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Posted on 05/27/2005 10:18:47 AM PDT by Swordmaker
Even though I am a security guy, my day-to-day work is pretty much like everyone else’s. I live on laptops and use my desktops at home and the office for geeking and experimenting. My pair of day-to-day laptops (Mac and Vaio XP Pro) are religiously backed up and so are my business machines. I don’t need them to do a whole lot – except reliably work, and that is why I am so damned aggravated with WinTel. (My Dell/Linux is for fun when I have the time, and to determine when it would be safe for OO.o to go Prime Time IMHO.)
Here is why I am annoyed:
1. I want my computer to function every time I turn it on.
WinTel platforms don’t work anymore – at least not reliably. More than anything else, I need my box to work. I don’t need it to crash while giving a PowerPoint presentation to the Canadian Parliament or the ABA. I don’t need Word to crash after writing the last irretrievably 12 brilliant paragraphs. I don’t need IE to crash because the memory handling in Windows is so poor.[1] And so it goes with a global litany of crashes that require reboot or memory cleansing every day.
[1] Do this. Open IE. Look at Processes in Task Manager and see how much RAM is being used. Now open a whole bunch of IE windows and watch the memory get eaten up. Now, close all of the IE windows and see how much RAM you are now using.
2. I want my computer to not corrupt data when it does crash.
That has happened to every one of us. Nuf said.
3. I use a handful of applications: Microsoft Office
Whether I like Office or not is immaterial. (I do like it, though, or I am terribly used to it.) The fact is that the world uses Word, Excel and PowerPoint.
Open Office and Star Office are getting ready for Prime Time, almost. But there are incompatibilities that would drive the average computer user bonkers. Maybe in a year or so… but not yet. That’s why I have a separate SUSE laptop to play around with.
4. I live on the Net. I do not want my browser to eat up all of my memory.
At the end of the day, most e-mail programs have pretty good features. I have always chosen one that is not the subject of endless assault by the ‘hackers’. The world, of course, should never use IE or Outlook: they are the prime targets of entirely too many attacks and vulnerable to too many ‘oopses’ that are really unnecessary. I have chosen Firefox. That’s my current religion, and I reserve the right to change my mind whenever I damned well please!
5. My MP3 and video clips and movies should operate every time I click on them, regardless of format. Hello? What is the problem here?
6. I use FTP pretty regularly.
7. In the WinTel world I have a terrific assortment of 3rd party tools to try to keep my PC alive. That’s just crazy. My wife has, out of necessity, turned into an uber-geek-spouse. All she wants to do is write, e-mail, surf & shop, and do graphics. She spends between 4-8 hours per week performing security relevant tasks to keep her machine alive, and it still crashes all of the time. (Didn’t the Intel dude just say the same thing?)
8. If I never install another operating system again… jeeez! It’s happened to you. CRASH! Reboot is arguably poor. F2 says the BIOS is OK. F8 Safe Boot is indecipherable to all but the technically hearty. Dell New Delhi says “reinstall the O/S”. Have you ever done that? Of course you have. But your machine is never the same. It’s like laser surgery; you see better sometimes, but not always… and at night all bets are off. The WinTel O/S installation on your PC did not come from the disks they give you to reinstall Windows. It comes from the manufacturer’s master build and they ain’t the same! Sorry guys, but it’s true. A new O/S install is just a quaint way of saying, “Shut up, Customer. It’s as close as we can get without having to spend a lot of money to make it right.”
That’s enuf. For now. But there is more. Later.
Mad as Hell: I - Switching to Mac
This is my first rant written on a Mac. Ever. Maybe I should have done it a long time ago, but I never said I was smart; just obstinate.
Here’s the deal. “I’m Mad! And I’m not going to take it anymore.” Of course I am talking about the WinTel world. Before anyone in Redmond or Inteland freak out… well maybe you should. I have had it.
Brief history. I grew up an analog geek. Tubes – valves. Built an analog computer in 1961. Programming in 1966 and on. First home machine in 1974: SWTC with binary switch encoding on the front panel. (Boooooring…) PET in 1977. Trash, too. Compaq, 1981 was it? DOS 1.0 and Lotus 1,2,3 1.0 and I still have the disks. CPM and pip.
Things used to work.
And this is exactly why I am coming to subscribe to the view that indeed, the WinTel hegemony is a threat to the national economic security of any organization or nation-state that relies up it.
In the coming weeks I am going to keep a diary of an experiment that I began in my company at 6PM GMT-5, April 29, 2005.
An experiment predicated upon an hypothesis that the WinTel platform represents the greatest violation of the basic tenets of information security and has become, indeed, a national economic security risk. I do not say this lightly, and I have never been a Microsoft Basher, either. I do not and will not dis any one company without a fair bit of explanation, justification and supportive evidence or experience.
So bear with me as I attempt to document the results of my experiment and I will attempt be fair to myself, my company, our clients and the computing public at large.
I am coming to the belief that there is a much easier, more secure way to use computers. Since I have spent several years focusing my security work on Ma, Pa & The Corporate Clueless, I have also come to the conclusion that if I and my kind (reasonably fluent) are having such problems, what about the other 98% of humanity who merely want a computer for e-mail and multi-media (Porn).
Mad as Hell: Why Over The Top?
Unscheduled Rant:
A lot of folks are asking, "what sent you over the top?"
Well, I've been married to Spousal Unit #1 for 26+ years. (Had to ask her. :-) And for those of you who are as lucky, going over the top is often inexplicable. Hey! It's true!
But, in this case it was building, over the last few O/Ss or so. :-) But, really, in the last few months, my frustration went over the top because I openly admit I am tough on laptops. I schlepp two of 'em everywhere 'round the world and I see no reason a $2000 box should not be able to take $2000 worth of airport abuse.
So, my beautiful new Sony 17" VAIO with 1920X1200 res (Freaking gorgeous) began to have mechanical problems. I can recognize a HW versus SW prob and this was hardware but the Sony folks, in an effort to save having to send a guy to me, tried to convince me "Reinstall Windows." NO! That is wrong! This is a HW problem.
The Sony guy came, and had the wrong parts. So he came back and when he left, the machine was in worse shape (fried Darlington power pair - I grew up analogue!) Sony is becoming useless, so my backup and I build a new one in the Dell 9200 (great machine when it works, and calling New Delli for help ("Ah to be reinstalling Windows") is an exercise in BabelFish.
Sony dude: back three times. Left 21 screws out. Sony says, "Time to reinstall Windows" and I scream LEMON LAW! - just give me a new box. (This one was 3 months old, 4 visits, Windows did NOT need a reinstall, and I had bought a 4 year in home service warranty.)
3 months into this, Sony says, "OK, it must be the HW."
The sheer amount of time I wasted was extraaordinary - to get a WinTel vendor to cop to the fact that HW does break, and all I needed was a HW fix - NOT reinstall XP Pro.
That was me. I like to think my time is valuable. So, if I spent 100 hours (conservatively) on this, how much is that worth? To me - I would have bought ANYTHING to make WinTel go away.
My wife's Dell box was rapidly turning into a disaster with a rebuild because the Reinstall disks do NOT match original OEM build. That really sucks for Ma&Pa customers because their machines will never be the sam again. Then they call New Delli and all they get is "Reinstall Windows".
NOTE: I really am not blaming ANY of this on MS. As my "Mad As Hell" series will hopefully, I have decided to look at PC/WinTel Security from a Systems Engineering View (SEV) - the world and discipline I grew up in at the turn of the last century:
My wife spent a gazillion hours in recovery, rebuild, reconfig, add security... and her time iss more valuable than mine! (she says....:-)
Our CTO had a WinTel meltdown. My daughter had a WinTel disaster. My son already uses Linux and only uses WinTel for gaming.
The cost - the unacceptably immense financial premium that the WinTel world demands of its users - is going to be the straw that breaks the WinTel back! I could no longer afford WinTel.
OWNING WINTEL IS TOO DAMNED EXPENSIVE for anyone who cares one whit about their money or their profits.
In this series, I am going to PROVE it. Please hang around.
PERSONAL NOTE:
I want to thank the literally thousands of people who have come forward to voice their support of "Mad As Hell". This means a great deal to me personally (people actually do care) and I think it is one of the best ways to create an inviting community where mass migration of the Ma&Pas can find a secure and functional home.
Later.
Winn
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It's still around here somewhere, although I have not seen it for years...
Heads and shoulders better technology.
I started up my Dell computer and was instantly reminded of why I went to a macintosh in the first place *lol*
I've known Winn for a few years now, and when he called me up and said "We're switching to Mac's", I have to say, I didn't believe him. While initially I argued that if he truly intended to go in this direction he should send me a Mac mini for testing before we commit to it. Where testing meant putting the Mac in this and breaking Malcolm Campbell's 1925 world speed record. [
I'll be strait with ya, I'd just taken my wintel problems with a grain of apathy each time they surfaced. I just accepted that all of the problems, the viruses, malware, out-of-the-box insecurity and even the beloved BSOD were just part of the package. I ran a slew of third party programs to maintain my wintel pc and I had a backup routine that was full of fiber. Why didn't I just run Linux? I do, but its a tool in the toolbox, not my daily driver. Linux/MySql rocks as far as I'm concerned, but Linux is not an office desktop... yet, and we all know it, so lets just say OK and move on. ;)
Suffice it to say, when I was presented with the opportunity to move my daily driver to a Mac for S&G's, I jumped at it on principal alone. What would you do if you hadn't used a Mac since Logo on the Apple II and someone sent you a G5 and said "Have Fun"? A chance to explore something new? CM'on... Besides, I wanted to see if the stories the mac users told were true. The underlying BSD OS with a proven OS? Sensible security settings out of the box? Sounds like a fairytale wintel users tell to their children, so needless to say, I was an easy sell. Couple with that the proported security and the sheer lack of viruses?
Heck, I was eager.
Well, it's been a few weeks now and all and all, I'd have to say I'm smitten. I look forward to using my Mac every day, and I can honestly say I've never felt that way about a Windows machine. Lets face it, it's a sexy beast and it's just been one pleasent surprise after another. I crashed the dock once and was able to shell out and use ps aux and kill to end the process.
Neat.
My impression is that he can keep his stuff going but he is getting damned tired of having to do it...
I switched to MAC a year ago. In the old days of DOS half the fun of owning a computer was trying to squeeze that little extra bit of memory out your limited 640K or coming up with some CONFIG.SYS or AUTOEXEC.BAT line that would give you just an a tiny bit of extra speed. Talking about you victory around the water cooler was a sign of geek machismo. But ever since WINDOWS 95 I have decided I just wanted a computer that could handle images, music, and internet when I needed it. Last year I finally got tired of spending half my time just trying to figure out why my computer was freezing, slowing down, or going crazy. The fact that every time my applications lock up I am asked if I want to tell Microsoft about the problem is just rubbing salt in the wound. Can you imagine if you owned a Ford truck and while you are driving down the road a message came up on your dash telling you your breaks had just failed and asking you if you wanted to tell FORD about it? You'd buy a Chevy. Well, I bought two MAC G-5s with Cinema screens and a Mac Powerbook G-4. I have never had to go to a website to figure out why something isn't working. Everything works, all the time.
Obviously not. I've never had Powerpoint crash during a presentation - I've never attended a presentation where someone else had Powerpoint crash. On the few occasions when Word dumped on me, I didn't lose any data, because unlike Winn, I apparently have grasped the mysteries of autosave and autorecover. I don't expect the system to play every possible media file out of the box, because I know that no system can possibly contain every codec that's ever existed, along every possible future codec that might someday be developed. I don't spend "4-8" hours per week maintaining my systems - they back up automatically, and run a virus scan automatically, with no intervention on my part, although I'm not sure why I bother with the scan any more, since the last virus problem I dealt with was in 1991. I've never had to reinstall the operating system to fix some problem. And if there's a hardware problem with some machine or vendor, I don't blame the whole platform, because I'm smart enough to realize that if Sony doesn't do me right, that doesn't mean Dell or HP or Gateway or Compaq will have the same problems.
Enjoy Winky-dink's Mac conversion, but just remember, he's a poser - as soon as he finds out that Apple recalled a bunch of laptop batteries, he'll throw his hands up, blame the entire OS for it, and run off in search of something else. Bet on it ;)
Yep, I'm a software engineer (database stuff). I'd just as well buy a new computer as start messing with some farked up Windows installation.
I don't complain about the software on the wintel machines I use at work, but the hardware is another story.
I have Compaq and Dell machines on my desks, and I've had lots of trouble with both. In four years I've had 5 hard drives die, three CD burners bit the dust and two floppy drives are no more.
I've thrown away two ex-keyboards, a mouse and a monitor, and a second monitor is flickering. I also sometimes use a Dell laptop, and I recently had to replace the hard drive in it.
I have a 6-year old Mac G3 at home. In the past four years, by way of comparison, I've replaced an 8-year old monitor and a 14-year old keyboard. Now, I have done upgrades to the Mac. I replaced the G3 CPU with a G4 CPU last year, and I've brought the RAM up to 512k.
I killed my SCSI card when I replaced the CPU, so I can't use my SCSI scanner anymore.
On the flip side, I've got a PIII-700 from HP that's entering its eighth consecutive year of service, with no hardware problems at all other than replacing a few keyboards. Cheap components are a plague on everyone, even Apple, so YMMV ;)
I've had clients who did that exact thing... when Windows got screwed up, instead of spending the time (which costs money) to re-install and reconfigure, they went out and bought a brand new computer. I've gotten several excellent computers for free that way... they just wanted them out of the way.
ping
You're absolutely right, re post 10. I've been on Wintel for years, and I've NEVER had any problems with programs spontaneously shutting down or any of the mythical problems everyone complains about. Maybe they just bought POS cheap-arse boxes. Well ok, I used to run out of RAM memory in Photoshop...like 10 years ago. In my experience Macs are for people who don't know how to use computers. Ever try explaining to an artist on the latest and greatest Mac how to upload a file to an ftp? Comical if not so tragic.
I don't think so. Macs are for people who don't enjoy maintaining their computer as much as they like using it. I've had pc's since the first IBM came out in the early 80's. I used to enjoy tweaking them. But then we got the Web, and I prefer to spend my computer "play time" on the Web rather than maintaining the computer.
I have a Mac desktop and a Dell laptop. The Mac is an "appliance" - I turn it on and it works. The Dell is a "computer" - I have to maintain it. I've lost interest in that. I can figure out how to fix the problems, but I don't find it to be how I want to spend my time these days.
I'll probably buy a Mac laptop soon.
I can understand you wanting an appliance, not a computer, which doesn't refute what I said. But my comment relates to my experience, which is with graphic artists and their lack of technical skills often causing bottlenecks in workflow. And I'm only talking about things like file transfers and downloading from ftp's, that ain't hardware issues.
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