why post here to rag on macs?

[sortius]

I don't get it.

I really don't get it. Does it make Windows users feel superior? Should I go into the Windows forums and rag on them for having a bad O/S and say Linux is much better?

I know I don't post on zgeek really anymore, mainly due to the wankers that populate this place, but I just keep getting feedback from my better half that there's continually people saying "macs are shit".

I've used many O/S's over my career, and I can assure ALL Windows users that if Windows was 1/2 as stable, 1/2 as fast, and 1/2 as good as the Mac OS, then Microsoft wouldn't be hammered by users about vulnerabilities, bad programming and generally a lack of support.

If a PC user can come up with a decent reason why "macs are shit" (and 'you can't play games on a mac' isn't enough, seeing as it's A LOAD OF BULLSHIT) then I'll agree. However, untill I see this, I will continue to rate these dickhead Windows users as lower than amoeba.

[rascuache]

+ Rep

I endorse this thread

:victory:

[kré]

http://www.crayonline.com/smilies/blahblah.gif

[sortius]

that'd be right cray... blah me in a rant in a mac forum about windows people ragging on macs... feel like man now do we?

[kré]

that'd be right cray... blah me in a rant in a mac forum about windows people ragging on macs... feel like man now do we?
http://www.crayonline.com/smilies/blahblah.gif

[Arcane1]

that'd be right cray... blah me in a rant in a mac forum about windows people ragging on macs... feel like man now do we?
You expected an intelligent response?

As for the Windows matter; there really isn't a decent baseline to compare them on. I have used both, though am nowhere near up to date in the MAC Os area. As for Windows, it may suck as an OS in many areas, but it does what it need to when configured right about 90% of the time. Not may products on the planet can claim such a usership level especially considering so many are pirated. I've know a few graphics people that have tried to go to PCs for the other more standard business apps, but were horribly frustrated.

Are you Ford or Chevy?
Are you Disney or Warner Bros?
Are you Mac or Windows?
Are you Budwiser or Coopers?
Are you e-clique or can you think for yourself?

Can't some people stop whinging so we can all get along?
Right, of course not.

To each their own.

[sortius]

it's a bit deeper than that arcane... looking at the fundementals of the OS, you can start to see the flaws in any OS.

If you break it down to a simple analogy, it becomes clear:

You have a tool. It's great, can do almost anything (a-la Swiss Army Knife) if need be. This is all fine, till you need to do some real work. You want to open a computer case, what do you reach for... the swiss army knife, or the phillips head screwdriver that fits the screws?

The way I see it, Windows is a great multi-function tool, you can do a fair bit with it, although shakily most of the time. Mac OS is a robust tool, designed for multimedia (2D/3D graphics and music mainly). I know myself if I had the cash (which I will soon hopefully), I'd buy a powerhouse G5 to do my graphics/web design.

The main point of contention with the whole mac/windows arguments is the core of the OS. On one hand you have a flimsy, and at times down right unstable core (windows NT kernel with a few million extra lines of code), on the other hand you have stable, powerful core (Mach Kernel with BSD extensions). This is not where it ends, security with windows is absymal (even with SP2 & windows firewall running), however Mac OS comes default with a packetfiltering firewall (a-la unix/linux), on top of this, a majority, if not all, browser vulnerabilities are targeting windows machines.

As a side note, piracy isn't exactly non-existant on Mac OS, I can get anything for Mac I need off a variety of sources if need be.

[Thyrd]

Since Windows is pretty much the most widely used OS, it's fair to say that hackers and virus coders target it more than other systems. If Linux or the mac OS were far more widely used, would there be more vulnerabilities found and more viruses targeting it? One could say the biggest weakness of windows is its popularity.

[sortius]

not at all...

Case 1: there was once a competition called "hack en mac" (hack a mac), a mac OS server was left unprotected on the net, doing it's daily chores, etc. You could earn a fair bit of cash by hacking it. it was only ever hacked once, and the hack was a filemaker extension running on the server. this was quickly fixed, and the comp was never won again as far as I know.

Case 2: I run a linux server. It is constantly bombared by hack attempts. Mainly SSH brute force attacks. If you really want I can post the logs of the attempts. On top of this, most of the internet runs on linux/unix, and there are a number of vulnerabilities discovered regularly, these however are fixed on the spot. Rather than the MS view of "when we get pressured, we'll fix it".

It's not popularity that denotes hackability, it's vulnerability that denotes such actions. I know myself, if I needed to hack a machine, I'd prefer it to be a windows box, rather than a mac os box.

[druid]

I don't get it.

I really don't get it. Does it make Windows users feel superior?

Seeing the timewise correlation between this thread and the widget thread I would like to ask where in that thread were people ragging macs? My post was to put your Windows barking into perspective and I don't see any other posts that would claim macs suck.

I would've also continued about widgets in general or how something being at your desktop doesn't necessarily mean it's built-in to the OS but that would only derail the thread more.

I've seen posts like "I bought a Mac" replied with "My condolences". While amusing I don't think they belong here. On the whole I think this place is pretty clean. There's still the Report button if you think something is way out of place. If there are more examples than the one I mentioned not a single one has been reported.


Should I go into the Windows forums and rag on them for having a bad O/S and say Linux is much better?

Nah, there's plenty of people covering that already.


I know I don't post on zgeek really anymore, mainly due to the wankers that populate this place, but I just keep getting feedback from my better half that there's continually people saying "macs are shit".

Somehow this seems to hit your Jobs nerve in a similar manner you say these 'Windows amoebas react'. :boohoo: Don't act like a condescending dickhead and you probably won't get treated like one.

P.S. Hacking competitions prove fuck all except the fact that they are a great way to get publicity.

[druid]

Let this post serve as a divider. From now on no oneliner insults or fighting. The title of this thread does have a point and everyone should stay on that topic. There have been a few good replies and I want all posts from now on be well justified and follow the general Tech posting guidelines.

If there's enough demand I can move this to B&R or Fight Club.

[sortius]

do what you will druid, I really don't care... in fact, ban me, I really have no desire to become a zgeeker again. it seems that zgeek is owned by trolling dickheads who serve to show their own superiority by being wankers rather than displaying any truth to their arguments.

as I was always told as a child, you can't argue with morons, and I certainly can't argue with zgeekers.

I created this thread as vent for mac users, rather than a rag on topic for windows.

I did respect people like you druid at one stage, but frankly, I don't care anymore... If this place haddn't gone to shit and was kept as a forum, rather than a oneupmanshiptown then I'd probably have a few thousand posts... rather than 200-odd.

I personally don't care how I am treated here, thus why I act like people who post retarded posts are beneath me. I never treated people like crap here till it happened to me.

anyway, back to the topic, I don't see how the comment of "P.S. Hacking competitions prove fuck all except the fact that they are a great way to get publicity" is relevent. a dickload of cash is enough to set any hack a drool. Publicity stunt or not, I've never seen a comp like that for windows machines.

[druid]

anyway, back to the topic, I don't see how the comment of "P.S. Hacking competitions prove fuck all except the fact that they are a great way to get publicity" is relevent. a dickload of cash is enough to set any hack a drool. Publicity stunt or not, I've never seen a comp like that for windows machines.

You might want to read this (http://www.schneier.com/crypto-gram-9812.html#contests).

Here's an excerpt:

Contests are a terrible way to demonstrate security. A product/system/protocol/algorithm that has survived a contest unbroken is not obviously more trustworthy than one that has not been the subject of a contest. The best products/systems/protocols/algorithms available today have not been the subjects of any contests, and probably never will be. Contests generally don't produce useful data. There are three basic reasons why this is so.

Behind that link Schneier talks mostly about cryptanalysis but what he says is also true for computer security (or theory of security) in general. There's also a link to another article (http://www.ieee-security.org/Cipher/PastIssues/1996/issue9602/issue9602.txt) that's not so heavy on crypto.

[druid]

I've moved more posts since it was obviously so hard to understand what I said earlier. Any more that are in breach of my tyrannic rules and the new warning system gets some use.

[Asmodeus]

I don't get it.

I've used many O/S's over my career, and I can assure ALL Windows users that if Windows was 1/2 as stable, 1/2 as fast, and 1/2 as good ...

then it would be a mac.

i love shutting down mac users on these points.

mac stable? now i admit that i haven't used the latest revisions but from the ones i use in a production environment that were maintained and set up by so called mac professionals.. the stability left a LOT to be desired.

Mac fast? no, you have this wrong again. macs are not fast, they rarely have been. macs computationally have always been dogs. the only thing they have going for them half the time is they have a very smooth flowing gui screen. somethign which too many uninformed souls equate to fast. I don't play pound for pound games either. top of the line mac vs top of the line pc will always come out with the pc getting teh job done first despite whatever pretty numbers tweak heads vomit out every other week.

as good? sadly, it seems the state of mac is usually lacking when it comes to state of the art or current games, applications, etc. while windows is no prize, a majority of the development is unfortunately where its at.

for servers.. i wouldn't even give them a second glance. their underlying system is great, but unfortunately, the mac shell over it all just makes it useless again.

im sure its good enough to bang out basic web pages on or play around with paintbrush programs when its not busy being glorified juke box.. you know, your average pc user.. it seems to fall far short in production departments and frankly, the only ones her ei still see with them are those who are convinved this is the machie to use becuase their daddy did, or becuase they need a machine to read the media from the companys using these obviously legacy machines. mac has mostly lost it in teh professional world.

[sortius]

I honestly don't see the relevence of articles describing hacking cryptography with regards to hacking a raw machine, no crypto, nothing like that, just a raw machine.

I know statistics are bent, but from what I can tell, you've got about 15 mins before you are screwed connecting to the net on a windows machine with no firewalling at all. In contrast, I can connect to the net with a mac and maybe get one attack that might cause a problem with the machine.

I have tested this too. I ran my machine on the net for a good hour when I had no DSL. Raw machine, windows xp, no SP, etc. I had to reinstall windows after that.

In contrast, Rascuache's parents were doing the same, for hours on end with macs within the same time period, without so much as dropping a beat. And yes, they would notice it. Ras' father is an architect, using archicad requires a lot of resources... he is very observant of issues with his machine, we get the calls when it doesn't work. ;)

anyway, back to the issue at hand, I agree to a degree that comps don't show the robustness of a system entirely... what it does show is two things:

1. The writers of the comp are fairly confident that they are going to keep people out, $x is a lot of cash for investors to waste.

2. I've never seen or heard of a comp where a raw windows machine is left to it's own devices on the net. To me, this shows the lack of assuredness that the machine will pull through.

I suppose we can all take what we want from this, however, there are some plain, blatant questions we can't dismiss.

Why are the comps only run on raw macs, high crypto windows stations, or standard *nix boxes?

Why is it that we seem to see the Windows platform being destroyed while *nix varieties are seemingly immune?

Why does microsoft release secuirty fixes for security fixes for security fixes, and well, you know where it goes from here?

sure, osx has fixes, but they are for vulnerabilities in the OS, not the fixes.

[druid]

I honestly don't see the relevence of articles describing hacking cryptography with regards to hacking a raw machine, no crypto, nothing like that, just a raw machine.

Did you actually read that at all? What about the other one that I said is not about cryptanalysis (http://www.ieee-security.org/Cipher/PastIssues/1996/issue9602/issue9602.txt)? The relevance should be clear if you can see the forest from the trees.

Besides, I bet none of the contest targets were raw, clean machines with no tweaks at all.