Spectrum,
You MUST be acting obtuse on purpose as I have never met someone who acted so slow but could navigate the internet. So we are done here, I was trying to have a rational discussion but apparently you are incapable. I hope your Mac’s serve you well for ever and ever, just try not to jizz on them.
Unclviny (who will not open this thread again)
Wow, what an asshole. Please tell me, what the fuck is there to reply to in this:
First, I never made the Fort Knox comment. Second, What am I supposed to be replying to?
Oh wait, petulant little bitch isn’t going to open the thread again.
Sorry to bump, but could someone please explain what it is that I was supposed to respond to in Post 97?
To summerize his words, he said “Opsie, I can’t cut-and-paste right”
"He then went on to say, “Well, I think you are wrong, and you are dumb, how about that”, or rather:
Self-pwnd!
Okay, so it’s not my fault. Good. I hate it when people don’t respond to posts, and didn’t want to be seen as avoiding doing so.
It has been pointed out to me (thanks Monstre) that I mixed up rjung and spectrum, for this I apologise. I am still waiting for 1 (one) example of Mac’s superiority, I fully understand “different” but unsubstantiated claims of superiority don’t do “Mac crowd” any favors.
Unclviny
It has been pointed out to me (thanks Monstre) that I mixed up rjung and spectrum, for this I apologise. I am still waiting for 1 (one) example of Mac’s superiority, I fully understand “different” but unsubstantiated claims of superiority don’t do the “Mac crowd” any favors.
Unclviny
Personally, I think the obscurity claim regarding the lack of Mac* viruses is bull. Some script kiddie would’ve written a virus just to piss off us snot-nosed Mac users.
*-Not “MAC.” That’s lipstick.
Lipstick? Well, I don’t know about all that, but to me, MAC is “Medium Access Control” and the type of address on an ethernet card.
You can wear the MAC lipstick. Not that there’s anything wrong with that… 
Historical anecdote:
Would this not mean that an email worm (i.e. one that sets itself up on the SMTP port and emails itself to any addresses it can scour from the host) would be unhindered by the OSX firewall? Because (for example) Sygate does things on a per-executable basis, and will ask for re-confirmation of network access every time an executable changes, regardless of port. Needless to say, there’s no reason why a 3rd party OSX firewall couldn’t do things this way, but if I’m reading your post correctly, OSX as shipped wouldn’t alert the user to an SMTP relay operating on the host machine, which is how a large number of Windows worms have spread. Incidentally, regarding my earlier claim about this being the main method of viruses spreading, I note that every single one of the top ten viruses at present use this method, some in combination with P2P spreading and network shares. None of them exploit a Windows weakness, but all rely on the user to run the infected executables. Of the top ten for 2004, only one, Sasser, used a Windows exploit to spread.
Further, XP now limits the rate of un-ack’d outgoing connections a machine can make, strangling the potential of XP boxes to effectively run as email zombies or indeed any other sort of zombie (braaiiiiiiins…). This is actually pretty nifty, as the average user really has no need whatsoever to open 50 un-ack’d connections a second, and notices no difference at all with the changes. Yet it has a significant effect on the ability of viruses to spread, regardless of their means of transport. In a way, it’s a lot like the constricted network protection that Macs have by dint of being rare - there may be squillions of XP boxes, but they can’t connect to things all that fast any more.
Again, I’m not trying to say Windows rules the world for security; I’m just trying to say that the days when a Windows machine was a shocking pile of holes just waiting to be hacked are receding, as are the days when MS would simply pretend that security flaws were something to be swept under the rug.
You’re forgetting that not only does the lack of Macs inhibit the ability of viruses to spread, it limits the number of people with one to write a virus on. When Macs constitute 1 or 2% of the desktop market, that means only 1 or 2% tops of potential virus writers even have access to Macs, let alone the know-how to actually write a virus from scratch (script kiddies don’t; they use toolkits to churn out copycat style viruses, hence the somewhat derogatory name). Finally, for what it’s worth, a little light googling indicates that there have indeed been a few viruses written for Macs (and yes, I’m aware that they’re pretty old).
Are you familiar with the RunAs command, both as a command and a context menu item?
Yup, I just don’t think it’s particularly convenient. Bit of a personal preference thing I’m sure, and in part it’s the difference between a GUI and a CLI; but for me, sudo on the CLI is considerably more convenient than Run As in the GUI. Even Linux GUI apps that require root privileges tend to ask you if you’d like to escalate to root - Win32 apps just tell you to fuck off. It sounds like a trivial thing, but it’s the sort of detail that makes a whole lot of difference to people’s operating habits…
I had a boss just like the OPs boss. He has always been a Mac purist, since I got to the lab, when we were running System 8.6. He was one of those tools that would bash PCs constantly without knowing a thing about them, except what he read in his Mac magazines and message boards. The funny thing was that we had the exact opposite people in the lab as well – the PC purists who knew not a thing about Macs and griped constantly that our boss forced them to use Macs. At least they did get a working knowledge of Macs and generally stopped complaining as much.
You see, as others have pointed out, computers are just a tool and you should only really notice them when they make it difficult to get your work done. Once you are proficient with one, your day-to-day operations with it generally are trouble-free. Sure, you can count how many times each crashes, but since Windows 98 and OS 9 went away, the truth is both XP and OS X are pretty stable. Anyone not familiar with either will bitch about the shortcomings of the OS when forced to switch.
Me, I use them all. Been dual-booting Windows/Linux at home since the Linux kernel was 0.99pl12. I’ve run Microsoft incarnations since MSDOS 3.3 and Apple incarnations since my Apple ][. There are relative merits to all operating systems in my experience, but I do have to say that the best computer I have ever used EVER was my dual processor G5 running OS 10.3 which I used at work.
This computer did it all for me. Anything that I could ever desire: I wrote C and Perl programs and bash scripts while editing my thesis using MS Word and EndNote and put together slide shows with PowerPoint. I synchronized with our school Exchange server using Mac Mail, AddressBook, and iCal with GroupCal. I ran the Apple X client to use the GCG suite from the Sun cluster. Could natively ssh and scp to my home Linux box right from the Terminal program (and could ssh and scp from home to my work computer). All alongside iPhoto, iDVD, and iTunes. I’ve never had a computer cover all of my bases with such ease of use. As soon as my home Athlon 1800 becomes totally obsolete (I give it another few years), I will definitely migrate to Apple permanently and get rid of this 13 year Windows/Linux dual boot experiment…
Which is not to say my boss was right.
You guys all suck.
I still like my TI99/4a.
Doesn’t anyone agree with me that there is no good operating system yet? In my opinion, they all suck.
[sub]Well, the ones I’ve tried anyway. MacOS X, RISC OS and a couple of others are on my to-do list.[/sub]
Not me, I just use my TI-81 I got back in high school. Heck, by plotting with X[sub]1T[/sub] = 11sin 4Tcos T and Y[sub]1T[/sub] = 11sin 4t sin T, I can have it draw a flower for me.
Yeah?
I bet you’re jealous.
Yeah but ya see, MINE wasan actual COMPUTER…sort of. At least it had a keyboard. Oh yeah, and you could save your programs to a cassette tape. I once programmed the Frank Zappa guitar solo called The Black Page not for note on it. Took me most of a week.
And I need to learn how to spell more gooder two!
Phht. Poseur.
My first power machine was a TI1000. I didn’t need no built in monitor. I used the TV. And I learned to program it in machine code, as with 2K of RAM, BASIC programs would chew memory like a freakin’ swarm of locusts.