“One-in-three Australian business users blame Microsoft for this week’s worm outbreak, a poll reveals. ZDNet Australia reports… an informal online poll by security specialist, Sophos, it reports that 35 per cent of respondents hold the Redmond giant to blame; 45 per cent blame the virus writers while 20 per cent blame their system administrators,” Macworld UK reports.
Full article here.
MacDailyNews Take: The use of “this week’s” to describe the worm outbreak amuses us. That phrase is obviously quite necessary to differentiate between last week’s and next week’s Windows malware outbreak. Thankfully, the question Mac users used to ask each other, “will they ever wake up” has been soundly replaced with “who’ll be the last to wake up?”
Related MacDailyNews articles:
ZDNet: How many Mac OS X users affected by the last 100 viruses? None, zero, not one, not ever – August 18, 2005
Curious, what was their n-size? 20 people?
[This post brought to you by the Magic Word “data”. You can’t make this stuff up]
While I don’t doubt the numbers… they are meaningless…It’s not 35% of “Australian Windows users”, but 35% of “Australian Windows Users who visited the Sophos Web Site and responded to an impromptu web poll…
That’s like standing in the lobby of a Wendy’s restaurant and taking a poll of people who walk in, and asking them “Do you like Cheeseburgers, hamburgers or chicken sandwiches?” and “Of them all, who do you like the best? Wendy’s McDonalds or Burger King.”
Why is this crap being “reported?” Seriously, what has it got to do with Mac News????
Not the home of ‘Trustworthy Computing”.
I just wanna know if my MacIntel is running WINE if it will run my favorite Windows viruses?
When is M$ NOT to blame? It’s their swiss cheese crapware that makes this all possible. And apparently the masses love it because they just keep coming back for more…
To paraphrase Shakespeare, “all are to blame… all are punished”.
At least all users are punished. M$ will probably benefit by selling a newer plague. Kind of makes you wonder if all this was pre-planed for needed sales boosts? Are a number of virus writers on M$ payroll?
OK, I hate Windows as much as anyone else. But if those business owners want to blame someone, they should blame themselves. Microsoft Windows has had BIG virus/security/worm/etc. problems since day 1. Yet these business owners continue investing in Windows systems. They knew when they made their last Windows purchase that the OS was shit, yet they did it again.
So, you don’t like what you see on your Windows box? Then switch to an alternative or quit bitching!
Tommy Boy asks: “I just wanna know if my MacIntel is running WINE if it will run my favorite Windows viruses?”
Answer: Sorry, Tommy Boy, but your Macintel will not be able to run most of the popular Windoze viruses under WINE. While it may be capable of running a few, like the Sir Cam virus, the user experience is just not up to Windoze standards. Sir Cam is severely crippled and incapable of replicating itself under WINE, and if you don’t run a Windoze eMail client, it won’t even be able to mail itself out to your friends and colleagues!
Once again, Mac users will be left out in the cold when it comes to running the most talked about and often run applications in the Windoze world. You’ll just have to learn how to get along without running malware on your Macintel. Sorry.
For a report on viruses which Linux users have tried to run under WINE:
http://os.newsforge.com/article.pl?sid=05/01/25/1430222&from=rss
And for more info on the Sir Cam virus:
http://www.vnunet.com/vnunet/news/2116150/linux-experts-wine-virus
Yeah…I think we might see a greater market share as a result of this ridiculous O/S shortcoming. Maybe we’ll go from 5% to 6% !
Andrew Hamilton
Las Vegas Videographers
http://www.hiproductions.com
I remember the SirCam virus. My Mac wouldn’t run the attachment, but my coworker was using Win 98 and her computer managed to infect all of the test computers. We lost one day of product testing plus the time it took 3 engineers to remove the virus from the test computers.
Since that time, we have had one other virus – we have an Agilent test box which came with a virus (it runs windows os) when it came back from cal.
We now have our test computers blocked from the internets.
Looks like I’ll have to switch to windows to finally get a chance to try out these viruses that are constantly top news. I’m missing out on the full computer experience of my contemporaries. Where do you want to go today? – Anywhere that’s cheap and sassy…
That’s like standing in the lobby of a Wendy’s restaurant and taking a poll of people who walk in, and asking them “Do you like Cheeseburgers, hamburgers or chicken sandwiches?”
Um, yes that is exactly how you do statistical analysis. It has been proven after you ask 1000 people the same question you have the averages of a much larger group with a possible fluctuation of ± 3%.
A smaller number asked increases the potential for deviation. Asking more does not drop the average deviation scores unless you ask everyone.
So having business owners or system administrators that visit a company’s web site that discusses viruses would be the best place to take a poll of random sampling, and if you have at least 1000 respondents you can guarantee you have a correct total average of all people with a ± 3% deviation.
Windows is so awesome. It is has viruses and spyware. I wish I could get that sh*t on my Mac.
Web Polls & Phone-in Polls – meaningless and sometimes dangerously deceptive, crap.
I hate these things, particularly when used in a political or complex social issue context.
These things are designed to manipulate and skew public opinion, because they are wide open to this kind of abuse. Even those Morgan polls taking a random sample of the “Australian Electorate” to find which political party is on top this week or the like smack of mass public manipulation.
And it’s always media like the Fox/Murdoch Empire that make the most use of them. Then other media pick up on the “startling results” as if it is in anyway, shape or form, genuine news?
Imagine if we conducted elections like that? Oh, that’s right! We’re moving in that direction already.
Polls on other fairly innocuous issues? Whatever; I view it as entertainment usually. Take all of them with a fistful of salt.