branding is important, yo!

You have a double standard.

well, don't we all? but I think my argument is somewhat well founded. I have a reply in-composition, but just got project smacked. will reply as soon as I am able. didnt want you to think I had abandoned a conversation.

That's security through obscurity. It's not that Linux has better security, only that its already tiny desktop market share around 2003 was even smaller because of different variations.

no, its absolutely not. its choosing software components based on known security vulns or limiting exposure to a suite of suspected or established attack vectors. its absolutely not security through obscurity. these are fundamental choices made every day by engineers and sysadmins everywhere as part of the normal design, implementation and maintenance process. there is nothing "obscure" about selecting for certain attributes and against others. this is how its done.

perhaps you disagree with this.

That's again blaming the Microsoft user for not understanding computers but not blaming the Linux user for running as root.

? its not the users job to understand OS security. to expect otherwise is unrealistic. also, virtually no "average" linux user, then or now, ran/runs as root. the "root X" issue related to related to requiring XWindows to run with and maintain root privs., not the user interacting with X running as root. it was much more common in the XP era to find XP users running as administrator than a "Linux user ~~for~~ running as root" because of deep, baked-in design choices made by microsoft for windows XP that were, at a fundamental level, incompatable with a secure system - microsofts poor response to their own tech debt broke everything "NT" about XP... which is exactly the point I am trying to make. I am not sure your statement has any actual relation to what I said.

So you blame Microsoft for allowing users to disable security features but don't blame Linux for allowing it also?

I am saying that I have far fewer privilege escalation issues/requirements on a typical linux distro - almost as if a reasonable security framework was in place early on and mature enough to matter to applications and users.

we can get into the various unix-ish SNAFUs like root X, but running systems with non-monolithic desktops/interfaces (I had deep core software and version choices) helped to blunt exposures in ways that were just not possible on XP.

we are talking about XP here, a chimeric release that only a DOS/Win combo beats for hackery. XP was basically the worst possible expression of the NT ethos and none of NTs underlaying security features were of practical value when faced with production demands of the OS and the inability of MS to manage a technology transition more responsibly.

now, if you ask me what I think of current windows... well, I still dont persnally use it, but for a multitude of reasons that are not "security absolutely blows".

apologies for the wall-o-text, apparently I have freshly unearthed XP trauma to unload. :-/

so, hows your day going? got some good family / self time lined up for the weekend?

these days old onion articles are prophecy and new onion articles cant even give me a raised eyebrow.

this is/does both.

as a followup to how useful your visualization is, I have started spreading comments across a wider selection of instance communities.

this is something I have considered before, but your visulazation made the possible utility and usefulness of doing so much more "real".

in

and with one word, the conversation becomes deeply political.

gotta disagree. microsoft's vaunted API/ABI compatability combined with often broken process isolation made it an absolute mess. security features that should have protected users and systems were routinely turned off to allow user space programs to function (DEP anyone?).

SP2/3 taught users one thing only - if a program breaks, start rolling back system hardening. I cannot think of one XP machine outside of some tightly regulated environments (and a limited smattering of people that 1. knew better and 2. put up with the pain) that did not run their users as a local administrative equiv. to "avoid issues".

if user space is allowed to make kernel space that vulnerable, then the system is broken.

XP before SP1 was a security nightmare

To be fair, Linux was a security nightmare before 2000 too. Linux didn't have ACL's until 2002.

yes, but XP at any SP is an unfixable mess compared to virtually any OS in the past 20 years (Temple OS excluded?), ACLs or not

not suggesting that you intimated otherwise, but its important to remind myself just how bad every XP instance really was.

someone genuinely interested for intellectual reasons would likely not fall for it. I would imagine that a non-trivial percentage of "antiquity enjoyers" are very light on history substance and heavy on history feelz.

once the appropriate brain tickles have been pushed into their heads their "history substance" feed content becomes decidedly propagandized.

this is really, really interesting. thank you for this.

instance reach and relationships are pretty wild and I can see this helping people to mix up their communities between instances.

the tight groupings of some instance communities might be source of pride or distress, depending.

would be nice to select a community and query its n closest overlap neighbors or all neighbors within a certain distance.

very cool project.