Brennan’s Blog

The debate is seeing some new life after Winn Schwartau started a series in his blog called Mad as Hell. I personally deal with the issues in this debate all of the time. And the problems with Spyware, Viruses and general Windows instability and unpredictability has forced me to carry out maintenance tasks on my Windows machine over the last 3 months instead of doing something productive. I estimate I spend 90% of my time either installing upgrades, running anti-virus software or preparing backups. I am left with 10% of that time to get work done. I have limited free time and the free time I do have I would prefer not to be at my computer dealing with this garbage. You could say I am also Mad as Hell. But it seems I have to live with it.

A little while back I wrote my own series on Anti-virus due to problems with malware:

• Anti-Virus I: The Entry Point for Malware
• Anti-Virus II: Free of Spyware, I Hope!
• Anti-Virus III: Is my Mac Safer?
• Anti-Virus IV: The Return of Microsoft

And just this week I installed WinXP and I am using Norton Ghost to cope with it. There are so many factors to consider int the Windows for MacOS X debate. Sure security seems to be a big one right now, but the common definition for security can be quite limited.

Sometimes security is limited to keeping out Spyware and Viruses, but in a broader sense it can include keeping your computer in a state you want and expect. This means that when you leave your computer and come back to it later all of your files will still be intact and over time your system performance is as you expect. We all have had to defrag our hard drives because over time our systems had become slower and slower. That is just how the file system works on Windows. And if you do not watch over it, you can lose files or your hard drive entirely.

Back before MacOS X the Mac ran on System 9. It run a B-tree file system. That system works as a hiearchy of nodes. And if you lose the top node you lose the whole thing. It happened to me and I lost all of my files and work. In my broad definition of security I call this a security flaw. It is like placing your spare tank of gasoline next to the fireplace. Eventually there will be a problem.

MacOS X now thankfully includes a journaling file system which helps keep the file system organized and prevents the B-tree troubles. It also eliminates the need to defrag your hard drive. Your computer does the work for you. Imagine that?! You will still want to create the occasional backup because hardware will still fail eventually. I personally run a file server and have a scheduled process synchronize changes over to that server in case something does go wrong. I may also create backup system using an idea I had with using enclosures. That would truly provide security, or perhaps piece of mind that my data is not all in the same place where it can be stolen or destroyed in a fire.

Another aspect of security is the internal threat by those your should be able to trust. Sometimes it is an intended violiation and other times it is just misuse of the system by unsuspecting users.

Occasionally one of my sisters will visit and my niece will want to work on homework or chat with her friends. I simply created an account on my iBook and let her use iChat and Safari and let her be. I know that she will not be able to install any applications or change how the networking was configured. And I know she cannot write to files outside of her home directory. In terms of security, she is isolated to her confined space. My home directory is safe from whatever she does.

If I had her use my Windows system she may be able to get a virus or spyware by simply using Internet Explorer or Windows Media Player. That has happened to me and I have been careful to generally visit well-known sites, like CNN.com or Yahoo.com. I also use Firefox over IE, but she seems to want to use IE and sees little difference.

Other ways for your computer to misbehave is to simply run amok with unknown processes which eat up memory, processor time and disk I/O. On my work laptop I am often waiting for the green hard disk light to stop flashing while Iam trying to get work done. I do not know what is happening and when I look at the Tasks I see some unknown running loose on the processor. I Google it and discover it is some sort of memory management process to help manage swap space. With 1 gig of memory and only a few applications running it should not need to be spending so much time swapping memory out to disk, but it happens all of the time on Windows.

I do not appear to have the same problems on my Mac, and instead of having 1 gig of memory I only have 384mb. It works quite well with that limited memory. And MacOS X has a utility called Activity Monitor which allows me to more closely identify what is running. It also allows me to know which files a process has open. That is a feature I have wanted from Windows for a long, long time. I can actually determine what the process is touching. Why does Windows hide that information?

I look forward to reading the rest of the Mad as Hell series. It should raise many points which are hopefully raised with careful thought and facts to back them up.