> > I think it's unfair to blame MS entirely for having so many security holes; far more people are *looking* for security holes in MS' products, simply because they're so widely implemented.
>
> True to an extent, but I won't concede the point. Take one area in which Microsoft is *not* dominant, for example: the Apache web server is the most used web server out there, servicing, last I knew, somewhere around 60% of its market. Microsoft's IIS has a much smaller user base. When security holes are discovered in IIS, it's routine, and when security holes are discovered in Apache, it's news. In any case, a company producing products that *have* such a wide user base should, if anything, be held to a higher standard, not a lower one.

At the same time, to be fair, not everything Microsoft makes is quite as assy as IIS. I wouldn't compare IE's level of ass to IIS's - IE at least does what it's supposed to reasonably well, while IIS is like the half-formed mutant evil clone of Apache. Also, I think you'll find that I'm less tolerant of security holes in software designed to operate as a server - if it's something that's going to be exposed to the entire internet all the time, and is going to be public about it, it *really* needs to have tight security. The people who work on Apache understand this - just ask them. They all hang out at /., I'm sure ;-}.

The only good thing about IIS - I mean, the *only* good thing - is this error message that I've linked to down below there.

> > > There is free accounting software,
> >
> > Uh. Nothing that's up to the level of Quicken/Quick Books. I'm not aware of any really advanced free accounting/inventory management software.
>
> Quicken and Photoshop definitely rock. No quibbles there. I think what I'd like to do, ultimately, is run Windoze on Linux so I can have Linux's function and security while still being able to use stuff like that when I need to.

Not to be argumentative again, but, I have to say that from a non-pir8 home user's viewpoint, how much Photoshop rules is totally and unquestionably irrelevant. No one actually *buys* it - the stupid thing costs six hundred dollars. If I had six hundred dollars, you know what I'd do with it? Neither do I. I've never had that kind of money just lying around waiting to be spent on something. I've been using the Gimp lately (of course), and I think it's pretty groovy. For my Windows graphic-design needs, I use Paint Shop Pro (the poor man's Photoshop), which has a slightly better interface (yeah, the Gimp's interface is assy enough that I can say that). Also, a lot of my graphics are text-heavy, and Windows has better fonts. TTF support on LUNIX is coming along - KDE has figured out how to use them, but is still struggling with how to share them with applications. ;-}

Besides, what is all this talk of Photoshop, anyhow? REAL men use Maya. And that's available for LUNIX and *not* for any non-NT flavours of Windows. ;-}