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RE: Re: January 15 is Personal Firewall Day, help the cause
From: "Chris Harrington" <cmh () nmi net>
Date: Thu, 15 Jan 2004 17:04:02 -0500
No, it's telling them not to drive a Pinto when they could drive
something safer. It may be safer but the average desktop user couldn't drive it. Hence the proliferation of Windows on the desktop. Some 92% if memory serves me??
You are very much safer. Our mail server receives on the average day 70
viruses from cracked Windows machines, and none from cracked Linux machines. We still receive several Nimda hits a day, and none from cracked Linux machines. Safer yes.....but the usability issue for a lot of desktop users still exist. Things are moving forward in that area. RH 9 with the Ximian desktop is pretty user friendly.
A default install of a modern Linux distro includes firewalling rules by
default, and is fairly safe. Hmmm....sounds like a personal firewall to me.
Because it is impossible to use Windows safely; the very design of the
operating system is flawed. Typical opinion from the Linux crowd. Yes Windows security issues, that not news. If Linux is so great, why isn't it on more desktops??
This is not just my opinion; it's also that of Bruce Schneier and many
other people, some of whom lost their jobs for speaking out. It's still an opinion, one to which I disagree. I generally hear this from people who do not have enough experience with Windows to be able to secure it properly. If you are referring to Dan Geer, you'd better do a little research as to why he was fired. It was not for pointing out MS flaws.
Why? We have no machines that are susceptible to the viruses that are in
the wild. We do, of course, drop .exe, .com, etc attachments on our mail server, but that's just to save disk space and stop annoying messages from filling our mailboxes. We have since 1999, and haven't had any problem. If you don't use Windows, you don't need anti-virus software. I would still use AV software, but I am paranoid :) If you don't have AV software how do you know you get 70 viruses form cracked Windows machines daily? Regards, --Chris
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Current thread:
- Re: Re: January 15 is Personal Firewall Day,help the cause, (continued)
- Re: Re: January 15 is Personal Firewall Day,help the cause brenda (Jan 17)
- Re: Re: January 15 is Personal Firewall Day,help the cause Ron DuFresne (Jan 20)
- Message not available
- Re: January 15 is Personal Firewall Day,help the cause Jim Race (Jan 17)
- Re: Re: January 15 is Personal Firewall Day,help the cause Valdis . Kletnieks (Jan 17)
- Re: Re: January 15 is Personal Firewall Day,help the cause Jim Race (Jan 17)
- Re: Re: January 15 is Personal Firewall Day,help the cause Jim Race (Jan 17)
- Re: Re: January 15 is Personal Firewall Day,help the cause Tobias Weisserth (Jan 17)
- Re: Re: January 15 is Personal Firewall Day,help the cause Jim Race (Jan 17)
- Re: Re: January 15 is Personal Firewall Day,help the cause jan . muenther (Jan 17)
- Re: Re: January 15 is Personal Firewall Day,help the cause Valdis . Kletnieks (Jan 17)
- RE: Re: January 15 is Personal Firewall Day, help the cause Chris Harrington (Jan 15)
- Re: Re: January 15 is Personal Firewall Day, help the cause Valdis . Kletnieks (Jan 16)
- Re: Re: January 15 is Personal Firewall Day, help the cause Dani Wuck (Jan 15)
- Re: Re: January 15 is Personal Firewall Day, help the cause Ron DuFresne (Jan 15)
- Re: January 15 is Personal Firewall Day, help the cause SecuresDotComs (Jan 15)
- Re: Re: January 15 is Personal Firewall Day, help the cause Damian Gerow (Jan 15)
- Re: Re: January 15 is Personal Firewall Day, help the cause David F. Skoll (Jan 15)
- Anti-MS drivel Edward W. Ray (Jan 17)
- Re: Anti-MS drivel Luca Mihailescu (Jan 17)