[Info-vax] OT: Rob Short: Operating System Evolution

[Richard B. Gilbert]

Bob Koehler wrote:
> In article <28ydnYkBfeJND6PWnZ2dnUVZ_o2dnZ2d at giganews.com>, "Richard B. Gilbert" <rgilbert88 at comcast.net> writes:
> 
>> W/XP was better still.  There were, and still are, security fixes to be 
>> applied but XP has proven to be a very solid and stable release.
> 
>    Which is why I only get about 12 security patches a month?
> 

All I can say for sure is that I've been running it for four or five 
years without problems.

I know from experience how bad it *can* be.  My VMS systems did what 
such systems do, they sat there and worked.  I had a lot of free time. 
Since I had available time, I was asked to take over the job of 
immunizing our 300 or so PCs against some worm whose name I forget.  It 
pinged every address in our address family in order to locate machines 
to attack. We had W/98/2e as our standard for desktops and people using 
laptops on the road.  I spent months bringing those PCs up to W/2K, 
service pack 4 and up to date on patches.

I may just be lucky that I'm behind a LinkSys BEFR81 router/fire wall. 
   It won't let anything through that is not a response to a request 
from inside my network.  I keep my Norton Anti-Virus up-to-date and 
haven't had any malware problems for several years now.

My router reports an average of three attempts per second to open 
connections from outside!  A few of those might be due to fumble 
fingered typing of an address but I'd bet that 99% plus are malicious! 
It's a jungle out there!!!!