[LINK] Apple Users -- Not so good, good, great, perfect etc?

[Rachel Polanskis]

On Sat, 2 Mar 2002, Patrick Corliss wrote:

> On Fri, 01 Mar 2002 09:23:01 +1100, Jonathon Padfield wrote:
> Re: [LINK] ABC Catalyst Tonight: 'Internet Meltdown'
>
> > Interestingly they did point out that the 95% of PC's connected to the
> > internet constituted a monoculture, specifically a Microsoft
> > monoculture, that made large scale worms such as Code-Red possible.
> > Unfortunatly they didn't point out any alternatives or that the
> > alternatives that do exist were unworried by the day-to-day effects of
> > such a monoculture.
>
> Hi Jon
>
> I know all you nice people use Linux and stuff unlike my M$ Windows 98, but I
> wonder do we have any Apple users here and if so, what are their thoughts?
>
> Not so good, good, great, perfect etc?
>
> Some (many?) people I know would switch if they had the chance, imo.

Don't use Microsoft browsers, email, web servers, operating systems
or office productivity software is the real solution I believe.

Code Red is propagated via IIS.  Many of the other worm/virus/MS specific
viruses use MS script so apps that use the scripting host
like Outlook, MSOffice or IE are vulnerable.

I don't think IIS is available for MacOS, so you are covered there.
MS Office/IE/Outlook is of course installed on many Mac systems and
the Scripting Host is the same so therefore attacks via Outlook and
so on are still possible.

I know that after looking at Apache logs that code red tries it's
attacks but of course the vulnerability doesn't exist there.  This is Ok,
but of course on a large server, it still has to process each attempt
code red makes to connect to the server.  This can cause load problems
on lower bandwidth systems but at least it can't propagate further.

Macs do not seem to suffer the same level of true virus attacks for whatever
reason as opposed to Microsoft specific exploits.  I am not even sure
what Mac specific viruses there are out there - I guess I should find
out as I have a 7300 I am using for my MIDI studio that I've been doing
lots of binary downloads on!   (gurus?)

Why people even put up with crap like Microsoft is way beyond me
but of course we've all had this discussion before....

Do yourself and your friends a favour and make your next PC one of those
new Imacs.  I want one too and as I am a Sun Fiend, that's
a big statement!  We have one PC at home and it's going to be replaced by
one of the new generation Macs as soon as "Starfleet Command" is
finally released for the Mac platform ;)

The Mac has come an enormous way in the past 3 years and I must admit that
having disliked them intensely at one stage due to poor
quality I have now shifted my opinion
around completely and have become quite keen on them.

BTW, can Mac gurus tell me if it's Ok to remove IE and oulook off my
Mac?  It won't break anything I need, will it?


rachel

-- 
Rachel Polanskis                 Kingswood, Greater Western Sydney, Australia
grove@zeta.org.au                http://www.zeta.org.au/~grove/grove.html
      "People don't say sorry in this country" - Max Connors (Seachange)