Linux-Advocacy Digest #370, Volume #26 Fri, 5 May 00 05:13:06 EDT
Contents:
Re: How many more viruses does Microsoft need to fix the problem? ("Francis Van
Aeken")
Re: Linux file system vs. Win/DOS ? (Christopher Browne)
Re: Help ... ... P l e a s e ? (Jim Richardson)
Re: Help ... ... P l e a s e ? (Jim Richardson)
Re: Help ... ... P l e a s e ? (Jim Richardson)
Re: Linux file system vs. Win/DOS ? (tom)
Re: Linux file system vs. Win/DOS ? (tom)
Re: Microsoft: STAY THE FUCK OFF THE NET!!! ([EMAIL PROTECTED])
Re: Dvorak calls Microsoft on 'innovation' ([EMAIL PROTECTED])
Re: Virus on the net? (Jim Richardson)
Re: Call me Paranoid - Re: What else is hidden in MS code??? (dakota)
Re: Microsoft: STAY THE FUCK OFF THE NET!!! (Loren Petrich)
Re: Virus on the net? ("Erik Funkenbusch")
Re: Gates admits MS "engineers" suck? (Mike Marion)
Re: Dvorak calls Microsoft on 'innovation' (Mike Marion)
Re: Dvorak calls Microsoft on 'innovation' (Loren Petrich)
Re: Virus on the net? (Jim Richardson)
----------------------------------------------------------------------------
From: "Francis Van Aeken" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: Re: How many more viruses does Microsoft need to fix the problem?
Date: Fri, 5 May 2000 00:37:25 -0300
<[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote in message news:[EMAIL PROTECTED]...
> There's no time........
>
> They are too busy adding features :)
Yes, like Linus.
He will never get all the bugs out of pre-2.4 if he keeps on
adding features. Sad to see how people never learn.
Francis.
------------------------------
From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] (Christopher Browne)
Subject: Re: Linux file system vs. Win/DOS ?
Reply-To: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Date: Fri, 05 May 2000 03:45:08 GMT
Centuries ago, Nostradamus foresaw a time when tom would say:
>I'm curious about how Linux organizes itself and its files. In
>Windows, the system files are usually in Windows & Windows/system, and
>program files are in the similarly named directory. And the same goes
>for DOS, of course.
>
>What happens in Linux when you install packages? (where do the program
>files end up, etc.?) I haven't installed Linux yet, but I'm planning
>to try it out in the near future.
>
>I did search for a HOW-TO on this, but couldn't seem to find what I'm
>looking for. If anyone could refer me to an online source of info,
>that would be nice, too.
Look for FHS: <http://www.pathname.com/fhs/>
On the Filesystem Hierarchy Standard.
--
..you could spend *all day* customizing the title bar. Believe me. I
speak from experience." -- Matt Welsh
[EMAIL PROTECTED] - - <http://www.ntlug.org/~cbbrowne/lsf.html>
------------------------------
From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] (Jim Richardson)
Subject: Re: Help ... ... P l e a s e ?
Reply-To: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Date: Fri, 05 May 2000 04:14:16 GMT
On Thu, 04 May 2000 04:06:32 GMT,
tom, in the persona of <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>,
brought forth the following words...:
>Okay, we're bumping up against the edge of my technical know-how, so
>let me just give a couple more details on what I did.
>
>My c: drive is 8.6G (FAT32), of which I had around 6.5G free. After
>doing a scandisk & defrag, I rebooted with a boot disk containing fips
>and carved 2G off the tail end of the drive for Linux. At this point,
>Windows did not recognize the new partition (although of course it knew
>free space had shrunk by 2G) and for some reason, I thought that I
>could not install before it did, so I formatted it (from DOS, not
>fips). I don't know if it's called a logical drive, DOS partition or
>what, but it's showing up in Explorer as a separate drive.
>
>I don't know what you mean by "native partition". Does that refer to
>the 2G's state BEFORE I formatted it, when Windows didn't recognize it?
>(with no existing file system)
>
>As far as your reference to umsdos, Armed Linux would have used this (&
>I did get it to install, but it wouldn't boot). However, Caldera 2.3
>and Corel are regular, full versions of Linux. Maybe that's the issue?
>(the partition needs to be formatted in Linux's file system?)
>
>Tom
<snip> and butting in here
yes, you pretty much have it, the "new" drive after formatting in Dos, is
not a linux native partition and thus will not work with (eg) Corel or
Caldera. You need at least two partitions for the Corel or Caldera install,
one, a swap partition of 2 times your Ram, or 128Mb, (whichever is smaller)
and the other, a linux ext2 partition for the OS itself. Both can be carved
out of that 2Gb partition. There is a complication with lilo, which
expects the kernel image to be below the 1024th cylinder, but this is only
a problem on some older Bios. Your's may or may not have this problem. If
it does, there are a couple of options, either use Loadlin to fire up linux
from Win/Dos, or some other boot loader like System Commander (I think that
is the name of the norton one.)
--
Jim Richardson
Anarchist, pagan and proud of it
WWW.eskimo.com/~warlock
Linux, because life's too short for a buggy OS.
------------------------------
From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] (Jim Richardson)
Subject: Re: Help ... ... P l e a s e ?
Reply-To: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Date: Fri, 05 May 2000 04:19:22 GMT
On Thu, 04 May 2000 04:12:42 GMT,
tom, in the persona of <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>,
brought forth the following words...:
>In article <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>,
> [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote:
>> No, you just need enough available space on the current drive to use
>> fips or partition magic, or partition resizer to squeeze windows over
>a bit.
>
>Actually, I thought that's what I did. Of the appr. 6.5G available, I
>carved 2G off the tail end to dedicate to Linux.
Yes, this is what you did (I must have missed that part) but formatting it
as an MSDOS partition is what caused Corel and Caldera to bomb.
>
>So the install program isn't smart enough to recognize where it's being
>put and handle the boot setup on it's own, eh? I've heard the
>names "LILO" and "Loadlin", and I know they have something to do with
>booting, but what are they about and how do I set up one or the other?
>(or is this a "read the HOW-TO" situation?)
Well, reading the howtos is allways a good idea :)
The problem is that some BIOS won't see anything over the 1024th cylinder,
you can spoof it by adjusting what the hd reports, but this is not for the
tender newbie :) Or you can partition a small (20-40MB is more than
sufficient.) in the front of the drive. Or, you can put your kernel image on
a floppy, and use that to boot from, or use loadlin from win/dos or some other
bootmanager that doesn't care about the bios.
--
Jim Richardson
Anarchist, pagan and proud of it
WWW.eskimo.com/~warlock
Linux, because life's too short for a buggy OS.
------------------------------
From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] (Jim Richardson)
Subject: Re: Help ... ... P l e a s e ?
Reply-To: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Date: Fri, 05 May 2000 04:20:43 GMT
On 04 May 2000 18:20:30 GMT,
Marada C. Shradrakaii, in the persona of <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>,
brought forth the following words...:
>>Caveat, windows want's to be (probably won't boot at all if it isn't) on the
>>first partition of the master (for IDE) drive
>
>Odd... I boot Win98 just fine off of partition three of my primary master
>(/dev/hda3)
>
>
YMMV, I had no end of trouble with a laptop I was setting up for dual boot,
if W9X doesn't care anymore, then that is one less complication.
--
Jim Richardson
Anarchist, pagan and proud of it
WWW.eskimo.com/~warlock
Linux, because life's too short for a buggy OS.
------------------------------
From: tom <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: Re: Linux file system vs. Win/DOS ?
Date: Fri, 05 May 2000 04:18:31 GMT
In article <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>,
[EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote:
>
> Look for FHS: <http://www.pathname.com/fhs/>
>
> On the Filesystem Hierarchy Standard.
Thank you, gentlemen. This seems to fit the bill quite nicely.
Tom
Sent via Deja.com http://www.deja.com/
Before you buy.
------------------------------
From: tom <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: Re: Linux file system vs. Win/DOS ?
Date: Fri, 05 May 2000 04:18:47 GMT
In article <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>,
[EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote:
>
> Look for FHS: <http://www.pathname.com/fhs/>
>
> On the Filesystem Hierarchy Standard.
Thank you for your suggestions, gentlemen. This seems to fit the bill
quite nicely.
Tom
Sent via Deja.com http://www.deja.com/
Before you buy.
------------------------------
From: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Crossposted-To:
comp.os.ms-windows.advocacy,comp.os.ms-windows.nt.advocacy,alt.fan.bill-gates
Subject: Re: Microsoft: STAY THE FUCK OFF THE NET!!!
Date: Fri, 05 May 2000 04:22:33 GMT
In article <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>,
Captain Lethargy <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
>
> >By the way. What exactly did you have to "fix" on your relatives
comput=
> ers?
> >This virus doesn't destroy anything but graphic and music files.
>
> Uh, I killed it six times at work today, wiped out printing on one pc,
we=
> b
> acess and non outlook email access on another, it replicates itself as
ht=
> ml,
> vbs and other filetypes as described in the earlier posts, and all
claims=
> of
> linux vulnerability to virii is irrelevant, anyone in the IT field
knows =
> that
> Microsoft from the beginning has sacrificed system security in favor
of e=
> ase of
> use, and stability sacrificed as well, and the ignorance of the
typical w=
There you have it folks Franky admits MS software is deliberatly made
insecure!
>
Sent via Deja.com http://www.deja.com/
Before you buy.
------------------------------
From: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Crossposted-To: comp.os.ms-windows.nt.advocacy,comp.lang.java.advocacy
Subject: Re: Dvorak calls Microsoft on 'innovation'
Date: Fri, 05 May 2000 04:42:23 GMT
In article <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>,
[EMAIL PROTECTED] (The Ghost In The Machine) wrote:
> There is none, there. However, innovations abound elsewhere.
> X (The X Window System, that is, but I'll just call it X
> for the sake of brevity :-) ), for instance, was "innovated"
> in the mid-80's; TCP/IP was created in the early to mid-80's
> by the Woolongong group, IIRC.
Neither TCP/IP nor X were originally developed in Unix. Neither are
even good protocols. DECnet (which was invented in 1974) continues to
outpace TCP/IP especially on gigabit and faster installations, since
TCP/IP has such a small MTU, not to mention DECnet's superior user
space features. But since you're a Linux weenie, I'm sure you think
Linus Torvalds invented TCP/IP so it is Really Good, and I'm sure you
never have heard of DECnet.
> And Mosaic was created on Unix, AFAIK, starting it all. (Internet
> Explorer was created from Spyglass code; I think Netscape might
> have been, too; both are now heavily mutated, of course.)
There is some mighty historical revisionism!
The first wide-spread web browser was Lynx, which was developed on VMS.
Unix was playing catchup to the web when it finally got its own Lynx
port and several years later with Mosaic.
Ah, but you're a Linux dweeb: you think Linus Torvalds invented the
Internet, you have never logged onto a VMS system, and you think the
only two operating systems which exist are Lindows and Winux.
> Old-style Unix also had rather poor memory management, compared
> to today's hardware; if an process wanted more memory, it had to
> tack it onto the end of the physical image of the process. If
> another process got in the way, well, that other process had to
> be physically moved to somewhere else in physical memory. If it
> didn't fit, it got shoved to a swapfile somewhere ("swapped out").
During this time the companies dealing with the more robust systems
such as DEC already had sophisticated memory management features, more
robust than Unix today (does Linux support working set quotas, yet?
Heck, does it properly alert you of a memory allocation failure, yet?)
Unix installations were known to crash regularly until 1989 or 1990,
when DEC already had perfected clustering for several years. But
you're Linux weenie: you do not know what DEC made, and think Linus
Torvalds invented memory management.
> (One of the more interesting displays was the ability to show the
> physical location of each process on a cursor-addressable screen.)
Which was available in RSX-11 in 1972!
> I think a variant of Unix running on the VAX -- I don't know if it
> was Ultrix, or BSD -- finally figured out that each individual page
> could be sitting anywhere in physical memory, or swapped out
> to disk. (VMS might have been there first, though; I don't remember
> now.)
Boy, the things they teach the kiddies these days!
It is difficult to tell whether you are trolling or just clueless. But
here's a clue: the first operating system native to VAX was VMS, which
supported virtual memory. VMS came out four years before BSD (which was
the first Unix to support virtual memory).
Other DEC systems such as the 36 bit systems supported virtual memory
long before VMS. All of this was way before Unix. Way before. But I'm
sure you didn't know this because since you're a Linux weenie you think
that Linus Torvalds invented operating systems.
Sent via Deja.com http://www.deja.com/
Before you buy.
------------------------------
From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] (Jim Richardson)
Subject: Re: Virus on the net?
Reply-To: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Date: Fri, 05 May 2000 05:00:15 GMT
On Thu, 4 May 2000 13:45:15 -0500,
Erik Funkenbusch, in the persona of <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>,
brought forth the following words...:
>Craig Kelley <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote in message
>news:[EMAIL PROTECTED]...
>> Martijn Bruns <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> writes:
>>
>> > Has anyone heard of a new virus on the net?
>> >
>> > It's called 'I Love U'. (or something that sounds like that) and
>> > it seems to be infecting a LOT of companies around the globe
>> > right now!
>> > Also, it seems to infect Windows PC's running Outlook (Express?).
>> >
>> > It was on the radio surrounded by a mild case of panic :-)
>> >
>> > Does someone know more about it? Could something like this affect
>> > Linux-machines also?
>>
>> 1) Most Linux e-mail clients aren't dumb enough to run code sent in
>> e-mail, and there's no "give me all your friend's e-mail addresss"
>> API either.
>
>No, but there's a mail aliases list in the users home directory that could
>easily be read.
>
sure, except how? you'd have to get the user to fire up an executable.
>> 2) Linux doesn't run VBS. :)
>
>No, instead it has sh.
and permissions, so that even in the event of an executable being run without
asking from an email (are there any linux email clients that do this?)
the only files that will be affected are those the user has write perms to.
>
>
>
>
--
Jim Richardson
Anarchist, pagan and proud of it
WWW.eskimo.com/~warlock
Linux, because life's too short for a buggy OS.
------------------------------
Subject: Re: Call me Paranoid - Re: What else is hidden in MS code???
From: dakota <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Crossposted-To: comp.os.ms-windows.nt.advocacy
Date: Thu, 04 May 2000 21:55:00 -0700
In article <xG4Q4.4326$[EMAIL PROTECTED]>, "Erik
Funkenbusch" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
>R.E.Ballard ( Rex Ballard ) <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote in
message
>news:8eqid8$d5p$[EMAIL PROTECTED]...
>> It looks like we'll never know. For some mysterious reason,
>> my hard drive lost all it's partitions. I examined the
partition
>> table, it was filled with zeros.
>>
>> To make things even more interesting, each time I tried to
>> repartition the drive, it refused to remember the
partitioning.
>> Prior to this no virus detectors went off.
>
>All very convenient Rex. I won't call you paranoid, I'll call
you stupid if
>you think anyone here falls for this.
>
>> I'm hoping that the manufacturers can salvage the drive, but
>> this was one nasty buggy. Not only did it cost me $6000 in
>> billable time (spent trying to rebuild the disk then waiting
for
>> a replacement to be shipped via overnight), it also put my
client
>> in a bind.
>
>Sounds like you're at fault for not making backups.
>
>> Well, now the drive is going back to IBM.
>> Maybe they can figure it out.
>
>Uh huh.
>
>> What makes this particularly interesting is that
>> each change in state occurred right after I
>> went to the web using IE5. I normally use Netscape.
>
>I'll bet dollars to doughnuts that nobody at prudential has ever
heard of
>you.
>
>
Sounds like another troll grasping at straws.
* Sent from RemarQ http://www.remarq.com The Internet's Discussion Network *
The fastest and easiest way to search and participate in Usenet - Free!
------------------------------
From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] (Loren Petrich)
Crossposted-To:
comp.os.ms-windows.advocacy,comp.os.ms-windows.nt.advocacy,alt.fan.bill-gates,comp.os.ms-windows.nt.advocacy
Subject: Re: Microsoft: STAY THE FUCK OFF THE NET!!!
Date: 5 May 2000 07:31:34 GMT
In article <8etct6$8gb$[EMAIL PROTECTED]>,
Stephen S. Edwards II <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
>If you are using Windows95, or Windows98, try using telnet
>to run a remote pine session on your ISP shell account
>(assuming you have one), and check your messages before
>you give OE the go-ahead for downloading them. ...
Seems very cumbersome.
>And BTW, indeed, fixing relatives computers is very annoying.
>They often expect you to work for hours (which you end up
>doing), and at the same time, they bombard you with questions
>that you really don't feel like answering. At least, mine do. :-)
Why not charge for that service?
You could make good money :-)
--
Loren Petrich Happiness is a fast Macintosh
[EMAIL PROTECTED] And a fast train
My home page: http://www.petrich.com/home.html
------------------------------
From: "Erik Funkenbusch" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: Re: Virus on the net?
Date: Fri, 5 May 2000 03:09:07 -0500
Jim Richardson <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote in message
news:[EMAIL PROTECTED]...
> >How much slower? 30 seconds slower? The only thing that makes Windows
> >propogate faster is that there are more people that wouldn't have a clue
> >about the difference between a script and text file. Anyone with any
> >knowledge would not be effected under Windows because they would know
> >better. Even Mig Mig mentions that he recieved the virus and didn't
execute
> >it.
>
> no, you misunderstand, the propagation of the virus is slower because not
> everyone (or even a majority most like) are using the same mailer/shell
> combo's So only some subset of the Linux users out there would be
vulnerable
> to a given exploit. So many people use outlook on WinXX, that the rate
> of propagation is phenomenal.
But what you fail to realize is that it's *NOT* the email program that is
causing the problem. Windows Scripting Host is causing the problem, which
is semantically the same thing as sh on a unix system. The press has this
issue wrong, it has little to do with installing Outlook, other than the
fact that WSH is installed when IE4 or IE5 is installed. This comes by
default with Windows 98 and Windows 2000.
WSH is a scripting host that allows multiple scripting engines to be
installed on an OS. For example, there are Rexx, and Perl plug-ins for WSH,
as well as the default jscript and vbscript that ship with Windows.
These scripts could not function properly if executed in an HTML message,
since those messages have restricted API's which do not allow accessing
files directly. Thus the script MUST be sent as an attachment in order to
function properly, since the attachment must be executed outside of the
email environment.
> >Yes, it has you create a user and does not default to Administrator,
> >although the user it creates does default to having admin privs.
> >
> >But, unlike Unix, having admin privs doesn't mean you automatically have
> >global write access to every file on the system.
>
> does the admin privs in the default you mention have global write?
Only to Admin files. Not other user files.
> >> (what % of the windows folks are using W2k?)
> >
> >What does that matter?
>
> Because the problem was (widespread) with W9X, W2K is a small fraction of
> users, so saying that W2K has similar security as Linux doesn't help the
vast
> majority of users with W9X whose systems are in (symbolically at least)
flames.
Consumer level OS's don't have security systems by default. Look at BeOS,
MacOS, OS/2... none of them have permissions and have global file write.
> >> Obviously windows has a problem, it may be that W2K specifically has
less
> >> of a problem, but there's a lot more windows than W2K out there.
> >
> >User rights are not incredibly relevant to the problem here. The problem
is
> >that the virus replicates itself to users in your email lists. The same
> >thing could be done regardless of user rights (unless they had no rights
to
> >use mail).
>
> The virus also overwrote .css, .html, .jpg and other files, under linux,
only
> your files would be affected, under W9X, all were affected.
only jpeg, jpg, mp3 and mp2 files. not html or css. typically these files
will be writeable to the user anyways.
------------------------------
From: Mike Marion <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: Re: Gates admits MS "engineers" suck?
Date: Fri, 05 May 2000 08:09:39 GMT
Robert Browder wrote:
> I've had X lock up on me a couple of times too. Usually hitting
> <ALT><CTRL><F2> will return me to a login prompt where I can log in as
> root and do an orderly shutdown.
Why don't you just Kill X and restart it? Or are you saying that failed too?
I've _never_ seen X get so bad that I couldn't kill it and login again/restart
it.
--
Mike Marion - Unix SysAdmin/Engineer, Qualcomm Inc.
Like the man said "Nothing is foolproof, because fools are so ingenious"
------------------------------
From: Mike Marion <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Crossposted-To: comp.os.ms-windows.nt.advocacy,comp.lang.java.advocacy
Subject: Re: Dvorak calls Microsoft on 'innovation'
Date: Fri, 05 May 2000 08:02:46 GMT
[EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote:
> even good protocols. DECnet (which was invented in 1974) continues to
> outpace TCP/IP especially on gigabit and faster installations, since
> TCP/IP has such a small MTU, not to mention DECnet's superior user
> space features. But since you're a Linux weenie, I'm sure you think
Ah, but being technically better doesn't mean you'll win. Just look at the huge
market share windows has. :)
> when DEC already had perfected clustering for several years. But
> you're Linux weenie: you do not know what DEC made, and think Linus
> Torvalds invented memory management.
As someone that learned asm on a VAX system running VMS a few years ago in
college... I saw a single user able to drag the system to a halt by accidentally
defining a macro that had a normal call's name.. then using that call in the
macro itself (and no it wasn't me). Attempts to assemble it caused an infinite
loop which would freeze everyone's session until the process could be killed..
which took over 15 minutes once. Although I don't remember the machine crashing
completely, which is a good thing. Just goes to show that DEC didn't design
perfect systems either.
> Boy, the things they teach the kiddies these days!
You're assuming someone taught them at all. Most people only know the history
of computing because they looked it up themselves. Most schools don't go into
the history with much detail at all.
> It is difficult to tell whether you are trolling or just clueless. But
> here's a clue: the first operating system native to VAX was VMS, which
Nice attitude.
--
Mike Marion - Unix SysAdmin/Engineer, Qualcomm Inc.
The Matrix is going down for reboot now!
Stopping reality: ....OK
The system is halted. -- yet another sig stolen from /.
------------------------------
From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] (Loren Petrich)
Crossposted-To: comp.lang.java.advocacy,comp.os.ms-windows.nt.advocacy
Subject: Re: Dvorak calls Microsoft on 'innovation'
Date: 5 May 2000 07:46:11 GMT
In article <oylQ4.4440$[EMAIL PROTECTED]>,
Erik Funkenbusch <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
>petilon <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote in message
>news:[EMAIL PROTECTED]...
>> "Biometrics", my ass. Why don't Microsoft instead work on a
>> simple operating system that is as easy as a remote control?
>And you don't think they're working on such? ...
They've failed in that goal so many times that one does have to wonder.
> Only so many people can work
>on any given problem before they start getting in each others way. This was
>documented in "The mythical man month"
As if M$'s software designers worry about that at all.
And does creating an easy-to-use OS *really* require a herculean
development effort?
>> From Microsoft's perspective Biometrics is a good move because
>> it is the kind of thing that will generate a *lot* of press,
>> and will give people the false impression that Microsoft is
>> making great innovations. ...
>You make it sound like a simple process. Let's see you do it to Linux.
I have no special expertise in that area, but to a Linux kernel
hacker, it would be a fairly trivial task.
--
Loren Petrich Happiness is a fast Macintosh
[EMAIL PROTECTED] And a fast train
My home page: http://www.petrich.com/home.html
------------------------------
From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] (Jim Richardson)
Subject: Re: Virus on the net?
Reply-To: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Date: Fri, 05 May 2000 07:38:15 GMT
On Fri, 5 May 2000 02:22:12 -0500,
Erik Funkenbusch, in the persona of <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>,
brought forth the following words...:
>Jim Richardson <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote in message
>news:[EMAIL PROTECTED]...
>> >It's a little more involved on Unix, but certainly possible. There are
>lots
>> >and lots of people using Unix that don't have a clue about how to read a
>> >shell script. If a friend of theirs sends them an email with
>instructions
>> >about how to execute the attachment, most of those people will do it.
>> >That's how the virus propogates, by sending itself under the guise of a
>> >friend.
>>
>> And the extra steps make the propagation of the virus much much slower
>than
>> with windows.
>
>How much slower? 30 seconds slower? The only thing that makes Windows
>propogate faster is that there are more people that wouldn't have a clue
>about the difference between a script and text file. Anyone with any
>knowledge would not be effected under Windows because they would know
>better. Even Mig Mig mentions that he recieved the virus and didn't execute
>it.
no, you misunderstand, the propagation of the virus is slower because not
everyone (or even a majority most like) are using the same mailer/shell
combo's So only some subset of the Linux users out there would be vulnerable
to a given exploit. So many people use outlook on WinXX, that the rate
of propagation is phenomenal.
>
>> >No different than Windows 2000.
>>
>> curious, when you install W2K does it have you create a user ? or
>> does it default to Admin?
>
>Yes, it has you create a user and does not default to Administrator,
>although the user it creates does default to having admin privs.
>
>But, unlike Unix, having admin privs doesn't mean you automatically have
>global write access to every file on the system.
does the admin privs in the default you mention have global write?
>> (what % of the windows folks are using W2k?)
>
>What does that matter?
Because the problem was (widespread) with W9X, W2K is a small fraction of
users, so saying that W2K has similar security as Linux doesn't help the vast
majority of users with W9X whose systems are in (symbolically at least) flames.
>> Obviously windows has a problem, it may be that W2K specifically has less
>> of a problem, but there's a lot more windows than W2K out there.
>
>User rights are not incredibly relevant to the problem here. The problem is
>that the virus replicates itself to users in your email lists. The same
>thing could be done regardless of user rights (unless they had no rights to
>use mail).
The virus also overwrote .css, .html, .jpg and other files, under linux, only
your files would be affected, under W9X, all were affected.
--
Jim Richardson
Anarchist, pagan and proud of it
WWW.eskimo.com/~warlock
Linux, because life's too short for a buggy OS.
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