Data on nuclear agency workers hacked

Reuters ^ | Friday, June 9, 2006 | Chris Baltimore

[driftdiver]

Sure Mac OS which is very similiar to BSD for some strage reason /sarc is good. And Mac pioneer many technologies. They why do so few people use it? I remember when I was younger and there were lots of IIe's out there? Its because MAC is expensive (overpriced) and fills a niche market.

Windows is so popular because everyone uses it. There is a reason everyone began to use it over the MAC. MAC lost the race a long time ago.

[driftdiver]

"With clicky windows and everything."

Yup and while they make cute computers not too many people want to spend twice as much for cuteness.

Argue as much as you want. Mac lost, Unix lost and windows rules the business desktop world. Windows is inferior in many ways except for the one that matters. Windows is easy to use and cheap for the consumer.

[doc30]

Jeeze...at work, we have several >$100K instruments that were bumped from our company network (without warning) because they are Win 95 or 98 machines. Our IT guys said it was time to upgrade the PC's because they could not run the latest security software. They didn't understand that the instruments are critical to our R&D efforts, as well as their network connections, and that to change the OS mease spending hundreds of thousands of dollars for hardware we don't need. The old instruments work fine, but are not compatible with the newer operating systems. We are still waiting to see if the IT department will pay for the new instruments, too. I imagine the government has nuclear labs with the same problems - old PCs that ncan't be upgraded without spending millions of dollars for new hardware the PC's operate. So the network stays fixed like it was still 1996. And hackers can get in easily.

[familyop]

I also second your rant on the VA letting our personal data get into the wrong hands.

[familyop]

"I like Unix and have a couple of different versions running. But its not a OS that you can put in front of the every day business user and let them work."

Maybe that will change as consultants begin to get more business-wise and do more marketing. Elementary school teachers and administrators near me are using OpenOffice (free from Sun and as intuitive as Microsoft Office, IMO). If they can use it, anyone can. StarOffice is sold for very little cash and is even more developed.

Recently, more software development companies are using packages like Eclipse (little developed as it is) due to cost-cutting.