Originally Posted By: Arney
Actually, I think MS has come a long way since the days about a decade ago when Internet Explorer and the IIS webserver had more holes than a block of Swiss cheese.

I will admit ... they are trying. Some efforts have been more successful than others. I remember trying to use Vista once. Every time I hit a key, up came a popup asking if I really meant to hit that key, and asked if I was aware of the security ramifications of hitting that key. That is no way to treat a user base who probably didn't understand why they even hit that key in the first place, let alone be able to comprehend the resulting Windows popup.

What happened with Microsoft and Windows, is they targeted the "mass market". Most of the end-users of their Windows computers, were, to put it bluntly, totally computer ignorant. So they tried to make things more easy to use by trying to do everything for everybody, to support their target user base. Unfortunately, "we'll do it all for you" and "security" are at opposite ends of the spectrum. When you automate/integrate for ease of use, security goes down the drain. And when you make things secure, ease of use suffers. That is why many Windows users complain about how difficult Linux is, and complain that "Linux is not like Windows, therefore bad". They don't know any better. The target user base of Linux is the opposite of the target user base for Windows.

Open source vs. closed source definitely has something to do with security. But the effect is probably not as marked as the difference in the user base of open source products vs. Windows users. Linux/open source users tend to be much more computer literate and technically savvy than Windows users. And that difference probably has more to do with overall security than the differences in the operating systems. Although Linux and just about every other OS out there, open source or not, is more secure than Windows. Windows has indeed improved over the years. But it is still trails miles behind every other OS in the security area. Under the hood, Windows looks like a mating squid ball. Everybodies tentacles stuck into everybody elses' orifaces. While the squids seem to like it that way, it does not make for a secure and stable operating system.