“There are three kinds of lies: lies, damned lies, and statistics.” (wiki)
There is so much Bravo Sierra floating around the internet in the never-ending OS and browser wars. This quite often takes the form of ill-informed “reporters” creating click-bait headlines. This past week, Secunia published a report called the Secunia Vulnerability Review 2015. Now look at the name again. Does it say “least secure”, “most insecure”, or “most vulnerable”? No, and no where in that report does it mention that either. Yet many hysterical sites proclaimed Chrome as the least secure browser based on their incorrect interpretation of that report. Most Geeks know there is a difference between reported vulnerabilities and the actual security of a product. Phil Muncaster at Infosecurity Magazine quotes Secunia’s director of research and security, Kasper Lindgaard:
Google Chrome came top of the ‘20 core products’ with the most vulnerabilities, with a whopping 504 discovered last year – ahead of Solaris (483), Gentoo Linux (350) and Internet Explorer (289).
However, this is not a direct reflection on how secure or insecure Chrome is, said Lindgaard.
“It is a reflection on how aware Google as a vendor is, regarding the security of Google Chrome,” he argued.
“A large part of vulnerabilities recorded in Google Chrome are discovered, fixed, and disclosed by Google themselves – they put in a lot of resources into identifying the vulnerabilities before hackers do.”
Anywho, take your grain of salt for the day. Or better yet, get it off the rim of a Margarita!
Speaking Of Stats…
Ed Bott fought his way through a mound of government stats to find Six surprising facts about who’s winning the operating system and browser wars in the U.S.
I dunno, Windows 7 and iPhones dominating aren’t surprising. The stats do backup the argument that the desktop is far from dead.
Audacity 2.1.0
Audacity got a nifty update including improved noise removal and real-time preview for effects.
Reader Emails
Q – Is that Winamp on your multi-media screen?
A – Yep, lots of Q’s on this. I will have a write-up this week.
Responses so far to looking for laptop post (summarized):
1 – There are several Lenovo’s that fit your specs.
2 – Check Costco, great warranties.
3 – I own and recommend the Alienware 15.
4 – Not quite to your specs but the Dell XPS 13 is nice.
5 – “Eric we really need to get you into a Mac.”
my response: :rotfl: