On Mon, 04 Aug 2003 14:34:40 -0700, John Steed
wrote:

On Thu, 24 Jul 2003 13:10:38 -0500, Tim Lavoie
wrote:


All systems have bugs, and vulnerabilities will come up. People do
talk about Linux security vulnerabilities, along with those of all
other operating systems, but some get fixed faster than others.

I haven't used Mandrake, but updating the works in Debian is pretty
much a one-liner, including dependency checks etc.

Yea right, I updated some files in Mandrake 9.0 and then it tried to
update some dependencies needed by the newer files and it could'nt
find them on the FTP server. If you dion't get the dependcy files then
your Mandrake install is screwed.

I suspect the main issue which comes up is that the Windows
environment tends to be much more homogenous, and the sole vendor
likes to integrate "features" which bite their users later. Everybody
have Outlook? Yup. How about executable spreadsheets and Word docs?
Yup. Poor default choices in one app allow rogue code to exploit the
idiot features of another, creating a huge market for a potential
virus.
The key is default and choices.

Mine is set not to run HTML and macros do not automatically execute.

Roger Halstead (K8RI EN73 & ARRL Life Member)
www.rogerhalstead.com
N833R World's oldest Debonair? (S# CD-2)

You can send viruses to me too, but neither Gnus nor Mutt will try to
execute them, and you won't find an Outlook address book for further
targets either.


Outlook is easy to make completely secure and you can even uninstall
it from your system and use an alternative program if you are that
worried about it. I'm not.