-software companies may or may not be writing and/or releasing certain mild viruses to ensure continued demand for their (mostly Win32-based) wares.

Unfortunately the colleges my girls attend dish out all their homework on PCs

Thankfully my school has moved beyond being OS-specific (well, except for engineers, all our CAD, math and coding kit only runs on Win32) and uses the same expensive, slow, platform-independent system for almost everyone's Web-based class stuff. (A lot of profs got sick of it and now just post everything to little HTML pages.)

Microsoft makes all schools and colleges an offer they can't refuse

They also give away a great heap of free stuff to anyone who takes courses that focus on their products. Go into computer or electrical engineering, take some comp.sci courses, and there's a good bet you'll be able to get Vista, Office and other MS_crap for free, just as an added incentive to become proficient with administering their own systems instead of working with Linux. Which Microsoft now considers a VERY big threat, much more so than they let on in public.

[Mychael]

[quote=marshmat;136786]It's always been cool to bash the big guy. A related theory I've heard from a lot of people with industry connections is that certain security-software companies may or may not be writing and/or releasing certain mild viruses to ensure continued demand for their (mostly Win32-based) wares.

Yeah, that's always been a question.
I could see how maybe one or two really clever nerds might do that to prove how clever they are but on such a large scale??
I cannot think back to when viruses first appeared. Can anyone recall how soon after viruses became an issue that anti-virus software became available?

First virus I ever heard of was the "Pacman" virus and there were already anti-virus programs around then.

It becomes a game for the companies, just think how their business would be if their particular program fixes a virus that another brand cannot.
It arouses my suspicions a bit when brand "A" virus checker cannot fix a problem but brand "B" does.
Now I am not a programmer but I would have thought the basics of writing a fixer program would be the same, you have to start from about the same place so it follows to my reasoning that any brand should be capable of doing the same job as any other brand. That there are differences seems (to me) to point to companies trying to nobble one another.

Mychael

[Mychael]

Following on from my line of thinking, it just occured to me that my "clever Nerd" theory has holes in it. Even though there are a lot less Macs around surely it would be a major kudo to write Mac viruses.
So,, either the Mac OS is so tight no-one can crack it or,,, given that the pc market is so huge the viruses get written for pc's to cash in on the money cow of anti-virus software.

Mychael

[Bergalia]

Originally Posted by Mychael

there are a lot less Macs around....Mychael

Dammit Mychael - how many times do I have to tell you - 'Fewer' Macs...NOT less.Fewer for numbers; Less for volume...Even so, your point taken

[Mychael]

duhhh, "please explain". Oh never mind I've re-read your post , I get it now.

So I could make a shorter post so that would be a "less" but if made less posts, that would be "fewer".. lol

Mychael

[Bergalia]

Originally Posted by Mychael

duhhh, "please explain".
Mychael

Well Pauline, it's like this... (Aussie members will understand...)

[Mychael]

Hmm, but I could have said there were "less" Macs produced last year then there were pc's. As in the volume of Macs produced was Less.. Hey I'm getting the hang of this now.

Mychael

[Tim B]

It's a well-known that major manufacturers release software to cure problems they created in the first place. what do you think bug-fixes in commercial software are? Especially the ones with a rolling update license.

There are probably a few rather clever people around who have written the odd virus or dialler (though possibly just to prove they could). I remember viruses being around in the days of the early ACORN systems. Having a ROM-based OS, there wasn't much the virus could do that re-formatting the hard drive wouldn't sort out.

The old Win/Mac/Linux debate is a funny one. Partly because Linux & Mac are not really dissimilar systems, just Linux is an awful lot cheaper (well, free...). One thing is for certain, though, Microsoft's business model is STILL unacceptable. Has anyone noticed thier WinXP system slow down after the release of VISTA? Several of my friends have reported weirdness, and I'm not really surprised.

Oddly enough there are Windows advocates who actually genuinely believe that VISTA is great. I'll bet they're using a system not dissimilar to the 64bit Pentium4 one I built recently. It runs Mandriva Linux 2007 and it is blisteringly fast. On averarge it is 1.8 times faster than my existing machine (2.4GHz P4) on real tasks. Per clock cycle it is 38.5% percent faster than my existing machine. You'd need that sort of power for VISTA though, otherwise the OS would feel a like treacle.

Linux is free (or relatively free) of viruses, because they can only be run as user programs, therefore, they cannot corrupt system files (owned by root) or other users files. Microsoft has tried to copy this ownership mechanism, but has failed miserably.

Incidentally, there is some interesting discusions about DRM (digital rights management) at the moment. This is really because MS and RIAA are not fond of anybody else making more money than them. UNfortunately, the record companies don't seem to be too happy about it, and are now selling DRM-free music.

So, there are lots of problems in the computer industry, most of them because of Microsoft.

To really stick the knife in, the MS website runs on Apache. Apache is an open-source LINUX web server. So MS trusts it's own products doesn't it?

Tim B.

[Bergalia]

Originally Posted by Mychael

Hmm, but I could have said there were "less" Macs produced last year then there were pc's. As in the volume of Macs produced was Less..
Mychael

Nearly there Mychael: 'There were fewer Macs produced last year, because the volume produced was less than that of PCs...'

Where, oh where is Professor Higgins when you need him...

[marshmat]

Incidentally, there is some interesting discusions about DRM (digital rights management) at the moment.

That's got to be one of the biggest inherent flaws in Vista, is its disgusting built-in DRM "features". Try playing a blu-ray or HD.DVD disc in a Vista machine- apparently it'll (a) degrade the picture quality to normal dvd levels, and (b) use most of your cpu power to run 30 checks per second on the integrity of the signal path to ensure it's not being diverted or copied. I call bullshit.
I know exactly one person who has Vista and likes it. Developers worldwide are peeved that the APIs are either sparse, worthless or unavailable. The OS alone is over twelve gigabytes and virtually nothing more than a year or two old can run all its features. Even many new machines have trouble. And Vista was over a year late. A conspiracy to make old, fully functional equipment obsolete?
(On a semi-related note, I found out the hard way this month that the new IE7 and Windows Media 11 that are designed for Vista are NOT fully compatible with XP. This after Windows automatically installed both without asking me, and promptly went into memory-leak and CPU runaway whenever you tried to do too much at once in either.)

[Tim B]

That's why we use Firefox and either Zinf or VLC (all free).

Tim B.

[masalai]

Time for an update, Go to the Ubuntu website and ask for a free (literally) copy to be posted to you, for free!!!.

No viruses, as the 'community' seals any potential hac access for viruses within days of it being found. Linux works differently to MS and is less at risk by design as is Apple - both derived from the Unix concept.

I have a virus scanner so I don't pass on to the poor ******* user.

I now have "wine" so I can run DelftShip & FreeShip as if it were a Linux application. No problems. Greater flexability. Better hardware interface & control. Can read & write most MS & apple file formats.

What is your problem? Mine works, does your OS & apps meet your needs & expectations? I use a 'flavour' of linux called mint. I am thinking of migrating to "ubuntu studio" soon. enjoy................

[Mychael]

Originally Posted by Tim B

That's why we use Firefox and either Zinf or VLC (all free).

Tim B.

I use firefox (much better then IE) but what is Zinf & VLC?
Also swapped to Mozilla Thunderbird in place of Outlook Express. I think on that one I prefer OE if it behaved itself (which it doesn't) hence Thunderbird.

Mike

[masalai]

Mychael, go the whole distance & you will not regret your actions.

I currently use "Linux mint" which uses the ubuntu repositories (it contains all the plugins & codecs to play all music and all region video), I am toying with the idea of going to "ubuntu studio" which may be similarly equipped but includes all quality software for processing video, sound - - synthesisres, drum kits, music mixing (28 channels), & lots of other stuff, and still images, all at near professional levels. Have a look, it is free and will load for dual boot automatically in most cases ???

[the1much]

i run windows,,i have mozilla firefox,, the ole lady uses IE,,,but she can only do what i have programmed to be "allowed",,,,and i have a "handfull" of "toys" on here that im pretty sure unless your some computer genius ,,,your not even gonna "find" me on the internet ,,hehe