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Apple Redefine 'Epic FAIL'?

Play it by the rules.

Get It

Try It

Rule #1 when you're touting an operating system not fit for human (or web) consumption: harp about incidental failures in other more adequate systems. This makes you more secure.

This is of course utter nonsense but it's what the Windows people have been doing for ten years now. And guess what? They're not more secure. There's evidently something in their strategy that's not working!

There've been people in the Windows camp who've watched the developments in the 'osascript' case with glee. Whilst their keen interest in all things security is appreciated their astounding cluelessness is not.

Let's try to help them along a bit. Repeat the following until it seems to have sunk in.

Windows is a standalone system. It was never meant to work on something like the Internet.
It's not significantly more difficult to build a properly secure system but it's impossible to go back after the fact and patch things up. It just doesn't work.
No matter how much Apple thwart and pervert FreeBSD they're still running Unix. And Windows users wish they had it so good.

Unix and Windows can't be compared for one very good reason: Unix is an operating system; Windows is a hardware interface.

The article cited above starts in by categorising the osascript hole as 'relatively minor flaws'. But then the article goes on to claim these flaws 'pale into insignificance' when compared to the 'hooter demonstrated by RixStep [sic]' - but all the Rixstep article does is cite a script which shows how the osascript hole could be exploited. It's the same bloody flaw.

So for the record: there aren't two or three or more flaws - there's one. It's all the same thing.

Avie Come Home!

Poster Ray7 does ask a valid question.

I find myself asking yet again: have things slid since Tevanian left?

And that's a good question. Especially as so many things have 'slid' in Tiger and now even more in Leopard. Apple have, as all know, diverted attention from their computer OS to concentrate more fully on their iPhone OS.

But are innocent bystanders supposed to start jumping for joy?

Ah well,... [sic] the windows [sic] crowd always said that Apple wasnt [sic] more secure. It was just a less popular platform for hackers. Now that their install base is going up, it is becomming [sic] more and more lucrative to find exploits for Apple computers. It's only a matter of time before more exploits come out,. [sic]

That matter of time: how many hundreds of thousands of active thriving viruses are out there for Windows? Are there any for any Unix system? Any whatsoever?

Rather Amazing

Actually it's rather amazing: instead of doing the Intelligent Thing™ and getting the F off Windows because it's utter crap they keep on using it, keep on subscribing to antivirus signature lists, keep on visiting malware identification websites, keep wearing kevlar to take their leisurely evening promenades, keep letting the black hats kick the shit out of them...

And most importantly: keep letting their hundreds of millions of pathetic computers get compromised, join botnets, and spew out 99.999% of all the spam and malware on the Internet today.

And instead of doing the good thing and cleaning up their act - someday there might be legislation which finally outlaws people like this using systems like this - they just sit back and tell themselves, over and over again, that it's not that bad, not that bad at all, because in the next five hundred years or so some other system might turn out to be as bad or worse.

It won't. Because no one builds crap systems like Microsoft anymore; because no one needs anything other than Unix or derivatives thereof; as a result - as these systems are true operating systems and not mere hardware interfaces - it's just not going to happen.

Don't expect the Windows Kool-Aid drinkers to understand that. If they understood anything they wouldn't be on Windows in the first place.

Clean Them Out!

It's time to start legislating and protecting the Internet the way we do our highways. Dangerous drivers and dangerous vehicles are simply not allowed. And that includes the people at MSDN.

This is not - repeat not - about a 'lifestyle revolution'. Most people don't get it and don't give a shit but that's not what it's about. It's about making the bloody Internet secure so it works as designed and so people can feel comfortable and secure using it.

The astonishingly clueless Windows losers really think all computer systems behave this way - wobbly, crash prone, lacklustre - and wide open to the most puerile of script kiddie attacks. Clue: they aren't. None of them are. Only Windows is.

And as long as we've got stuttering pollution emitting wobbly vehicles like Windows hogging the road space we're all going to continue to suffer.