This has been driving me NUTS lately.

[demented-pants.livejournal.com]

Am I the only one noticing a trend lately wherein people everywhere seem to be going, "Oh, windows is so insecure and awful, I'll switch to Macs, they're better," without having a damn clue what they're talking about? When pressed, sure, they might say, "Macs don't get viruses," which is (of course) a fallacy, or, "Windows crashes all the time..."

Regardless, they switch to macs and then they're totally illiterate and I have to help them figure out wtf they're doing. And then when everything doesn't JUST WORK ZOMG like they're expecting it to, it's somehow *still* Windows' fault, somehow.

Ugh. I'm not advocating for one above the other. I use Mac, Windows, and Linux all three, though I have a definite preference for Windows, personally. Use what works for you.

But for fuck's sake can we all have a little bit less of that annoying superiority?

Comments

[preserver3.livejournal.com]

Preferences hinge on what you know. If you're a power Linux user and you think the mouse is a waste of time, you probably love Linux and despise Mac and Windows.

If you don't understand the finer points of Linux or your last interaction with linux required two separate compiles which brought you to the LILO prompt, then you may hate Linux and think that the happy music from Vista or XP adds something to the "experience".

If you ever had to deal with removing an uber infection from a laptop without formatting the machine... You may despise Windows with all of your might and all of your soul.

If you're a Java applet developer, and you care about what your app looks like you may love Mac and Windows and wonder what that blocky text on Windows is all about.

If you suffer from attention deficit disorder, but are highly functional and need to in the same day, edit video, scrub audio, re-size a pic, format said pic in four different formats, have a video chat with your friend in Germany, deploy a flash app, and grep through three thousand text files for the words "Zerg Rush", then you may be so insipidly a Mac user that you haven't even gotten to this portion of my response.

If you think Excel is the only spreadsheet program, you may be a Windows user.

If you don't know what Excel or spreadsheet programs are, but know how to check your email, you are a Windows user.

If you currently have a piece of tape over your built in camera, you are a Mac user... and a smart one at that.

If you compile modifications to your own Kernel, you are a Linux user, and though I may like you for the work you do, I secretly hate you because you're too much like me.

If you had to fix a computer this morning because it was both WoW patch night and Windows gave out some questionable updates last night, you're upset that all world servers are down now for emergency maintenance as of 4:00 PDT. Oh and you probably think you need to go and figure out how to run Linux with all of the patches on your Ubuntu box again.


There are a lot of layers to all of this, but I'm a linux user who uses Windows and Macs because I can. You're probably a Windows user who uses Linux and Macs because you can and the current market forces you to remain in this job until further notice... or you're sticking with the devil you know.

You're right, people who switch to Macs because they haven't learned the basics of computing and now expect things to be easier are nutjobs who should be in a sausage factory becoming soylent green, but the likes and dislikes are based on experiences.

[jahbulon.livejournal.com]

If you don't know what Excel or spreadsheet programs are, but know how to check your email, you are a Windows user.

Or a Mac user.

[agentdanak.livejournal.com]

so, not a mac user (but can sort of remember how to use a mac), so i don't know why the camera should be taped over...

explain?

[confectionqueen.livejournal.com]

Yeah I was wondering about that one too.

[preserver3.livejournal.com]

This may take some explanation:
Step one: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clickjacking
Step two:Understanding how Adobe Flash Player Camera Control works on a Mac
Step three: seeing a demo in which you arrive at a word press blog that is not run by a hacker, but has a hijacked post containing a UI redirect built into one of the ads. As you peruse the site, clicking, commenting, etcetera, you notice that your camera light is on, then you find that images of you have been uploaded to a remote flicker account and are being presented on a website in 1 per second reviews....


currently the only way I know of to protect Firefox is with the noscript add on. There is to my knowledge no native protection for Safari or Opera.

Hence why you may see many techies, in a sign of solidarity more than anything else, with a piece of black electrical tape over their camera on their Macs.

[agentdanak.livejournal.com]

wow, that's kinda creepy.

thanks for explaining!

[preserver3.livejournal.com]

special note... the claim is that Adobe has since closed this loophole(not a bug, as the integration of a flash camera control is a feature they have retained), and FlashPlayer 10 actually makes it extremely hard to do, but it remains possible due to other weaknesses in a vulnerable browser.

As an even more special note, this is not a Mac specific exploit, it's simply the nature of how integrated the camera is in the iMac design that makes it an excellent target.

[agentdanak.livejournal.com]

*nodnod* yeah, i've seen articles about someone rigging their i-camera to start going as soon as the lid opened when the machine was sent in for repairs.

in a way, the controls are pretty neat. then again...i guess not in all ways.

[tanetris.livejournal.com]

currently the only way I know of to protect Firefox is with the noscript add on. There is to my knowledge no native protection for Safari or Opera.

Not on a Mac, but what I personally do with Opera is run with plugins disabled (easily enabled/disabled from the quick-prefs, or a checkbox for it can be placed on toolbar of choice). When there's some sort of Flash I actually want to see, F12 & click to enable, mouse gesture up & down to refresh, F12 & click to disable.

You can also use site preferences to always enable or disable plugins and/or javascript for particular sites.

Not as elegant as NoScript, and you can't (easily) be as selective about particular elements of the page, but it would likely prevent most cases of what you're describing.

I'd use the tape anyway. Regardless of OS. But I'm paranoid.

[simoncion.livejournal.com]

...your last interaction with linux required two separate compiles which brought you to the LILO prompt...
^^^ There's the issue. LILO sucks, hard-core. They should be using GRUB wherever possible! :D

[japester.livejournal.com]

There was a time when there was no grub. it was lilo, or write your own bootloader. Lilo doesn't suck, it's just not as pretty or menu enabled like grub.

[simoncion.livejournal.com]

Heh. I was under the impression that lilo didn't understand the filesystem of its boot partition and had to have a magic command run to update notion of the sector offset for each OS's boot sector each time you changed your partition layout. (or something... it's late and my memory is fuzzy.) Regardless, it seems like it has a sane config file and my recollection of the magic command is incorrect. I retract my comment as to LILO's suckitude. It seems like a decent tool.

[tanetris.livejournal.com]

your last interaction with linux required two separate compiles which brought you to the LILO prompt

*raises hand* Oddly the experience never made me hate Linux, only myself for not being good enough for it.

Of course, then I gave it a few years and now I am happily computing from an Ubuntu PC. I'm totally good enough for Ubuntu. ;)