Tell him to get Norton Antivirus 2004. Keep auto-update and auto-protect turned on and his dumb ass will never have a problem with viruses.
Don't click "Yes" when a website says to install "SuperTerrific HappyFun Software!" and his dumb ass will never have a problem with malware. And if he is dumb enough to click "Yes" run SpyBot or AdAware.
This shit isn't hard. People just need some serious beatings with the ClueStick.
Windows9x sucks, but since Win2k the biggest threat to the platform is the dumbass sitting at the keyboard.
No, tell us how you really feel....
Today I downloaded Firebird for my peecee at work because I would rather have viruses on a system I like than one I hated.
I work at a university so they lock down their system pretty hard but I think I can ride this one out..."How many patches are you running to covers IE's arse?"
At a game company I worked at a couple of years ago we were hit by the latest windows virus/trojan/worm. The thing would trash the contents of files one by one starting from the root of the c drive. It clobbered about a thousand files on my machine and others before it was caught.
No one even blinked.
I wanted to stand up on my desk and scream at the entire office. Microsoft has lowered the bar on what most computer users think is normal to such a low level that all the people I know who have peecees just accept the situation.
One of my neighbors across the street got a dell laptop for email and web browsing. She got a peecee because one of her friends is a 'peecee' guy. She got infected with some virus and spent days reinstalling the os and hours and hours on the phone with dell. She finally asked me for help. I asked her why the hell did she buy a peecee for email and web browsing when she could have just gotten a cheap iMac and avoid the nightmare of wintel. Of course her peecee guy friend was nowhere to be found.
I could go on and on with stories of friends with peecees and their nightmare stories.
Net message boards and media sources are full of diehard wintel fanatics spreading the microsoft 'party line' on viruses.
1) It's your own damn fault if you get infected
2) All computers get viruses, not just windows
3) All the viruses on windows is just because it's so 'popular'
Which is fine for people engaged in platform wars, but it's really sad when so many everyday people who just want to turn their computer on and check their email are caught up in such a mess.
I know a lot of mac/linux/bsd/etc. users have fun crowing about microsoft bugs everytime one is discovered, but I can't say that I have too many problems. My windows machine runs Win2k, IE & outlook. I've been on the 'net since the early 90's and have been hit by 1 virus & no trojans or worms. It was because a friend ran an executable somebody sent him on IRC, while I wasn't paying attention. I finally got a virus scanner about a year ago and it auto-updates once a day or week or something. I also log into my admin account every few weeks and windows update patches while I'm doing whatever I logged in to do.
I also work at State Farm Insurance's support dept. Somebody claimed we operate the largest microsoft network (>100,000 Win PC's). I personally haven't heard of any problems caused by msblaster, sobig, or the other RPC variants.
My anecdotes aren't proof of anything, but all windows users don't spend all day patching and virus scanning.
My anecdotes aren't proof of anything, but all windows users don't spend all day patching and virus scanning.
Your right about that. But the fact that sometimes they have to is ridiculous. I wouldn't put up with all the crap that the wintell world dishes out as normal for a computer. If the world could only see how much better life is with a Mac. My grandma uses an older iMac, she had never worked anything harder than a toaster before she got the computer and she was up and running, sufing like a pro, and worlds of other things within 2 weeks. Just goes to show...Macs rule.
Just a little side note, my bro has never gotten a virus, but he is afaraid that with a few other people in the family using his computer while he is at work and in class that he may get one.
A robust security policy works with things as they are. As things are, most people simply set things up and use them (including, hilariously, a vault in Los Alamos that stored the secrets of the US nuclear weapons program - they never changed the combination on the lock from the factory default!). You can call this dumb, you can rail at the lack of vigilance by whomever, but at the end of the day two things are clear:
1) From a simply factual standpoint, people don't go installing this and that and checking some webpage weekly to see if they're all patched up; (and it's easy to act as if these patches are all innocent and harmless, but MS is terrible about rolling in all kinds of other stuff with security updates in order to force software "upgrades" and changes to the EULA);
2) From a user-friendliness standpoint, why should people have to do it at all? It's possible to ship a robust OS - not perfect, but robust; it's possible to set the defaults with security in mind at the factory; and it's possible to send out well-tested security updates that don't carry any other baggage. MS does none of these things, and the followup chorus of "blame the user!" is just sad. Especially since MS itself has been caught running servers that hadn't been completely patched up.
It gets worse: Someone used a buffer overflow in MS Outlook to break into Valve Software's servers and steal the source code to Half Life 2. The hack was customized for the job, so it eluded antivirus software detection.
Is this Valve's fault? The MS party line says yes, of course. Microsoft has no responsibility whatsoever, and you should be thankful that they deigned to update Windows at all.
I think PCs lots of issues, from security to reliability. That said, I don't think it serves anybody to overblow their PC horror stories, because a reasonable person is going to see right through it. I hope that the Mac faithful can convince the world that its better, because, as a software developer, I'm stuck on the PC. But I'm not holding my breath.
I honestly believe you have to be computer-stupid or amazingly lazy to get a virus. It takes almost zero effort at all.
Perhaps you shouldn't be so quick to pass sweeping judgments.
If you read the description of how this trojan works, you'd see that all a user would have to do is visit a web page, or view an e-mail, or play a song -- WITHOUT ACTIVELY OPENING ANY ATTACHMENTS -- and he or she could become infected. This is NOT an "Oh, gee! Somebody loves me! I'll double-click on this love letter!" kind of attack that gets people too dumb to know they shouldn't do that.
You could be diligently running Windows Update every hour and still be completely vulnerable during the window of opportunity between when a hacker finds this kind of security hole and when Microsoft finds the hole and issues a patch for it.
You could be diligently running Windows Update every hour and still be completely vulnerable during the window of opportunity between when a hacker finds this kind of security hole and when Microsoft finds the hole and issues a patch for it.
You can also be vulnerable after the patch, since MS has released patches that didn't completely solve the problem.
Or, the patch could hose your machine or applications in some way.
The bottom line is that "ship first, patch later" is a stupid, user-hostile, and largely ineffectual security policy. The more work you require the user to do, the less effective it is. The more crap you shoehorn in with the patch that addresses the security issue, the less effective it is. If you're trying to patch an OS that was designed for convenience over security, it's borderline miraculous for any measures to be effective at all.
Our IT guy and his staff are on top of all this. They keep us all patched up and firewalled, and keep all our virus definitions up-to-the-minute. Their hours and hours of effort have paid off so far. But it's hours and hours of effort, and many late Saturday nights, to do a lot of thankless and essentially redundant work that MS could have obviated with much less exertion on their part, when they had the chance to. I can't help wondering how much more we'd get done if he didn't spend so much time just keeping the machines running.
Using Windows Update on my sister's PC was amusing. It starts off from a local webpage, but insists on running the Internet Connection wizard before allowing you to proceed to the web site. The wizard bombs, due to insufficient memory (Win98 should run fine on after a clean installation, never happened in the past on the same machine/CD, etc...). I had to use Mozilla (downloaded on another machine) to download IE6 . After that it worked fine: 12MB of Windows patches later and it was up to date.
I'm currently installing the latest Mac OS X Java/10.2.8 patches: 80MB in total! :eek:
I have been hit with 1 virus in my life, it's when I was on a Mac.
99% of the freaking out about viruses and security issues isn't about actual infections/break-ins. Our IT department damn near shut down the entire UT network in response to the Blaster worm, which NO ONE was infected with.
Up here at UT Dallas we got slammed by that worm. A faculty member brought a laptop to work that already had the worm on it, thus bypassing all our security. Joy.
Up here at UT Dallas we got slammed by that worm. A faculty member brought a laptop to work that already had the worm on it, thus bypassing all our security. Joy.
Heh. That happened repeatedly at a certain Very Large Company That I Will Not Name. Some friends who work there estimate 80,000 to 90,000 infected machines, and the problem was exacerbated by people bringing their laptops in.
Whee!
Blaster also shut down all the PCs at the university hospital here. (One more vindication of that giant IBM box holding all the important data in the basement.)
Users -- even smart users -- on occasion do dumb things. (And even smart people can be dumb users.) That's life. Blaming viruses and security problems on the user is pretty sad IMO.
Until MS ships Windows with ports turned off, I don't think it's FUD for Apple to run an aggressive campaign for Macs stressing security.
It's entirely possible to run 2000/XP at all times and avoid being infected with hardly any effort. In fact, I've been all over the web since ~'94, and I've only been infected twice...although I'm definitely more in touch with how my computer works than the rest of the countless hordes who run Windows. I know that's 2 times too many, but still. 95-Me were absolute crap in terms of stability, but Microsoft's newer NT-based operating systems have improved quite a bit. I'm quite impressed with what some of their programmers have been able to get out of NT's core, as they're building on an OS that's an absolute mess. I feel pretty sorry for them. MS needs to finish Longhorn and start from scratch.
Well I'm a brand new switcher with a 15" albook. I just laugh now thinking of the recent Microsoft patch FOR A PREVIOUS PATCH. Seriously. They have to repair their repairs. Sigh...
I don?t have enough money for a mac and pc setup, so I chose a pc (that was back in the day before OS X., I?m getting an iBook next year for university) mostly for games, ease of piracy. Up to this very day I haven?t had a single virus/Trojan? Maybe if people stopped using Kazza and surfing porn, they would get less viruses. I don?t use silly old Norton, because its useless. I got a Firewall, and that?s sufficient security for me.
So that I don?t get booed for using a pc, I run win 2k / Linux RedHat 7.8, and have a Macintosh Classic II
Well I'm a brand new switcher with a 15" albook. I just laugh now thinking of the recent Microsoft patch FOR A PREVIOUS PATCH. Seriously. They have to repair their repairs. Sigh...
Comments
Originally posted by groverat
Tell him ...
Damn, I wish I had said that.
Originally posted by groverat
Tell him to get Norton Antivirus 2004. Keep auto-update and auto-protect turned on and his dumb ass will never have a problem with viruses.
Don't click "Yes" when a website says to install "SuperTerrific HappyFun Software!" and his dumb ass will never have a problem with malware. And if he is dumb enough to click "Yes" run SpyBot or AdAware.
This shit isn't hard. People just need some serious beatings with the ClueStick.
Windows9x sucks, but since Win2k the biggest threat to the platform is the dumbass sitting at the keyboard.
No, tell us how you really feel....
Today I downloaded Firebird for my peecee at work because I would rather have viruses on a system I like than one I hated.
I work at a university so they lock down their system pretty hard but I think I can ride this one out..."How many patches are you running to covers IE's arse?"
No one even blinked.
I wanted to stand up on my desk and scream at the entire office. Microsoft has lowered the bar on what most computer users think is normal to such a low level that all the people I know who have peecees just accept the situation.
One of my neighbors across the street got a dell laptop for email and web browsing. She got a peecee because one of her friends is a 'peecee' guy. She got infected with some virus and spent days reinstalling the os and hours and hours on the phone with dell. She finally asked me for help. I asked her why the hell did she buy a peecee for email and web browsing when she could have just gotten a cheap iMac and avoid the nightmare of wintel. Of course her peecee guy friend was nowhere to be found.
I could go on and on with stories of friends with peecees and their nightmare stories.
Net message boards and media sources are full of diehard wintel fanatics spreading the microsoft 'party line' on viruses.
1) It's your own damn fault if you get infected
2) All computers get viruses, not just windows
3) All the viruses on windows is just because it's so 'popular'
Which is fine for people engaged in platform wars, but it's really sad when so many everyday people who just want to turn their computer on and check their email are caught up in such a mess.
Originally posted by Ernest eMac
And the person who wrote the virus is innocent?
I meant the vulnerability is Microsoft's fault.
I also work at State Farm Insurance's support dept. Somebody claimed we operate the largest microsoft network (>100,000 Win PC's). I personally haven't heard of any problems caused by msblaster, sobig, or the other RPC variants.
My anecdotes aren't proof of anything, but all windows users don't spend all day patching and virus scanning.
Originally posted by xmoger
My anecdotes aren't proof of anything, but all windows users don't spend all day patching and virus scanning.
Your right about that. But the fact that sometimes they have to is ridiculous. I wouldn't put up with all the crap that the wintell world dishes out as normal for a computer. If the world could only see how much better life is with a Mac. My grandma uses an older iMac, she had never worked anything harder than a toaster before she got the computer and she was up and running, sufing like a pro, and worlds of other things within 2 weeks. Just goes to show...Macs rule.
Just a little side note, my bro has never gotten a virus, but he is afaraid that with a few other people in the family using his computer while he is at work and in class that he may get one.
Spyware programs will find tracking cookies, so finding 36 isn't a big deal. If it was stuff like Gator... you installed it.
It's kind of hard for Microsoft to prevent people from being dumbasses.
1) From a simply factual standpoint, people don't go installing this and that and checking some webpage weekly to see if they're all patched up; (and it's easy to act as if these patches are all innocent and harmless, but MS is terrible about rolling in all kinds of other stuff with security updates in order to force software "upgrades" and changes to the EULA);
2) From a user-friendliness standpoint, why should people have to do it at all? It's possible to ship a robust OS - not perfect, but robust; it's possible to set the defaults with security in mind at the factory; and it's possible to send out well-tested security updates that don't carry any other baggage. MS does none of these things, and the followup chorus of "blame the user!" is just sad. Especially since MS itself has been caught running servers that hadn't been completely patched up.
It gets worse: Someone used a buffer overflow in MS Outlook to break into Valve Software's servers and steal the source code to Half Life 2. The hack was customized for the job, so it eluded antivirus software detection.
Is this Valve's fault? The MS party line says yes, of course. Microsoft has no responsibility whatsoever, and you should be thankful that they deigned to update Windows at all.
Originally posted by groverat
I honestly believe you have to be computer-stupid or amazingly lazy to get a virus. It takes almost zero effort at all.
Perhaps you shouldn't be so quick to pass sweeping judgments.
If you read the description of how this trojan works, you'd see that all a user would have to do is visit a web page, or view an e-mail, or play a song -- WITHOUT ACTIVELY OPENING ANY ATTACHMENTS -- and he or she could become infected. This is NOT an "Oh, gee! Somebody loves me! I'll double-click on this love letter!" kind of attack that gets people too dumb to know they shouldn't do that.
You could be diligently running Windows Update every hour and still be completely vulnerable during the window of opportunity between when a hacker finds this kind of security hole and when Microsoft finds the hole and issues a patch for it.
Originally posted by shetline
You could be diligently running Windows Update every hour and still be completely vulnerable during the window of opportunity between when a hacker finds this kind of security hole and when Microsoft finds the hole and issues a patch for it.
You can also be vulnerable after the patch, since MS has released patches that didn't completely solve the problem.
Or, the patch could hose your machine or applications in some way.
The bottom line is that "ship first, patch later" is a stupid, user-hostile, and largely ineffectual security policy. The more work you require the user to do, the less effective it is. The more crap you shoehorn in with the patch that addresses the security issue, the less effective it is. If you're trying to patch an OS that was designed for convenience over security, it's borderline miraculous for any measures to be effective at all.
Our IT guy and his staff are on top of all this. They keep us all patched up and firewalled, and keep all our virus definitions up-to-the-minute. Their hours and hours of effort have paid off so far. But it's hours and hours of effort, and many late Saturday nights, to do a lot of thankless and essentially redundant work that MS could have obviated with much less exertion on their part, when they had the chance to. I can't help wondering how much more we'd get done if he didn't spend so much time just keeping the machines running.
I'm currently installing the latest Mac OS X Java/10.2.8 patches: 80MB in total! :eek:
Originally posted by groverat
I have been hit with 1 virus in my life, it's when I was on a Mac.
99% of the freaking out about viruses and security issues isn't about actual infections/break-ins. Our IT department damn near shut down the entire UT network in response to the Blaster worm, which NO ONE was infected with.
Up here at UT Dallas we got slammed by that worm. A faculty member brought a laptop to work that already had the worm on it, thus bypassing all our security. Joy.
Originally posted by Whisper
Up here at UT Dallas we got slammed by that worm. A faculty member brought a laptop to work that already had the worm on it, thus bypassing all our security. Joy.
Heh. That happened repeatedly at a certain Very Large Company That I Will Not Name. Some friends who work there estimate 80,000 to 90,000 infected machines, and the problem was exacerbated by people bringing their laptops in.
Whee!
Blaster also shut down all the PCs at the university hospital here. (One more vindication of that giant IBM box holding all the important data in the basement.)
Until MS ships Windows with ports turned off, I don't think it's FUD for Apple to run an aggressive campaign for Macs stressing security.
So that I don?t get booed for using a pc, I run win 2k / Linux RedHat 7.8, and have a Macintosh Classic II
Originally posted by sunrein
Well I'm a brand new switcher with a 15" albook. I just laugh now thinking of the recent Microsoft patch FOR A PREVIOUS PATCH. Seriously. They have to repair their repairs. Sigh...
You missed the 10.2.8 update story then?
Originally posted by Ernest eMac
You missed the 10.2.8 update story then?
A rare and isolated incident. That can't hold a candle to MS' shenanigans.