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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.""
(Yeah I know, fair to Microsoft... on Slashdot!)
Windows 98 is 6 years old and isn't sold with computers anymore. This test just shows remaining Windows 98 users they should keep up to date or upgrade to XP.
Boxing Equipment Reviews
Anyone that takes that long to backup a hard disk, reinstall Windows 98, some office apps and maybe Quicken,and then copy the data back on should be fired. This is the work of "consultants".
"Her PC was in such bad shape, it required 10 1/2 hours of surgery to restore it to working condition."
It takes me a lot shorter to install Win98 on a box and that includes saving any or all documents.
1.5 hours tops.
This is the sig that says NI (again)
Very few machines are worth 10.5 hours for me. Factoring in labor, I can save a lot of money by saving the data elsewhere then FDisking and reinstalling the OS. Even considering windows install time, program install time, and configuration, I don't have 10.5 hours in it and the user probably has a less glitchy machine for it.
How many roads must a man walk down? 42.
While Apple's track record on security isn't perfect, I hope she'll realize that she has these problems because she chooses to use Microsoft products. That it's a choice is debateable, given MSFT's documented predatory practices. However, it's ultimately up to her to stand up to the monopoly, since the government refused to.
If she buys an Apple Mac computer next time, she will have a computer that functions better, works better, and breaks much more rarely than her current Windows computer. It's simple, really.
(Me, I use Debian GNU/Linux because I value the freedom that is in Debian's goals. I recognize that Apple shares to some degree these goals, looking at its KHTML-based Safari goals.)
Flame me, since many of you will, but consider that whether you blame the creators of Gator, Microsoft, or worm writers, she would have a better experience on a Mac.
"choice"
|/usr/games/fortune
'Surgery' is a little misleading since it suggests hardware damage was incurred. If I was determined to use a metaphor, I'd go for 'therapy' :)
Prosperity is only an instrument to be used, not a deity to be worshipped. Calvin Coolidge
I find it interesting (and a little frightening) how otherwise educated people (reporters, for instance) can be so clueless in critical areas. Is this inevitable for people?
And yes, I do consider basic computer literacy a critical skill; your computer is not just an appliance. Letting your computer get 0wned is much like letting your car run out of oil.
----
"Ours was a free culture. It is becoming much less so."-Lawrence Lessig
Consider a hypothetical Win98 user. For the sake of argument call her 'my mum'. She runs a Pentium II-450 and uses it for email, word processing, web browsing and very occasional other bits of office. The computer runs all these tasks fine, but it really isn't powerful enough to run XP. Windows 2000 would make life better, but it will go out of support soon and if you worry about getting legal copies, it's not available in a home edition so it's very expensive. Windows ME can hardly be called an improvement.
So you're saying people in this position need to spend money to upgrade their hardware despite the fact that the current computer runs all the software they want to run at a speed they find acceptable.
Yes I know; install Linux.
In soviet russia stale jokes recycle you!
I seem to get a call from some family member every few weeks where their computer is unusable due to viruses/spyware/adware...
Basically what happens is I spend at least an hour or two, (but not 10-1/2), removing programs, installing programs like Adaware, Spybot, ZoneAlarm (or make them buy a NAT device) and some decent Antivirus software.
What happens if you put a six year old piece of software that was never designed for always on networking on broadband?
Or an unpatched version of XP - which is now 3 years old?
What happens if you go on holidays and leave your all you doors and windows open, and you change your answering machine message to "Hi, we're out and we won't be back for ages. Help yourself to whatever you need!"?
This is all Microsoft's fault.
I bet he didn't check the hosts file. I bet that was null routing the liveupdate DNS records.
Once the infections were removed, LiveUpdate still could not retrieve the latest virus-targeting data. So I gave up on that and uninstalled and reinstalled the entire Norton AntiVirus program, hoping that its update system would work afterward -- but it did not. I again tried to access Microsoft's Windows Update Web site, but IE still failed to respond.
Suspecting a problem with Internet Explorer itself, I tried to repair IE using the Add/Remove Programs control panel. That didn't work either, producing an error message that indicated some file or files necessary for IE were damaged or inaccessible. Trying to restore the previous version of IE, 5.5, yielded no benefit, either.
Finally, I abandoned ship, reinstalling the entire Windows 98 operating system to repair the damage to Internet Explorer and allow Kathleen's computer to access the Internet and update the Norton AntiVirus definitions.
I always check that file. It always gets hijacked. I'd be willing to bet that was his problem.
There are quicker methods.
Drive C: contains a valid NTFS partion, are you sure you wish to format (y/N) y.
From the article:
"What a revelation: Four programs -- one a firewall and three to combat spyware -- I downloaded FREE worked better than one I paid through the nose for. Why would anyone create these terrific programs for free? Often, as in the case of ZoneAlarm, they hope people will like the product so much they will buy an upgrade or, in the case of the spyware, pay to subscribe for upgrades."
She was right in the middle of the trees, and couldn't see the forest... yes, free software, even WINDOWS free software, works better and does what it says it does.
Talk about leading horses to water...
"...More important, everybody selling to home users -- Microsoft, hardware manufacturers, software developers and retailers -- needs to do a better job of informing customers of the risks and potential problems of Internet access."
I don't know why Apple doesn't pick up this ball and run like hell with it.
Most of the people I know that run 98, 2000 or XP just assume that ANY computer OS, Windows or Mac has the same internet "experience", but it just costs more to have the same crappy "experience" on a Mac.
I like microcars
For example, a tax accountant would probably think you clueless if you ended up having a big tax bill on April 15. Paying your taxes properly is a critical skill, since everyone has to do it.
Or a doctor would think you clueless if your cholesterol was over 200. It's (usually) quite simple to keep your blood cholesterol low.
Unless it has happened to them or someone they know, most computer users are unaware of things like spyware, virii, etc.
bun-fhuinneog agam!
The ISPs are pushing broadband -- hard -- and should be responsible for either providing a HW firewall with their DSL/cable modem or at least educating their customers that they need to install one.
I felt the same way when the AOLers discovered Usenet years ago. AOL brought them here, so AOL should teach them netiquette.
Also, broadband ISPs should register their dynamic IPs at SORBS.
It's not a Windows problem, it's a PC enduser problem. The domain technical contact is ultimately responsible for his users.
Firstly, installing "everything" on a machine, including Office and other big application suites, on a 400MHz machine, with (very likely) a slow HDD, will take ages. Secondly, what if, for some reason, you can't just reinstall everything? In your case(s), you say you frequently just reformat and start from scratch, but do your customers provide you with the licensed software, or the CD keys of the software you need to install? And what if those are lost, and repairing is the only option?
-- Sig down
10.5hours?! Man oh man.. the way I look at it is like this:
.. Going back to sys admin 101, if a box is owned, you have to restore it from trusted media.
.. bwhahhahah.. I can't even type it with a straight face. :)
If spyware, viruses, etc get on a machine, it is effective "0wn3d"
Granted, since I can't make a distro of Win98 (with all the upgraded patches, Office, etc) and reduce the re-install time from the 3hrs+ of most-of-the-time sitting at the computer hitting "next" or rebooting (seriously, the time it takes to backup data, format, reinstall Windows, upgrade patches, install applications, reinstall virus/spyware scanned data, install additional protection measures and configure (spywareblaster, virus scanner, firewall, firefox, yada yada) then I tend to do the following:
Run spyware check & virus check (both run mostly unattended, can do other stuff) -- consider the box good. If there are outstanding issues, run a quick hardware diagnostic (unless symptoms make me believe it is the issue initially) and if it checks ok, then reinstall.
Microsoft could have made it a LOT easier if we as IT pros could make a reliable windows "distro" -- throw all the most-requested software on the disk, be able to install it virtually unattended and have it have an updated driver database so hardware installs, again, mostly unattended.
I do use ghosting/sysprep when possible, but there are some serious limitations that only make it feesible for certain situations (ie computer labs, standardized business desktops).
I suppose to an extent, it is job security, but I'd rather spend my time building solutions, than fixing Microsoft's issues. Oh wait, WinXP SP2 will fix all that
I deal with these problems everyday and I can clean a computer that bad in about 2 hours. This is one subject all IT computer guys need to get on the band wagon. It is getting worse. The necessary tools to fix all these problems are these. (I'm sure there are some other tools as well.) 1) Spybot 1.3 2) Adware 6.0 3) HijackThis 4) CWShredder, Kill2Me, CWS Mini Removal tool. 5) VX2Finder 6) LSPFix or Winsock XP 7) Good virus scanner (AVG, Panda, Trend) 8) Learn how to identify registry entries for manual deletion. 9) Always clean out Temporary Internet Files and some Temp files and turn off Restore on XP/ME computers. 10) Repeat steps when necessary.
Techy Nerds generally have poor social, interpersonal skills. This is the largest factor causing the destruction of their IT industry through outsourcing.
:-)
Doctors have Unions, called the AMA. Unions provide "Congress" protection. Dentists have Unions, called the ADA. Their Unions protect their industry by limiting enrollment and limiting both OUTsourcing and INsourcing. There are plenty of willing foreign Doctors prevented to emigrate to the U.S. to alleviate the high costs of Medical.
Doctors and Dentists are smart. They have Congress protection. They have social skills.
Techies and Nerds are stupid. They have poor personal skills. They have poor Congress protection. Hence, Congress screws their IT industry because they can. No protection. No Union. No AMA or ADA for Techies.
This is the cost of Techy naivete. It's the systematic destruction of their industry and jobs through OUTsourcing and INsourcing and Mass Immigration.
Outsource Congress this November.
Score & Karma: SASA: Slashdot Approval Seekers Anonymous
I used a win98 box as my game machine for a good while. Just through normal use, the damn thing would degrade over the course of a year and become sluggish and erratic. Grant you, I'm using it like a 15 dollar ho, but that's not acceptable. (I've still got the comp, and its running RedHat8, and STILL getting slapped around, and it's got an uptime of 108 days (Power failure). Vive la differance.)
The secret is to keep a data drive and a OS drive, and when it ends up in the shitter (as it will, without a doubt), copy your data and reinstall. Sure, you can screw with the registry and a vast array of tools that claim they'll fix your computer...But trust me, they're a waste of time. A clean 98 install is good for 6 to 8 months of only minor suckitude.
Even better to make a ghost image of a good install, and then restore it whenever you need to.
ad logicam Claiming a proposition is false because it was presented as the conclusion of a fallacious argument.
Is it just me or should that guy be embarrassed to admit that he took 10.5 hours to reinstall an OS and a security suite? I realize that he took the long way to fix the issue. As far as I see it if ANYONE other then the client has had root on a box you can't trust it. Ever. You need to reinstall from known good media and start over.
But maybe that is just me.
Not the point. If the customer doesn't have backups of their work & you don't have easy access to some means of backing it up, you'll have to do it the hard way. (WTF are you doing such a job if you don't carry around a spare hard disk?!)
If the customer simply doesn't like the sound of rebuilding from scratch, you'll have to do it the hard way.
If the customer doesn't have access to original install media (and you're going to be a Good Little Tech and refuse to put pirated software on), you're going to have to do it the hard way.
> Is it just me or should that guy be embarrassed to admit that he took 10.5 hours to reinstall an OS and a security suite?
Embarrassed? If he was charging $45/hour he should be bragging about it.
Sheesh, evil *and* a jerk. -- Jade
I find it interesting (and a little frightening) how otherwise educated people (reporters, for instance) can be so clueless in critical areas.
I find it much more interesting how clueless the parent is. If he read the article he would have seen that the user did have computer literacy, with at least basic trouble shooting skills. The problem is that it is not easy to keep a windows box clean from any malware. MS (and others) need to be make it easier for users to protect their PCs (which, by the way, is the point of SP2). Computers should just work correctly, without users having to work very hard.
We in the computer industry need to all work toward this goal. Computers are tools to make things easier; they shouldn't make peoples' lives more difficult.
Long ago, an early Mac ad compared itself to the IBM PC by dropping the corresponding manuals next to each machine. The Mac manual was light as a feather, the PC manual pile was 2 feet high. It was of course an exaggeration, but the point was valid.
I don't see how Apple can afford to not take advantage of the current spyware/security craziness occurring in the Windows world, and put out a ballsy ad along the same lines. Perhaps show each computer out of the box being plugged into a broadband connection, and on the Windows box, instantly a dozen windows pop up advertising things. Something along those lines.
I use both Macs and Windows all the time. My mom has a Mac, because I don't have time for the "family tech support" that her having a PC would require. She does complain about occasional problems with the Mac, but I have no doubt it would be at least 3 times as bad if she was running Windows.
Why didn't they spend $50 on a wireless router that includes a firewall? I guess it sounds like no one in her house owns a laptop, but if they did and could thereby benefit from the wireless access, this would have been a simple way to protect everything on the broadband connection.
Like Digital Freedoms? Then donate to EFF before they're gone.
The key difference is that when your Ford has a security recall, they'll patch/recall it even after the next model came out. If your car were like Windows, a couple years later Ford would be telling you to buy a new car because they stopped supporting the old one.
"If the customer doesn't have access to original install media (and you're going to be a Good Little Tech and refuse to put pirated software on), you're going to have to do it the hard way."
This is quite laughable. You will have more luck seeing little green men than a Windows "Good Little Tech" that does not have a trough full of pirated Windows software that they are not only willing to use but think it is almost silly not to.
I do this for a living. I work a regular job trading futures, but I've been playing with computers since I was 6 or so. It is the easiest money to make. I could charge tons, but I just charge around $100 bucks for 1-6 hours of work and usually people are so happy I make everything work that they give me food and beer.
It boils down to having a USB key with 5 programs. They all fit on a 16MB key. Sometimes if I know my client has a virus program ahead of time I will download the definitions, but not that often.
People's problems are always the same. Virus and spyware. I don't recommend that most people use a software firewall since everyone just gets click happy. I usually tell them to just get a router. I have yet to get a call back from any of my clients and each time I do see them they say they never have any problems. They also like the fact that the router is just a one time buy rather than constantly buying new software and upgrading. I know there are free programs out there, but most people just don't trust them (beats me why).
What I think is shocking is the fact that the PC tech apparently did not feel it necessary to wipe the OS and start from scratch. Both these articles perpetrate the dangerous notion that being r00ted is recoverable. Once a system has been compromised, there's no telling what other nasties reside therein.
This bit of info was sorely lacking from both articles.
A Pirate and a Puritan look the same on a balance sheet.
Why bother with Knoppix? Spend a short amount of time and you can make a boot floppy. It'll boot much faster when it's just disk/network drivers, bash/dd/mount, and your shell script.
First, the article says the guy came over in course of the next week and try to install Norton firewall, to no avail, and that the owner made some calls to M$ for like half an hour. Therefore the $800 paid for more than the 10 hrs of technician labor.
Second, as someone else pointed out in this thread, you do not expect a car to go on without maintenance. Come on, the computer is not a damn fridge. It is a COMPUTING device, and the Internet is a complex two-way medium, not a dumb TV set. If you do not take care of your car, you will end up with your thumb on the road. Same here. Tow-away and repairs.
So no, the technician did not act like a used car salesman. The dude just fixed a computer that was unusable.
"First, the article says the guy came over in course of the next week"
Right and a week to do an OS install is OK how?
"If you do not take care of your car, you will end up with your thumb on the road. Same here. Tow-away and repairs."
Right but the miss in your analogy is that the mechanic billed for 5 times the book repair time.
Or actually took 5 times as long as it should have taken. And if that is the case how is it the problem of the client that it took that long?
10.5 hours for an OS install? No way. For $800 the client could have gotten a new computer.
If the customer doesn't have access to original install media (and you're going to be a Good Little Tech and refuse to put pirated software on), you're going to have to do it the hard way.
If the person has a legal license for windows (assuming they had windows pre-installed, they would), is it still pirated if you use different media?
That sounds like a BSA stance, not a legal one.
JWall: GUI client for IPTables
What happens when you put an unprotected Windows 98 box on a broadband connection?
If you went back in time (say 1950's) and were able to peer into the future to 2004 and saw how users had to be "educated" in computer usage (install anti-virus, anti-spyware, OS fixes AND having to keep the whole mess updated), I would think the first thing that people would ask is "Can't the computer do it?"
Patching, fixing, protecting: it's a computer for crying out loud! Why shouldn't users be naive? Why should people be wasting their time learning how to fix something that shouldn't be broken in the first place?
Take a step back, and it seems totally absurd that people need to learn to protect an operating system so bad that it can't protect itself. I call that "sickly".
Ruby on Rails Screencast
Exactly. He should have spent 20 minutes backing up her crud and then a couple hours doing a reformat reinstall.
It would have been easier and by far the most intelligent course of action.
He should also be smacked in the head for not getting her off Windows 98. Windows 98 is 6+ years old. How many people here recommend 6 year old Linux distros?
Be happy. Nothing else matters.
Yes, you can de-0wn a rooted UNIX(tm) system. Microsoft has made it much more difficult with their own (lame-ass) file integrity controls.
Restoring a UNIX(tm) system is merely tedious. Compare the existing system to that last known good archive and/or OS distribution media. Any missing or new files should be inspected manually and restored or deleted as needed. (All of this is done from a different system, obviously.)
I have un-r00t3d several systems over the years. And I've burned down a number of windows boxes. Erasing a system and starting over is not always a good solution as it will often take longer to reinstall all the applications and personal data than it would to inspect the entire system. (Of course, if a virus scanner has found 23,000 infections in 30mins, it's best to take it out to a field and shoot it.)
"He should also be smacked in the head for not getting her off Windows 98. Windows 98 is 6+ years old. How many people here recommend 6 year old Linux distros?"
I sometimes use and sometimes reccommend Windows 98. It doesn't have the security problems of XP/2000 (no Windows Messenger, no LDASS or whatever that was, no remote assistance, no product activation, no media player with evil crap in it, you can update it without revealing the software you use to Microsoft, the EULA doesn't allow Microsoft to impose new terms on you in the future, nor does it allow them to remotely install software on your machine. It's not as stable, but it only needs to run for long enough to play a game; nobody would be using Windows for any real work anyway, and you can dual-boot back to a proper operating system when you've finished playing the game.
Oh yeah, and "flamebait" is the button you want to press. Reccomending windows98 indeed! Don't I know that the moderators are all MS guys, with their "if you administered a billion computers for a fortune-500 company like I do, you'd know..." attitude.
I was shocked that a search fo Mozilla came up empty. Simply switching to Firefox and making some descent security choices prevents all sorts of spyware. This is something that our reporter can actually do proactively, if only she gets the word. The other useful tool is the Thunderbird Email client. Remove MSIE and Outlook (Express or regular) and you stop all sorts of spyware and virii. Thow in a cheap router with firewall (as others have stated) and some antivirus software and you will have a reasonable chance of being able to use high speed Internet with a Win98 box.
Think global, act loco
Is it me, or is anybody who doesn't install a basic hardware firewall crazy??? (Or at least foolhardy.)
I've setup DSL and T1s for lots of small companies and friends, and I always install a seperate firewall unit. Post-rebate, these things are sometimes $10 or less. (I wouldn't use one of the $10 units for a business, but it works great for Aunt Petunia.)
With a hardware firewall, you don't need to jump onto WindowsUpdate immediately. And you can get to WindowsUpdate and update the system before your system gets compromised.
Sure, your system is still vulnerable to viruses (via email) and spyware (via stupid user clicking and IE vulnerabilties), but you are very unlikely to get rooted or infected for simply existing on the Internet.
(Firewalls can have security holes too, but they usually aren't so gaping.)
And here's another vote for Avast antivirus (www.avast.com). Great program and free (for home use). Better than some pay programs.
About that "Please insert the Win 98 cd" problem: Copy the contents of the \win98 directory to the hard drive. When any installer asks for the cd, point it to the hard drive files instead.
Anybody whose data is worth less than their computer is just using it as a toy. Regaining access to your data is of far greater value than making the stupid hardware run. If it was one of my computers, I'd happily pay the $800 (or even $8000) to get my data back, and *then* I'd ditch the "ancient piece of crap machine" and buy a new one.
(Well, actually, I keep distributed backups to avoid this problem, and use almost exclusively ancient piece of crap hardware since the machines themselves are irrelevant. So if it were my computer, I'd probably just spend the $800 on women and beer.)
The lusers don't care about security, they only care when their computers are slow... or actually they don't even care when their computers are slow, they only care about the computers not working at all!
So if you want to write spyware or viruses, make it efficient, and don't use too much computer resources. Nobody really minds running about a dozen rogue programmes on the PC if they don't prevent their browser and other Internet software from running. In reality, the thing that users don't like is adware, which replaces DNS or some other Internet services and prevents them from reaching their favourite Internet sites (even everywhere, that simply shows popups or replaces text on web pages with advertising is ok).
Future Wiki -- If you don't think about the future, you cannot have one.
So yeah blow away her software and replace her OS with Linux and then spend HOW much time installing products that might do what she needs? Then teaching her how to use them? Remember - this was someone who wasn't bright enough to know how to stop this crap in the first place.
:-)
Reinstalling the OS is also not always an option. Computers are much like people's homes in that they become heavily customized over time. Do you level your home and start over everytime the faucet leaks? Does everyone keep track of ALL of their registration keys? All of their passwords stored in cookies? All those tweaks to the interface and 3rd party products that do little things? All those funky drivers for oddball hardware from manufacturers no longer in business? From what I've seen hell NO they don't. Telling someone you have to trash their machine and that they have to reinstall from scratch will put many users in tears. I try VERY hard not to do it unless I absolutely have to. Besides, it's a challenge not to do it
I am now cleaning up machines just like the machines described several times a month. It takes me, on average, about 4-10 hours per machine and I'm pretty experienced at it too. Much of this time is spent kicking off automated programs, interpeting the output, and then cleaning out the crap. I have to do this with a second machine connected to the 'net just to research all of the TRASH I find on machines and sometimes to DL updates to USB fobs. There is even spyware out there that will disable virus scanners, disable Windows Update, and shut down many of the anti-spyware tools. It also doesn't help that these jerks have gone out and put up Web sites that look like they supply spyware cleaners that in reality install *drum roll* MORE SPYWARE! Some of this stuff even redirects searches for these products to bogus pages or to 404 errors. The scum of the Earth builds this stuff, how they actually make any money doing it is beyond me. The last machine I worked on had it's home page directed to an IP address that when visited actively ATTACKED the user's machine. It's tons of fun to finally get a machine back to working, hit MS Update, and find out that there are 35+ "critical" updates out there missed because a piece of crap turned off their update mechanism.
The folks getting hit with this are much like the article's author. They don't understand security, they run sub optimal machines, they refuse to update their AV products when they expire (MicroTrend's Housecall is a godsend as an initial check), and they let their kids download and install anything they want. When I get my hands on them they are fairly glowing chock full of nasty crap. I clean them and I don't charge but it sure as hell takes up alot of my time. I learn something just about each and every time though so I DO get something out of it...
Build it, Drive it, Improve it! Hybridz.org
Hear hear! For an inexperienced home user, Win98 is rather safer than 2K/XP. Its also much easier to grab files off of a FAT32 partition when it dies than to mess with getting the machine booted to a state where you can see the NTFS structure. Average users wind up being given root accounts on 2K and XP anyhow, simply because so much software requires it. 47 days is plenty of uptime for someone who only uses their computer a couple of hours a day tops.
"Because Science" is one step from "Because old book". Try "Because of my experiment testing my falsifiable assertion".
you sir , are why landfills are full
if it works why get a faster hotter computer , and polute the enviroment more ?
Type unto others as you would have them type unto you.
Well done Phil this is spot on.
Back in the 60's the American car industry peddled out a similiar line of "product before safety" . The book, Unsafe at any speed [Ralph Nader, 1965] ...
In the case of the Chev Corvairs even when parked. (you can read such stories from the reader testimonials at amazon. Better still read the book at your local library). As a result of the book and the following movement, the mantra of "Engineering, Enforcement, Education". The legacy that is still applied to Engineering practice today.
It's a sad day for journalists (let alone Journo's from the Washington Post [think Woodward and Burnstein]) that fail to understand Naders legacy and see it's relevence to todays computer software industry.
The lefty ratbag John Pilger's creed should be repeated here to see where this journalist has failed the Posts readers ....
peterrenshaw ~ Another Scrappy Startup
if you can't handle driving on the highway (whatever the reason) AND you keep crashing your car into other peoples cars (read: zombie spam machine)
Wrong analogy. This is Ford with a faulty tension spring in the carburetor that has a potential to turn into an engine fire by allowing far too much fuel in. Then they issue a recall (a patch) which adjusts the spring, leaving it mostly broken, and losing a few screws here and there when they put it back together.
Historically Microsoft patches haven't fared very well.
but that does not logically imply that all technology/pc industry designs are flawed
Whoa there. This was never a point. The point was always about the insecurity of the software.
it just means the current popular consumer software is
Microsoft has, at every turn, wisely invested marketing dollars to minimize the perceived threat of having a just a faulty little spring that opened the valve a little too far. It probably won't make any difference in everyday usage. Sucks to be you if you're the guy whose engine blows up. Identity theft and harassment are very very real and it's not primarily by 14 year olds. It's done by people with too much time on their hands. Know anyone who doesn't need to work and can just lay around all day?
+++ATHZ 99:5:80
He acted like a crooked mechanic, no better.