“As the latest mass-mailing worm spread across the Internet on Monday (“‘MyDoom’ Windows virus spreads rapidly; Macintosh unaffected”), infecting many tens of thousands of Windows PCs with a program designed to attack the servers of Unix vendor SCO Group on 1 February, Gates stressed the importance of security to his company’s products, but said that competing vendors — such as SCO — were courting danger by sitting back,” Matt Loney reports for ZDNet UK.
“‘A high volume system like [Windows] that has been thoroughly tested will be by far the most secure,’ Gates told the audience at the Developing Software for the future Microsoft Platform conference at London’s Queen Elizabeth II Conference Centre. ‘To say a system is secure because no one is attacking it is very dangerous,’ said Gates, referring to operating systems that have a smaller share of the desktop market, such as Apple Mac OS and Linux,” Loney reports.
Full article here.
MacDailyNews Take: We’re tired of your lies, Mr. Gates. Are you scared of something, Bill? You sound it. Mac OS X is simply more secure than Windows and you know it. Nice try with the Mac OS X “security through obscurity” myth, but we all know the truth here, sorry. We went though all of this with the last Windows virus nightmare. Mac OS X and Linux are much more secure than Windows XP.
Gates = walking asshole. And now he’s getting reamed. These viruses and worms for Windows have a number of people I know considering the Mac OS X alternative seriously. I’m sure Gates has focus group info telling him the same thing. I blame IBM for letting this pipsqueak, Kermit-voiced, greedy pussy get where he is today.
Gates is a fool.
“security through obscurity”
That’s funny. Anyone can get source code for both Linux and MacOS X (Darwin). Only limited people has access to Windows code. So, which OS is using security through obscurity?
If you were in Gates position, you would say the same. If MS ever admit just how insecure their products are, the class action suits would build up so quickly that Bill would end up living in a trailer park bemoaning that once he had it all.
Perfect timing for such a statement as virusses and worms are spreading again on the internet the last couple of days and NOT via OSX as usual…
Spent most of the day consoling our customers who have infected pcs that there aren’t any for the Mac, and when I got the usual ‘but the Mac doesn’t run Word’, gave them a history lesson about the 20 year old’s roots!
This should persuade a lot more people to take a long hard look at OSX.
A friend of mine has just dropped out of his M$ training course, he now thinks the future lies in being a unix networking engineer that a M$ one.
Yesterday, my poor little sister foolishly executed an attachment that accompanied an email to her from a friend in New Zealand. Well, well, well… Little sister’s Windows XP system then became infected and self-destructed in about five minutes.
No doubt, my son will have to attend and reinstall Windows totally for about the fifth time in the last year. Yes, she shouldn’t have executed the attachment, and yes, she knows very little about computers despite being on line for about five years.
Little sister just wants a computer to chat with her friends and to find new travel destinations on the web. So… the minute the iMac upgrades to a G5 – she will be switching. In the last year, four of my friends and relatives have dumped Windows for a Mac.
Are you hearing the wind change direction, Mr. Gates? The leaves are rustling, and it looks like a full gale shaping up on the horizon, Billy.
“Little sister just wants a computer to chat with her friends and to find new travel destinations on the web. So… the minute the iMac upgrades to a G5 – she will be switching.”
Huh? What the hell does she need a G5 for if all she wants to do is chat and browse the Web? She could use practically any Mac for that, even a G3 (or earlier). Sounds like she’s procrastinating.
Funny how Al Gore had the same problem during his “Global Warming” speech. Remember, that happened to on the coldest day of the year in NYC. Interesting gaff, that. So it is with tremendous irony that Gates would say, during the spread of one of 2004’s first worst Worms, that Windows is “secure”. Way to go Bill!
I have never received an email with a Mac program attached. When you dbl-click it in Mail, does it just launch? Or is there a warning that it is a program that will run?
Since a telltale “.exe” extension isn’t required, it would be hard to tell a program from a data file. The program could have a MS Word icon and end with “.doc”. The only way to tell would be if Mail (or the OS) warned you.
Great comment by “s” above. I’ll just repeat it cuz it’s worth doing so. “security through obscurity”
“That’s funny. Anyone can get source code for both Linux and MacOS X (Darwin). Only limited people has access to Windows code. So, which OS is using security through obscurity?”
bill gates uses a 17″ powerbook. i know because my friend betty told me
Talk about an oxymoron;
Windows –> Secure
and the famous;
Microsoft –> Works
Hmmm… makes you wonder who drinks the MS flavored Kool-Aid the most?
RDF = Redmond Distortion Field!
Sir Bill Gates?
Bill Gates KCBE?
As an American I have no interest in “Royalty”, “Nobility” or “Titles”. I find the whole thing crazy and have no interest. No wonder the Brits lost their empire. The genius of America is we got out first with a clean break.
They can Knight him SIR VIRUS.
Only time when viruse has affected my Mac was when they hit electrical plant and they had to shut down the plant. Those bastards killed Kenny!
Okay it was for 15 minutes only. Bought ups for my home Mac next day.
Addendum from NoPCZone:
Did anybody notice that the hackers are using Windows to attack SCO’s UNIX system? Why go the long way around? Because Windows is such a big and easy target. Windows is a Weapon of Mass Destruction. I’ll bet OBL uses a Dell.
He’s right, it is the most thoroughly tested…tested by multi-millions of consumers who experience constant, multiple problems, security issues, and altogether unintuitiveness.
It just goes to show that the drugs crisis in America goes all the way from pavement to penthouse.
Please spare a minute to pray for Bill, Paul Thurrott (“Dell make the world’s best computers” was yesterday’s jewel of delusion) and millions of other substance abusers, and remind your kids: “Just Say No!”
Go on, open your hearts.
NoPCZone, nice flamebait, but we lost the Empire because two world wars left us bankrupt. War tends to do that.
How much of your money is Dubya sending to Iraq again?
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Looks like Billy Boy is taking lessons from the former Iraqi Minister of (Dis)Information. “There are no viruses in our computers”. What a joke.
“Security through obscurity” is nonsense.
First, I fail to see how “9.3 million active OS X users” [quote from Jobs’ latest keynote] equates to being obscure.
What would be a more cherished and potentially newsworthy event, being the 82,791st person to make a MS Windows virus or to be the very first to make a Mac virus? The creator of a successful Mac virus would be the focus of international attention, if not by the news media, I am quite sure Bill Gates would shout it from the roof tops himself and take out full page ads in every major newspaper in the world.
To anger him further, he is also well aware that the vast majority of Mac users use no virus protection at all. And, STILL there hasn’t been a single self-replicating breach of security. A single Mac virus would be extraordinarily devastating. That, unto itself, makes the prize all the sweeter.
Bill Gates has absolutely no proof that no one is interested in writing a Mac virus. Being a programmer himself, he is well aware that a Mac virus is the Holy Grail of programming, and there are thousands of people in search of the elusive code (probably, most are on MS payroll, working in Bill’s basement, not unlike Mr. Salt making his peanut factory workers look for Golden Tickets in the movie “Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory”. See time index 00:15:42.)
Has Comical Ali landed a knew job as Billyboy’s ghost writer?
“I can see no viruses. Those viruses will be crushed by our secure operating system! Already thousands of viruses surrender every minute.”
That’s real chuzpe! Talking about the security of Windows while yet another worm wiggles around the world. But Billboy may get away with it. After all, he’s been talking to politicians and business leaders. Talk about a clueless audience.
ndlec, you beat me to the comparison with Comical Ali
Idiot.
idiot.
Ultimate case of self denial.
Idiot.
NoPCZone: just to follow on from Dave H, that’s what happens when you fight two world wars on your own with the valued assistance of Australia, NZ and Canada between them for the best part of five years (1914-1916 and 1939-1942).
It’s an irony that the USA rewarded the Axis for being an enemy under the Marshall plan, whilst forcing the UK into giving up an expensive empire allegedly because the USA wanted open access to Empire markets. Wish we could see the same commitment to commercial openness being practised in Iraq, where American firms are the main commercial beneficiaries.
Maybe some perspective on history might be an idea.
End of lecture.