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The Impact of Technophobes
fsharp writes "Most of us have experience with average folks requesting technical support. I have friends and family members that would be lost without my support. I opt for a sliding scale payment plan, usually dinner. At any rate, The New York Times has a nice piece on the impact of technophobes on the Internet (vis-a-vis MyDoom and other email-borne viruses) and their technologically adept friends and family."
alright, I won't reply! Ha!
Well, considering the hatred for the US, once you start punishing acquaintances, then you may as well nuke the middle east. Seems many are associated in one form or another with terrorists. The thing to do is to modify our foriegn policy and just punish the actual terrorists instead of going down the slippery slope of acquaintance punishment.
My best friend is in a methadone clinic, does that make me a junky?
ymmv
This is why computer types hate people.
the preceding comment is my own and in no way reflects the opinion of the Joint Chiefs of Staff
every time i see this argument i cringe. it's simply not true. gee you send me an attachment in mac os x. pardon me while i open a terminal, chmod it to +x, and then run it with ./command. that's assuming you sent a plain binary. consider the same with a mac Folder.app. just to test this, i took an application and sent it to myself as an attachment. apple's mail.app automatically zips the .app (since you can't send folders). so the average user would have to unzip and then run it. clicking the attachment say: Warning, this attachment is an application. since applications can contain viruses or be harmful to your computer, be sure this attachment is from a trustworhty sender before saving or opening it. that sounds a hell of a lot more cautionary than outlook express and outlook.
i don't know if you're getting the trend here, but it's a LOT harder to quickly run an application sent as an attachment in os x. enough to the point that most users won't impulse run something.
even after all this, the most viruses on os x can do is wipe files you own. granted this could mean all your personal files, this does not mean your system folder or other user's home folders which are safe.
- tristan
Most of the non-technies I know are pro-outsourcing to India due to the illusion they will save money on their ISP or support bills. After the market has demonstrated that this practice does absolutely nothing for the end-user experience, since the suppply and demand metric is what controls prices. Show me one ISP or software company that's dropped it's prices since this practice began.
But I digress, I've all but quit helping people due to this broad attitude of "too bad for them".
I'm small, yes. But I'm bitter and angry, so screw 'em. They can talk to the Indians. >:-O