>John,
>
>It wasn't meant as a flippant "my OS is better than your OS" comment :-). I just remember it being reviewed in something like DDJ.
>
>I saw a UK television program on hackers the other day and let me set the record straight, if you want to keep your data out of these guys hands then keep it on a standalone machine under lock and key. This was an amazing program (not wishing to glorify hacking) these guys are more than hobbyists and it didn't really matter which OS it was running on!
Neil, I didn't think you were being flippant. I agree with what you are saying. I am a therapist, but into computers. When at the club I belong to sitting around talking, I would say that around 90% wouldn't buy on the internet and don't trust it. I got tickled when it came out that by phoning and taking phone solicitations and purchasing that some were giving Credit card numbers and personal, confidential information to people the companies hired part time that were currently resding in Huntsville State Prison. This came out because the prisoners, in some cases, were using the information to buy things, get loans etc. So it becaomes a ? of how safe is it. If you were seeing me as a shrink, how much of the information would you want on a computer connected to the web. Although my financial information isn't protected in terms of confidentiality by law, I still don't necessarily want it available like all my medical information. When it becomes secure enough so that someone can't get to any material without the login ID and password - although I recognize those can be hacked - I won't really consider it very safe. BTW there are ways that it can be made difficult to hack the UID and PWD. On my old Unix system, if you called it and identified yourself as a machine that was allowed to login, it hung up and called you back, If your second attempt at logging in was incorrect it hung up and wouldn't allow you back in till root gave a release. Not a 100% but I did get compliments from one divorce attorney whose PI couldn't hack into it.
