Linux is the most secure, so why are you not using it?

Last week there was a study released by the UK government that they tested all of the OSes used within their networks and they found that Ubuntu 12.04 LTS was the most secure.

See the article in TechRepublic or the summary at Ubuntu (pdf)

They did 12 tests, rather comprehensive, fair, impartial and independent from the OS makers. Ubuntu passed 9 of the tests with no significant risks from the 3 it failed. Those 3 were mostly just failed on that item had yet to be independently reviewed. Expect Ubuntu 14 to pass at least 2 of those by April.

Windows only passed 8 the same as Mac Os and both had significant risks in at least 1 of the tests it failed.

Now on Friday I have this system I am working on and we did a backup and had to restore. The backup was before we made an account for me so after the restore I had to create an account for me on a system where there is no root login (Ubuntu doesn't let you log in as root in the default configuration, to compromise it you have to compromise a user account and then the root account) but through the magic of being at the terminal I created my own account.

This made some of the people watching comment that if it was so easy then why do they say Linux is secure. Because if you have physical access to the system it is easy to get into all of them, most have the access built in (Windows recovery mode for instance.)

You can make Linux not let you in by the recovery/single user mode but then just boot a live CD and edit the password and shadow files or on Windows boot a live cd and hack the registry with a Linux based Windows registry editor.

Mac probably the same as Linux as it is BSD.

Nothing is ever 100% secure but for what we can do Linux is the most secure OS out there. Period, full stop.

OK so there is a lot of inertia using Windows. People are used to it, they have programs they are used to using in Windows. Office apparently is a stumbling block although when people tell me libre-office won't do something I can usually find a way to do it easily.

Other people say, games, PC games need Windows don't they? Well, not since Steam went Linux.

So I wonder what excuse people will come up with next, it's too different from Windows? Well so is Windows 8.

There's no excuse now, just switch and be more secure.

Hand Sanitizers

Hand sanitizer gel, seems like a good idea, use it every time you might have gotten your hands onto a surface where viruses and bacteria might be. Unless you actually read the directions and the literature.
Hand sanitizer is supposed to be used if soap and water is not available. It's not a substitute for soap and water but a fallback only if soap and water is not available.
If you work in the food industry you aren't even supposed to use it, only soap and water, both Canadian and American guidelines state this.
It has also been shown in various studies that too much use of things like sanitizers leave children not exposed to enough bacteria and viruses to form proper immunity. Yeah kids need to get a bit dirty to grow up healthy. (link)
For me it is also a trigger for my lung condition and hurts almost as much as hot tar fumes and perfumes.
If you insist on using it please don't near me or anyone with lung conditions like asthma etc.

Watch out for the Polar Vortex (or not)

This blog is turning into the debunk what people are miss-calling things blog (or something like that...)
The current cold snap coming to most of North America (Except Manitoba which is always this cold...) has been described by not just a few as the polar vortex. Which is partly true but mostly just wrong.
Some people even in the weather community have been saying that this is caused by the polar vortex, and while it is involved it's not a vortex of cold are screaming southward like a tornado as some people seem to think.
Our world spins and has two poles. The south one has mountains and glaciers so the winds don't form as much at the pole itself but as a ring of storms and wind off of the edge of Antarctica as well as a tight polar vortex.
The north pole has just ocean, aptly named the arctic ocean, where the winds form a tighter circle around the pole. This is the northern polar vortex; it keeps the coldest arctic air bottle up at the pole. And while it is stable it just whips around the pole because of the spin of the earth, sort of, plus some other stuff like heat transfer from the south. Every once in a while every spinning thing breaks down. An interference wave caused by the land masses around the pole, Greenland for instance, and the weather there, cause the breakdown and this is what happened here, the vortex broke letting the cold air contained within to spill out.
When this happens the resulting southward moving air blasts through the warmer air and disrupts all kinds of things and can form into little low pressure vortex storms like what has hit the US east coast. These are not the polar vortex but the air that was once contained by the polar vortex. While they go south warm air has to replace it at the pole (warmer, not really all that warm) and then the next polar vortex forms and that air gets cold and eventually it all happens again.

Ice Quakes (Baddly named)

Lots of news about ice quakes lately but what are they you ask?
When it gets cold the water in the top layers of ground freeze. Typically in Ontario this is the top 2 or 3 feet of soil. This is why you have to put posts, concrete footings and the like down 3 feet or so (depending on your local municipality rules and codes.)
When it gets really cold after a wet spell this water freezes fast and water expands when it freezes. The resulting expansion of the soil causes it to buckle and heave causing the "quakes."
They are generally very localized and multiple reports from an area will be for multiple ice quakes which are too small and being in only the top 3 feet of soil won't affect much of an area. On a lake the cracks can be miles long but in soil the variability of the soil tends to make them shorter and while they can be noisy if right beside your house generally harmless.
The scientific name for the phenomenon is cryoseism, also called frost quakes.
This has nothing to do with earth quakes as they are in the rock and not the soil. Earth quakes are caused by the bedrock or lower rock layers moving or buckling due to plate tectonics (generally but that's another post later.)
Freezing the surface layer of soil does not affect earth quakes nor do earth quakes generally affect ice quakes as they do not have a common factor in their cause.
What would be cool would be any one who has pictures of the results of an ice quake near them to post the images to Google plus and link them in the comments.