Is Security Essentials Microsoft 's answer to Linux 's security record?

One of the areas where Linux really shines is security: you do not really need an antivirus if you are running Linux as an end user. In the Windows world however a good antivirus is almost a requirement as viruses and malwares are commonplace. I have personally seen Windows computers being infected less than an hour after being connected to the internet. Microsoft is now trying to fix these issues with it's new free security offering: Microsoft Security Essentials.

Microsoft security essentials is a new free lightweight antivirus from Microsoft. The problem that Microsoft faces with security is not only technical but also caused by the behaviors of the average Windows end user. It is estimated that despite the abundance of antivirus solution for Windows machines, more than half of home computers are simply not protected!

There are several reasons behind this. Ignorance certainly plays a part, but the main point is that most home users are simply not willing to pay for antivirus updates. A lot of people don't really understand the problem, other are not willing to pay to solve what is in fact Microsoft's problem, other still are willing to take the risk, too bad if this causes the viruses to spread. There are free antivirus solution available for Windows such as Avast or ClamAV, but these are almost never pre-installed on computers because antivirus vendors like Symantec pay computer manufactures to load a demo version of their products in the hope of cashing on the fee updates.

These updates fees can run into a lot of money: a one year subscription to Norton antivirus will cost you $39 per year on the Symantec website (Money saving tip: it is actually cheaper to buy the full product from Amazon than to renew your subscription!). If you consider that the average PC has a lifetime of 5 years that's a $195 bill! This is an hidden cost that a lot of computer users are not ready to pay.

In the case of the home user this can give Linux a huge TCO advantage: an Ubuntu CD costs between $12.99 and $19.99 on Amazon, or the CD image can be downloaded for free. This means that a home user can save a lot of money on the lifetime of his computer by replacing Windows by Linux instead of keeping their antivirus updated. This is of course bad for Microsoft.

There are free antivirus programs available, but most of them leave a lot to be desired. I had a bad experience with Avast on an Eee PC 900: the antivirus detected viruses correctly but was using so many resources that the netbook became sluggish to the point of being almost unusable for surfing! Also you need to contact avast every year to get your free update code, meaning that the product manufacturer can start charging for updates at any time.

Microsoft Security Essentials is an attempt by Microsoft to solve this problem. The product is currently in beta testing and should be available in certain countries as early as next week for Windows XP, Vista and 7. Unlike other free antivirus Microsoft Security Essentials should not consume too many resources, as the requirement are quite low for Windows XP: 256 Mb ram and a 500 Mhz CPU. On Windows 7 or Vista the requirements jump to a 1 Ghz CPU and 1 Gb ram, which means that Microsoft Security Essentials will probably be more of a resource hog on the future Windows 7 based netbooks.

On the issues side there is the fact that Microsoft Security Essentials will not be pre-installed on Windows computers but will require a download from Microsoft's website. Microsoft can not include the software for antitrust reasons which I can understand, but this means that a lot of home users won't bother. Also the download will require the users to pass the Windows Genuine Advantage test, something that will restrict adoption further! Part of Microsoft's problem is that Windows has been insecure for so long that a whole antivirus industry had the time to crop up, meaning that it is not longer possible for Microsoft to impose a free product like Microsoft Security Essentials as a default preload.

All in all this is still a good move from Microsoft to reduce the cost gap between Linux and Windows, even if in my opinion Microsoft does not go far enough. They should heavily promote Microsoft Security Essentials as well as pay PC manufacturers to include it as default. A better solution still would be for Microsoft to include with every Windows license a voucher for 5 years of upgrades with the antivirus vendor of the customer's choice, but somehow I doubt this will ever happen.

Updates on Tech-no-media

Beside the articles published on the main Tech-no-media blog, a few interesting articles have appeared on the specialized blogs:

On "From Windows to Linux for the average Joe"

5 disadvantages of Linux: When someone want to switch from Windows to Linux, he or she has a tendency to only think about the advantages of Linux and not think about the disadvantages. There is a bit of a "the grass is always greener at the other side of the fence" effect at play here. Most people have very good reasons to switch from Windows to Linux, but before actually switching it is important to review the disadvantages of Linux as well as the advantages. So what are the things that Linux does NOT do well?

What is the best Linux distribution for beginners: One of the questions I see the most in forums and sites like Yahoo Answers is : "What is the best Linux distribution for beginners?" or "What is the easiest Linux distribution?" Well, unlike what you may think these questions are not that easy to answer, as the easiest Linux distribution is not necessarily the best for all beginners because other factors like the availability of support and commercial applications availability have to be taken into account.

On "Online Video Producer"

Good light makes a video podcast shine:When shooting a video podcast there is one thing that makes all the difference between a glorified home video and a true studio production: good light. In the video world light is like magic: it makes your host's wrinkles disappear, whitens it's teeth, put the shine in his eyes and give him that aura that true video hosts have. The point is that to shoot a good video podcast you first need to have good light.

Overall this was really a Minty week between my review of Linux Mint, my interview of Clem and "What is the best Linux distribution for beginners" that covers Linux Mint too! I also experimented a bit with the ads on the Blog. Not that it brings me much money currently, but the blog is seeing a nice growth in readership and I want to be ready if it does really take off.

For those that are interested this week was the busiest ever on the blog: almost 2000 visitors on Windows to Linux and an astonishing 5400 visitors on Tech-no-media. when combined that's more than a thousand visitors per day on average. For a blog on which I have started to seriously post only 2 months ago this is not bad!

I have also noticed that the most successful articles are the ones about Linux and open source, so I will try to write more on these subjects. That is a good thing because I am myself a big Linux fan and it is a topic I love to write about! In fact I am already working on a Linux related post for Monday. I have also added a contact form to the blog for those of you who want to contact me directly.

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Hunch: a fun web-based decision engine

I have just tried Hunch, the fun website that helps you decide. Open to the public only since a couple of days I can see this "decision engine" (sorry Microsoft, Bing is a search engine, not a decision engine) becoming a successful novelty for some time at least.

What is Hunch about?

The principle is very simple: when you first get to the site hunch asks you 20 questions. it uses your answers to build a profile on your likes, dislikes and personality. Once that profile is created you can start to use the Hunch decision engine to answer questions. The questions range from "which Blu-ray player should I buy" to "how many pages should be in my resume". To help you answer the question the site will ask you various simpler questions e.g. to know the size your resume should be the decision engine will ask you several multiple choice questions on your career. The original question is then answered by Hunch and you are given the percentage of users that reached the same answer.

Yes, but what IS the Hunch?

Well, if you do not want to answer the question you can also press the Hunch button. This will make the decision engine take the decision for you based on the profile it build from your previous answers and the answers of the users whose profile match yours. Note that you can also opt to skip one question it you have trouble answering.

I expect Hunch to be successful not only because it can provide a good service but also for the entertainment aspect of the site. This reminds me of the multiple questions "test" that you find in almost all magazines and of the votes channel on the Wii, and no one can deny that these are entertaining and successful. My only worries are about the potential privacy implications: the site claims that the data is confidential, but this would be a gold mine for marketers, so I hope their security is up to scratch.

Well, don't stay there, go try Hunch and leave me a comment with your opinion!

An interview with Clem from Linux Mint

A few days ago I reviewed what is in my opinion the easiest Linux distribution for Windows switchers: Linux Mint 7.0 The small group of talented people that manage this distribution is led by Clem, the "founder" of Linux Mint. Today he was kind enough to grant me an email interview as a follow up to my review.

Erlik: How did you get started on Linux Mint?

Clem: I've been passionate about Linux since the early days. I started using it as my main operating system in 1996. In the following years I did a lot of distro-hopping and I spent a lot of time helping other users. In 2006 I started selling reviews and tutorials to linuxforums.org (my articles are still available here: http://www.linuxforums.org/bio/author/Clement+Lefebvre/) and I eventually decided to publish them myself, and so the name of my website at the time was linuxmint.com. The more distributions I reviewed the more I felt something was missing and I started to develop a very precise idea of what I would personally like to see in a desktop operating system. I'm a developer myself so I wasn't afraid to develop the missing parts and I started taking what was already there in the Open Source world to build upon it. I chose not to develop my own package base and so I opted to base my little project on top of a Debian distribution. Ubuntu was popular, I would have ported most of their innovations anyway and being compatible with them was a huge advantage, so I chose the Ubuntu package base. At first it was probably just an experiment but after the release of version 2.0 "Barbara" people started to gather around it and to show interest. At the time it wasn't much more than Ubuntu with codecs but because this corresponded to something people wanted it created a following, and when the time came for me to really start improving the desktop and to implement a new vision (that started with the release of Linux Mint 2.2 "Bianca"), there was already and audience and a user base eager to see how Mint would develop and interested in the innovations.

Erlik: Linux Mint is very successful (3rd on distrowatch), what do you think is the reason behind such a success?

Clem: Well, as I said, it was probably a bit of luck at the start. The luck to fill a niche market with the codecs on top of a popular Ubuntu base but also the luck to find talented people in the very early days of Linux Mint, who helped the project and formed the core and a wonderful ambiance within the community. After that it was the fast pace and the amount of development done on Linux Mint. We pushed a lot of innovations and offered features no other operating systems had at the time. Some are still unique to Linux Mint and with each new release we try to push harder on the development and to offer new use cases and simplify the most common ones. An other element, at first due to the small size of our community and nowadays due to our light structures and the way we work, is the quality of the feedback we get from our community and the dialogue we have with its members. We try to listen to our users as much as possible and to communicate and justify our decisions and what lead to them. I'm personally easily reachable and I like to stay close to the user base, that's very important I think and although it gets harder as the community gets bigger this is what makes all the difference. So we're constantly trying to improve the communication between the team and the community.

Erlik: I see that a lot of work is done on the 64 bits edition of Linux Mint. Do you thing that 64 bits is ready for the average user?

Clem: Yes. There were a few incompatibilities but it's getting to a stage now where our x64 edition is almost as stable as the main one.

Erlik: One of the disadvantage of Linux Mint versus Ubuntu is the lack of an easy "push button" way to upgrade to the next Mint release, what is the status of the work on that?

It's funny you say that. I commented on your review of Linux Mint 7 and talked about this: http://www.linuxmint.com/blog/?p=900

It's a valid point though. The upgrade is as risky on Mint as it is on Ubuntu, but Ubuntu made it much easier than we did. They need to work on making it safer and so do we. As for the ease of use, I'm adding this to the Linux Mint 8 roadmap, I think we can merge the features of the upgrader within mintUpdate and offer something similar than Ubuntu. That's easily achievable and you should see improvements in the next release. My worry when it comes to upgrading isn't how easy it is though, it's to be able to guarantee a safe result ... and this is where both Ubuntu and Linux Mint need to work really hard.

Erlik: Unlike a lot of other big distributions Mint does not have a big company offering behind it and is more of a community effort. Do you intend to keep it that way or do you want to develop a professional support structure for Linux Mint?

Clem: Ideally I would like Linux Mint to be financed by the community and through advertising so that we, developers, don't have to spend time on anything else than improving it. Most distributions provide a free desktop and rely on professional support to finance their activity. The problem with that model is that some of them get extremely focused on the support activity, that this takes most of their resources and that they're left with very little time to innovate.

Having said that, I would also like Linux Mint to represent a viable alternative for companies and so for this I will try to develop a structure that will allow us to offer adequate support. The main thing of course is not to rely on it too much financially and not to let it become our main point of focus.

Linux is a hobby to many of us and we're driven by passion. We need money of course to be able to work on it full time but it's pushing the development and the innovation that makes it interesting. If tomorrow our activity is solely devoted to maintaining an income then our work won't be very interesting. Professional support needs to become available, we need to work on this and get to the point where we can offer a solution, we will definitely generate an income out of it but it needs to remain something extra, the main thing here being the distribution itself.

So far we got here with 5 or 6 people working a few hours every day. If we get enough support within the community to start making people quit and to hire them full time, just for us, fully focused on improving Linux Mint, guess how far we can go. With the support I got from the sponsors and donors I already managed to free up 3 months of my time this year and I hope I'll be able to demonstrate how much of a difference this can make on the upcoming release.

Erlik: Thank you very much for this interview Clem, and continue the good work.

Blu-ray Mandatory Managed Copy is so borked it's ridiculous!

For years we have been promised by the manufacturer of Blu-ray devices that thanks to Mandatory Managed Copy we would be able to use the content purchased on Blu-ray on other devices, thanks to the possibility to make a full resolution copy of the content. At Blu-ray launch however the feature was missing. It seems that the much needed feature is finally coming, but as the details emerge it turn out that what should have been Blu-ray's major advantage over DVD is completely borked!

Lets look a the long list of problems:

1: Mandatory managed copy won't work with current hardware: Yes, you read it right, no firmware upgrade for this. Since Mandatory Managed Copy will require an internet connection you will need to replace your $400 player to be able to use it! The only possible exception is the Playstation 3 as it has a network connection. Also there is no guarantee that the hardware you purchase later will include the feature, as this is completely optional for manufacturers. Compatible stand-alone players will be available in 2010 at the earliest, meaning that purchasing a Blu-ray player this year is now out of the question for many people.

2: Mandatory managed copy won't work with current discs: Yes, all the discs you purchased up to now were supposed to be compatible, but in the end they are not. If you want to benefit from Mandatory Managed Copy you will need to re-purchase them. Currently no exchange plans has been announced by any studio. Given Blu-ray huge duplication costs I have little hope that they will do the right thing and replace all Blu-ray discs released so far.

3: Only one copy is mandatory: The studios are only forced to grant you one copy, this means that if you want to transfer your movie to a media player, you won't be able to make another copy if you replace that device. In a world of iPods that last 4 years at best this is ridiculous. Five mandatory copies would be the minimum any sane consumer would be ready to accept.

4: Copies are not free: The studios can charge you per copy or transfer that you make. That means that you would actually have to pay to transfer a movie that you own on Blu-ray to your multimedia jukebox. In my opinion this is totally unacceptable, moving your media between your devices should always be free.

5: Few devices are supported: The only three target formats supported by Mandatory Managed Copy will be AACS protected Blu-ray, CSS protect DVD or DRM protected Windows media. This means that very few devices beside Windows PCs will actually be able to use the features to transfer HD content: iPods, Macs, Linux netbooks are left out, as are most video jukeboxes and multimedia hard disks! The only way for these devices to access a copy will be to request a DVD copy and then rip the DVD. This is absolutely ridiculous: If the copies need to be protected by DRM at the minimum the DRM scheme must be available for all devices, and preferably free of licensing fees!

In the end what we have here is technology that is 4 years late, is incompatible with most current hardware and all current discs, is incompatible with most devices and is ripping off the consumer. Personally I thought that this feature could save Blu-ray when it would finally come to be implemented, but now I realize that AACS-LA has made a joke of this, I am disgusted, this is a complete failure for Blu-ray. One thing that is sure is that I won't be buying a stand alone Blu-ray player this year since current models will be obsolete next year! If you still wish to purchase a player this year I would suggest that at least you choose the Playstation 3, as this is your best bet if you hope for a firmware update (and that is a risky bet).

You know what, I am starting to hate HD content. It seems that because the image quality is a bit better the media industries feel that they can impose their own set of rules on the consumers and rip them off in the most unacceptable way! A few extra pixels do not give them the right to treat their customers like shit. I say stop: I'll purchase Blu-ray content when the format is finally stabilized and event then only if the price is right and if I really own the content that I purchased. This would mean that I can transfer and play it on any device I own without having to pay ridiculous transcoding fees. Until then I"ll stay with DVD, or I'll watch free HD podcasts in Miro or iTunes, thank you!

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