What Apple's Switch Means to Desktop Linux

the Geek world is buzzing with news that Apple is to Use Intel Microprocessors Beginning in 2006
What Apple's Switch Means to Desktop Linux

Apple is going x86 makes today a historic day in the industry. It may mean that Microsoft might see a few percent decline of their market share the next few years, but what about Linux?

You still have to have Mac hardware to run MacOS even with an Intel chip

This really doesn't change anything unless the price of the package drops.

Linux will be just as strong a force tomorrow as it was today. Microsoft is safe in that you can't just run MacOS on any old Dell PC.

apple will take customers largely from microsoft.

what are the reasons people use linux/oss on the desktop:

* people are fed up with the viruses/windows crashes/bugs
* cheap or free
* extremely customisable - the people love to tinker
* controlled by them, the community
* benefits of free/open source software

Sober.P appears to turn off Symantec's antivirus protection and the Microsoft Windows XP firewal

Sober.P Worm Accounts for 25% of all Email Traffic-Sober.P appears to turn off Symantec's antivirus protection and the Microsoft Windows XP firewal

The Sober.P worm is still spreading fast and made up almost 5 percent of all e-mail traffic on Friday morning, according to a U.K. antivirus company.

Sophos said that the worm accounts for around 77 percent of all virus activity it is seeing. The company said the Sober variant is still spreading, even though large corporations appear to have patched the vulnerabilities that the virus uses to propagate.

"It's lingering around like a nasty smell and spreading in big numbers," said Graham Cluley, senior technology consultant at Sophos. "It's still at the same level in that it's 4.65 percent of all e-mail out there. We can't be sure how many people it's infecting, but we think most big business will be protected."

Sober.P appears to turn off Symantec's antivirus protection and the Microsoft Windows XP firewall, probably as a way of preparing computers to distribute spam and to spread itself wider.

"That's probably why it has become widespread so quickly," Cluley said. "(Virus writers) used spam technology to send it out. Now it's just perpetuating."

Sober.P--which security companies have variously tagged as Sober.N, Sober.O or Sober.S--travels as an attachment in e-mails written in English and German. One of the most widely reported e-mails contains an alluring message stating that the recipient has won free tickets to the 2006 World Cup in Germany, but many other types have also been spotted. Once opened, the virus sends itself to e-mail addresses harvested from the infected machine.