Conficker - Still paying for the mistakes of the past

I've been specializing in Analytics lately and I use Linux on all my desktop machines, so I haven't really paying that much attention to the Windoze arena other than the nicely manicured, maintained by a team of overseas engineers Windoze machines. I was reading this article from The Atlantic the other day, and I think the time has finally come to migrate off of Redmond Swiss Cheese once and for all.

The Conficker worm is one MF, for sure. The problem is this. You don't have to get infected by it directly. If there's a machine that's on the same network you're on, and it has the Conficker worm. That machine will actively attack your machine. It will try new security holes, and it will even try password cracks to try and guess your passwords.

First detected back in 2008, this thing has just gotten bigger and badder ever since. Sure there are patches, and apparently only some unreleased Beta of Windows 7 was vulnerable, but most of the other release before it were at one point vulnerable.

So let's say that you have one of these Windows systems and you are installing it fresh. It's probably vulnerable out of the box and will need an update. Well guess what, you have to connect to the Internet, to get the patch to close the hole. If you are on a network and there are machines that are infected, they will be actively attacking your machine. It's a race against time to see if you can patch your system before the nasties get in.

I just don't get it, I'm talking with my significant other's employer, they have seem to be having the same problems every network with Windows has, things work, then don't work, machines get infected with virus' and other nasty stuff, compatibility issues with older version and when I tell them they need to get off Windows and onto Mac's or Linux, they say "Well Windows has been working fine for us". When in fact they have all of the problems I just described. It's funny how people computers can run slow, crash and have all kinds of other issues that keep them from working and things are "working fine for us". The very next day, this same person I had the conversation with has the nastiest picture she has ever seen, spread eagle on her screen with the message "Watch Me Masturbate!". I think their ready for Linux now :)