Ah, Well, it’s Time.

Christopher Anthony must have even more free time on his hands than I do, which is a sad state to live in. How can I say that? He actually took the time to rebut my analysis of his website, although he just changed the word order of his original arguments to combat my points. How many flaws are in his argument? Quite a few, but I’m unwilling to clutter my Blog to debate him – would the punk actually allow for comments on his site, I would, but he seems a little skiddish – so my rule of thumb is to wait until he posts something worth responding to.

And in spite of that, I have noticed some key quotes from our whipping boy…

Linux is a multi user system – So is Windows, you buffoon. If more people ran as a regular user – instead of as an Administrator which is what people usually do because they are lazy – then they would have limited rights to the core OS. And since the most popular viruses simply spread through email not the core OS, should they not run email? So yes, it is a misconfigured computer that helps a Trojan horse, same as it is a user that opens the attachment in the first place. To further support my point, if a Linux system had no account but Root, then wouldn’t it be in the same situation? Yes, yes it would. Here’s a better thought: spread some blame around to the hackers that write viruses and Trojan horses instead of just the people that write the OS. Oh lemme guess, the next comment will be “Microsoft writes its own viruses for more press”, right?

how come Linux only has 15 viruses where Windows has 500,000 – Hackers need attention, much like you seem to, so they will target the larger audience. Why on earth would a hacker waste time on 5% of the computer world?

Linux is hacker proof. – How can you say this and then back it up with unless you have root privileges? That means it is not hacker proof because any password can be hacked. A user can get into the box over a network, use sudo and guess what? They have root access. The only hacker proof computer is a computer that is turned off. Any password can be hacked, given enough time, and no network can ever be 100% safe. Stop sounding like an ass and say it’s more secure or whatever you’re trying to prove, because no system is hacker proof.

re OSS: I’ve run MovableType on Windows boxes – freeware and built on PeRL – and it runs fine. Just because you don’t like the way it runs doesn’t mean it does not work.

Red Hat charged for media – then it’s not free now is it? If they weren’t charging for software why did they have a basic and profession edition at two different price points? The same amount of media is included. And I like you how ignore the fact that there were a few dozen updates when I installed it initially, along with an update a day whenever I checked the upgrading service. Apple has updates for OSX and they’re Linux based… FreeBSD is the core of Darwin, I believe… And IBM charges for the services that are used to install the software: that’s not free either.

I did have an AV package already installed and it did tell me I had three viruses, anyone who does a Windows install will tell you they always get hit by at least one virus during update. – This is my personal favorite. Doesn’t he understand that the media would jump all over this if this is indeed the case? And given that I had to install XP about a dozen times already this year, from a retail CD, and I’ve run with Norton AV 2004 all this time, how come I haven’t seen a virus yet? Or better yet, what update had the virus? Or what virus was found? Odds are it was a “something is trying to be installed” message that most AV products like to throw out there, and he just didn’t read it. He then goes on to say that AV products are only out there because Microsoft sucks and they shouldn’t be for free (i.e. OSS) because they wouldn’t be trusted… so now OSS is untrustworthy? Again, how about putting some blame on the hackers? If there were not hackers, we wouldn’t need AV now would we?

He goes on and on (and on) and he’s even trying to say that he’s not a zealot, too [the link is for your Chris, seeing as you don’t know what it means, I’m guessing] Yeah right. Being a zealot on it’s own isn’t a bad thing, but being completely obsessive for an argument that is based on nothing but blind passion and skewed facts is where there’s a problem…

that and the fact that he keeps trying to argue OS selection like it was a religious decision. If he really was a Linux fan, he’d be better off trying to prove why Linux is better for him, instead of trying to bash Microsoft for everyone else.

The truth is that in a few months, we’ll have to revisit our big boy’s predictions – I can promise you that his allegiance will shift between Linux partners. He already hates SCO for “MS backing” or some shit and he hates OSX for reasons I can’t explain. Give him a few months and the story will change yet again. Always against Microsoft, though – that will be constant. I can just imagine that he was a huge fan of SCO before they started to sue anything that moved… I just love the fact that he’s only pissed that Microsoft has a bigger market share than Linux: that’s they short story of all this whining… you can trust me on that.

What I wanna know is who is this Novell company he keeps yammering about?


11 thoughts on “Ah, Well, it’s Time.”

  1. Windows is a multiuser system? How many are logged into your computer simultaneously now? There are 98 logged into my ISP’s Linux box using command shells. I’ve had clients that could never get more than 50 users logged into a multiprocessor Windows box running Cytrix. Windows is multiuser, yes, but Linux does that better.

  2. Apples and oranges, dude. First off, I never said Linux was worse or better: I simply said that Windows can support multiple users. The point he was making was that Windows is insecure because you can’t have multiple user accounts, which is obviously not the case. What’s worse is that if Linux users did what Windows users tend to do, and that’s run as root/Administrator, then they would have the same problem… that a lot of the “holes” come from user-centric misconfiguration.

    Beyond that, it depends on what you mean byt “logged in”. Telnet? VNC? Web? FTP? And what version of Windows? 2000? 2003? XP Home? I don’t know what the max number is – and I’m not debating that Linux doesn’t have it’s uses – I was just rebutting false information from another web site…

  3. Actually, the multiuser thing is a recent addition. AFAIK, multiple users are still only semi-supported through the remote desktop feature; you can’t get a command shell.

    This actually makes sense, because Windows was not designed to be a multi-user system from the get go (unlike Unix). Thus, it relies on UI for most of the work, and it has virtually no security. This makes perfect sense given their requirements: one user using the physical machine at a time. Since there’s no way anyone can access the machine over the network, there’s no need to write remote shells or split up the GUI like X does. And there’s no need for security, for the same reason — just lock up your computer with a physical key, and you’re done. However, this also means that the entire OS is optimized to support just that one user — and it’s very good at that.

    Windows began facing problems when this thing called Internet came about. Suddenly, you can be connected to other machines all across the world, and you can have multi-users, and 90% of them are malicious… The original design assumptions no longer hold, and the system can’t handle it. What MS should have done is release a new, networked OS which was designed from scratch, and came with some sort of Windows emulator, but they tried instead to shoehorn their existing code into diametrically opposed requirements. Hence the bugs.

  4. “multiple users are still only semi-supported through the remote desktop feature; you can’t get a command shell.” This does depend on the version of Windows and your settings of Terminal Services. No lie – do a search on Google and you’ll find the setting for connecting to the console.

    Also, this will all become moot with the command shell that’s included with Longhorn, if MSDN is to be believed… ya figure that MS will take the years of Windows experience and the new ideals of OSX and Linux and apply them to the “next generation”.

  5. Apples and oranges, why? What’s your definition of multiuser? Mine would be simultaneous logins to single box. The 98 users I mentioned were command shells, i.e., telnet or ssh. That does not include HTTP, FTP, NFS, VNC, X-windows and CDE.

    The systems were multiprocessor 2000 server and XP, running Cytrix. The terminal server systems we have are limited to two simultaneous logins at a time by the guys in IT, so I have no idea how many can be on.

    No, you did not say Windows is better than Linux. Is Linux better than Windows? On this one point, at this time, yes, IMHO. Overall? Depends on what you want the system to do. You might not care about command shells or other users.

    MSH looks good. I’d love it for the pipes alone. It looks like it would address my biggest gripe about Windows, lack of command line utilities. Cygwin (which is what I currently use) and WSU notwithstanding.

  6. Bugmaster, I disagree. Unix is no more inherently surcure than Windows. Unix has had more time to deal with the problem, and Windows is handicapped by wider usage and more visibility when it happens. I lost count of the number of idiot sys admins (and I’ll admit I have done it) who left guest accounts or default logins wide open. I had two SCO boxes go down due to viruses in the early ’90s.

    Randy is correct that most users run as Administrator either through ignorance or sheer laziness. I used to find the same thing in the Unix world. I was shocked a few years ago that one admin of a company was routinely using rcp and rsh (they have since stopped, and are using authentication shells).

  7. Hey, I once knew a Solaris shop that ran for years on a set of T1 lines that had no firewall installed. Talk about an unsecured system: in that environment a Vic 20 would have problems (assuming it could see the network).

    And, not to beat a dead horse, but I remember being able to send mail to people from god@heaven.gov when sendmail was a much friendlier module… it eventually added a good deal more security to it to prevent it yet there’s still a lot of people with sendmail trouble…

    The greatest risk to a computer is still the user.

  8. also @Tim: Since Citrix doesn’t run on Linux, it’s still apples and oranges. We’re not in the days of “I have a computer” – different OS’s are doing different things on different types of machines. You wouldn’t try to run a high traffic web server on a Pentium I with a 56K modem; you would waste money given an end user an AMD64 just for word processing. So multiuser can be keeping different desktop setting for multiple user accounts to hosting a 100K hit an hour web site. Or a SQL server database. It’s all relative. If I told you I could host a 100,000 SQL server users a minute it’s impressive; hosting 100,000 static page requests per hour is not.

    So to say Linux can host more than Windows, it’s true in some cases, but not might be in all, especially when the version of Windows isn’t quantified. Right out the door, XP Pro can’t handle more than one at a time in Terminal Services – I don’t know what 2003 Server can handle. Linux is very geared to handle thousands of telnet sessions, but if you don’t use telnet, how does that help?

    And having said that as well, it’s hard to say which is better. I agree with you: it depends on your needs, which is why I systematically attack people that can make sweeping declarations that they are right or wrong without any type of details.

    For me, at home and work, for developing client applications and running software, Windows XP works for me. For server based systems, I don’t have any really, so I have no input. I know Linux is supposed to be cheaper, but I also maintain that a general user can tweak XP (thanks to the UI – keep clicking until it closes) and a guru is sometimes needed for Linux. IMHO, a Linux system is only as secure as the admin is deep in knowledge… a lot of Unix information is still passed like folklore so it’s very much up to the admin to “do it right”

  9. What is the maximum number of computers all operating Windows XP pro, that can link on to a single system with Windows XP pro and share its files, and peripherals?

    My system reaches a peak of 18 and then anyone trying to access the resources on that system after 18 gets a “No network connection available…” message. Please help. – Thanks

  10. Then I would say 18.

    In all honesty, if you had more than 10 computers connecting to a single PC, I’d put server software on it… I mean, if you have 25 computers and they’re all talking to each other, that’s different – that splits the load. But for a box that’ll be a central point, I’d go with Windows Server or something else.


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