The Old Argument From Market Share
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| Author | Content |
|---|---|
| phsolide May 21, 2009 10:32 AM EDT |
The cognitive dissonance in this article is almost palpable. But what else can a propaganda agency do? Linux is free, and easy to download and install these days. So, they have to counter actual experience with smoke and mirrors. Not an easy task. Ask Ben Bagdikian. Anyway, what alternative do they have? Windows software is plagued with malware of all sorts, that much we know (or do we? What role do the "anti-virus" companies play in all this fearmongering?). Yet we have to accept that MSFT is bursting with the Best and the Brightest, as they have Made the Most Money, and that's how we track the Winner these days. It just wouldn't do to point out that Windows APIs are far larger than they have to be, very poorly organized, and badly designed. I can't find it right now, but "Solar Designer" used to have a web page that pointed out that almost all Win32 calls involved passing in pointers, and that meant the NT kernel had to deal with potential page faults on each and every entrance to the kernel. Instead, we have to castigate the C programming language, ban specific function calls, spackle over bad designs with more hardware, and put out crapaganda like the Argument From Market Share. Put simply, "MSFT has more vulnerabilities because it has more market share" is just a form of special pleading, and it rests on an untruth: that every piece of software is fractally buggy (see http://www.andyozment.com/papers/Ozment_and_Schechter-Milk_O... for proof that it's not). Linux and Apache and etc have exactly the same infinity of bugs that NT and IIS and etc have, they just haven't been discovered by Those Evil Hackers yet. |
| tuxchick May 21, 2009 11:03 AM EDT |
Quoting: Linux and Apache and etc have exactly the same infinity of bugs that NT and IIS and etc have, they just haven't been discovered by Those Evil Hackers yet. Your whole comment is great. As for that last bit, I thought open code meant Those Evil Hackers could find weaknesses more easily? ;) |
| hkwint May 21, 2009 11:26 AM EDT |
Well, I'm afraid the name of the writer of the article says it all. |
| dinotrac May 21, 2009 1:58 PM EDT |
The weird part of the argument is that it somehow spills into servers, where OSS market share is much higher, thank you very much. In the case of Web Servers, IIS is a minority, not majority presence. But -- who wants to let facts into the argument? |
| tracyanne May 21, 2009 5:01 PM EDT |
My comment in reply to that article.Quoting:First that's FOSS, as in Free and Open Source Software. Second FOSS is already highly adopted, the Internet runs on Free and Open Source Software, from Apache to GNU/Linux, so attacks should already have grown. The things is they aren't particularly effective, unlike attacks on certain Proprietary Software. Given it's already high adoption rate, and low failure rate, much as this article attempts to spin it the other way, FOSS has already shown itself to be the safer bet. |
| caitlyn May 21, 2009 5:29 PM EDT |
ta: You're right of course but your comment will probably fall on deaf ears. Articles like this are usually all about the agenda and not about facts. |
| tracyanne May 21, 2009 5:33 PM EDT |
Of course caitlyn, but it doesn't hurt to point out that the agenda and the facts are separated by an uncrossable chasm. |
| caitlyn May 21, 2009 5:38 PM EDT |
Nope, it can't hurt. You just have to hope someone reads through the article and the comments and is still open to another viewpoint. I've seen articles like this one quoted ad infinitum to prove to me that Linux is inferior to Windows. |
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