QuagmireOfBloat...

Very good example whereby you get a clicky bloat pop-up before you can see anything!

So where does that site get it's numbers from and how? I wonder if they include the Microsoft update site to skew the numbers somewhat!?

Compare with:

OS Platform Statistics (w3schools.com)

Note also:

marketshare.hitslink.com vs w3schools.com


It's all a very cynical game...

Regards,
Martin

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See new freedom: Mageia Linux
Take a look for yourself: Linux Format
The Future is what We all make IT (GPLv3)

It's all a very cynical game...

Hi, well, surely, an interresting and long thread, but now I don't know, what to believe . . . . .

Just kiddin, though . . .

I find Steve Jobs an arrogant person, IMHO, with his iPAD ?!?
I think Apple is way too expensive, *nix has an advantage, cause it's free. And has it's drivers-problem (almost)solved...
MS WINDOWS is expensive (license),, but has done (too) much to make it safer and less prone for virusses/trojans/hacking etc. then the previous versions.

Hacking, gaining access to another PC, without a permission, unless used on own equipment, surely is criminal.
I'll stay with Windows and (for now) playing with *nix.
Just my 2 cents . . .

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So where does that site get it's numbers from and how?

Since I don't hate Apple, I don't have a dog in this hunt, but--
since you asked...

...NetApplications measures operating system usage by tracking the machines that browse the 40,000 sites it monitors for clients, which results in a pool of about 160 million unique visitors each month. It then weights share by the estimated size of each country's Internet population.

Compairing that with W3Schools', as you suggest, we see that W3Schools' numbers are a five year trend from their own site "collected from W3Schools' log-files".

Your second link actually says:
"Overall I think the hitslink data is about right for North America anyway.
Linux usage is most likely about 1% to the nearest integer."...

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So where does that site get it's numbers from and how?

Since I don't hate Apple, I don't have a dog in this hunt, but--
since you asked...

...NetApplications measures operating system usage by tracking the machines that browse the 40,000 sites it monitors for clients, which results in a pool of about 160 million unique visitors each month. It then weights share by the estimated size of each country's Internet population.

So the data is severely biased to begin with. Obviously it misses counting all server machines as these are never used to surf the web. It also misses all manner of computers as well. I've got four machines on the network here. A Mac and a Wintel which could get counted, plus two nix boxes which wouldn't, the printer and the router. That is a pretty big skew factor in the data. I've got another nix computer as well, but I don't expect it to count my iPod.

It would be interesting to see some real data on the true penetration of each of the O/S's from a sales figure perspective. I suspect nix would be somewhat bigger market share than expected by many people.

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So where does that site get it's numbers from and how?

Since I don't hate Apple, I don't have a dog in this hunt, but--
since you asked...

...NetApplications measures operating system usage by tracking the machines that browse the 40,000 sites it monitors for clients, which results in a pool of about 160 million unique visitors each month. It then weights share by the estimated size of each country's Internet population. ...

Well, that site is certainly favoured for their MS stats:

IE8 is Now World's Most Popular Web Browser

Is that really so, or just that the picture has the biggest suntanned boobs?

The comments to that article give perhaps a clearer picture...

And despite the seemingly impressive number of "40000" sites, I wonder what bias there is for that lot for the sites that are Microsoft specific...

Does Google have similar stats for their sites? I'd be a little more trusting of that...


Regardless, I would expect the numbers to show that Microsoft has an effective monopoly.

Regards,
Martin

---

See new freedom: Mageia Linux
Take a look for yourself: Linux Format
The Future is what We all make IT (GPLv3)

So where does that site get it's numbers from and how?

Since I don't hate Apple, I don't have a dog in this hunt, but--
since you asked...

...NetApplications measures operating system usage by tracking the machines that browse the 40,000 sites it monitors for clients, which results in a pool of about 160 million unique visitors each month. It then weights share by the estimated size of each country's Internet population. ...

Well, that site is certainly favoured for their MS stats:

IE8 is Now World's Most Popular Web Browser

Is that really so, or just that the picture has the biggest suntanned boobs?

The comments to that article give perhaps a clearer picture...

And despite the seemingly impressive number of "40000" sites, I wonder what bias there is for that lot for the sites that are Microsoft specific...

Does Google have similar stats for their sites? I'd be a little more trusting of that...


Regardless, I would expect the numbers to show that Microsoft has an effective monopoly.

A quick Google gives this interesting comparison:

Usage share of web browsers - Summary Table


Note also this comment:

Certain anti-virus products fake their user-agent to appear to be popular browsers. This is done to trick attack sites that might display clean content to the scanner, but not to the browser. The Register reported in June 2008 that traffic from AVG Linkscanner, using an IE6 user-agent, outstripped human link clicks by nearly 10 to 1.


Hence, choose your numbers in the Marketing game...

Regards,
Martin

---

See new freedom: Mageia Linux
Take a look for yourself: Linux Format
The Future is what We all make IT (GPLv3)

Nothing will keep a determined hacker out.

1) Running no services will keep a hacker out. (Java, active x, etc. are services in this respect.)
2) Having a very small pipe will keep one out. He won't be able to do enough probes before the system gets replaced.

There is more to hacking than external attacks. A specially tailored script or malicious program sneakily installed on your system can still do the job. As I said, nothing will keep a determined hacker out.

You did understand that it is hard to run a script if there isn't a scripting interpreter installed on the target machine.

Picking locks, they physical kind, isn't hacking.

I think the term "hacking" has been so abused by the ignorant media to mean various negative things that it's original computer programming meaning is now long lost. Even then, "hacking away" at a program to make it work did suggest the negative element of using "trial and error" to blunder through to a fragile solution.

Which from this latest Microsoft big splash, perhaps suggests exactly how Windows has been historically hacked together:

Microsoft to patch 17-year old computer bug


Interestingly, from an article I've just seen, most of the Anti-Virus vendors that 'protect' Microsoft systems from malware excuse the vulnerability of Windows due to the 'widespread use' of Windows [on the desktop]. All that is, except one security expert who is well known for being a little more independent and expert where his answer highlights other aspects of the vulnerability of Windows.

I guess if you ask about 'security' from Microsoft or any Anti-Virus vendor who 'protects' Microsoft products, they'll give any excuse to protect their "gravy train" profits!


There is another article that highlights that the Microsoft Windows code base is almost unmaintainable...

Regards,
Martin

---

See new freedom: Mageia Linux
Take a look for yourself: Linux Format
The Future is what We all make IT (GPLv3)

Sadly this isn't a thread about everything ML1 hates about M$. Lets try and remember that we are on a thread talking about reasons to hate Apple not M$. Feel free to start your own M$ deathwatch at your own convenience.

/Me back on topic. I just see Apple as being all glitz and very little innovation. I heard on NPR that Apple won't play flash images on its new Ipad(madTV precognition)
They insist on using the HTML5 which is what Apple is gambling on for the future of the Internet. I can only hope that Jobs is wrong and the minor influence his company had on the internet will backfire on him

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In a rich man's house there is no place to spit but his face.
Diogenes Of Sinope

Sadly this isn't a thread about everything ML1 hates about M$. Lets try and remember that we are on a thread talking about reasons to hate Apple not M$. Feel free to start your own M$ deathwatch at your own convenience.

No "hate" there from me. More an observation of the state of play and how that affects most people in some way.

There may well be a "deathwatch" thread for whatever is the next 'big' incident on the internet or for whatever the next Marketing escapade might be! Each 'big news' fubar gives the competition another chance...

Unfortunately, there is no escaping the influence of a certain one big monopoly... Like it or not, it does colour and shape to some (large) extent what others (must) do... However, I very much wouldn't want Apple to become the next monopoly game!!

/Me back on topic. I just see Apple as being all glitz and very little innovation. I heard on NPR that Apple won't play flash images on its new Ipad(madTV precognition)
They insist on using the HTML5 which is what Apple is gambling on for the future of the Internet. I can only hope that Jobs is wrong and the minor influence his company had on the internet will backfire on him

I'm hoping that might just push Adobe out from gaining (any future) monopoly control of website content. It's possibly quite a good and clever move by Apple, and something that they can Market as distinguishing it from "PC"s.

Note however that you can already get a Citrix client for the iPad so that you can 'run' Windows on it... Will the iPad be relegated to being a cloud computing display surface?...

Cheers,
Martin

---

See new freedom: Mageia Linux
Take a look for yourself: Linux Format
The Future is what We all make IT (GPLv3)

I own nothing Apple ever created. As far as I know.
I was once interested in a hacked version of the Mac OS because of some mystical properties it was purported to have a few years back, but never got that far.
I have been taunted by some to launch Linux on my prime crunching rigs due to it's purported lack of overhead, but this ol' fart is just too set in his ways to try it.
DOS was good, NT was king, XP x64 rocks.

I actually had to do my income taxes on the Frozen Nehi this year, because Turbotax no longer supports Win2k Advanced Server.

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"Freedom is just Chaos, with better lighting." Alan Dean Foster

Noting things purely Apple:

Apple Bans the Word 'Android' From App Store

By now, we're all familiar with Apple's culture of control. Particularly when it comes to the App Store, the crew from Cupertino is famous for its frequent rejections and vague explanations. The process can make the satirical comparisons of Apple and a communist regime seem pretty reasonable at times.


Apple Will Reject Apps Using GPS for Location-Aware Ads

... "Looks like Apple is going to keep location-based advertising to themselves," he said- not surprisingly in a tweet on Wednesday.

I can certainly see why Apple would like to do this, but i certainly do view it as quite anticompetitive...


All just a game?

But who pays?

Regards,
Martin

---

See new freedom: Mageia Linux
Take a look for yourself: Linux Format
The Future is what We all make IT (GPLv3)

Noting things purely Apple:

Apple Bans the Word 'Android' From App Store

By now, we're all familiar with Apple's culture of control. Particularly when it comes to the App Store, the crew from Cupertino is famous for its frequent rejections and vague explanations. The process can make the satirical comparisons of Apple and a communist regime seem pretty reasonable at times.


Apple Will Reject Apps Using GPS for Location-Aware Ads

... "Looks like Apple is going to keep location-based advertising to themselves," he said- not surprisingly in a tweet on Wednesday.

I can certainly see why Apple would like to do this, but i certainly do view it as quite anticompetitive...


All just a game?

But who pays?

Regards,
Martin

It's a business model. And one that apparently works for Apple.

It's OK......the euro courts will drag them in the same way they did $soft before too long.

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"Freedom is just Chaos, with better lighting." Alan Dean Foster

SETI's *nix server's get hacked.

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Since this is an Apple thread...Does anyone have a clue as to why Apple hasn't released a version of their Operating System for the General Public? They run on the same hardware it seems yet they don't even try to offer Microsoft any Competition...I wonder if Microsoft bought them off?

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Official Abuser of Boinc Buttons...
And no good credit hound!

More like Apple knows they can't compete with Microsoft on a software level, so they choose to compete on a platform level. If they have complete control of the hardware, and focus on writing stable drivers for only the hardware they choose to support, then they (and all their elitist fanbois) can brag about having a better system.

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Since this is an Apple thread...Does anyone have a clue as to why Apple hasn't released a version of their Operating System for the General Public? They run on the same hardware it seems yet they don't even try to offer Microsoft any Competition...I wonder if Microsoft bought them off?

Microsoft is a large shareholder of Apple. It may be the only profitable part of Microsoft.

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SETI's *nix server's get hacked.

Very good, and was the hack the result of a kernel bug, an application bug, malware, or a configuration issue?

Folks try to hack into *nix systems all the time, I have system logs full of failed attempts to log in to a *nix host I have running (to date none have succeeded). Did anybody here say that *nix is never hacked?

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I think you'll find it's a bit more complicated than that ...

Since this is an Apple thread...Does anyone have a clue as to why Apple hasn't released a version of their Operating System for the General Public?

I was under the impression that Darwin was open source as well as Mach/BSD. Apple would be required under the GPL licenses to post the source. I believe they do. Or course you have to supply all the stuff that isn't part of the open source, such as the graphics drivers, SATA drivers, USB drivers, firewire drivers, ethernet drivers, Apple Talk, Bonjour, etc. That is the code that is in the ROM on the motherboard. People have made ports so it is possible to run Mac O/S on a generic PC, how well I don't know. Apple may not be interested as they may think with a $29 price tag on their O/S they wouldn't make money having to support 10,000 Korean manufacturers variations.

That is the rub. Microsoft is forced by their policies to support 10,000 different manufacturers variations, many of which were "designed" by wet behind the ear developers.

I think the above is why Windows running under Mac O/S with Parallels in machines with identical CPU's runs faster. Can't think of any other reason.

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Bobbie, let's just say that in places the exact version of the O/S that is being run and the exact model number of the machine it is running on has been posted. As you know taking the project down to install updates to the latest security patch makes the user grumpy. Any script kiddie could use that information to find a published exploit and get in and play. Of course a dictionary attack is always another possibility. As an ad was left, that points to a script kiddie.

I just hope that the Seti science code stayed secure. Don't want to be running a bot.

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iEvolution.

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- Luke.