Re: RW's statement - what am I missing (was: help with tables

On Feb 6, 7:33 am, Robert <n...@xxxxxx> wrote:
On Tue, 5 Feb 2008 08:13:24 -0600, "Judson McClendon" <ju...@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
"Robert" <n...@xxxxxx> wrote:

Microsoft isn't content with being a 'terminal company'; it wants to put Windows on back
end machines. IBM is vulnerable because a large portion of its revenues come from software
licenses rather than hardware. An end-user company can significantly reduce expenses by
replacing z/OS with either Windows or Linux. The reason WHY IBM promotes Linux is to fight
off Microsoft.

All this talk of replacing mainframe OSs with Windows or Linux gives me
pause. One reason why Windows is so plagued by virus and other security
threats is that most of the PCs on the planet run Windows, which means
most of the hackers have Windows "in their living rooms" so to speak, on
which to develop such attacks. Mainframe OSs have been far less prone
to similar attacks, in part because of better security, but also because few
hackers have access to mainframe OSs on which to design and test their
attacks. If mainframe OSs are replaced by Windows and Linux, that will
no longer be an issue.

In my opinion, the perception that z/OS is more secure than Windows is marketing BS.

Windows was designed to give 'a great user experience'. For example
opening an email in MS Outlook Express with a MS Word .doc could
automatically open MS Word. Macros in that doc could be automatically
run. Macros have a rich feature set. This makes it _so_easy_ and
convenient for the user. It also makes it easy and convenient for the
virus writer.

For (an older) example, setting up a netbios network exposed port 139
to make it easy for other users to find your shares. Connecting to the
internet without a firewall exposed that port to the world.

Unix, with its multi-user and acadaemic background (and its basis in
Multics) never went down the path of making it easy to do silly
things.

Mainframes never made it easy to do anything.

The reality that Windows _is_ less secure is _because_ of "marketing
BS", the marketing of 'so easy'.


It
is comparing apples with oranges, professionally managed back-end machines versus desktop
machines poorly controlled by unsophisticated home users.

Why doesn't the same perception apply to Big Unix? I work on Unix machines bigger than
most mainframes, having 128 CPUs and gigabytes of memory. For example, the world's
telephone networks run on Unix. We don't get hacked any more than mainframes, which is
very seldom.

You don't run IE, Outlook Express, or MS Word on those machines.

.

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