slashdot: m$ praises unix and linux shell clis and prepares to emulate them

[Walter Dnes]

On Sun, Jun 12, 2005 at 05:47:45PM -0400, CLIFFORD ILKAY wrote

> It used to be the case that you could keep your Windows box deloused
> by not installing such things. That no longer seems to be the case.
> The biggest growth area of malware is in so called "drive by" malware
> where all you have to do is to visit an infected web site while using IE.

  Oh yeah, the other piece of free software on my machine is Firefox.
I do *NOT* use IE for visiting external websites during lunch or
researching questions from the public.  I've got IE locked down to the
point of uselessness so that Outlook (which is a glorified IE front-end)
doesn't get infected by spams/worm emails.  In a government job it is
essential to at least glance at all incoming email, just in case it got
mis-labelled as spam.

  I sometimes fill in for somebody else in a position where I answer
questions from the public.  Even if it's not directly in our department,
I can often find answers via Google, or at least a URL of another
government agency or some standards body.  A simple typo, DNS poisoning,
or compromise of the remote server, could make viewing with IE dangerous.

  Sometimes I wonder if there's anybody running a business looking up
stuff on Google for people who can't seem to figure out how to RTFG.
It's second nature to me by now.

> So who who administers/delouses the Windows box on your desk and
> reinstalls from scratch when it becomes slow, crash prone, or
> otherwise unusable?

  The IT people.  Actually, they've done a good job of protecting our
site (anti-virus, system policies, etc).  In the past several years, I
haven't had one virus drop stuff from another machine onto mine, and
that got deleted automatically.  A couple of hard drive crashes, and
they've re-installed the OS and apps.

-- 
Walter Dnes <waltdnes-SLHPyeZ9y/tg9hUCZPvPmw at public.gmane.org>
My musings on technology and security at http://tech_sec.blog.ca
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