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Who's Paul Thurrott??

I have windwos XP, and have NEVER had any trouble on the intraweb!

What happened to the old Paul Thurrott that I knew and hated. Now he's making sense lately. It's scaring me.

"Who's Paul Thurrott??"

Rumor has it he lurks on Mac message boards under the name "Reality Check" and makes a complete ass of himself. I can't believe he would actually say something that makes this much sense.

Of course this is all old hat to us.

lier-
liar is spelled with an "a" not an "e"

Yeah, a guy in my lab says he doesn't have trouble with spyware either, all he has to do is run some software that gets rid of it once in a while.

I see his monitor from where I sit and between virus checkers, spyware scanners, a free firewall, and M$ updates, he gets windows popping up on his screen all the time - it's almost as annoying as spyware...

simply amazing. These are unbelievable times we are in.

HOLY CRAP!!
look out! hell's freezin' over again!!

I love getting attachments that I know are actually windows viruses. I just sit and double click on them over and over and laugh my ass off the whole time Im doing it.

HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAH

Sounds like a ploy to get me to click on his website....I'm not falling for it this time either.

I saw one Mac user who claimed to have spyware on his/her Mac....He/she posted a comment on one of the other Mac sites (I don't remember which one)....the person seemed sincere, but I have not seen any other reports of spyware on OS X. Has anyone here ever gotten spyware?

Not trolling, just curious. 1 possible spyware infection on OS X vs 90% of all PC users.

According to the UK security firm Sophos, a typical Windows PC has a 50-50 chance of being infested with malicious software within 12 minutes of being connected

You know.. they say 60% of the time it works.. every time - Anchorman

As long as you don't plan on keeping that PC for longer than 12 minutes you're okay, right?

Well.. then there's a 99% chance that after 30 minutes you're infected..

Whammy! :(

BTW. Nice curve ball Paul

" Maybe we should have paid more attention to those Apple Switcher ads after all," Paul Thurrott writes...

O.O

Okay, now Paul...I know you're not feeling well lately, but you have to take this slowly. You're scaring us now.

Seriously, this is good that even Paul sees this. It's even better that he's writing honestly about it. I don't say this often, if ever, but good job Paul.

When does the probability reach 100%? Within 15 minutes?

C'mon guys, Paul's been a Mac user for years. You can't honestly say that Mac has always been better than Windows at everything. Yes, we're in a new Golden Age of computing now that OS X is maturing, but Paul is just reacting to that. I've even been known to bash a finder window here, or a hung process there. In the OS < 10 days my systems crashed plenty. Windows was more stable and had actual preemptive multitasking. Macs were also vastly more expensive before Steve came back and came to his senses.

We've all grown. Paul has too. Now give cretid where credit is due. Don't bash him for bashing Apple. Apple needed it.

thought it had been a while before we heard something from him and comes out with something truthful *shock horror*

wanna know what else is annoying beside Windoze and spamware, it's all those freakin' ads popping up on MDN.

whatever happened to those flashing ads from this morning and all the references in postings? was it all a dream???

dogfriend


Jul 08, 05 - 02:52 pm

Sounds like a ploy to get me to click on his website....I'm not falling for it this time either.

I saw one Mac user who claimed to have spyware on his/her Mac....He/she posted a comment on one of the other Mac sites (I don't remember which one)....the person seemed sincere, but I have not seen any other reports of spyware on OS X. Has anyone here ever gotten spyware?

Not trolling, just curious. 1 possible spyware infection on OS X vs 90% of all PC users.

Not spyware but one of the guys where I work got emailed a Mac Classic specific virus. It didnt have any effect on his system. We still run MS Outlook 2001 in Classic on 10.3 I think he was just being cautious, our Admin just deleted the attachement.

Anyone see the irony between this story and millions of people using Windows?

http://abcnews.go.com/Technology/wireStory?id=920398

when did this revelation hit our dear paulus? seems like a slow summer in windowsland, nothing new. wait... nothing new for quite some time!
maybe we should have listened... what? to logic? reason? THE OBVIOUS?
next week, paul and mossberg [sic] team up to announce the spherical nature of earth.
sheesh

PC's don't have problems with spyware as long as they don't get on the internet. Otherwise you have to run 2 or 3 different programs to clean your PC everytime.

I'll stick with my Mac and stay on the internet without any spyware at all.

If Windows users would only keep their systems uptodate, with current anti-virus and anti-spyware, active firewalls, etc. there would so much less of a problem. And then Mac users would say 'well we don't have to worry about any of that' and to some extent that is true. But even Mac users should take security precautions and many are not. I use Mac OS X, Linux, Windows XP, and Windows Server 2003 and the security precautions I take are similar between the platforms, and I have no more security problems with the Windows systems than I have with Mac OS X or Linux when it comes to security.

Mac- I use those same platforms everyday aswell. I dont have any security issues on any of them...Mac, Linux, Windows, Solaris...etc..

dogfriend.
Sounds like a ploy to get me to click on his website....I'm not falling for it this time either.
You are so right. Hold the line.

MACINTOSH today, MACINTOSH tomorrow and MACINTOSH forever!

"lier-
liar is spelled with an "a" not an "e""

Don't you realise that spelling is not taught in our schools any more? It's socialism thet get's pumped into the chidren today.

"the security precautions I take are similar between the platforms"

Why?

I got his resume last week.

Bwahahahaha!

Don't you realise that spelling is not taught in our schools any more? It's socialism thet get's pumped into the chidren today.

---

That would explain why George Bush is such master of the English Language!

Seriously.. WTF country do you live in that you think Socialism is popular? All I know is American Public Schools teach words like "Guesstimate" and "Conversate", then charge around 40 grand for a 'World Class Education'

Sweet huh?

Ron is mostly right. In America, socialists call themselves "liberals" or, sometimes, "progressives," and we certainly have plenty of those. Classic liberals tend to be Republican, but we don't have too many of them. BTW, "guesstimates" have replaced much real calculation in American public schools, and that's because the math teachers think it's so much more "fun" to teach our kiddies to guesstimate than to calculate properly (it's certainly easier, by their standards).
Hugs and kisses,
Kate

mike: "Well.. then there's a 99% chance that after 30 minutes you're infected.."

Actually, if there is a 50% chance in 12 min, then there is another 50% chance in the next 12 min, and another 50% chance the next 12 min, etc.

After 36 min the chance of NOT getting infected in 0.5 x 0.5 x 0.5 = 12.5%

Just thought you might want to know...

MDN's comment just pwned the entire Windows world.

gambler...

*shakes head

that was so corny.. I'm a freakin student man.. I do calculus, integration, algebra, stats..

I know addition, thanks.

why do you assume the graph (time/infection %) is a straight line? All you have is one fuckin point.

</geek>

I think it is amazing to contrast the first link above: "MS sells out anti-spyware subscribers" with the fact that the Mac platform appears to have no spyware at all. At least, if it does, it is so rare that no one knows about it.

"You know.. they say 60% of the time it works.. every time - Anchorman"

Man alive, that is really, really funny.

if we educate you properly we wont be able to invade countries to steal oil…er… free the oppressed masses

consume and be afraid - the american way

I work at a major lab, and there is a park of some 10,000 machines connected 24h/d to the network.

It is simply not true that security is the same for OS X, Linux, or Windows machines.

On one side, the only actual security incidents happens on Windows machines, on the other side the lab firewall blocks an average 500k attacks targeting... Windows OSes.

Sure, all other platforms are protected by the same protections in place but there is no recollection of on OS X or Linux infection happening in the last years.

There has been two OS X machines compromised because the cracker used the password to those, so it might well be internal hacking, and some Linux platforms removed off the net because they were not with latest security patches installed.

Personal experience, as single user with ANY platform has little value toward gauging security of the OS. One need samples on large numbers. Sure, any PC Windows user here could come and say "Never had a problem". Indeed, so? Does not matter. One case, two cases, 10 cases means absolutely nothing.

What matters is % of infections and security incidents on large samples.
From what I see on our relatively large sample the vast majority of attacks target Windows, and no matter the protection level there are infection 100% of the times when a major virus strikes. You simply cannot bullet-proof a machine unless you hook off the net. And still...

Very few Linux targeting malware but no infections in the last years, nothing reported able to attack/compromise OS X.

Cheers

Last comment to avert silly comments: Unix and Linux are around singe ages on the net. Their APIs are well known to any one who would like to crack them. Even more than Windows API where not everything is released to the public: Security via Obscurity which helps Windows a bit.

The main issue on the various OSes is how easy in to exploit a flaw. Not so easy on Unix based OSes and Linux. Relatively easy on Windows: good kits available off the net. Free download and sure results: stir, warm and release. No need of Windows expertise. Not so for Unix/Linux/OS X : you need an expert. By the time s/he got to that level s/he probably got mature enough not to even attempt or actually release to the wild whatever exploit was found: it makes instead the next OpenSource security patch.

Thanks, Seahawk.

As usual a sane voice.

John

All I seem to comlain about are the pop unders that seem to slip past Safari and Firefox.

Glad I've got a Mac. Will never buy Windows rubbish.

what does Thurrott mean when he offers the following ...new brand of malware - Spyware is anything but new! Hell I can remember when M$ was through to be something "good"!

I think Paul is finding that he is using his Mac more and more. There are days I bet he doesn't even turn on his Windows PC except to play games. This is what his article is really saying.