LinuxPlanet: There but for the Grace of Bill….

[ Thanks to Kevin
Reichard for this link. ]

“As a Linux user, I gleefully quipped to anyone who’d listen
that I was immune to anything written in VBScript. … I’m sure
FreeBSD, Mac, BeOS, Amiga, UNIX, and mainframe users around the
world were doing the same thing as we all listened to the clueless
journalists announcing a major, worldwide e-mail crisis. … Well,
my little droogies, we are all so busy whistling in the dark that
we don’t see the headlight of an oncoming train. After these
goofballs get tired of Windows, they’ll turn their attention to
Linux, and we will look even worse than Bill and the Boys from
Redmond do today.”

“HTML e-mail is an atrocity of its own, at least the way it’s
currently implemented in Netscape and in Outlook. …HTML mail has
some ugly side effects, and they are largely the same on Linux as
they are in Windows. The only difference is that Windows users have
more choices of active content that can be sent inside an HTML
message; the underlying problem is the same.”

“…we should be thankful to Bill Gates for being our stunt
double. …the current state of leading e-mail programs, from a
security standpoint, is abysmal. This is true no matter which
operating system you’re using. By being the overwhelming
market leader, Microsoft has graciously volunteered to take most of
the hits from virii and worms. There but for the grace of Bill go
we. As Linux becomes more popular, and starts appealing to less
skilled users, we are condemned to the same fate as the Windows
community. More Linux users will attract more Linux attacks…”

“The difference is that we will suffer more in the press and in
the highly-unfair court of public opinion. The problem is that we
Penguinistas have claimed for so long that our system is more
secure.”

Complete
Story