[dalight]

You know.. when you brought up the CMU (Carnegie-Mellon University) connection.. it got me to remembering a University Professor that I would trust to make a statement on Windows vs. Unix security. A CMU alum from before Dr. Rashid's time, who is credited as the Father of the Computer virus. At least he was the first to define the term "Computer Virus".

From Kosmoi.com

The term "virus" was first used in this sense in print by Fred Cohen in his 1984 paper Experiments with Computer Viruses, where he credits Len Adleman with coining it. However, a mid-1970s science fiction novel by David Gerrold, When H.A.R.L.I.E. was One, includes a description of a fictional computer program called "VIRUS" that worked just like a virus (and was countered by a program called "ANTIBODY"); and John Brunner's 1975 novel The Shockwave Rider describes programs known as "tapeworms" which spread through a network for the purpose of deleting data.

Now if Dr. Cohen would come out with a study saying Windows was more secure, then I would stand up and take notice. But, alas he probably wouldn't as he wrote an article comparing security for closed vs. open source software already (now a couple of years old still is pretty accurate)

And just by the way, Linus Torvalds did teach Computer Science at the University of Helsinki, he just never got his Piled Higher and Deeper before he decided to come to America to work for Transmeta.

[ThePythonicCow]

Linus Torvalds did teach Computer Science at the University of Helsinki

But I suspect he started Linux well before he taught, and he has certainly continued to lead Linux development long after this teaching.

So it's not that a professor wrote Linux, but that a student started Linux (many of us have written it), and would later go on, for a little while, to teach at a University, while continuing to lead Linux development.