Re: [LUG] [Fwd: Web perils advise switch to Macs]

Ben Goodger wrote:
> On 05/07/06, *Julian Hall* <lists@xxxxxxxxxxxx
> <mailto:lists@xxxxxxxxxxxx>> wrote:
>
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>     http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/technology/5150508.stm
>
>     Ummmm Macs aren't the only option are they? :)
>
>
> <bbc> What you're forgetting is that Linux is not used by anyone
> except uber-geeks, and for that reason it's fine to ignore it utterly,
> even down to using Realplayer for streaming media.</bbc>
>
> No, they're not, but for the average UK tv-license-payer, you mustn't
> forget that Windows is a part of the computer, as is AOL. A Mac is the
> only even vaguely applicable alternative for them ("what's this
> colonel thing?!")
> But meh: Mac == BSD == UNIX =~ Linux, so what's the big deal? The
> point is to leave Windows - for all Sophos cares, we could probably
> put people on ERNIE-2 dumb terminals...

("what's this colonel thing?!") = The guy who knows what the secret
herbs & spices are for a certain brand of fried chicken :-)

Mac == BSD == UNIX =~ Linux - Well not far off.  I think the big
differences would be the licence and freedoms.  I don't see Apple giving
away the source code for all their nice GUI features, or allowing anyone
to port/run MacOS X on any hardware.

You can run Mac OS X on any hardware, there's a procedure for doing it somewhere...
The freedoms are largely immaterial from a security standpoint, particularly since all of the essential bits of those OSes (I was using UNIX to refer to a type of OS , e.g. "windows, mac os 9, unix") are open-source/free.