“Microsoft plans to offer its own anti-spyware software, Chairman Bill Gates said Friday. Gates said Microsoft will offer software to detect malicious applications and that the company will keep it up-to-date on an ongoing basis. He did not say when the software would be available or whether Microsoft would charge for it,” Ina Fried reports for CNET News. “Although progress is being made against spam and viruses, Gates said the adware and malware problem is getting worse. ‘This malware thing is so bad,’ he said in a speech at the Computer History Museum here. ‘Now that’s the one that has us really needing to jump in.’ It’s also a problem that has affected Gates personally. He said his home PCs have had malware, although he has personally never been affected by a virus. ‘I have had malware, (adware), that crap’ on some home machines, he said.”
Full article here.
MacDailyNews Take: We’ve never had a virus or adware or spyware or malware on any of our Mac OS X computers. Never. For our Windows-only friends, if even Bill Gates can’t avoid it, can you ever hope to? Perhaps you’d like information on smoothly adding a Mac OS X machine to your computing arsenal? It can be found here.
It should be programmed to remove winblows xp that would help.
“smoothly adding a Mac OS X machine to your computing arsenal?”
I see this sentence in just about every other article, and I have to wonder: Is the MDN site run by actual people who can write an original response, or is it just a scripted autoreply system?
They put it there for the retards that are still running Winblows despite the constant reminders of why it’s ignorant to continue to do so…
MDN has an amazing talent for restating the obvious flaws with Windows. This “report” is not even news among Windows users, so it makes me wonder what MDN’s purpose is for recycling headlines like this.
In fact, reading more of the same old Microsoft canards is tiresome. I would prefer more information and reporting about what Apple is doing to improve OS X and Macintosh design.
Windows is Malware
keep up the windows bashing MDN!!!!! you’re doign great!
Mac news please.
Let me get this straight, a company with a defective product is going to provide a extra product to protect the defective one.
With SP2 numerous PC techs have claimed Windows still isn’t secure as it leaves too many doors open.
Shut the doors and Windows doesn’t work, shut the doors and the viruses can’t come in, so Microsoft is going to provide extra software to allow Windows to keep the doors open, but attempt to keep the viril out.
Of course 10,000 anti-virus programmers and personel and their buisnesses just got handed their pink slips with Gates statement.
Of course in Gates eyes it’s all these anti-virus companies that are making Microsoft look bad, so if M$ runs them out of buisness then nobody knows about the viril because there will be no one paid to look for them except M$ stoogies with a non-disclosure agreement slapped on their mouths.
$5 says 5 years from now M$ will be suing people who announce a Windows virus.
To Windows Users :
Don’t let Microsoft fool you into thinking that viruses, spyware and adware are something they eventually need to “jump into”. They are flaws in design and implementation of their product and Microsoft needs to take full responsibility for them. Correction of these flaws is the only acceptable solution. A separate monitoring software to detect/prevent abuse of these flaws is not.
Anti-virus software only exists as separate entities because of Microsoft’s complacency. They did not exist before Microsoft came in and will die after it goes out.
To Mac Users :
Keep a close eye on Apple and on the way they handle this kind of stuff when it eventually appears. Will they be more responsible that Microsoft is at the moment ? AFAK, so far it’s been OK but let’s not take it for granted.
AV software on the Mac only exists because of psycholgical transferance of fear that comes out of the Windows PC market. When the virus issue on Windows is closed (either by a new Windows or no more Windows), anti-virus on the Mac will disapear as well.
Was Mr. Gates’ comment about “that crap” referring to spyware or windoze?
Bill Gates suggesting that only Microsoft can solve the problem of malware is evidence enough that Gates has either (1) lost touch with reality or (2) has made an unqualified admission to the utter failure of Windows ever being protected by third party programmers.
I suddenly have a picture in my mind of a mangled drunk driver car wreck victim (Windows) carried by gurney into the Emergency Department (third party anti-malware programmers). Suddenly the drunk grabs the scalpel from the attending physician and slurs, “I can do this (i.e. perform emergency surgery).” and starts slashing his body frantically with the blade.
Well, Windows fans, you may have to wait yet another 10 years for Longhorn as Bill Gate�s crew of intrepid programmers devote another decade of time, money, and manpower to make Windows as secure as OS X. Face it, Windows losers, Bill Gates must make Windows relatively safe to use otherwise Windows will be replaced. This security concern is Gate�s new high priority, not Longhorn. So forget about ordering Longhorn (64-bit with WinFS) for yourself, order it for your grandchildren.
In all fairness, one of the first viruses was written for the Lisa.
Yeah, and Lisa was one of the first computers available to the masses.
I love the confused look people give me when I tell them Im not affected by viruses, worms, trojans, malware… That alone gets people to visit apple.com.
Now if I can learn Cocoa and put my $maker idea into action.
Cute, amyhre.
Last time I checked, Lisa didn’t run Mac OS X. Nobody’s claiming that zero viruses have been unleashed on Mac OS (or on the Lisa Operating System). Just on Mac OS X.
I think Gates may have hit on a new way to milk the windows using public for more case. It’s brilliant. Sell them a crappy swiss cheese OS and then sell them the software to make it slightly less crappy.
Yes,
It seems unca billionaire Billy’s becoming a bit more concerned about his fortunes lately, with the rapid ascension of Apple Computer displacing slots in the Windows monopoly and evoking discomfiture across the BIG TABLE at Redmond. Who’d have ever thought it?
C’mon… a spyware remover from Micro-shark? Want a wild, albeit wry guess as to how that might pan out? Let’s see (don’t tell me)- after downloading and installing the new MS spy killer and running our first scan… Windows is deleted. Right?
On the other hand, if Windows ISN’T deleted, then we should know that unca Billy’s latest palliative is worthless, like all its predecessors.
Is the fox now offering the chickens an apology?
Does the addict now relinquish his opiated $ugar-teat? …Very doubtful, as yet.
That would be a real-life analog to the [top secret] govenment holocaust- very hush hush, you know- connected with Dr. Shoal’s Odor-Eaters (now banned IN the US Congress), whereupon certain AIPAC lobbyists and their pocket-stuffed beneficiaries, who had installed said devices in their shoes, were suddenly disappearing! All that remained were some slimy $1500 brogans and a few wisks of thin, yellow fog! Extremely vexing to investigative officials.
Yes, speculation on the phenomenon had at first been rampant as to whether the sudden disappearances marked a beginning of the much anticipated catapulting heavenward of saved souls from among the eternally-condemned wicked, which, as prophesied by religious pundits, is slated to occur at the start of the Second Advent.
But it was soon realized, to the chagrin of Reverend Jimmy Swaggart and messianic thinkers everywhere, that the scenario bore much greater mundanity than at first surmised.
If one stores sardines in an oaken keg and then replaces the contents with parfums de paris… what will he end up with? — Ans.: A fishy-smelling mess, and a subpoena from Christian Dior’s attorney.
It will have to be a completely new, spyware-free operating system, replete with fool-proof registry, no more tricky dlls, and no more back-engineered P.R.O.M.I.S. architecture. Why not rename it… ‘Doors?’ (No offense to Jim Morrison.)
Okay, Mr. Gates — you’ve got your walking papers. Now get cracking!
Andreades
first virus on Lisa? I thought first worm was written for BSD (used a hole in sendmail, if I remember correctly).
Didn’t DOS have virus before Lisa was even on the market (or may be DOS was the “virus”…. It spread like one didn’t it? It also caused computer crashes like one.
” width=”19″ height=”19″ alt=”raspberry” style=”border:0;” />
Never personally affected by virus?
Try flu.
He should buy a F-Secure�s newest virus detecting program that finds over 90 000 viruses out of Windows.
The easiest solution for MS would be a simple script that pops up everytime spyware is detected. It would scroll across the screen the message “Get a Mac, Dumbass!” Problem solved.
I’d like amyhre to support their statement:
“one of the first viruses was written for the Lisa.”
Unsupported statements have little weight.
Furthermore, if one compares the sheer number of viruses and other malware for Windows platforms compared to the Mac OS/ Mac OS X platforms, it is obvious where the security problems are.
One may knock other qualities of MacOS (pre OS X) but when it comes to Internet security it has few peers. Some of the more aware here may remember the competition run for hacking a Webserver running under MacOS … nobody could ever collect since it was essentially unhackable (aside from the usual social engineering path!).
here’s an article that might be of interest.
http://www.viruslist.com/eng/viruslistbooks.html?id=16
It’s the history of the computer virus.
Correction it’s not the history of the virus, it’s a “Chronology of Events” until 1998. I have only briefly read it but it appears that the Apple was first infected with a virus before the IBM PC (Although the IBM PC virus caused more havoc).
But it’a also should be noted that the majority of the latter half is all Microsoft.
The concern with m$ getting into the game is what we have seen with browsers. They put competitors out of business and then move on to other fields of play. Their AV software will end up 5-10 years behind. That is simply a frightening prospect.
Thorpedo…
“…..Some of the more aware here may remember the competition run for hacking a Webserver running under MacOS … nobody could ever collect since it was essentially unhackable (aside from the usual social engineering path!)……”
I remember that “contest” taking place at least once a year….. and I dont remember anyone ever succeeding…
Do you know if the contest still runs?? and if so…where ??