On Sat, 2002-07-27 at 10:41, Daniel Churchill wrote:
> I guess it was obvious that this is how this thread would end up after the 
> first post.  Still, I am disappointed and disgusted by the fact that it 
> actually dipped to the low of one person calling the other a dumb ass, 
> followed by someone else showing enthusiastic support for it.
> 
> For the record, I thought that Ryan brought up some valid points.  It's 
> obvious though, that too many of the people on this list are too far gone 
> to acknowledge them.
> 
> What Linux users fail to acknowledge in too many cases is that part of the 
> reason Microsoft products "cause" such problems is a result of the product 
> being designed for _users_ who *don't* "worry about administering their 
> own boxes". 

But, of course, somebody has to, which is why the popularity of
pre-installed systems and restore disks.  While, in theory, various
forms of Windows can easily be installed in a wide variety of systems,
there's often some hardware issue that needs to be tweaked, and the
manufacturers get around that by tweaking once, and deploying many
times.


> If they weren't so popular in the first place, there wouldn't 
> be so many people trying to maliciously target them.  

True.


To further that 
> logic, if a comparable Unix app was to replace a Windows app at that level 
> of popularity (and thus scrutiny), it would likely have just as many 
> errors, just as many exploits.  


Nah.  Exploits are proportional both to the attention given and the
vulnerability, not just the attention.    

Why are the mistakes made by Linux 
> developers any less severe?  Mostly because there aren't as many clueless 
> users to propagate the exploits.  

And because of the large open source community, portions of which spend
a lot of time finding exploits, and a mechanism for distributing both
the nature of the problems and fixes very quickly.