Question regarding an article from Microsft Hellas's CEO

[Joao Ribeiro da Silva]

Dear fellows:

We need to put things in perspective, calm and easy.
I could just say that the statement from Microsoft's CEO is 
false, but I'll not. Instead I'll will just describe some 
facts and then you reach your own conclusions.

The main problem with security on windows and other operating 
system is in their base.
Unix like OSs are closed systems by default while Microsoft 
Windows is a open system by default.
On Unix like OSs in order for a user to run anything you need 
first to give him necessary permissions to do so. Otherwise 
not even a byte the user can read from whereever.
On Windows you can do what so ever and then you starting 
removing power to a user (closing the system to that user).

When a trojan or a virus infect an OS it operates under a 
user account, so it inherits the system previleges of the 
user under who's account it is running and only that user.
On Windows OSs because the users by default are at least 
machine administrators the virus or trojan is able to do 
whatever that user can, so it damages the system alot more 
than on Unix like OSs.

Try as a normal user on Unix based systems to access the 
configuration files. Yes in many of them you are even able to 
read those files, but you can't change a thing on them.
Try to delete a file in the /USR (kind of Program Files under 
windows) directory for example, you can't.

Try to map a network drive or even access to your CD-ROM it 
will tell you that only the system administrator can do that 
and because on Unix nobody works as system administrator then 
the system core never has a virus. In the worst case scenario 
only the files created by the user can be deleted or damaged 
not the files from other users so even if we had virus on 
Unix the impact over the system would be very small (to the 
user level only).
On Unix, as soon a user logs out from the system all 
applications running with that user permissions are forcelly 
terminated by the OS itself.
Because the Unix system administrator (ROOT) only logs in for 
bref moments (the way it should be used) root has no internet 
mail, only local mail, root has no need to browsers (you do 
it under or normal user account) and so on.
On windows virtually any user can delete, create or modify 
any files, becuase by default your user is the system 
administrator.

Now just think a little
Best regards
Joao Ribeiro da Silva