We/I broke 1,000 comments at some point. I happened to look at it and think “wow, that’s a big number”. There’s technically more than that but way back when in the switch from Moveable Type to WordPress they refused to import. They don’t show up as spam nor do they show up associated with posts, but they are there. Somewhere. Ghost comments (cue spooky noises). brr.
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So, a while back the CD-Rom drive on my laptop died. Since my laptop is six years old and doesn’t boot over USB, I was stuck using whatever was on it (or not using it, as the case may be). I was using Arch, but I ran out of HD space to do updates so now it’s sitting unpatched and I don’t dare connect to any network with it. Windows is windows, and it’s broken because I broke it (phone hacking).
In the meantime, Lisa has been running Ubuntu 10.04 (not without complaint, of course) and I’m quite jealous. With luck, I managed to snag a used drive on ebay for $9 (who wants a six year old drive anyway? other than me, that is) and now we’re back in business. By Lisa’s estimation over 30% of my entries are reviews of linux, hence the lack updates.
Lisa is set in her ways and wants to go back to some variant of Windows eventually but things are working so we haven’t futzed with it. In the meantime, I plan to join her running some variant of Linux that isn’t so needy like Ubuntu or Fedora.
The problem with running a six year old laptop is that it is six. years. old. Ubuntu runs nicely on Lisa’s laptop but Lisa’s computer is the intended target audience (less than four years old). The hunt is now on for a decent distro that can run well on my machine. It could very well be that I have to go back to Arch.
In the last few months I’ve found several sites that have seem to attack some 0-day exploit in Windows on four separate machines (including Lisa and her mom’s computer). With Mac’s popularity soaring I’m half hoping Linux doesn’t gain more than 2% desktop market share; however, there are a couple of 0-day exploits floating around in the Mac universe too.
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Ilana once said to me ‘Macs can’t get viruses’. I hate that line of thinking. The virus is catch-all and an antiquated notion that should’ve been buried with Windows 98. A virus isn’t simply ‘I love you san‘. The concern is the trojan, and it’s serious. With PCs that are connected 24/7 to a large dumb pipe (the internet), trojans serve a couple of purposes: to infect other machines or to download private information, or both.
Further, if you install anything – anything – outside of the apple/windows walled garden, you’re no longer safe. Install flash? You’re prone to any flash exploits. View PDFs through Adobe’s reader? Prone. Use Firefox? Prone. And the list goes on. Further, unlike Apple or Microsoft products, there’s no reliable method of update delivery. Mozilla and Adobe have no partnership for update delivery, nor will they ever.
A trojan can be a virus, and a virus can be a trojan, but they aren’t exactly the same thing. A virus is self replicating generally not requiring the originator’s help; a trojan has users on both ends.
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I purposely left out linux because you can actually review the source of these apps. If Apple hits above 25% desktop share (somewhere between 10-15% now), it won’t matter I’m sure. But in the meantime, security through obscurity.
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Zombie Shock (ip/t): It’s an insanely fun and quite hard zombie shooter. That game took me back to Atlantic City playing House of the Dead. While not quite the same, the game has the same level of energy and fun.
Dirt Moto (ip/t): I wish I paid $5 for this instead of Asphalt. It’s an ATV racing game with a gradual difficulty curve. The game is mostly arcade with some realistic effects. There are four types of terrain with daylight and twilight driving. Some of the courses themselves are challenging: you can’t veer too far off course or you’ll be forced to reset so careful driving is key. The game has a great mix of all out full speed racing with massive jumps and high banked walls and precise tracks requiring careful braking. Two thumbs up – I thoroughly enjoyed it.
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2 Comments
No really, how do you REALLY feel about Macs and viruses?
And I think I’m getting used to Ubuntu. Kind of. Sort of. But I reserve the right to change my mind.
I figured you would at some point. It does things *differently*, not badly. The one really, really nice thing about Ubuntu is that as long as you stay in the main repositories (which you are), all the apps are packaged by Ubuntu itself, which is not true of many (most) distros, hence its popularity.
Wikipedia is powered by Ubuntu, which I learned recently.
As for the Macs and viruses thing: I can’t believe that Apple is taking that tack in their adverts. Viruses are different from trojans which are different from phising attacks. Another technical thing: while it’s much more difficult to take down a Mac (or Linux) at root level, that’s not so important anymore. Everything important (passwords, accounts, saved documents) are at the *user* level, hence the popularity of trojans.