Re: @Eadon

@James O'Shea - That's funny :)

hehehe :))

Re: Eadon's Tough New Security Plan

As usual, the Register commenters seem to be confusing trojans, which are caused by human error - which can be mitigated by training - with viruses. A virus propagates without human intervention. Only Windows systems suffers from viruses. That's why virus scanners can for windows viruses.

Ever noticed how bot-nets comprise windows machines? How all remote exploits are windows exploits, with very very few exceptions?

I hope that you will now understand why Windows is more insecure. There are many other reasons why Windows is more insecure - it's attach surface is huge for one. But I wouldn't want to overburden you with too much computer science.

Also, BTW, not all security holes are equal. One critical vuln can be infinitely worse than a thousand non-critical vulns.

It's OK, you do not have an engineering training, and have been attending too many Microsoft training courses to be healthy, so it's not your fault you seem to fail to understand computer security at even rather fundamental levels

@Jeff 11

Hadoop is a solution that MS cannot provide, though I understand they are attempting to copy it. Linux can provide this, Microsoft cannot. Now, I never said everyone needs it but it's an iconic example about how open source solutions are excellent, and these are available on Linux but not (generally speaking) on Windows.

You might not think you need Hadoop, but you never know! A killer app that needs it might turn up tomorrow. Linux gives you that advantage.

Interoperability - you are arguing that Azure is apt for a customer who only uses Microsoft solutions. I would agree. But let me point out that the world is moving away from Microsoft and towards open systems in the data centre. Even on the desktop Execs wouldn't be seen dead with a windows laptop, they want their Apple gimcracks. Therefore the days where computing was Microsoft-only have pretty much come to an end.

Having a non-Microsoft cloud solution would be a good way to be able to escape Microsoft if you had to one day. Those enterprise licences are shooting up fast...

Powershell - I'm not an expert in Powershell but engineers who are expert at both see Powershell as not being as flexible or as powerful as bash. Certainly bash is open, whereas powershell is closed. One day MS might kill it, like they killed VB and Silverlight. With bash, your skills will always be relevant into the distant future.

As for getting things done with Windows deployments, often have I heard it said that one admin can run about 60 unix boxes easily with bash shell scripting, whereas windows boxes forever require hand-holding and you need at least twice as many windows boxes to do the same work. And that is consistent with my own experiences of windows servers and linux servers.

Re: @Eadon

"Extensive support of Microsoft"? Two things. First, you get through to an Indian in Bangalor. Secondly Microsoft systems need ten times more support than non-microsoft systems, which are generally reliable.

If you're saying, let's use Microsoft's cloud because we already use windows server 2003 (or whatever) then MS is screwing you with your pants on, and you do not even know it. It's called Lock-In.

Now there may be niche's that arguably can use MS Cloud, but for any serious project, I would argue that "support" is not a good reason to go with an inferior solution. You are paying for that support one way or another, nothing is free.

Re: FYI Apple runs its Clouds on Unix

@AC - can't you trolls use handles?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ICloud

No mention of Azure. There was a rumour knocking around 18 months ago, which is what you link to, about Amazon and Azure, but I can see no reference that proves the rumour true. I'm happy to be proved wrong, but I very much doubt Apple use Azure for serious cloud infrastructure.

Re: Windows is the wrong tool for the job

"You don't debate, you shout what you believe and accuse anyone who doesn't believe you of being a shill." says AC 17.15 seemingly unaware of the irony.

Re: *....sigh....*

Ironically, Windows 8 has taken us back to the days of win 3.1. Sorry, make that Win 2.0.

Re: FYI

@AC congratulations you have many WTF's per sentence in your argument, it's all over the place.

I think you'll find that Apple use Unix based systems for the serious cloud stuff. (OSX is certified UNIX incidentally).

The quality of the comments on El Reg is just appalling.

Re: Unfortunately,

If MS took security seriously we wouldn't be seeing so many holes in their software in the first place. They put profits before security.

Re: CVE-2013-0422

You can use Closures wit the VM - it's just that Java does not yet support them. The reason is an engineering based one, supporting closures comes with a performance overhead. Groovy and Scala both have closures so maybe those are languages to consider for the JVM.

.NET has been officially killed by Microsoft

Microsoft have killed .NET. They're pushing devs to the latest shiny dev tools - HTML 5 (embraced and extended MS-only version) for Win 8. Thou shalt write for the app store.

In Microsoft there were two factions, C++ and .NET - the C++ faction won. Microsoft were always schizophrenic about .NET, which, after all, is a copy of Java / JVM. It evolved from J++.

Now .NET is dead, rest assured, Java will remain the number 1 language for enterprise apps.

Java doesn't really belong in a browser in applet form, I would agree. But you cannot beat the Java/Linux combination for secure, stable, robust scalable enterprise computing with best of class open source libraries, frameworks, app servers and tools.

And with the JVM JIT using dynamic optimisation (which C++ cannot do) then you also have speed, Java is very fast once the JVM is in memory.

Re: The bootnote was in my opinion the most interesting part of the article

@John Smith 19 "And yet in in 2013 what OS is running on most desktops in the world"

--

However, Microsoft's market share and their absolute sales plus licence fees per machine are all falling.

MS used to have over 90% of the browser share. Now MS has 29% of the browser share and it is *still* dropping. The same is happening to Microsoft's desktop share, it will erode away in the same way that IE share has eroded.

Before long, Microsoft will lose it's power to dictate to OEM's what they can and cannot install (via the losing discounts blackmail trick). Already the OEM's are no doubt negotiating tougher deals with MS, particularly as an OS licence costs about as much as it costs to make the hardware at wholesale cost, and the desktop market is shrinking.

This is compounded by pressure from mobile computer competition.

Re: Need a decent SDL

@AC You want Oracle to learn from Microsoft about security? Next you will be recommending learning about virtue and purity from a harlot.

Re: Nokia sell in a quarter now what they used to sell in 2 weeks

@Dave W Thompson - Elop could have gone with Symbian, Maemo or Android and done far far better than he is now, selling a paltry number of Microsoft phones. Even today Symbian sells nearly as many phones as Windows despite Elop killing it!

And everyone says, they want a Nokia Android phone.

Re: Android didn't get to number one by people not standing it

@Dave W Thompson - you say, "become yet another Android vendor"

Well,now they're yet another Windows 8 vendor. Better to be a player in a market that has 75%+ of the customers than one that has only 0.5%.

Re: Bizarre

@AC 15:24

That's a false dichotomy - they could do what Linux / Android do - release an open OS that is secure. In the end, you can't protect against all trojans unless you do lock down a computer, but Android and Linux have the balance right between locked down and freedom.

MS is just locking everything down because that's what Apple do, and Apple make $$$. They are definitely locking everything down to try to prevent Linux being installed on kit.