AOPA Flight Planner - Microsoft only?

"Sylvain" wrote in message
info about knoppix can be found here (it is a very neat Debian based
distribution of Linux that boots from the CD, i.e., neat for those
who'd like to try what a real OS looks like without having to
install anything on their PC): http://www.knoppix.org/

That is just too cool. Thanks.

--
Jim Fisher

"Sylvain" wrote in message
eat for those
who'd like to try what a real OS looks like without having to
install anything on their PC): http://www.knoppix.org/


To hasty in my thanks. It seems all the mirrors are broken at the moment.
;(

--
Jim Fisher

On 3/18/04 11:11 PM, in article , "Peter
Duniho" wrote:

"Wizard of Draws" wrote in message
news:BC7FD46C.66F2%jeffbREMOVE@REMOVEwizardofdraws .com...
Andrew isn't even close to a rabid Mac fanatic on the basis of what he's
posted here.

Of course he is. Anyone silly enough to claim that using a Mac is in and of
itself safe computing (or that using a Windows machine in and of itself is
not) is by definition a rabid Mac fanatic.

Of course, most Mac users are rabid Mac fanatics. It's the only way Apple
could have hoped to have survived under their business model.


Your definition seems to be a bit different than mine.

I would use the terms 'rabid' and 'fanatic' for the Mac users that sent
death threats to the person who recently claimed to put PC components in a
G5 case. IIRC, it was a joke, but the rabid fanatics went ballistic.
Somehow, Andrew doesn't fit in the same mold from my perspective. And I, by
the grace of God and Stephen Jobs, use a Mac.
--
Jeff 'The Wizard of Draws' Bucchino
Cartoons with a Touch of Magic�
www.wizardofdraws.com
www.cartoonclipart.com

"Wizard of Draws" wrote in message
news:BC811E28.6949%jeffbREMOVE@REMOVEwizardofdraws .com...
Your definition seems to be a bit different than mine.

I would use the terms 'rabid' and 'fanatic' for the Mac users that sent
death threats to the person who recently claimed to put PC components in a
G5 case. IIRC, it was a joke, but the rabid fanatics went ballistic.

Anyone who's love for their preferred hardware or software causes them to
make completely false statements about the relative merits of that preferred
hardware or software is a rabid fanatic. No death threats are required.

By the way, G5 cases *have* been used for PC hardware, and Mac hardware
*has* been installed inside regular PC cases. The reason for putting PC
hardware in a G5 (or any recent Mac) case is obvious: they look damn good.
Mac hardware in a PC case has been done as a way to reduce the desktop
clutter; in the situation I know of, it co-existed with PC hardware, with a
normal KVM switch to select which to use.

Pete

"Andrew Gideon" wrote in message
online.com...
Dylan Smith wrote:
As for security cultu consider this. Although Apache by far and large
is the most common web server, all the serious exploits so far has been
for the minority web server - IIS [...]

MSFT fanatics ignore data like this.

They (and thinking people who aren't fanatics) ignore it because it's
misleading and inaccurate. Such as the statement that "all the serious
exploits so far..." for example. There has only been the one IIS exploit in
the wild (the variants of Code Red don't count as new "serious exploits"),
and the use of the word "all" is just so much propaganda to attempt to
influence the reader to think there's a huge problem.

Beyond that, Code Red came out AFTER the vulnerability had been fixed and
WIDELY PUBLICIZED. Duh. When the press spends all of its time talking
about the security vulnerabilities in Windows, it greatly increases the odds
of someone taking that information and creating an exploit from one.

Mac and Linux vulnerabilities just don't make for news that sells papers,
mostly because they are such niches. When vulnerabilities in Apache are
found, they sometimes make the trade papers, but you'll never see WSJ,
MSNBC, or USA Today wasting time reporting them.

You need to look at the big picture. Computer security is as much about
human nature as it is about security holes and installed base.

Pete

On 3/19/04 10:05 PM, in article , "Peter
Duniho" wrote:


By the way, G5 cases *have* been used for PC hardware, and Mac hardware
*has* been installed inside regular PC cases. The reason for putting PC
hardware in a G5 (or any recent Mac) case is obvious: they look damn good.
Mac hardware in a PC case has been done as a way to reduce the desktop
clutter; in the situation I know of, it co-existed with PC hardware, with a
normal KVM switch to select which to use.


The horror!
--
Jeff 'The Wizard of Draws' Bucchino
Cartoons with a Touch of Magic�
www.wizardofdraws.com
www.cartoonclipart.com

"Dylan Smith" wrote in message
...
The problem with Windows is cultural. Windows comes from a single user,
single tasking culture - and many of its features have been added on
without regard for the fact they might be connected to a public network.
[...] if you buy a brand
new Windows package with all the latest updates, it STILL has the RPC
ports open by default, despite all the worms that have exploited holes
in it!

True. Things should be shut down by default, not open. However, as you
say, this is a cultural thing. For any software company, and especially for
Microsoft, one of the biggest cost centers is customer support. Most of the
calls are for stupid things like "what icon do I click to read email"?
Cost-wise, in the past, it has been much less expensive to enable everything
by default, so Microsoft doesn't have to answer phone calls that are
basically just asking how to turn the light switch on.

I disagree that it's ALL Microsoft's fault. It's mostly simple economics.
Of course, now security issues are touching the bottom line, generating
plenty of bad press. They are now more important than saving some money
over at Product Support Services. This is a good thing.

Then there's the software writer part of the Windows culture. Many
software companies are still writing software which won't run at all or
not properly unless you are running as administrator - meaning users are
forced to run insecurely if they want to run some software.

I'd be curious to see what happened to the Windows Logo program. It was
instituted when Win95 was released, and had a long list of strict
requirements a program had to meet, otherwise the Windows logo could not be
displayed on product packaging. I know in the year or so after, it got
watered down a lot.

I haven't checked up on it lately to see if it's still around, or what it
requires if it is. It ought to require that software run under restricted
accounts unless there's a good reason for them not to.

IMHO, end-user software that requires the user to be admin should be taken
out and shot. There's even software out there now that actually *checks* to
see if you're admin, and refuses to run if you're not. This prevents people
who know how to modify security settings from allowing the software to run
(usually all that needs to be changed is access rights to a single
subdirectory and/or registry key).

No difference here from other single-user paradigm environments though, the
Mac being one. MacOS X has required a major learning curve from the old Mac
camp, just as XP is requiring from the old Windows camp.

Finally, there's the usual things such as Outlook making it very easy to
just click on email attachments to *run* them. The basic OS
architectural problem that just giving your file an .exe extension makes
them executable, and therefore if you find another bug like the MIME
bugs OE suffered from, you can leverage it to make executables attached
to email run automatically.

As opposed to Unix where you can attempt to run ANY file, regardless of
extension? I'm not sure what your point here is.

Of course, there are many users who can be socially engineered to run
anything (people download and run spyware voluntarily, and it's not even
emailed to them!) which would be a problem regardless of which OS is
run.

And it is a problem. The vast majority of viruses and worms are dependent
solely on human factors. In fact, some of the most successful viruses
contain no code at all. They are just plain text email messages.

As for security cultu consider this. Although Apache by far and large
is the most common web server, all the serious exploits so far has been
for the minority web server - IIS (Code Red et al.)

See my other message.

Pete

In article , "Gig Giacona"
wrote:

I was a Mac user back at version something. About 5 years ago I gave up.
Yes they have a great operating system but Apple has done everything
possible to screw up the adoption of it by the general public.

According to Google Zeitgeist the operating systems used to access Google
during February 2004 by percentage were

Windows 98 23%
Windows XP 46%
Windows 2000 18%
Windows NT 3%
Windows 95 1 %
Mac 4%
Linux 1%
Other 1%

That's 91% for Windows.

There just isn't the base out there for every body to port every thing to
non-Windows OS. Hell, the virus writers don't even port their stuff to
Mac.


the numbers cannot be trusted because browsers can be configured
to lie to the server. The lie is required in part because some
web weenies are complete idiots, "designing" the site so that it
only supports MSIE (we don't need that pesky web paradigm, do we?)

--
Bob Noel

In article , "Jim
Fisher" wrote:

"Andrew Gideon" wrote in message
I tried to go to the AOPA Flight Planning web page today, and found
that
the
only option remaining is to download a Microsoft-only application.
This
seems annoying.

Why should AOPA devote substantial time and resources to develop
something
that much less than 3% (the percentage of non-MS systems in homes out
there)
of their readership would ever use?

why write a ms-based app?

why not a web-based?

(btw - your "3%" number is incorrect)

--
Bob Noel

"Andrew Gideon" wrote

That's what I think we need to do with AOPA: help them recognize the
problem: that they're encouraging a dangerous monoculture.

- Andrew

You still don't get it AOPA is trying to provide a service to the vast
majority of it's members. It will switch to a different platform when the
majority, or a significant percentage, are using a different platform They
are not going to be out to DRIVE for change. It is not their place.

Get off it, already.
--
Jim in NC


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