multilanguage support, and a bad virus experience

[Derek Martin]

On Fri, Feb 13, 2004 at 09:11:52AM -0500, bscott at ntisys.com wrote:
> On Fri, 13 Feb 2004, at 1:22pm, invalid at pizzashack.org wrote:
> > On the virus front: To make a long story short, I installed XP on my
> > laptop ... in that short time, my windows XP install had become infected
> > with not one, but FIVE different worms... This kind of thing would never
> > happen to me on Linux, because it's a simple matter to shut down all
> > running services before connecting to the Internet for the first time to
> > get updates.
> 
>   Right.  And it would never happen to me with Windows XP, either.  Why?  
> Because before I connected to the Internet, I would have turned on Windows
> XP's built-in firewall, which would have completely protected you from all
> of those worm attacks.  I do the same thing on Linux.

Indeed.  I had heard that such a thing existed, and even looked for it
(a little) before proceeding.  But I had thought I heard it was part
of some service pack, so I gave up (too easily) when I did not find it
where I expected to find it.  I later did find it buried in advanced
networking options.  I expected it to be either in the control panel,
or as a separate program in Windows Accessories.

I intended to install Zone Alarm immediately anyway (which I did,
though unfortunately not before my system was hosed), which I trust a
lot more than Microsoft.

> Alternatively, go to http://www.microsoft.com/ and click the "Protect my
> PC" link that's displayed right on their home page.

When I have the chance, I'll look at this.  I'm fairly certain the
toll-free line won't work for me here in Korea... ;-)

> > This is, of course, only my opinion, which is based on my own personal
> > experience.
> 
>   As you, by choice, have avoided Microsoft as much as possible, I really
> don't think you're qualified to speak on how much information is available
> on Microsoft systems.  FWIW, I envy you for that fact that you have the
> choice of avoiding their stuff.  I do not.

I granted that in my previous post.  Your envy may be a little
misplaced though...  You have been continuously employed since before
MCL fell in 2000, whereas I have been anything but.  Not knowing M$
software well has been a liability, which is forcing to rethink my
attitude on that particular issue (not that I'm saying I'm going to
rush out and become an MCSE any time soon)...

[I'm also happy to say that I'm generally quite pleased with my
current situation, which has virtually nothing to do with computers,
and still affords me a very pleasant life style.  But that will have
to end some day.  Or, will it?  ;-)]

However isn't it still true that Windows comes with all-but-useless
documentation?  Some  Linux distros, at least Red Hat, come with a
series of pretty decent manuals which discuss everything from how to
log in, to how to build a custom kernel, to (if I'm not mistaken) at
least some basic security measures.  Unless I'm mistaken, Windows
only comes with a small booklet that isn't useful to anyone other than
extreme computer novices (and then, only if they actually read it,
which admittedly they're not so likely to).

IIRC (at least some releases of) Win95 came with the resource guide on
the CD.  But I think that stopped with Win98.  My point is that it may
have become easier to get information about securing Windows systems
lately, but you either need to shell out for it at your local book
store, or you have to get it on-line.  If, like me, you feel that you
should not have to pay for this information, that means you'll have to
connect your unsecured system up to the net in order to find out how
to do it.  By the time you've gone through it all, your system will
already be deflowered...

Of course, you could get the info you need from a different computer
(or booted into a different OS).  But then you'd have to somehow save
all that information somewhere (even if it's your brain) in order to
refer to it later.  This probably means saving the web pages to a file
at best, or voluminous printing in the more likely case.

If you're a network admin for some company, this doesn't pose too much
of a problem.  But if you're Joe Newbie, all of these barriers
basically guarantee that it will never happen, even if Joe has the
presence of mind to be worried about security in the first place.

Obviously there are more factors which I'm leaving out, but I'm
getting sick of typing, so I will continue to leave them out.  =8^)
We both know what they are, and we both know both sides of them.
Anyone still listening who doesn't can always research them in the
cornucopic heap of archived posts from yesteryear...

-- 
Derek D. Martin
http://www.pizzashack.org/
GPG Key ID: 0xDFBEAD02
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