Puff Cigar Discussion Forums

floydpink · 08-14-2008, 07:09 PM

Top 25 helped me pick many a box of Cuban cigars. Pretty good reviews.

yayson · 08-14-2008, 08:20 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Totemic

Yes, I do work at Microsoft. However, aside for questioning my bias, I'm not sure how it impacts the information I've posted thus far. The information I'm posting are all verifiable through independent third party data.

I agree, totally fud free info, enjoyed your insights a great deal.

The thing that depresses me a bit is the web's "known exploits" used to be isolated to popular softwares like bulletin boards and blogs (for example), nowadays I can't use my modest server side programming skills to put up a tagboard or somesuch without spambots exploiting it in a very short time! So it is with the top25 review db, I've always assumed that it was a custom rolled app and would not be so vulnerable because of it.

As the exploit knowledgebase grows it becomes increasingly more difficult for amateur programmers to have some fun with self publishing using their own stuff. Humans and bots are getting smarter faster and I can't/won't keep up no mo!

Good news for the truly talented folks that make a living writing and maintaining the software however.

macjoe53 · 08-14-2008, 10:06 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Totemic

I'm sorry, I know folks want to avoid the whole Mac vs PC thing here, but this sort of misinformed nonsense is hard to ignore.

Apple has had a very consistent track record of being incredibly sloppy when it comes to bugs and patches. In fact, given that OSX uses a fair number of open source components, it's absolutely inexcusable that they are still shipping vulnerable open source components whose patches have been available for months, and in some cases over a YEAR!

I wasn't kidding when I said Apple is to security now what Microsoft was to security in 1999. The difference is that in 2008, the online community is a helluva lot more dangerous than it was in 1999 and there's absolute no excuse given the lessons learned the hardway by Microsoft and Windows users.

Well my misinformed nonsense comes from the fact that I've used Apple computers since 1986 and what I've stated is what I have learned over the years I've used Macs. As for bugs in OSX that may be but that is also partially due to the fact that Apple shifted to the new Intel chips and rewrote the operating system to work with the new chips.

I find it hilarious that a Microsoft employee is gleefully stating that Apple is to security now as Microsoft was in 1999.

Asher · 08-14-2008, 10:46 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by macjoe53

As for bugs in OSX that may be but that is also partially due to the fact that Apple shifted to the new Intel chips and rewrote the operating system to work with the new chips.

Not really. They certainly didn't have to rewrite the operating system; most of the code simply needed to be recompiled for the Intel architecture. I'd wager that very few of the current OS X bugs are related to the architecture transition. That's not to say there aren't any; I had to deal with one myself (http://gcc.gnu.org/bugzilla/show_bug.cgi?id=25765) in gcc, which is distributed as part of Xcode. But for the vast majority of the code in a modern operating system is hardware agnostic.

The simple fact is that Apple engineers make mistakes. They're human. Such is the nature of software development.

flmcgough · 08-14-2008, 11:06 PM

Well this thread seems to have gone pretty far afield...

Totemic · 08-14-2008, 11:21 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by macjoe53

Well my misinformed nonsense comes from the fact that I've used Apple computers since 1986 and what I've stated is what I have learned over the years I've used Macs. As for bugs in OSX that may be but that is also partially due to the fact that Apple shifted to the new Intel chips and rewrote the operating system to work with the new chips.

This is what I mean when I say misinformed and just plain wrong.
The current OSX origin is based on the NextStep OS which was purchased by Apple when their Copland, Rhapsody, Taligent, Pink, whatever the heck other code name they had for the next OS fell flat on it's face.

And NextStep ran natively on the x86 platform (among others).

Furthermore, the bugs in question aren't specific to the CPU architecture, it's just a bone headed mistake on Apple's part. But that's not really the problem here. All non-trivial software will have bugs. It's how they approach dealing with these bugs that's troubling.

Quote:

I find it hilarious that a Microsoft employee is gleefully stating that Apple is to security now as Microsoft was in 1999.

Gleefully? No, merely appalled. Even after the pain points that millions of users went through and all the cost that Microsoft had to endure because of our own lackadaisical attitude towards security, even after all that, Apple didn't learn and are making the exact same mistakes. Only difference is that a helluva lot more people are online today then they were 9 years ago so the impact is potentially much worse.