that if free software people make viruses, then they are smarter than the proprietary people who don't?
I'd venture to say yes, but you have to wonder...
Proprietary people make a living off their proprietary OS. Why would they want to cause it harm? The escape from that question is that the OS is inconsequential, that the user's harm is the target, not the defamation of the OS. But we can very likely have an alternative to that: it's not so muth the damage to the user, but the quanitity of it - how many and how bad. The only moviation there is glory, since there is no other gain or some form of anger for targeting everyone indiscriminately.
Yet another reason could be that the proprietaty OS is the only one vulnerable, either technically or by low user IQ.
Suffice to say, proprietary OS and dumb user = easy tatget. If we assert that the reason for the virus is glory, then we can rule it out, since it's not very glamorous to beat up on a cripple.
We also have to look at the fact. Proprietary people use proprietary tools. And the dominant tool kit is very good about hiding intracacies of the OS. So I'm going to venture that these people are not the ones doing it.
All things considered, we conclude we have a few renagade people attacking Windows because of hate for the platform. The more they chisel at it, the worse it looks. Given Microsoft's history of patching, it seems to be a worth while endevor.
On the other side, we have to have someone every skilled to craft attacks against unix-based OS's. You need to know the architecture and how things compile on it. You need to (usually) target a specific version of software, and you have to do it before it changes (a la OpenSource). So many more steps are required.
We conclude that a middle-of-the-road programmer finds the risk of virus development easy and thrilling enough to target windows.
Of course this al hinges on the premise that one does not attack his own OS.
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Posted by: Scorp1us on February 18, 2004 03:14 AMI'd venture to say yes, but you have to wonder...
Proprietary people make a living off their proprietary OS. Why would they want to cause it harm? The escape from that question is that the OS is inconsequential, that the user's harm is the target, not the defamation of the OS. But we can very likely have an alternative to that: it's not so muth the damage to the user, but the quanitity of it - how many and how bad. The only moviation there is glory, since there is no other gain or some form of anger for targeting everyone indiscriminately.
Yet another reason could be that the proprietaty OS is the only one vulnerable, either technically or by low user IQ.
Suffice to say, proprietary OS and dumb user = easy tatget. If we assert that the reason for the virus is glory, then we can rule it out, since it's not very glamorous to beat up on a cripple.
We also have to look at the fact. Proprietary people use proprietary tools. And the dominant tool kit is very good about hiding intracacies of the OS. So I'm going to venture that these people are not the ones doing it.
All things considered, we conclude we have a few renagade people attacking Windows because of hate for the platform. The more they chisel at it, the worse it looks. Given Microsoft's history of patching, it seems to be a worth while endevor.
On the other side, we have to have someone every skilled to craft attacks against unix-based OS's. You need to know the architecture and how things compile on it. You need to (usually) target a specific version of software, and you have to do it before it changes (a la OpenSource). So many more steps are required.
We conclude that a middle-of-the-road programmer finds the risk of virus development easy and thrilling enough to target windows.
Of course this al hinges on the premise that one does not attack his own OS.
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