Microsoft WMF vulnerability

[Bill Campbell]

On Sun, Jan 01, 2006, Collins Richey wrote:
>On 1/1/06, Bill Campbell <linux-sxs at celestial.com> wrote:
>> On Sun, Jan 01, 2006, Collins Richey wrote:
>> >On 1/1/06, R. Quenett <qcal at quen.net> wrote:
>> >> I know this is a linux list.  I also know that many of us run windows
>> >> from time to time, and this looks serious to me from where I sit.  If
>> >> I'm wrong or you disagree, please excuse the noise.
>> >>
>> >> http://isc.sans.org/diary.php?storyid=996
>> >
>> >It's definitely not noise, but OTOH certainly to be expected. M$ has
>> >created the market for creative viruses by creating an OS that is open
>> >to attacks from anywhere anytime. Most of us have spouses and/or
>> >acquaintances that are bound to the Dark Side, so it will indeed be
>> >[bs]ad.
>>
>> They don't have to be bound to the dark side.  I gave my wife a Mac Mini
>> for her birthday with a copy of Microsoft Office 2004 for Mac installed.
>>
>> Now she doesn't have to listen to me bitch and moan whenever something went
>> wrong with her old Windows box.
>>
>
>Certainly not a bad idea, but will the MAC run old the old Windows
>crappola (ancient versions of Photoshop, ancient versions of Epson
>scanner software, etc., etc.) that the typical clueless Windows spouse
>has accumulated?

I'm not, and never have been, a Photoshop user, but most of the people I
know who are are already using Macs, and have been for years.  For the
average person who wants to deal with photos, iPhoto is sufficient.  I know
at least one professional photographer who's business is doing photos for
car dealerships uses iPhoto exclusively as it does what he needs easily,
and has good tools for organizing his work.

As far as I know, all the Adobe software is available for Macs, and Macs
have been pretty much the standard for graphics and publishing for years.
Most software vendors have ``upgrade'' processing that allows platform
changes (although commercial database vendors tend to be very expensive,
often having large increases if one upgrades a CPU without changing the use
of the software).

I suspect that support for scanners and printers on Macs isn't a problem.
I've been using HP's software for my PhotoSmart and older ScanJet for
several years now after they stopped working on my Linux systems (probably
because I didn't have the patience to figure out the gimp-print/CUPS
interface, my SCSI drivers didn't seem to find the SCSI on the scanner, and
xsane was clueless on the USB side :-).

My wife made her living training people in PC applications before getting
her Doctorate in Psychology so is hardly clueless.  On the other hand, all
she wants is to be able to do her writing, spreadsheets, e-mail, and web
access with minimal hassle.

I had her using the Netscape browser and e-mail on her Windows machine so
the transition to FireFox and Thunderbird on the Mac was easy.  I didn't
try to convince her to use OpenOffice.org since it was far easier to just
install MS Office 2004 on her system (my brother works for the Redmond
Raptor so I can get M$ software without breaking the bank).

I went with the Mac Mini for her because she already had a decent monitor,
and I could get a USB->PS/2 adapter to connect the Mini through a KVM
switch allowing her to use the old Windows box if necessary.  It took me
about ten minutes to export her address book and other info from the
Windows applications, and import them on the Mac.  I set up the Windows box
to export the ``C:'' drive which is then easily accessible on the Mac (I
exported read-only to discourage writing things back on the Windows machine
and save them on the Mac :-).

On the other hand, we gave our daughter an Apple eMac since (a) we had a
spare available, (b) she didn't have an existing monitor, and (c) it's much
harder to lose, have stolen, or drop than an iBook or PowerBook.

While I have been a strong proponent for Linux on the desktop for many
years, and have customers and friends with them, I find it far easier now
to get people to switch from Windows to Macs -- easier for them, and much
easier for me as I don't have to shepherd them as much.

At this point, we do all our server stuff on Linux (SuSE Linux Enterprise 9
primarily), while doing the majority of desktop work on Macs.  The one
thing I haven't figured out yet is how to get the Zope ExternalEditor to
use vim as the editor on OS X. so I either switch back to a Linux machine
to edit Zope/Plone files or use ftp to get them off the Plone sites to
edit.

Bill
--
INTERNET:   bill at Celestial.COM  Bill Campbell; Celestial Software LLC
URL: http://www.celestial.com/  PO Box 820; 6641 E. Mercer Way
FAX:            (206) 232-9186  Mercer Island, WA 98040-0820; (206) 236-1676

``Liberals love to say things like, 'We're just asking everyone to pay
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The difference is fundamental. It is the difference between making love and
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