To the Editor:
These days, the world hardly goes a week without hearing of a
new computer virus. This week has been no different: the “bagel”
and “MyDoom” viruses are dominating Internet traffic. In fact,
according to The Collegian, MyDoom accounted for 10 percent of all
Internet bandwidth last Wednesday.
In fact, in the history of the Internet, about 25 million
computer viruses have been recorded. Of these, 24.99 million have
affected only computers that run Microsoft Windows. About 10,000
have affected computers running Apple’s Macintosh OS or some
derivative thereof. And, most remarkably, there is a popular
operating system that only 18 viruses have ever been
discovered.
I suggest to all students who value their personal information,
like credit card numbers, social security numbers and other private
data to switch to Linux. Linux is absolutely free, and can be
downloaded right off the internet. Go to http://www.redhat.com to
try out Red Hat Linux, or http://www.distrowatch.com to try out any
other flavor of Linux.
Another option is to try Apple’s OS X, which also has a
remarkable virus-free history. Microsoft, with all of its might,
still fails at keeping their software safe enough for the public to
use without fear of identity theft, random crashes and other
inconveniences (like losing that paper you spent hours writing, but
forgot to save before Windows crashed).
Jesse C. Owens
Sophomore, computer science
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