Posted on 02/17/2005 9:47:00 AM PST by rit
SAN FRANCISCO — Believe it or not, a Windows Web server is more secure than a similarly set-up Linux server, according to a study presented yesterday by two Florida researchers.
The researchers, appearing at the RSA Conference of computer-security professionals, discussed the findings in an event, "Security Showdown: Windows vs. Linux." One of them, a Linux fan, runs an open-source server at home; the other is a Microsoft enthusiast. They wanted to cut through the near-religious arguments about which system is better from a security standpoint.
"I actually was wrong. The results are very surprising, and there are going to be some people who are skeptical," said Richard Ford, a computer-science professor at the Florida Institute of Technology who favors Linux.
(Excerpt) Read more at seattletimes.nwsource.com ...
To the contrary, Ballmer Boy, I feel an overriding need to spread the truth about Microsoft and it's management.
I'm sorry if that hurts your little feelings.
You too.
Well, let's see here. First you decry the Linuxheads for using "guilt by association". Then you promptly use the same tactic here.
The group in question never "hid" their association with CCIA, since the report was published by the CCIA. As for the CCIA itself, it's older than Microsoft(!), and does a lot of different work in the industry. So your claim of a "Microsoft-hating" organization is farfetched.
Finally, I know a number of those individuals personally, and they're all well recognized in the Internet security community. John Quarterman in particular I've known since the Morris Worm in 1988. (If John is rabid about anything, it's about quantifying and studying Internet traffic on a macro scale.) Given that, why should anyone listen to you?
No need, they already know it.
They don't sell Linux, they sell support packages.
Fortune 1000 companies and even small business, don't build their own PC's and download Linux on to it.
The company CEOs and CIOs don't. But they usually have a department that does just that. It's the same department that buys Dell's, strips off the install Windows and installs the company's own build.
They buy servers pre-instaled with commercial software and backed by service agreements. Sometimes. And sometimes not.
I know at the Fortune 500 company where I spend most of my time, we order servers from Dell, strip off the Windows and install what we need.
Sometimes that's Windows. Sometimes it's RedHat or SuSE. Or it can be Debian Linux, Slackware Linux, FreeBSD or OpenBSD.
I've even watched them install Gentoo Linux and let it compile for a day and a half.
Most big companies have an IT department that does what's needed.
And few of the copies of Linux that we use in our department were paid for. We just downloaded and installed.
It's the same in most large companies. If they have an IT department they get contracts to cover the hardware. They support so many different kinds of software in-house already that another Unix doesn't really matter.
Smaller companies that don't have an IT department are closer to what you are describing. They buy RedHat or SuSE for the support.
Depends on the institution and the donor. In particular, Microsoft has been a big user of block grants, though this seems to be changing.
I think I'm going to punch out here as well, 19 years of Usenet wrangling has made me way too non-dogmatic for this kind of furball...
Sure, as long as you don't forget to apply those 853 critical updates and 765 service packs every month.
And you can download Linux here all day long for free.
So, they can sell it all they want, but it's still free.
You are half right. Most large companies do indeed build their own servers, because that way they can get exactly what they want.
Granted, all the parts come from big name suppliers and they don't tend to fiddle with lots and lots of different parts, but they do tend to buy something like this:
One mostly bare Dell Powerdedge server from Dell
4 GB RAM from Crucial
Two 120GB drives from DrivesDirect.
Two network cards from Intel.
The box arrives, the hard drive is pulled out and discarded, the new drives, RAM and NICs are installed, and an OS is installed.
Then it goes into the rack. One NIC is used for normal network communication, one NIC is used for the management network and one is kept for a hot spare.
I've built file servers, print servers, firewalls, LDAP servers, Kerberos servers and various specialty boxes in just this method while working for more than one Fortune 500 company and half a dozen Fortune 1000 companies.
Companies without an IT department generally take what Dell or HP gives them. Those companies are generally a lot smaller and buy complete support contracts for software and hardware.
Sorry, you're wrong.
You are wrong. Where do you think that Novell and RedHat get the Linux that they sell?
Do you think that Linus Torvalds burns them a CD and has his reindeer deliver it?
Nope. Sorry. RedHat and Novell get the latest Linux by downloading it off of the Internet.
Are they stupid enough to download some unsupported software from the Internet to run critical business and end up losing millions? No way.
Why not? Considering how wonderfully secure and stable the software that they've bought from Microsoft has been, it can't be much worse.
Everyone knows that buying software costs make up but a very small percentage of the total costs of running computers.
Well, that depends. For business computers, that's somewhat correct. For home computers, software, especially Windows, is now over 25% of the cost of a system and continues to grow. It continues to grow for business computers, but since the hardware and administration are the lion's share of the expense, it's not as big of a part.
The difference in the admin costs really stand out. Linux is less expensive to run. Yeah, there are some studies that say differently, but when you read the fine print, those studies never include cleaning viruses, worms, spyware, fixing broken patches and other Microsoft-isms.
Trying to save pennies by downloading free OS from the Internet would be really stupid
It's not about saving pennies. It's about getting something that works for a change.
No, you can't.
Show me where you can buy a Dell Poweredge server with a 1.2 GHz processor and using the motherboard that Dell shipped last June.
And big companies like to have all of their hardware the same. So they tend to buy in lots, store them and build them later.
It's more efficient than trying to customize each box, have each one be a bit different, some older, some newer. It makes management of the devices easier because you don't have to worry about big changes in things like the BIOS or ACPI or what revision of firmware is on the remote console card. The accounting department likes it that way too.
Lots of firms have had Dell deliver their desktop and server computers and even had Dell finish the installation itself, on site, in record time.
I remember reading a story in either Businessweek or Fortune about Dell doing deals of that nature a few years back.
They sure do. But big companies don't use them for that. Big companies buy in bulk and build what they need when they need it. That's what an IT department is for, after all.
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