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Spam and Spyware Too Much for Some Users
stewart_maximus writes "Spam and spyware is annoying to everyone, but some users are giving up on the Internet (mirror). Any Slashdot readers know someone who pulled the plug in frustration? Any advice for frustrated users, especially non-technical users?"
I think I would prefer to give up air and water first.
Oh, there's lots of great things to see and do on the 'net, but there's so much predation by more scum than even Mos Eisley would see on a good day that newbies must be inoculated before exposing themselves to it.
A firewall, virus scanning and quite a lot of gorm, to avoid spam scams. I'm almost to the point of telling, not merely suggesting, people to skip it if there isn't some damn good reason to be on the 'net.
Oh, and don't use Microsoft Explorer or Outlook or <Marvin Martian Voice> you'll be sorry, very sorry indeed.</Marvin Martian Voice> Getting on the 'net with good tools is a must and keeping up on them is also a must. Some degree of technical understanding is also essential, to identify when something is out of the ordinary, i.e. that request to verify your bank account goes to some ip address instead of yourback.com and where to go to keep up on the latest tools and information to protect oneself.
In the end, visiting or maintaining a presence on the internet is a job, not just an adventure, which requires some effort by the user to protect themselves.
A feeling of having made the same mistake before: Deja Foobar
yeah we know, it's called internet explorer
~/.sig: No such file or directory
For the last 2 weeks i've been trying MS Antispywaree tails.aspx?Fa milyID=321cd7a2-6a57-4c57-a8bd-dbf62eda9671&displa ylang=en&Hash=5BMW635
http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/d
And i must say, it works easyer then ad-aware or Spybot. And works BETTER then ad-aware and spybot..
Just a thought..
What would you do without a monitor? Sit and look stupid behind a keyboard and a mouse
You don't have an excuse now. Get the minimac. It will suffice for many people (sure, _some_ people just have to have those silly apps that only work in windows, for them, the future is not so bright).
The choice is obvious.
This
The internet experience doesn't have to be this way, but when the powers that be (Microsoft, mostly) sit on their laurels and allow the situation to degenerate, what hope is there?
The old Lie: Dulce et decorum est Pro patria mori
Easy to install, easy to use and they handle almost all of the problems that end users will run into.
1. Buy a mac or other non-windows machine
2. Use a browser with pop-up and ad blocking capablility.
3.
4. Profit from the wealth of information on the web.
It's even worse when you encounter the opposite... Those who refuse to give up the Internet even though they've got hundreds of virii and spyware programs on their system.
A couple of months ago, I went into my dry cleaner and they said they couldn't take credit cards that day. The reason? Their credit card system (PCs on the Internet) wasn't working because of a virus. I thought about giving them a lecture on keeping credit transactions off the public Internet, but knew it wouldn't do any good so just paid cash and left.....
Why in my day we used to use telnet to get to iscabbs.
We didn't have any of this fancy spam or spyware of which you speak. If we wanted spam, we had to log off, go outside, and walk to the 7-11 in three feet of snow, uphill, both ways.
*grumbles*
-[joke removed for your safety]-
I am not giving up as a user, but yesterday I have announced the closing of my hosting services (that I run as a side business) because I am tired of being trying to be hacked, and people exploiting scripts on the server, and running worms, and trying to DoS my server, and trying to flood other servers... I have way better things to do with my life than trying to protect my little server from punks out there...
What's the answer? Well, you could have pushed Linux until you said non-technical. Otherwise this thread could pretty much just be an ad for the Apple Mac Mini or even the iMac G5.
No, I won't add links to those. They're everywhere this week. And yes, I want one. Either one.
My own pointless vanity vintage computing page
get a mac! Popup blockers work just the same. There's pretty much no such thing as spyware or virii.
For the first time in ages, I can say this with a perfectly straight face and without reservation:
Get a Mac.
They're affordable, they're stable, they're powerful, they're easy-to-use, they're resilient against infection, they come with excellent software, there are some great games available, and yes, Virginia, they'll even work with your multi-button mouse.
For the basic user, what else is there?
Obliteracy: Words with explosions
I guess you think AutoCAD and ArcGIS are "silly apps." I know Mac people like to use their computer to make a fashion statement, but some people use computers to do work.
...don't let the door hit you on the ass on the way out.
Easy Instructions:
:)
a) Download Firefox.
b) Download anti-spyware (ad-aware, Spybot)
c) Get off the internet.
d) Run the anti-spyware to make sure your machine is 100% virus and spyware free.
e) Activate your winxp firewall.
f) install Firefox.
Ta-da!
i know everyone is going to say this but two things immediately leap out at me.
1) don't use windows, for chrissakes. how many people out there in the world don't know that there are alternatives? is it really that many? is apple's media saturation here in the bay area completely nonexistent anywhere else?
2) the solution isn't legislation -- it's people making crappy products. if toyota made a car that constantly ran into trees, the solution wouldn't be banning trees, it would be making toyota make some good friggin' cars.
lord stuff like this makes me pissy.
go get it
Call me a troll, whatever.
I use to fix friends/relatives PCs all the time with their problems.
Then spyware just went amuck.
I tell people now to just buy an apple. They most likely won't call me for help with PC issues.
I myself am sick of the spyware crap that's out there infecting PCs. I am on the road to going 100% mac.
I don't see Microsoft fixing these issues, so I just tell people buy an Apple.
If a user doesn't have the time and/or inclination to leave their browser of (informed) choice downloading critical updates to browser, OS, AV, anti-spyware and so on, then they're more likely to go "Ah, skip it - I can get them later, and anything dodgy will get cleared out then."
If you don't have the bandwidth to match your impatience, you're less likely to keep your critical software up-to-date. Simple psychology.
Meta will eat itself
Like many others here, a lot of people ask me what I think they should buy when it's tine to get a (new) computer. I now have an easy anwer for all of them: an Apple Mac Mini. The $499 model plus $75 to bring it to 512 MB RAM is *perfect* for everyone I know. Nearly no one I know *needs* Windows for anything. If they do, they can get a second, older computer and not connect it to the Internet.
I am so, so happy Apple has finally made a *really* affordable good Mac. (Where "affordable" means "less than $800" and "good" means "doesn't have a bloody great CRT built-in." Yes, the iBooks are fabulous, but the small screen and keyboard aren't so great for some folks. And $1000 is a lot more than $600 for a lot of people.) Thank you thank you thank you!
Dear Slashdot: next time you want to mess with the site, add a rich-text editor for comments.
My dad now emails me very frequently to ask if one of his emails is real or fake. It seems like he gets a PayPal or Ebay phish every other day. I've tried to explain to him to hover over the link and make sure it says www.paypal.com or ebay.com and not a dotted ip address. But he doesn't get it. I understand why people do phishing scams, but the spam is driving customers away from all net advertising. This should be a wake-up call for these types of advertisers. They are driving customers away from any future sales.
Q the dogmatic mac and *nix zealots who will tell us "MY system never has problems so nah nah nah nah nah"
Before you do people, get this, people wo DON'T work in computers - they just don't care - did you know that? they don't care if it's linux, max, pc, or whatever, they just want to start using this new intahwebeh thing.
When they go to a shop to buy one what do they get? Windows, cos that's what 95% of other people do. Windows is big, it's always going to be big, deal with this fact.
My Portfolio
I'm not a computer technician or anything, but i have not come across a virus i could not get rid of. However.. some spyware programs are rooted into IE somehow and i just don't bother.
But alas! The soloution: Mozilla Firefox!
This is a bad thing?
I can feel the Internet's collective IQ rising...
I see your point in that, having first used the Internet/Usenet in 1990, I sometimes miss the level of discussion then. On the other hand, it *was* pretty narrow -- with just geeks and professors online, science, math, and science-fiction were the dominant subjects. I mean, did anyone use the Internet to talk about weird stuff like the influence of Mexican music on Yugoslavian culture back then?
From the article:
"No one is immune. Microsoft Corp. Chairman Bill Gates discovered spyware on his personal machine not long ago."
Hoisted by your own petard, biatch!
http://www.thebricktestament.com/the_law/when_to_
So, what you're saying is that you've stopped looking at porn?
"My God...It's full of ads!" -Fry, about the Internet, Futurama
This is a very elitist view and in no way expressed in an effective manner. However, the point is kind of a valid one.
The "Internet", whatever that actually means, was definitely different 10, even 5, years ago. Not only were there less people online, those who were needed at least some technical savvy to be successful. Anyone who remembers trying to get a dialup modem working in Windows 3.11 for Workgroups should be able to agree. The people you met tended to understand the technology behind the Internet, the reasons why it exists and, as such, had a direction and a reason to be online.
However, as more people have got online and surfing has turned from a technical tool into a hobby and then participatory and ultimately passive form of entertainment things have definitely changed. Without the popularization of the Internet we wouldn't have websites like Slashdot, we wouldn't have widely accessible Email, we wouldn't have Instant Messaging clients (IRC excepted, maybe) and us geeks would have had a much harder time getting hold of Linux distros.
Yes we have to put up with Spam, yes we have to put up with annoying AOLers, yes we have to fight off evil spyware, yes we have to put up with annoying personal webpages with flashing text and badly sized pictures of peoples dogs. However, it's a price though I think we are willing to pay for all the fun the Internet can bring. Also, don't tell me I'm the only one who gets at least a little enjoyment from successfully setting up a new firewall or configuring a new piece of anti-spam software?
I gave up on the Internet for a while, then I came back with multiple computers. One for the Internet, and the others for applications. I only brows with opera and Mozilla and I have everything turned off. I use ad-aware programs and I delete webcheck.dll, loadwc.exe, and set reg keys : "RegDone"="1" "EnableDCOM"="N" and delete c:\windows\wscript.exe
I disable something with ad-aware's LSP Explorer plugin, forget what...
It's still not enough. I shouldn't have to do all this crap.
One thing I have given up on is e-mail. I change my e-mail every few months and I almost never use it, and I never give it to anyone. I also never use IM or IRC.
Get a Mac!
I found the meaning of life the other day, but I had write-only access.
1. My parents both use Windows PCs at work. they work for large companies that are not going to transition from Windows to Linux or Macs.
/.ers suggest that I wish a perfectly straight face suggest they use a Mac or Linux? Not gonna float people.
No - they use Office at work. Admit it!!
That is why there is Office X for the Mac.
2. My parents get confused if I alter a toolbar on their home PC when I am working on it. They think it is broken if it does not look exectly like the one they use at work.
You give them too little credit. Perhaps they will like how the Mac works better overall?
3. They do not want to learn how to use a PC. They still can't program the video player, they have no DVD player, they think CDs are some sort of voodoo.
Then probably, they should have a Mac and not a PC.
How would
Pretty easy, really. How are they going to fare in the long term when Longhorn comes out if they don't even like changig a menu?
Break them of the habit now, a short-term pain will go a long way in the future.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
The whole "turn a spankin' brand new PC" onto the Internet and it's infected with tons of crap in a few weeks/months IS a real industry problem. There was a great /. article on spyware yesterday - more pressure needs to be brought to bear to the people feeding this industry. And while it's one thing to have banner ads that just "sit there", it seems that the mainstream folks could get by with less popups and cookie setting IMHO - the later especially can be used for nefarious tracking purposes.
Hulk SMASH Celiac Disease
The ages of people interviewed seem to be 50, 52 and 77. Can anybody younger afford to remain offline? Even if you don't (already) need net in your job, not having an email seems actually quite impolite nowadays.
Also, using my .mac account for my primary email, I get about five spams a day. And each and every one of them originate from the same company, that a 'friend' of mine signed me up so she could get some free movie tickets. (She is actually an ex-friend over this very issue... she went ballistic when I asked her not to give out my personal information or send me stupid forwarded joke emails. Her response back screamed I WILL NEVER SEND YOU ANOTHER EMAIL, EVER! and I said, "fine by me.") I could try to get rid of those five per day emails, but I'm afraid of increasing the amount by using their 'unsubscribe' link.
My dad is in his mid 60s and has been using a computer for about 10 years now. I stopped by my parent's house last year and he told me he was cancelling his dial up service because he had so much crap on his computer. I took his computer, wiped it clean and put a new copy of windows 2k on it along with firefox and thunderbird. I told him not to use IE or outlook, only use the two programs I had put on his computer for him. He's still using the internet now, several months later and is very happy with the Mozilla programs. I put Zonealarm on his computer too and he loves getting the little pop up messages telling him it's blocked something. He has told several of his friends that they need to switch over to firefox also.
nope, it's a good thing. Less dumb users who can't handle spy/ad-ware or spam -> greater security for everyone else.
The "Insert Quote Here" line is almost as predictable as inserting an actual quote.
I fix home computers as a side gig and I tell people, especially those people who own cheap or old computers and don't do much more than surf, email, and word process that user friendly versions of Linux are waiting for them, immune to nearly all viruses and spyware and the best part is they will probably not have to restart their computer anymore.
Did I mention they are free and I will make you the CD's for Fedora, Mandrake, Suse, or whatever other distro you want and you can just pay me to install them for you.
Alas, maybe they are afraid they will miss me.
...and when I opened the link, Firefox told me it had prevented latimes.com from opening a popup.
-- Don't Tase me, bro!
when I got paid for knowing about computers for the first time I thought, "Everyone should own a computer!" I think that a lot less now. But not becuase I am 1337 and "they" are LUSERS with PEBCAK problems. Not at all.
The home computer has failed to become an appliance like a microwave, or a refrigerator. Is it really any easier than it was back in the Apple ][e, Commodre 64 days? Has WinXP or Suse 9.0 or OS X really made computing as transparent as heating a chicken? Has networking gotten much simpler?
For the average mom and pop at home who want to send some email, do some online banking, shopping, knowledge gathering and write a letter, maybe balance a checkbook really need dual G5s a P4 3.0?
The computer world looked ready to go back to main frame client/server models with things like Java et al. It should. Give mom and pop a 20+" monitor and keyboard and mouse and let them access everything though their browser. Here's you Word Processor, here's you email, here's your pr0n.
And for those of us bold enough to muck about in kernals, driver and whatnot well we still could. Andf we wouldn't have to do it everytime we visit our parents, neighbors, friend's office.
People are diving off the internet because configuring their computers is still hard. It's still "dangerous" and frankly all the pr0n in the world can't drive this "internet" thing much further. And to this point pr0n and games have driven the internet and home computing into the super computer realm to this point.
The users aren't the issue. The fact that some 40 years later not all that much has changed regarding setting up a network is an issue. The fact that there is a large corporation out there making consistently insecure software despite their responsibility as the market (well really as THE market) leader is an issue.
This
Firefox would help, but is not completely foolproof. There are still exploits for Firefox, and this would not help with downloadable stuff.
Perhaps the best solution for those people who just don't (or can't) learn to protect themselves is to hand them Knoppix.
Pull the plug on the network while in Windows. If you want to surf then insert Knoppix, reboot, and plug the cable back in. Safe, secure browsing. And if you DO get compromised, security is one reboot away. This still does not stop Spam, though. And with Knoppix, web-based e-mail is probably the easiest.
"-1 Troll" is the apparently the same as "-1 I disagree with you."
For spyware and viruses, don't use Microsoft products. The iMac mini was probably made to be a replacement for Windows users tired of spyware and viruses - just remove the old computer, and hook the iMac up to the same devices.
For spam, not using AOL is a good start. Then, don't use your address on web forms. Be prepared to change addresses every few years or so. And use a decent e-mail client that has spam filtering.
Ta-da!
I don't reply to ACs
Seriously, Giving some family member who has finally grasped the concept of Windows a drastically differnet (and expensive) computer and operating system doesn't seem like a good idea to me. I have had great success installing Linux (Fedora usually) on familiy members pcs. I just adjust a few menu's and place some icons on the desktop and I'm done. They don't have to buy ANYTHING, they already have a computer. Even a cheap Mac ($800-$1000?) doesn't seem all that cheap to me.
People seem much brighter once you light them on fire.
Of course, you install Firefox and Thunderbird.
LitePC is too flexible for the typical home user, though. It's used mostly for configuring business desktops and embedded systems. Basically, it lets you turn off, selectively, most of what's in XP but not XP Embedded. They really need a one-step CD product that cleans out adware, spyware, and viruses, removes Internet Explorer, and installs Firefox and Thunderbird.
There really aren't that many important web sites left that work only with IE. And you can usually find a competitor that sells the same thing. I haven't run IE in a year or so now.
Hmm...that link finally explains why all of my mom's audio tapes from Yugoslavia sound like Mexican music. Thanks :-)
Bill Clinton: Pimp we can believe in. - The Shirt!!!
It would not require months to make people "internet literate", just one day, two or three changes, and 80% of this stuff goes away.
My windows workstation has been running for 5 years, every day, 10 hours/day, without anti-virus software of any kind.
A month ago, I actually installed Norton on it, and run a full system scan. No viruses. I then installed and ran Ad-Aware. It found a few dicey cookies in the tmp folder, and the Eudora cache was flagged, but other than that .... nothing.
And did not take any kind of tech genius to achieve this. I simply never, ever ran outlook. never opened an executable or .zip file from Email, sat behind a NAT router, and disallowed anything from Tiny Personal Firewall that I did not recognize. Eudora does an EXCELLENT job of filtering spam after 1 month AI learning.
Really, it doesn't require a Doctorate in Computer Science. Those that are "abondoning" the internet just don't care enough to take a few small steps to reduce most of the problems.
Ergo, I don't think this is a problem. The absence of those running Oulook and running the 0-200 ports wide open is probably a good thing for the internet - so it's mutualy beneficial.
Not being elitist at all. It just depends on how much effort you wish to put into making the experience more enjoyable. If that effort is "zero", then how bad do you expect others to feel about it?
Everything worth anything requires *some* effort to be worthwhile, and some people just want it all pre-packaged, which nobody has been able to do with any real success.
I'm sorry, but these people sound like complete idiots who need a computing appliance, not a completed computer. This reminds me of that rash of "sudden acceleration" stories in the late 80s or early 90s that had drivers complaining their cars where just randomly and without their input ramming into things. It turned out after investigation that these people were wildly incompetent drivers, and couldn't control what their feet were doing. If you aren't willing to take responsibility for using a tool, you're obviously not well adapted to the enivornment and should be removed from the gene pool to prevent the spread of stupid user syndrome.
Slashdot: Playing Favorites Since 1997
I read that as saying that every internet user has the responsibility to learn about how the internet works, what dangers are lurking, and what needs to be done to avoid those dangers.
WRONG!
That responsibility exists, but shouldn't necessarily be the user's responsibility. Just to use any piece of software, you don't have to know how it works. Not all users are also developers, you know.
By using network-enabled software like browsers, a user essentially trusts browser makers to manage the interface between the web and the user. And browser makers trust the operating system below it, to manage the interface between API's and the networking hardware. That trust includes an assumption of safety/reliability/integrity. The current state of software security tells me, that trust is often misplaced.
It's an endless battle of opinions, but IMO the #1 reason for having firewalls etc. is not functionality, but the fact that operating systems, networking software, browsers and so on, are BROKEN (unreliable, buggy, insecure). If they wouldn't be, there would be few reasons to put a firewall between a househould PC and the internet. Similar goes for virus scanners, anti-spyware, etc.
It may be a full time job to keep ordinary PC's secured & 100% functional, but don't assume that should be the user's job. I guess new developments like remotely managed, limited functionality PC's (see SimPC for example) could provide some relief here for many users.
Open letter to Intuit - I will not recommend 2005 to clients until it can run under limited user rights.
Create an easy way to overwrite critical Registry sections that are responsible for explorer tie ins. As a matter of fact, I think I'll write a tool like that.
Stop making people administrators by default, and the problem becomes localized and easily stopped.
No one remains an administrator or at least a defaultly configured Administrator after I see their PC.
Enjoy.
Leonid S. Knyshov
Find me on Quora
Sure, some may argue that people would then not have access to needed apps, but surely giving up the net connection is more of a hinderance than using linux. Are these people just not educated about alternatives to microsoft? Somebody like Mandrakesoft or Lindows should find a way to reach these people, it seems like a growing opertunity for profit.
True genius is grasping a situation like a peice of fruit, and peircing it just right so that it drains dry.
The only problem with the Mac Mini for a home user is that wacky thing we call human nature. For 90% of the home market, computing is a life experience that has trained them to be terrified of change. The very fact that the default Dock setup doesn't have a friendly blue 'E' for Internet Explorer could cause paralysis for those not willing to experiment to see what the computer can do and thus, learn that the compass icon points to a web browser (Safari...duh!) that is superior on many levels than IE.
This can be overcome by geeks like us who hold the hand of new Mac users who we convince to switch - my in-laws WILL be getting a Mac Mini for their next computer or I'll refuse to help them continue cleaning spyware off the system - but how many "normal" people want to learn a seperate OS from the one that they use at work - no matter how much better it may be?
Don't get me wrong - I am sold on the Mac OS X experience and have used a dual-G4/G5 alongside my Windows box for - wow! - five years now. However, I understand that Apple has a huge challenge in front of them. I'm just extremely glad that they've decided to release the Mac Mini so that they can see if the experiment is going to work.
...because it's making you see extra zeroes. Depending on how severe the problem is, $300 is not really that far out.
/. for relationship status, personal hygene, etc. It's fun to watch "the comic book guy" on the Simpsons, but it's not fun to actually deal with such people. In fact, "the world is better off" if these jerks could learn some social skills.
Anyways, Our AC friend typifies the sort of arrogant, antisocial IT people who are mocked on
I remember a skit on SNL that hit the nail on the head--it featured "the IT guy" (played by Chris Kattan I think) that everyone in the office despised but relied on to fix their computers. He'd invariably spout a bit of technical jargon, followed by some kind of insult--along the lines of "Oh that's easy, just clear the printer queue and reinitialise, but I guess you're too STUPID to figure that out...I'm amazed you figured out how to BREATHE..."
Look, if someone carts in a home PC and has gigabytes of pictures, music and other files they want to keep, and it is so clogged with viruses and spyware that it is better just to re-install, then backing up all that stuff, re-installing the OS and configuring the system can take anywhere from a couple hours to a whole workday. If it was toward the latter end then $300 is a deal.
Calling people fools and morons and implying that they are not worthy enough to be online is not a solution. It is not acceptable to expect an average user to know all by themselves how to implement a firewall and install and maintain antivirus and antispyware--either they have to learn from somewhere or rely on experts for assistance, and both are going to take time and usually money.
The fact that we have to worry about all these precautionary measures to make our computers usable is an indication of where the industry is--basically personal computing is at the "model T" stage: now affordable and widespread but very unrefined and with unrealised potential.
Well, close enough.
But I've known several people who have given up on the internet because of spam, nevermind spyware.
My wife is one. She really doesn't care for computers much. She only started using email when I was in Europe on business for a week, and our schedules made phone calls difficult. She liked it enough to keep using it, but she never used it much. So when she was getting several hundred spams a week, vs 1 or 2 real emails a week, she just gave up. She goes to the Yelow Pages and information and calling friends rather than using the web. I can't say that I blame her.
I think the best thing we can do is apply 19th century Texas justice. We can start with the UT student they just busted. If he's guilty, string him up from the highest light pole on I35 for the whole world to see. Run it on every news program for a week; ``Spammers, we're coming for you.''
These guys are costing us hundreds of millions, if not billions of dollars, and wasting the single, most precious commodity we have -- time. By intergalactic ore hauler loads.
This week alone I have helped several people in my personal life and co-workers get rid of junk either they or the person before them had installed on their machine.
If these folk are taking their virus ridden, spyware laden computers from the network.... well great!
I hate to be that guy and say they should not use a computer but it's true. I would cut them some slack a year ago but to be complaining that the spyware you installed on your computer is the last straw and you are giving up your dsl? All I can say is...bye!
Think more about the point your trying to make. You've used computers your whole life, your current profession is probably heavily computer centric. You've stated that noone, without similar credentials, should use computers. Now, imagine you had some influence and were able to make that law. Also imagine that like minded individuals of other industries were able to pass similar laws. You wouldn't be able to drive any longer. As an non professional, you could cause injury to others. You couldn't listen to music. As a non professional you have no true understanding of what's good and what's not. Don't give me that old "but I just like it." That's as ridiculious as expecting a computer "to just work."
In fact, pretty much everything you do, you'd no longer be able to do. And you wouldn't have been a King with your 2400-baud BBS's, because you, with your inexperience, would never have been granted the opportunity to try.
I have a friend who lives a few doors away. He's been having a lot of trouble with spyware. Porn ads popping up all day long. It was making his PC a pain to use even after a neighbor spent a few hours trying to clean it out. This same friend also likes to tell me about how much audio and video he's downloaded he's downloaded using the web and p2p.
It's pretty obvious what's going on. Your machine gets cluttered with spyware if you spend time on sketchy web sites downloading all and sundry and doesn't otherwise.
My solution is pretty simple - if I'm going to download porn off the web I use a Mac.
Doesn't it make you feel good to know that our freedoms are protected by politicans, lawyers and journalists.
Their spam protection is excellent and its much more difficult to "automatically" execute a binary if you have to download it first.
Combine that with Firefox and ymessenger and they have a lot of what makes Internet great without much risk.
but I gave up on the Internet.
Reject Fear - Embrace Hope
MiniMac, like MiniMe, is immune to spyware for now. However, if you have ever used email on a mac, you will know that spam is not a "to windows only" phenomenon!
" people just have to have those silly apps that only work in windows, for them, the future is not so bright"
Ir maybe you really do think that "email" is a silly windows-only app?
Don't blame Durga. I voted for Centauri.
[BIG RANT]
*sigh* ok, let me clue you nerds in. I have to get this out because it's an endless debate between some of the most myopic people on the Internet claiming to be the most informed.
I know we're probably a good 300 posts into this thread already and this posting of mine will be lost, but I feel the need to intervene anyway;
Some thoughts, from what I see here:
1) Normal joe/jill average users don't want to, and shouldn't have to, make checking e-mail and surfing the web a second job. So keeping up with every latest turn in the spyware/adware/spam drama is not an option. Your "it's that simple" solution isn't that simple to people who aren't immersed in computer culture 24 hours a day. Drop the faux-Darwinism routine and join us in what I like to call "real life". We're over here, in the sun.
2) Normal joe/jill average users WILL NOT run more than one computer for seperate tasks. This is insanity to begin with. Don't take your desk as an example of a normal computer user. You may have a room dedicated to your four boxes with various chips and OSes, but no normal human wants to do that. They want A box, with A monitor, and A device to interact with that box. They want a TV with a keyboard, but one that won't force them to download porn or send and recieve spam. The solution isn't a NeXT box for checking e-mail and a Sparc for web surfing, with a Windows NT 4 box off network for accounting, or some other absurd scenario.
3) Normal joe/jill users will want to run some fairly mainstream programs. If you're running AutoCAD, or MSSQL, or Cybertrader, you're a professional so the rules above no longer apply. Normal joe/jill average users want e-mail, fun web pages, The Sims maybe, Quicken. They want to buy a CD or a book online maybe, if they're feeling fancy. No crazy NASA shit. Don't hold them to your twisted standards of what normal people do with computers.
Where am I going with this? The only logical recourse at the moment is to get an Apple Macintosh for these users who are not computer dependant or who are not computer experts.
I know you all hate to hear it (other than the Mac fanboys who love to hear it, but let's just tolerate them for a moment). It's the only mainstream path for people who are trying to make joe/jill average user's computer experience workable. I've done it. I've set people up on Apples. I don't get calls about computers! They talk to me about them, but only to say how much they want to hug the damn things.
Regarding the proposition of a Linux desktop for these people. If you want to inflict frustration or dependancy on the normal joe/jill average user you're trying to help, if controlling them through reliance on your godlike technical abilities is your bag, by all means set them up with a Linux desktop. You can claim to have grandma set up on linux, and all your friends will pat you on the back for being such a wise advocate. Your grandma will use her computer all of the one time she can remember he login and password. Then when her $2000 investment in technology is worthless to her, and she calls for help to get some sort of value out of it, you can sigh call her dumb under your breath for not knowing how to operate an expert level OS. Hope you feel big...
You people frustrate me beyond words sometimes.
Luck favors the prepared, darling.
Anyways this is why Apple decided to build the Mac Mini, its the almost perfect solution to a lot of entry user's dilemmas. The average PC owner is almost completely in the dark when it comes to most technologies. The average Windows User has almost no idea of what he/she is supposed to do to maintain a Windows OS. They are just clueless.
Linux is a great alternative but a lot of these people (the target audience for the Mac Mini) is just out of their league. Meantion sudo to them and they'll just stare at you blankly. A lot of people have PCs just to do the basic things, Windows does suffice some of the time. But usually there are too many problems. Most people just want to be able to chat, email, surf, print, write papers, organize photos, and so forth. Not all that easy on a Linux box, and more trouble than its worth for Windows.
Don't get me wrong I have a Linux box and a Windows box. I only use the Windows box for gaming, thats all that it really excels at. I use Linux for a lot of my programming, webserving, hosting, and other tech savy needs. My Mac I use for everything else. Its that everything else that Apple is banking on. They know that people just want to be able to do something easily, safely, and quickly.
Last I checked this wasn't actually an "Ask Slashdot" article, it was just a post about other people giving up on the internet. The end questions were merely a poll of ideas.
Now if this were "hey slashdot, I have spyware, how to you guys remove it? lol kthxbye!!!11!!" Then I would see your valid troll point. Otherwise, you just did not RTFA.
At some point, "blame the user" becomes tired. Yes, he should have had backups, and/or the originals stored somewhere secure. Better/different virus protection would also help. However, at some point, the blame has to fall on the people that point this together. Tying the OS to its applications and making them all have authority with one another is the low point. Done to control and manipulate customers, as well as make usage easier, it makes any security hole threatening. When DRM hits and the users gets locked out of his computer while the spammers and virus writers get access, the cries will only get louder. Yes, there are bad people out there, but giving them the keys to the front door and the location of my wallet without telling me probably isn't a good way to help users secure themselves.
I don't maintain my car myself. I'm lazy enough to get my oil changes done, and it's easy enough to keep basic tabs on my car that I can use it. If my car required 30 min. of maintenance a day to run, and running around to get parts and software upgrades, I probably would find a way to use it a lot less, and lots of people would give their cars up entirely. If computers are expected to be used by everyone, then it isn't reasonable to expect people to put more work into their computers than into their cars or pets. Computers are tools - people want them to just work, or to require a minimal amount of effort to work. Computers sold to the majority of people don't do this, and then everyone's suprised when users get frustrated. For most people, computers aren't fun in and of themselves, but for what they allow us to do. If you want to sell to the mass market, you need to make what they can use, rather than complain that they aren't competent enough to use what's there.
what would happen if Linux became as popular as Windows? Where spyware writers start targeting Linux users? As much as I use (and love) Linux, I can't help but wonder if too much popularity is a bad thing. I know this may sound elitist, but I'm sort of glad that Linux is a niche product; it helps keep the scum (spyware and virus writers) focused on tormenting Windows users. (Not that I'm happy to say that, since I have to provide support for Windows computers, too.) At least for now, I can safely say that I little to worry about concerning my Linux boxes.
It's all fun and games until someone loses the key to the handcuffs.
I am surprised at how many windows users browse the web (among other things) while logged in with administrator priviliges. If you want to use IE for browsing, better run it with limited priviliges. I can understand why some people may choose IE over netscape/mozilla -- I use a 400 Mhz machine to surf the net and IE loads and runs way faster than firefox. I even had firefox crash on me many times (enormous swapping, 99% CPU use sometimes for unknown reasons). But I don't end up with as much spyware as other users because I never use the administrator account for doing daily stuff. Also, using firefox over IE will not make things better for you if you already have adware/spyware that downloads and installs other programs from the net. The first advise I always give to spyware-striken users is "Get off the Administrator" (ok, pun intented)...
Dell has the option of shipping Firefox on their system. And then when they return the Dell and go buy a Gateway because Gateway can browse the Internet with less problems, they will realize that their Dell is more stable and runs better. If I wete an OEM, I'd offer a "what do you want to do?" screen. (This idea came from HP). But instead of booting into a custom version of Windows if Internet was selected, I would boot into a small version of Linux running Mozilla that was not modifiable. I'd market it as "Spyware-free Internet" gaurenteed. You could even use the "Internet Explorer skin". We need to start demanding OEMs, banks, and other players in this industry to take security out of Microsoft's hands entirely, and into the consumer consciousness. --Sam
"... No one is immune. Microsoft Corp. Chairman Bill Gates discovered spyware on his personal machine not long ago. ..."
No one immune?
Pardon me, but WRONG! I'm on a Mac. I am damn well immune, thank you. I have no problems on my Safari og Firefox or Camino. I AM immune from spyware and malware.
I am surprised at how many windows users browse the web (among other things) while logged in with administrator privileges.
... except that heaps of software for windows expects to be run as administrator. The amount of problems she's run into simply through running as a non-privileged user is astonishing, and it often seems as though MS is the worst offender of them all.
I'm not. I recently supervised the purchase of a new laptop for my mother, and since it was a fresh machine I set up a separate administrator account, told her never to use it except when installing software and/or windows updates. I installed firefox and t'bird, explained about spyware and that unless software is open-source there's no such thing as a free lunch. And she took it all in and that was fine
The moral is: if you want to run without root privileges on Windows, you're going to have to put up with a heap of annoying crap. And that's assuming that the user is informed enough to even realise that there's such a thing as "administrator" and that they're set up by default to run as that - there's nothing under the WinXP setup that I saw that alerts users to the need to run as a non-privileged user.
Just in case you missed it from the Mac mini specs page:This means that if you want to upgrade the RAM in a Mac mini and keep your warranty, you'll be paying someone. Same goes for AirPort, Bluetooth, hard disks, optical drives, and anything else you may want to shoehorn into one.
'DIY' is the name Apple has given to parts customers can install themselves. (It used to be 'CIP', or 'Customer Installable Parts', but this has changed). It's Apple's policy that, if you modify any non-DIY component, you have voided your warranty. From that page you've linked to, the manager seemed to have stated Apple's policy on DIY parts. In the case of the Mac mini, it was wrong.
On systems that memory is a DIY part (every other Mac except the mini), it would be correct -- you can install memory yourself, but if you break the computer it's not covered under warranty. This isn't the case with the Mac mini -- the moment you pop the top, you've voided your warranty.
I'm not saying this is a good thing. However this is the truth of the matter, and anyone stating otherwise is wrong.
(And yes, a lot of geeks don't care about warranty, and will install RAM themselves anyway. Good for them!)