Seconded, though I can't help a little giggle at the though of the Mac being owned and not the PC ;-p

Can we have a humble pie/hat eating icon plz?

Don't get me wrong, I'm sure Apple software is vulnerable, it just seems odd that the unit of measure used by this article is the number of people that another person thinks are likely to use vulnerabilities at a hacking conference.

Whichever it is, if Safari doesn't take the dubious honour of being the first to fall, Windows most probably will.

cunning. but does that mean you can't pass pointers to functions or do functional programming?

"Within hours of Safari's debut in June of 2007, security researchers discovered multiple vulnerabilities that could allow attackers to remotely install malware on the machines of people who used the beta. "

Do you mean safari's 3.0 debut? Safari has been out for many years now.

"One track will pit hackers against the major browsers, including Safari, Internet Explorer, and Firefox."

What? No Opera? I wish they include it.

"Whichever it is, if Safari doesn't take the dubious honour of being the first to fall, Windows most probably will."

Last year, Vista only fell because of a hole in Flash.

Excel "done right" ? As someone who enjoys tracing their family tree, I can assure that the mess Excel makes of older dates doesn't allow it the label "right". I have to use an extended date add-in to correct the bug.

Errr… don’t you mean Safari vs IE? In which case you’d need to specify which Safari (3?) vs which IE (8?)… I believe IE7 was flawed from a security point of view, but IE8 is meant to fix most of these problems. I say “believe” and “meant” as little blue is gone from my machines, apart from world which seems to run IE6, but I did hear rumours that XP SP2 is coming soon here!!!

Perhaps you should stop trying to force a spreadsheet to do a databases job?

"I gave my sister a Mac because even with anti-virus software and automatic updates turned on there is so much crap on her PC that it is unusable."

You do know that the crap would be stuff she installed herself and most likely clicked "ok" repeatidly on. Just as she will do on the mac right.

I, of course, meant "work" instead of "world" in that gibberish I just posted.

Perhaps the general public should not be expected to learn about databases when all they need is a simple spreadsheet function. It doesn't excuse the bug anyway.

A couple hours ago I posted a short message on the Windows itunes forum board with a link to an article similar to this one concerning the Safari security issue. Within thirty minutes or less I received the following e-mail message:

(Big Mouth Barker),

Apple removed your post on Apple Discussions, titled "Heads up everybody regarding Safari," because it contained the following:

* Off-topic or non-technical posts

We are including a copy of your post at the end of this email for your reference.

Our terms of use, which include helpful information about using Apple Discussions, are located here: http://discussions.apple.com/help.jspa we encourage you to continue using the Apple Discussions while abiding by our terms of use.

If you would like to send feedback to Apple about a product, please use the appropriate selection here: http://www.apple.com/feedback

As part of submitting feedback, please read the Unsolicited Idea Submission Policy linked to the feedback page.

Kind regards,

Apple Discussions staff

++++++++++

A copy of your message for reference:

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2009/03/03/safari_at_pwn2own/

Security Issues. Must read article.

Issue No 1: Talk about double standards from Apple. Keep the following in mind when considering this issue: When I installed the iTunes desktop player Safari was not present nor did I want to download the browser. I tried it once and I realized from the getgo that this browser was going to be trouble. So I immediately removed it from my system. In this case, the iTunes player is downloading the browser for setup through the automatic updater. I feel that the subject matter that I posted on the forum was very relevant since it was being downloaded by the desktop player. It appears by the links that was provided in the e-mail that Apple does not like to hear critics talking about their products. Also, in their lack of response to the security issues by Apple, it also seem like they do not care about anything but profit.

Issue No 2: The iTunes Desktop Player may also have security issues as well. In the past couple of days I found the following entry in my DNS Cache Table:

C:\WhosIP\whosip>whosip -r 151.159.218.216

WHOIS Source: RIPE NCC

IP Address: 151.159.218.216

Country: EU # Country is really world wide

Network Name: EU-ZZ-151

Owner Name: Various Registries

From IP: 151.0.0.0

To IP: 151.255.255.255

Allocated: Yes

Contact Name: Internet Assigned Numbers Authority

Address: see http://www.iana.org.

Email: bitbucket@ripe.net

Abuse Email:

Phone:

Fax:

WHOIS Record:

% This is the RIPE Whois query server #2.

% The objects are in RPSL format.

%

% Rights restricted by copyright.

% See http://www.ripe.net/db/copyright.html

% Information related to '151.0.0.0 - 151.255.255.255'

inetnum: 151.0.0.0 - 151.255.255.255

netname: EU-ZZ-151

descr: Various Registries

country: EU # Country is really world wide

remarks: These addresses were issued by

The IANA before the formation of

Regional Internet Registries.

http://www.iana.org/assignments/ipv4-address-space

org: ORG-NCC1-RIPE

admin-c: IANA1-RIPE

tech-c: IANA1-RIPE

status: ALLOCATED UNSPECIFIED

mnt-by: RIPE-NCC-HM-MNT

mnt-lower: RIPE-NCC-HM-MNT

mnt-routes: RIPE-NCC-RPSL-MNT

changed: ripe-dbm@ripe.net 20030502

changed: hostmaster@ripe.net 20030621

changed: hostmaster@ripe.net 20050202

source: RIPE

organisation: ORG-NCC1-RIPE

org-name: RIPE NCC

org-type: RIR

address: RIPE Network Coordination Centre

address: P.O. Box 10096

address: 1001 EB Amsterdam

address: The Netherlands

phone: +31 20 535 4444

fax-no: +31 20 535 4445

e-mail: hostmaster@ripe.net

admin-c: CREW-RIPE

\tech-c: CREW-RIPE

ref-nfy: hm-dbm-msgs@ripe.net

mnt-ref: RIPE-NCC-RIS-MNT

mnt-ref: RIPE-NCC-HM-MNT

notify: hm-dbm-msgs@ripe.net

mnt-by: RIPE-NCC-HM-MNT

changed: hostmaster@ripe.net 20040417

changed: hostmaster@ripe.net 20070319

source: RIPE

role: Internet Assigned Numbers Authority

address: see http://www.iana.org.

e-mail: bitbucket@ripe.net

admin-c: IANA1-RIPE

tech-c: IANA1-RIPE

nic-hdl: IANA1-RIPE

remarks: For more information on IANA services

remarks: go to IANA web site at http://www.iana.org.

mnt-by: RIPE-NCC-MNT

changed: bitbucket@ripe.net 20010411

source: RIPE

I take security very seriously by keeping a close eye on my Host File as well as the DNS Table. The only program running at the time of this discovery was iTunes and I had not sufred the web when I descovered the entry. The following message was with the IP entry: “Scan iTunes”. In my view I believe it is time to form a coalition to approach iTunes and flat out tell them that they should pull these products with security issues if they are not going to do anything about it.

Big Mouth Barker

"Perhaps you should stop trying to force a spreadsheet to do a databases job?"

Especially since there is several freeware Genealogy software available which use the standard GED format for their files. Not to mention the plethora of on-line sites which offer the same service.

(wife recently decided to dive into genealogy. I learnt more than I wanted)

I've just reread my last comment and it sounds rather pillocky. By "applications" I actually meant random desktop applications. Believe it or not, I fully endorse business applications responsibly storing data in a properly set up database.