Posted on 12/06/2007 9:59:43 AM PST by driftdiver
After years of relative safety, the Apple Mac is becoming an increasingly tempting target for malicious computer hackers, according to a new report published this week.
Security researchers have been aware of the threat to Apple since last year, when they detected the first piece of malicious code – or “malware” – specifically designed to target Apple.
Over the past few months, however, the number of malicious programmes has increased, according to a report published this week by F-Secure, an internet security company.
“Over the past two years, we had found one or two pieces of malware targeting Macs,” said Patrik Runald, an F-Secure security researcher. “Since October, we’ve found 100-150 variants.”
(Excerpt) Read more at ft.com ...
“I guess they’re not selling enough Mac antivirus products.”
I guess it would be better to sit there being ignorant but happy.
Which is . . . Unix.
“Which is . . . Unix.”
SHHHHH its a secret. Unix isn’t trendy in fact if there’s anything more stodgy than Microsoft its Unix.
:-)
Ah, no, it’s a Posix platform, similar to Unix but not identical, it was created as a free Unix alternative by Berkley, like Linux.
So you can’t call BSD Unix because it’s not, it’s a Unix “like” system, referred to as a whole as a Posix platform.
"Sad Mac" days: A cooperative multitasking operating system with no protected memory and a bad virtual memory system even though it supported multiple users. A disaster waiting to happen.
These days: UNIX.
Apple got smart and ditched their old OS, while Microsoft hung on to theirs.
People keep saying it’s based on Unix when it’s not, it’s OpenBSD, which is an open platform.
See here. It's both, actually FreeBSD.
Torvalds is generally left but never gets involved in politics. He’s a pragmatic geek who sees open source as a good development model, which has angered the “free software as a philosophical and political movement” crowd.
I would agree that Microsoft has been "the best" at marketing, but not at product quality or technical excellence. It's a lot like television - the worst programs often get the highest ratings.
If you plan to continue making your livelihood on Windows products, I strongly urge you to avoid Macs. The Mac's superior user experience would spoil your perception of Windows, and then you would hate your job.
If I had to use Windows, I would leave the industry.
I'm watching what's going on, but hearing these guys cry wolf for several years is starting to get old. They do no service to anyone with these empty articles.
They'd do a better service if they shut up until something real came around. Which will happen, eventually.
“I would agree that Microsoft has been “the best” at marketing, but not at product quality or technical excellence. It’s a lot like television - the worst programs often get the highest ratings.”
They obtained their niche by providing the best product at the time. It was easy to use and fairly cheap. Yes it has problems but as such it is still more cost effective that MAC. Anyone who thinks they are perfect is in for a shock sooner or later.
“strongly urge you to avoid Macs. “
I will. I’ve found them difficult to work with and end up costing me money.
“The Mac’s superior user experience would spoil your perception of Windows, and then you would hate your job.”
I love my job. The parts I don’t like I hire out. :)
I have used both, and still have a PC, I like flexibility and options when it comes to computer hardware and software.
Geeks like PC’s because you have historically had many options to make changes and use various hardware configurations at reasonable costs.
Macs don’t allow for this historically, and when ever a piece of hardware is sold for Macs it almost always more expensive than it’s PC counterpart, even though the hardware may be identical.
And yes, I know, you can buy a less expensive piece of hardware made for PC’s and use them on OS X if you know what chip is used on what product and know how to edit out the kext files to allow for it’s use, but if Apple doesn’t have a native driver, or company didn’t make one for their product, you’re out of luck.
So for geeks PC’s have and always will be the preferred option since I can build a PC, can you build a Mac?
(Hardware wise, yes you can for less than $400, but you can’t install OS X on it)
“Who on earth would download software that they know nothing about? Not I-—so my Mac is still safe.”
Ever click on a link to see a funny video or look at a picture?
Similar to what Unix? The first edition? V6?
How about V7 or V8 or V9? :-)
Anyway, for the record, Leopard qualifies for the name Unix.
So the administrators of the minicomputers infected with the Morris worm gave it permission to run?
Leopard gets UNIX 03 certification
Military Airlift Command?
Anyway, TCO studies pretty much always have the Mac costing a lot less than an equivalent PC in the long run (we'll ignore the company-sponsored studies). Being able to cut just one support staff position makes up for a lot of hardware.
There are some exceptions. I've found that open-source drivers often work well on Macs. For example, the CUPS printer drivers do a good job in supporting older printers. And the SANE scanner drivers support older scanners on Mac. They're not as polished as the vendor-provided drivers, but they are very flexible and get the job done.
After adding in the operational costs of Windows (anti-virus software, poor security, lousy user interface design, reliability issues, shorter userful life, crappy applications, the constant nagging, etc.), the Mac is more cost effective. Windows is really the ultimate productivity-killer.
As a testament to Apple's quality - I have an Apple computer that will be 30 years old in a few weeks. It still works as good as new. Apple is simply the best in the industry for building solid, reliable products.
$ vi killme.bat $ cat killme.bat rm -rf / $ ./killme.bat bash: ./killme.bat: Permission denied $ ls -l killme.bat -rw-rw-r-- 1 zeugma zeugma 9 Dec 6 15:26 killme.bat $
Unlike MS-Windows, just becuse a file exists, and has the correct file extension (.bat, .com, or .exe), it is not executable.
In order for a program to run, it must be made executable first. Microsoft goes further to compoud this problem by not showing you file extensions by default in their file browser!
Further lets go ahead and make the bugger executable...
$ chmod 775 killme.bat $ ls -l killme.bat -rwxrwxr-x 1 zeugma zeugma 9 Dec 6 15:26 killme.bat $ ./killme.bat rm: cannot remove '//initrd.img': Permission denied rm: cannot remove '//root/.mcoprc': Permission denied rm: cannot remove '//root/.ICEauthority': Permission denied rm: cannot remove '//.mcop/random-seed': Permission denied rm: cannot remove '//^C
Notice that even though I told it to, it wouldn't delete files a user shouldn't have rights to. Now, OTOH, if I'd waited long enough, it would have eventually deleted the files in my home directory that I had ownership of.
The bottom line? Unix is better designed than MS-Windows.
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