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Startup Turns Fixing Your Grandma's PC Into a Game

Posted by timothy on from the as-long-as-the-kids-like-grandma dept.

First time accepted submitter thecrazyivan writes "As companies like Reddit and Foursquare have shown, Internet users enjoy earning points in arbitrary social games. So why not apply that competitive motivation to something useful, like cleaning up the world's PCs? A startup called Jumpshot is raising funds to launch a new, friendlier form of computer security. Jumpshot is still in its infancy, but it seems to have excited plenty of users with its potential: The company launched a Kickstarter project and almost immediately raised nearly three times its funding goal."

7 of 113 comments (clear)

  1. Better yet by Teresita · · Score: 1, Insightful

    Put Linux on grandma's Windows 95 machine and turn it into a powerful workstation.

    1. Re:Better yet by Billly+Gates · · Score: 5, Insightful

      Or even better get her an IPAD.

      Sorry, but not everyone wants to compile kernels and dealing with a driver breaking Xorg or the UI of Unity/Gnome-Shell. Asking her to find repositories for xfce defeats the purpose as she would not understand that nor need too.

      --
      http://saveie6.com/
    2. Re:Better yet by flimflammer · · Score: 4, Insightful

      You don't need to be an apple fanboy to suggest/buy an iPad.

  2. Riiighht.... by countach · · Score: 4, Insightful

    So people are going to let strangers delete files on their computers. And this is supposed to *improve* security? Ummm, is it only me who sees the extreme irony in this plan?

  3. So, wait, what does it actually do to fix things? by chazchaz101 · · Score: 5, Insightful

    So as far as I can tell, even after reading the so called technical explanation, it reboots the computer into Linux and then downloads magic buzzword driven pixie dust from the cloud, thus allowing it to solve all your computer problems.

  4. Re:Party like it's 1999 by DogDude · · Score: 4, Insightful

    The beauty of Kickstarter is that you don't even need #2 and #3.

    People are really, truly stupid.

    --
    I don't respond to AC's.
  5. Re:Worst. Game. Ever. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Insightful

    I'm sorry, but Microsoft Security Essentials can't protect against stupid.