Snitch or Switch

Nowadays everyone wants an iPod ”even Windows users! It just so happens that Windows users can't download songs from Apple's iTunes Music Store yet. What a coincidence ! Windows sites will invariably knock off Apple's DRM model and undercut the price, and iTunes will eventually accommodate Windows users, but that's really beside the point. The point is that DRM has opened a floodgate that could mark an end to the era of Wintel dominance ! Microsoft's market share has been slipping due to operating systems such as UNIX, Linux, and Mac OS X, and Intel is losing its foothold because of rival chips from AMD, IBM, and computers such as the iMac!

A few weeks ago I interviewed George Kurtz, the CEO of Foundstone, for this book. Kurtz is familiar with every OS known to man, and when I questioned him about Windows security, George had a startling solution:

Buy a Mac! A veteran Windows user , Kurtz confessed that he recently made the switch to a Mac for personal computing. He finds OS X more elegant than Windows from an aesthetic point of view, and he thinks the UNIX kernel is inherently more stable and secure than Windows NT. George may have a point. All things being equal, OS X historically has required fewer critical updates and security patches than Windows XP has.

George may use a Mac while I use a PC, but over the course of our conversation it became apparent that we use the same keyboard and mouse, Logitech's Cordless Elite Duo MX! I asked George if he was aware that two types of spyware lurk in the software that Logitech installs ”Logitech's Desktop Messenger and WildTangent's Game Channel. Unless you opt out, both programs install by default. George was unfamiliar with them, but he told me he opts out of programs like these automatically because of the likelihood that they contain spyware. So do I, said I! As a general rule, don't install software or drivers unless they're absolutely essential if you're not absolutely certain they aren't spyware.

Figure 9.6: Logitech Cordless Elite Duo MX

As an afterthought Kurtz added, "I also run Ad-aware once a week." Ditto, said I! I then described how Ad-aware identified 63 spyware components on my system after I foolishly downloaded and installed WildTangent's 3D visualization for Windows Media Player 9. That's how I became hip to WildTangent. After my conversation with Kurtz, I did more research.

Figure 9.7: The WildTangent Web site