Meh. Computers. Couldn’t take those computers on dates with you to impress the girls with a flower, could ya’? There’s nothing more romantic, I’m telling you, than whipping out a giant blue calculator in the middle of a shi-shi-poo-poo restaurant, telling the maitre d’ to “Turn on the lights–this thing doesn’t glow in the dark, you know!” and then turning to your date–whose face is drawn back in a presentation of delight (not horror, no matter what the other kids say the next day)–and saying, “For you, Sugar Baby.”
You do realize how ridiculous this is when it’s immediately followed by…
…right?
Dead Badger, I really still don’t buy it, regarding no Mac viruses. Excluding my own, I have access to at least six Mac systems (none at work). Considering what assholes script kiddies are, and considering how much Mac evangelists can annoy the crap out of Windows l33t crackers, I cannot beleive that no one has had the desire and the opportunity to attack the Mac OS.
I’m sure that if an actual, successful, non-hypothetical Mac virus was actually running rampant on the internet, the online Mac community would be all a-twitter, if only to see folks throwing out quickie solutions to the newborn menace. The fact that no such event has ever occurred is IMO a clear indication that no Mac-virus-writer has actually succeeded to date.
That’s pretty much my point. We say Macs are secure. They say they’re not, it’s just that no one bothers with them/has access to them. I say that’s hooey, any dipshit cracker would want to show us snotty Mac freaks their computers aren’t as safe as we think, and have done so and failed, because Macs are, in fact, more secure.
Priceguy: “They all suck, except all the ones I haven’t tried!” Especially since one of the OSs you haven’t tried is in the title of this thread, and half the basis for this conversation.
Oh, you’re right, because referring to “a Mac” is something completely unrelated to the Mac OS, despite the fact that through 97% of each’s history, the hardware has been married to the OS, bundled together, and produced by the same company exclusively for each other. :wally
Look, I’ve already demonstrated in this thread that the vast majority of the most prolific Windows viruses over the last couple of years have spread not through Windows vulnerabilities, but by tricking the end user into executing them manually. There is literally no reason whatsoever that makes a Mac less vulnerable to this sort of virus except for the fact that there are far, far fewer of them around. Let’s say my address book has 100 people, 98 Windows users and 2 Mac users. If a windows email worm sends itself to all the people in my address book, it only requires ~2% of its recipients to run the payload in order to achieve growth, because 98% of those recipients are using Windows. If a Mac email worm emails itself to those same 100 people, it requires a 100% success rate to achieve the same growth. Now, assume you’re writing a virus that you actually want to, y’know, spread - which system are you going to target?
No-one has claimed that Windows hasn’t had more vulnerabilities than MacOS, at least that we know of. What I’ve been trying to point out is that in fact Windows’ most critical vulnerability is simply its ubiquity, and this is something that is accepted by most people with a modicum of critical thinking skills. People keep bleating “oh, but there hasn’t been a serious Mac virus so there can’t be one”, without bothering to even consider that there might be a reason why every single one of the top ten viruses at present doesn’t exploit a single software vulnerability. They rely not on their host system being shit, but on their host users being dopey, and there being lots of similar systems to spread to. You simply cannot refute this - go to Sophos, check out the top ten viruses - every single one of them requires the user to manually execute the payload in some form or another. If you can explain to me why this is a problem with Windows, then great - otherwise, just give it a freaking rest.