MOTM

>> Not trying to start a war or anything, but is it any better
>> on Macs?
>
>There are less viruses written for Macs,

Actually, I haven't seen a single new Mac *virus* in quite a few years. I
doubt that any of the old ones even run in OS 8/9/10. Macro viruses running
in something like Excel don't count--they're platform independent and
generally less malicious. If like me you don't use Excel then it's a
non-issue.

>but you still can do the similar
>stupid things on OSX as you can on Windows and get yourself in trouble.

Well, computers make it easy to do stupid things in general. But in any
variant of unix you have go the extra mile and do something even stupider
to let loose this sort of mischief.

>OSX Doesn't have the prevalency that Windows does, and you can bet if it
>did it'd have as many problems.

Not exactly. Up until OS X all versions of the Mac OS were permission-less
and essentially running in "root" mode all the time. This is NOT the case
with OS X as it's based on BSD unix and properly locked-down by default.
The same cannot be said of Windows and its sundry apps although they're
finally moving in that direction. It's also extremely unlikely that OS X is
going to become remotely as big a target as Windows/IE/Outlook any time
soon.

M$ has become the primary target for three reasons:

1. largest user base
2. insecure by design
3. some people dislike Micro$oft

Put the three together and you have a recipe for disaster.

>The real issue is the best defense against
>all of this stuff is user education, not platform changeovers.

The need to educate computer users who don't know how vulnerable they
really are cannot be overstated. Anyone who isn't is simply another part of
the problem. A computer connected to the Internet is NOT a turnkey
appliance despite what the people trying to sell you one would have you
believe.

If you buy a Mac tomorrow you will eliminate about 99% of all possibility
of infection and the horrors that go with it. But you still have to live
with spam (a significant portion of which is now being generated/relayed
through compromised computers), slow or inaccessible web sites (due to
spam, DDoS attacks performed by said compromised computers), as well as
those wonderful "we couldn't deliver your message because it had a virus"
messages. The later defy all logic since virtually all malware spoofs the
"from" address which means the "sender" didn't send it. The result is the
most useless form of spam yet conceived.

>Someone suggested using Mozilla - good choice. And ditch
>IE/Outlook/Outlook express.

Agreed, with one catch--those web sites that ONLY work with IE, such as my
bank. That's the only reason why IE is on this machine.

-- 

Terry Bowman, KA4HJH
"The Mac Doctor"

"You'd PAY to know what you REALLY think"--Dobbs