Replies

The file system gives you the equivalent of mandatory access control: there's no way you can create a file without assigning an owner and a group to it and there's no way you can create a file without assigning access rights to it either. Very importantly: you're not root. There are areas of your file system where even you cannot go. You can't - as on Windows - assume ownership of anything and run with no one to stop you. If you can't be stopped then malware that gets in your system can't be stopped either. Try to get at system files on Mac OS X - just give it a try. It can't be done. You'll find no software that gets you through the gate. Mac OS X doesn't have that cursed Windows Registry either - and that registry on Windows is about as well protected as anything else on a Windows system. When Microsoft try to install new modules to fight the malware then the malware simply goes into the Windows Registry and turns the modules off. It's ludicrous actually. That can't happen on Mac OS X.
There's a lot to be said about the 'quality of life' where you're not constantly worried you're infected again, you lost your identity again, your bank account's been hacked again, you have to update your antivirus software again, and so forth.

You Apple fanboy! All you do is put up stories proving that the Mac OS X system is inherently better than Windows! Can't you ever obfuscate that fact?!! <sarcasm>
Thanks for what you do, Swordmaker! Always good to see your pings.
On a serious note, I got a warning when I took Safari to www.lirr.com to look up a train schedule for my son, who was unexpectedly afoot when his "new" car hemorrhaged coolant from the water pump. The warning message was asking me if I wanted to allow "Safari processing" - or some such nomenclature - and warning that features of the site wouldn't work if I didn't. I bit the bullet and approved, since having that information was a question of convenience bordering on necessity for my son. Can you comment on what threat path, if any, may have been opened up by that decision, and how it might best be ameliorated?