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Anonymous wrote:
There was a time when people thought Windows was safe too.

When was that? I worked professionally with Windows (and before that, "pure" MS-DOS) and it was never thought to be safe. Heck, MS-DOS, and so Windows, too, was so full of holes it was ridiculous (still is, come to that) and nobody considered it safe.

MacOS was not completely immune, but you really had to try to catch something (or use HyperCard on which there was quite a pleasant "Happy Birthday" virus) if you really wanted an infection. MacOS X is considerably better than that. Heck, you practically have to actually install a virus to get one.

There can be only one reason for any anti-virus app manufacturer to warn about MacOS X viruses and that's to sell more of its product. Sensible usage and MacOS X is all that is necessary to remain secure.

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Guest wrote:
You guys are idiots. Go bed down with your mac's some more. . . . See, this is why mac people suck. Bunch of wannabe hipsters.

Reply:
There is a name for the syndrome you display. In psychiatry, it is called "Mac Envy." The American Psychiatric Association's currently recommend therapy include purchasing a mac mini, along with an iPod and tose your windows machines out the window. Some may find smashing their windows machines with a baseball bat, along with a picture of Bill Gates posted on the monitor cathartic.

Although the current recommend treatment is not guaranteed to fully heal your deepest scars inflicted on the more vulnerable areas of your psychy, it has been general effetive for most patients. Psychiatrists are currently working day and night to find more effective measure, as I assure you, you are not alone, my friend.

Other than recommending that you consulting your nearest psychiatrist at the soonest possible date to end the pain, there two sources I recommend that your check up on regularly so that you may remain eduated about the latest developements regarding your condition.

http://www.psych.org/

http://www.pubmedcentral.nih.gov/

Good luck my friend, there is hope for you yet.

Roger

Disclaimer: I am not a psychiatrist, nor do I ever wish to become one. I have posted this message simply out of altruistic concern for the welfare the author of the posting titled "Idiots."

I think P.C.s are great I think they are the best And i think they are cool So hackers and phishers and crackers and any body who hates Macs, leave us be, it's the higher ups: Skull and Bones et al who you should concentrate on and they use P.C.s. We only corner 1% of the market. We are not the elitist!

BTW, on the Leo La Porte Show on KFI 640 (www.kfi640.com from 11 a.m. to 2 p.m. PST or -8 GMT), the guy from Tech T.V.s CFH etc., said that P.C.s are good computers, but if you don't want viruses or spyware, Macs are the best.

I can't say I'm a big Symantec fan in the first place: we recently bought Norton Systemworks 2005 because we needed Ghost. After registering it, their support policy is to charge approx $29.95 for per-incident issues. If the answer to my problem (having trouble booting with the recovery disk) isn't on their web page, pay up!

But this article was a joke. Yeah, it's along the same lines as the Bu$h idiots paying for airplay to push their crap... IMO, the main reason Macs have no virii is the inherent security of OS X out of the box-if you need an administrator password or root access to make your virus work, why bother? There's unlimited numbers of unprotected windows machines begging to get hit.

It occurs to me that perhaps I'm not an angry enough person to own a Mac...

http://www.faqs.org/faqs/computer-virus/macintosh-faq

It really doesn't seem like the Mac malware that has come out is entirely different in practice than the Windows type, regardless of how different it may be in design. I wouldn't be so dismissive of the points Symantec makes simply because you're so devoted to the underdog in your version of the console wars, they're fairly good at what they do, and what they do ensures that they're aware of how widespread those problems are becoming.

The Mac market share is expected to go up to 5%, honestly, step inside the mind for a minute of a pubescent obnoxious hacker type and ask yourself which part of the pie chart you would go after if your cold, dead heart pumped pure gasoline...

I'm a Windows user, out of my love of 90% of the software market and gaming and right-clicking, not because I'm not filled with all sorts of enmity towards microsoft. But being a Windows user, I'm also more conscious of stability and security issues that Mac users may take for granted. I have Firefox, a full antivirus suite and half a dozen anti-spyware/adware programs, if something gets by me at this point, it's because *I* messed up.

-Scott

"I wouldn't be so dismissive of the points Symantec makes simply because you're so devoted to the underdog in your version of the console wars, they're fairly good at what they do, and what they do ensures that they're aware of how widespread those problems are becoming. "

I'm not dismissive of the points Symantec makes because of some kind of devotion to Macs, I'm dismissive of the points Symantec makes because they're complete and total bunk. I'm pretty sure that's why everyone else here is so dismissive of them, too.

They even admit that their claim is based on thin air, with absolutely no evidence for what they're warning of. So before you say Symantec is aware of how widespread problems are becoming, you might want to make sure that they're talking about problems that exist.

Where'd you get that idea? Did you just decide that there were no exploits for OS X security vulnerabilities because you felt like it should be so?

It's ridiculous to think that there would be 37 security vulnerabilities released and no one decided to write exploits for them.

In fact there are numerous exploits... most of them are local privilege escalation exploits (since most of the vulnerabilities only locally exploitable), but there are also remote overflow exploits out there, and have been for over a year.

I am one of the new idiots who have just bought a Mac Mini. - I Love It!
I Love even more not having to:-
Buy Anti-Virus (although I suspect the author of the above comment doesnt pay for anything!)
Run Anti-spyware,
Wait for Windows updates to load and re-boot every month,
Wait for virus updates every 3/4 days,
So all you Windows bigots - keep updating!