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The Cost of Computer Naivete
wiredog writes "What happens when you put an unprotected Windows 98 box on a broadband connection? Two perspectives from two reporters for the Washington Post (frr,yyy): The User's " an odyssey that has taken $800 and roughly 48 man-hours over nearly three weeks" and Digital Doctor's "Her PC was in such bad shape, it required 10 1/2 hours of surgery to restore it to working condition.""
Geez... it takes 10 1/2 hours to install Linux these days? Have all distributions gone the way of Gentoo?
Whatever happened to:
Format, fdisk, re-install do da, do da?
Pull all the useful data off onto a spare disk and clean the machine. Just don't be like my neighbor, and wipe, then install your new os on the spare disk.
=================
Unix is very user friendly, it's just picky about who its friends are.
I read Why? WHY? WHY?!?
Mac OS 7 secure and stable as ever.
I wanted to take a 98(non-second edition) box, no patches, no firewall, and no updates and visit a frew pr0n sites with IE, and see how much I could get it to be 0wned with spyware, plugins, popups, etc before it was rendered unsuable. Make it a competition to see how quickly it would bring the system down.
The screenshots would have been hilarious. If I only had VMware.
"This repair will take 40 hours Cap'n and not a minute less!"
"Scotty, you have 10 and a half."
"Aye sir, I'll do my best!"
(10.5 hours go by...)
"Scotty, I need that computer working NOW."
"Almost done Cap'n."
"Scotty...."
"There! Now Cap'n!"
"You're a miracle worker Scotty."
So are they naive because they let their computer get that bad or because they paid a ridiculous amount of money to fix it?
If you wanted to be really fair, I could say that I could put my Commodore 128 on the Internet and let anyone who telnets to it run anything they damned well please, and I still wouldn't have problems...
connection: Cover your ethernet chord with a prophalctic(sp?). Of course, you block out all the interesting stuff on the internet along with the bad stuff, but that is the price one must pay to sleep with a dirty whore!
The user here was probably the type of person that would love to see pics from MyParty! (.zip file attached)
I think Jane should spend that $100 on some bottles of decent wine, instead of that crappy box wine.
...they want their operating system back.
Yes, or if you work in a relatively big office, your system admins do all that for you.
Constans sys admin on your box running Windows. Its a match made in the fires of hell.
In short, YES.
Rebooting your PC from crashed applications and drivers is normal. Get used to it. When Microsoft decides to stop supporting a given OS and all other newer ones require better hardware, then YES you should be forced to upgrade both the OS and the computer too.
"I'm sorry, that's just the way it is." But look over here! Isn't that "Clippy" entertaining?
After extensive police trials of medieval armour they found that the chain mail did not provide enough protection against 9mm rounds. Though the full plate mail suits did provide adaquete protection many policemen were unable to actually move.
To be fair, if you installed a stock version of Slackware from 1996 on the net, without a firewall, you would be subject to known exploits...
Oh, CRAP!! (runs from room to find server and power switch)
"Rocky Rococo, at your cervix!"
That's right, Windows XP definately has a lower Total Cost of 0wnership.
"Every man is a mob, a chain gang of idiots." - Jonathan Nolan, Memento Mori
I can't find it in the Start menu! Hay-ulp!
My other processor is big-endian.
That's kinda what I was saying while trying to get moderated as "funny" at the same time. I hope it works because I'm a karma whore.
[Jeff Goldblum voice] There is no step 2. There is no step 2!
Protect your browser with the Force Safe Search add-on
No it goes like this:
Tech: Where's your backup?
Client: Back what?
Tech: Backup.
Client:What up?
Tech: Backup.
Client What what?
Tech: Never mind.
12:50 - press return.
Q: What's the difference between a used-car salesman and a computer salesman?
A: The used-car salesman knows when he's lying.
John