Norsk's Profile

both beeblebrox and Megaman: When you have my experience and the experience of those around me along with the overseeing of product deployment/support on 5000 plus machines (active and not counting the countless machines/networks and installs since Ethernet came into being) across dozens of networks both small and large of which 2/3rds are Windows based and of those half are on Xtra Pain and the other half on 98 with a few on Win2K (the real world has installed less than 50% of their boxes with XP and the majority of the rest of are still running 98 or 2K and in my world you have to deal with it all. It all has to work, period)...then and only then will you have the real world, hands on, case histories and examples of Windows behavior and knowledge to make the observations based on what really happens in the business world not just Mom or the IT guy at school or your friend down the street with his Windows box or the the company with the 15 computer WinXP network over on Clark Street. Now, with all of that in mind, if any or all of those security/functionality problems were present with OS X then I would be stating those issues as well. But they are not. That is the reality. Not FUD. FUD by it's very perspective/definition is based on lies and half truths...not the truth. I really don't care about the Mac vs Windows thing. We must have systems that work in a network environment day in and day out and Windows does not provide us that level of acceptable dependability without the expenditure of considerable treasure. There is another way and it is UNIX. And when M$ removes all of the 'problems' then we will have another option won't we. Can't continue this thread. Have too many people waiting to get their work done so that they can do real business not theorize as to how they are going to do business and meet deadlines to fill orders.

Ster, You are absolutely correct. I am mistaken and I apologize per File Vault. Full volume didn't register properly. I was thinking in terms of data not applications. I don't care to worry about encrypting apps. Not necessary in my opinion. But data is data is data and must be protected and encryped. That is my version of 'full volume'. And MS-DOS, DOS, whatever, is still there. I could care less about 16, 32 or 64 bit...it is there. The back door is there and the crackers are still going through it. End of story. I'm a thirty year software engineer/developer. The company that I control has a partner who has a doctorate in business systems and 45 years of database architecting with 25 years with IBM alone who has developed a lot of the stuff we are using today back in the late sixties while with IBM and living through his fifth version of the internet. Knows more and has implemented more about real time object based database applications than any other human being in this country since the majority of his colleagues are still screwing around with legacy 'file record' and 'data bound' systems to this day. Combining that with my 30 years and our junior staffers adds up to a lot knowledge and a lot of doing. No theorizing. So, I know exactly what I am talking about and I know what kind of a penalty the real business world is having to pay to maintain Windows networks and they are sick and tired of it. Not the IT people but the people who are writing the checks. IT has lost a huge amount of credibility over the past four years. Especially after the year 2k debacle. So what does Windows bring to the table. What are the benefits?: BSOD Freeze ups and lock ups Multiple daily machine reboots Directory/Registry failures Application incompatabilities DLL failures An average of 9 clean OS installs per year (PC Magazine annual survey). 98,000 viruses, worms, trojan horses in the wild. 1000 new ones every month (Sophos LLC) computer security experts. Installation of weekly security patches for various parts of the Windows experience. Many security patches leave working applications non-functional after installation. Windows security applications now under attack by crackers. All of this adds up to loss of productivity and billions of dollars annually. And I have a 10 x 10 room full of documentation to back all of the above up. Bottomline: Mac OS X is here and it works. And you don't have to be a *nix geek to to make it work. Our work gets done on time and on budget. Windows based work does not get done on time and runs over budget. And until M$ takes their OS off of 'memory addressing' I believe the security situation will not change. Say what you want about Longhorn but it is not here and won't be for at least 18 to 24 months. And based upon the great M$ track record and the grumblings that are coming out of their developer community things are not looking good. But the M$/Longhorn apologists continue to hold out hope that it will arrive less than 5 years late with all of the funtionality that you all believe will be there. You've go to be kidding. I am not going to hold my breath.

I did not compare Mac virus percentages to marketshare. That's in your head not mine. No mention of same in my post. One has nothing to do with the other. It's the GUI and apps that could come under attack in the Mac OS X world not the UNIX kernel. Not after close to fifty years of 'hole plugging' and BSD is the most secure and stable version of the 110 flavors of UNIX. It's the kernel. It is BSD that sits underneath the OSX GUI. UNIX systems have been doing self maintainence since the beginning of 'dirt'. How about DARPA 1968-72. IBM UNIX for DARPA the original internet. It all has to do with 'services' (UNIX) versus 'memory addresses' (Windoze). 640 characters per string is a huge limitation and it's still there and will be as long as MS-DOS is. Windoze sercuity problems lie within the 55 million lines (or more) of code coming from MS-DOS and the GUI. That will never get fixed! Until they start over it won't happen. It will go on and on. One vulnerbility after another. 98,000 viruses, trojan horses, and worms already out there. And another 1000 a month coming into the wild. How many of those 98,000 are sleepers? Two nasties reappeared in the last 60 days. I would suggest you study up on the history of the development of UNIX all of the way back to the Bell Labs over fifty years ago. It was designed to be shared from day one. MS-DOS was never intended to be shared. Retro engineering very rarely works and certainly hasn't for M$. I certainly believe that Longhorn will be another XP 'spiff it up' job. With very little reason to upgrade certainly from a security point of view. They will be lucky to get it out within the first quarter of 2007 let alone by the end of 2006. I don't care who produces the OS. It could be the 'SaltPeter' people. Just as long as it works and I don't have to spend my companie's resources 'fixing' all of the problems.

RE: #10 is correct in stating that it will take Dell and HP to agree to mount OS X on their boxes for Apple to breakout and start moving upward and to get back to where they were coming out of the 80s into the 90s before the Sculley culture totally messed it up. Dell has already indicated that there is interest. It has been well established that M$'s OEM customers and enterprise customers are really getting sick and tired of all of the problems. And anybody who tries to tell me differently doesn't have a clue. I have a very large number of enterprise clients (50 nodes on up to 2000) that are totally fed up with th amount of money being sucked, every year, from their bottomline to keep Windows, in all of it's variants, up and running at the client level. They are looking for alternatives regardless of how hard their IT Nazis resist. Now whether Dell is pushing M$'s buttons or they are serious time will tell. But if they are and there is a serious business relationship in place between Apple and HP, beyond iPod, you could very well see either OS X or both mounted in their boxes. And if (the big red IF) Intel does acquire Apple, Katy bar the door. Damm, this is going to be fun to watch over the next 10-20 months.