Spyware to me is no big deal thanks to two great and free tools. 1. Spywareblaster 2. Spybot Spywareblaster blocks spyware from ever being installed, spybot mops up anything left behind. I've been 100% spyware free for months thanks to this couple.
Let me suggest that You should be using Ad-Aware along with those two. I use the three of them on my W2K CAD stations, and they run trouble-free.
The problem I have with relatives and friends who insist on Windows, is getting them to use these apps. I install them, but because the apps require that user actually run them, I find that most people don't bother.
'No, Ah'n no runnin' them, lass. Ah've got the Norton. Noo tha' protects ma computer.' One of my older relatives actually said this to me last time I spoke to him. He rang to complain that his computer had become unstable and wanted to know what I thought he should do about it.
Last September, during a six day visit, I completely re-built his system. I spent the better part of an hour explaining what malware was, where it comes from, repeatedly pointing out that Norton Antivirus wasn't written to protect him against the problems that these things cause. I installed Spybot, Ad-Aware, and SpywareBlaster. I showed him how to use them. I wrote out directions, reminding him to update the signature files on each run, and told him to run these wee apps at least once a week. I'm guessing that because they require the user to run them, like many people, he can't be bothered to put in the five minutes of user time a week it would take to keep his system clean. He'd rather fool himself into believing that the only member of the family who knows anything about computers is wrong, and that there is some magic God of the PCs, who beatifies his Norton Antivirus, endowing it with holy powers so it will do what was it wasn't written to do and protect his computer against, diallers, spyware, hijackers and whatever iteration of Xupiters and CoolWebBastards are on the lose. Oh, aye... sure. And if he believes that, I know of a bridge over the Firth of Forth that he can buy. And all it needs is a wee bit of paint. If he doesn't want that bridge, I have a fine one between Manhattan and Brooklyn I can sell him.
What could have have done? Oh, let's see, he could have had a teleconference with senior members of NORAD and the FAA on the same call. Thanks to the 9/11 commission, we have learned this didn't happen until it was far too late because of incompatible crypto and because no one was around to say "screw crypto, this is too important".
Amazing, innit. While Manhattan was in chaos, the president of the United States sat in a Florida schoolroom, reading "My Pet Goat".
A hijacked plane had crashed into the tallest building in New York. Thousands of people were burning to death. People desperate to escape the flames, were leaping from the upper floors to their deaths. There were body parts in the streets. Meanwhile, George Bush, the President of the United States, sat reading "My Pet Goat" to a group of Florida schoolchildren. There is something wrong with that man.
'Mush mouth' is a reference to the southern accent. I was being silly, because Georgia Tech, though located in Georgia, is by no means a regional university. GT is a uni that draws students from all over the US, and all over the world.
I know that Drew University in Madison NJ has been using Mozilla since 2002. They may have begun using it even earlier. The notebooks issued to students at Drew come with Mozilla installed.
(Off-topic: Drew may not be a name familiar to many of you, but the university president's name will be recognised by almost everybody. He's Tom Kean, former governor of New Jersey and Chair of the 911 Commission.)
First CERT, now Homeland Security. With the threat level so high, the large companies who build the PCs that the average users buy, companies like Dell, Gateway, and Compaq, should immediately begin to load Mozilla and Firefox onto their systems. It's criminal to sell a system with such shoogly software to people who, even if they have heard about the serious security problems with IE, haven't a clue how to go about making their systems more secure, beyond updating the service packs and running an anti-virus programme.
It's so easy for us to lose sight of the fact that, for most people, computers are work tools. People who use them shouldn't have to be constantly on the lookout for problems, simply because the bampots at Microsoft can't be arsed to write decent code. At least, let the companies who sell people their systems add a more secure e-mail client and browser.
Not to worry. The courts will find some reason to overturn the HIPPA Act soon enough, prolly when when some business brings a suit that HIPPA is cutting into their profits.
"...the Long Island Political Network invites you to play... Tic Tac Toe."
Really now? Given the overwhelming political corruption on Long Island, corruption that has its tentacles into every part of public life, the game should be re-named Tic Tac Dough.
Anyone with kids who has had both a minivan and an SUV monster should be able to tell you that the minivan offers far more usable room than your SUV.
Try hauling a 6'4" kid, with skis, poles, and all the necessary for skiing, who is bringing his fencing weapons, and all the necessary fencing equipment so he can get in his daily practise sessions. Oh, I should mention he is accompanied by his similarly equipped friends.
I have to borrow whatever truck-like behemoth I can wheedle off of neighbours who naturally require bribery. My own car, an ancient Toyota Camry, isn't equal to the task. But neither am I.
The first call came in at 5:20am. (They keep forgetting about the time difference between Europe and the US.) It looks like this memory problem affects almost every notebook in my family, not to mention those of my friends who are too dense to learn anything about PCs, or too busy being surgeons, farmers, writers, or whatever, to spend all those many hours reading and working endlessly with hardware and software. For some reason, almost everyone bought Compaqs, even those bampots who could afford ThinkPads.
The time has come for us to bill the companies for all the time we put into supporting their customers for problems that are caused by faulty products. I'll bet almost every Slashdotter is supporting at least one person, people who are Microsoft, Compaq, Dell, or Sony customers, people like my 78 year-old aunt or my 72 year-old neighbour. Are people like this really going to use a wee screwdriver to replace a memory module?
I just this minute received another call.
What is our time worth? How much responsibility does business have? It has been almost two years since my son was issued his Compaq Evo N1000c by his uni. I can't believe that it took Compaq all this time to discover the problem. There's more to this than meets the eye. All along, my son has been complaining about the computers, saying how 'crappy' they were, how often he and the other students would get the BSOD and other errors and problems.
Oh Gawd! Just thought of it.... I'd better ring my lawyer. She's got a Compaq too. And its always been unstable. I don't support her PCs; no one does. I always attributed her problems to bloody Windows ME. Now I wonder.
Well on the bright side, at times like these, relatives are forced to admit that a geeky girl who would rather mess about with computers than shop for clothes isn't a complete lost cause.
I no longer give to charities for the same reason.
Look, I work from home and my work requires concentration. I can't accomplish anything if I am constantly being interrupted. A few years ago, before the DNC list came out, I shattered my leg. Getting round was exceedingly difficult and very painful. Between the telemarketers and the charities, it was not unusual for me to receive twenty calls in one day. One day I received thirty-one calls.
It has been the tradition in my family to give small sums to many charities and large sums to a few favourite charities. Those favourite charities sold my name to other charities, and now I get no peace at all. So no one is getting any more of my money. (Part of the reason for that is my growing mistrust of these organisations. God only knows what these charities do with the donations and how much of what is contributed actually goes where we think it does. I know from personal experience that a lot goes to plush offices and fancy luncheons for charity administrators.)
Neither the peace of my household nor my personal privacy is for sale. I am the one who draws the line: not American commercial interests. I always gave to American charities because I now live in the US. But now, angered by the harassment, I am giving a larger share to charities back in Scotland. American charities, with their greedy tactics, are poisoning their own well, and they are too stupid to realise it. Many of my American friends have stopped giving to charities for the same reason.
We have been on the DNC list since it was first established. I take a daftie's approach with intrusive calls.
[Setting: My teenage son, my son's friend, and I are eating dinner. The phone rings. I answer it.]
Me: Hello....
Telemarketer: Hi! My name is Jason. I'm from AT&T and...
Me : AT&T. That's an American company if Ah'm no mistaken. Dae ye no realise you've called Scotland?
Telemarketer: Um... ah... But we're only dialing American numbers.
Me : Ah'm sittin' in ma wee hoose in a Hielan clachan. Are ye sellin' yer phones in th' Hielans th' noo?
Telemarketer: But...
Me : Haud yer wheesht! Dae ya think Ah dinnae ken where me hoose is, ya wee nyaff. Ye got yer numbers in a pure fankle. Mind an gies a break. Sort it oot an' dinnae call agin!
I ring off, and gaze serenely out the window, enjoying how the sun sparkles over the water of Long Island Sound.
Then the location to be spared would have to be Glasgow. Glasgow is populated by Vogons anyway. Well... aside from the West End which has been taken over by the Borg.
>> Right now, numerous stargazers are pulling out their dusty telescopes for some clean astronomy.
After a long dark hike through deepest, darkest Queens, my teenage son finally found his way to a friend's house in Brooklyn Heights where he spent the night stargazing in her parents' garden. The kids rang to tell me the stars were out over Brooklyn.
Slashdot Mirror
2. Look up Matthew 25:12. I always get blamed for things I had nothing to do with....
God
Dear God,
Stop whingeing. If you're really God, you're omnipotent and can do anything you want. Clearly, you're an underachiever.
Let me suggest that You should be using Ad-Aware along with those two. I use the three of them on my W2K CAD stations, and they run trouble-free.
The problem I have with relatives and friends who insist on Windows, is getting them to use these apps. I install them, but because the apps require that user actually run them, I find that most people don't bother.
'No, Ah'n no runnin' them, lass. Ah've got the Norton. Noo tha' protects ma computer.' One of my older relatives actually said this to me last time I spoke to him. He rang to complain that his computer had become unstable and wanted to know what I thought he should do about it.
Last September, during a six day visit, I completely re-built his system. I spent the better part of an hour explaining what malware was, where it comes from, repeatedly pointing out that Norton Antivirus wasn't written to protect him against the problems that these things cause. I installed Spybot, Ad-Aware, and SpywareBlaster. I showed him how to use them. I wrote out directions, reminding him to update the signature files on each run, and told him to run these wee apps at least once a week. I'm guessing that because they require the user to run them, like many people, he can't be bothered to put in the five minutes of user time a week it would take to keep his system clean. He'd rather fool himself into believing that the only member of the family who knows anything about computers is wrong, and that there is some magic God of the PCs, who beatifies his Norton Antivirus, endowing it with holy powers so it will do what was it wasn't written to do and protect his computer against, diallers, spyware, hijackers and whatever iteration of Xupiters and CoolWebBastards are on the lose. Oh, aye... sure. And if he believes that, I know of a bridge over the Firth of Forth that he can buy. And all it needs is a wee bit of paint. If he doesn't want that bridge, I have a fine one between Manhattan and Brooklyn I can sell him.
Amazing, innit. While Manhattan was in chaos, the president of the United States sat in a Florida schoolroom, reading "My Pet Goat".
A hijacked plane had crashed into the tallest building in New York. Thousands of people were burning to death. People desperate to escape the flames, were leaping from the upper floors to their deaths. There were body parts in the streets. Meanwhile, George Bush, the President of the United States, sat reading "My Pet Goat" to a group of Florida schoolchildren. There is something wrong with that man.
'Mush mouth' is a reference to the southern accent. I was being silly, because Georgia Tech, though located in Georgia, is by no means a regional university. GT is a uni that draws students from all over the US, and all over the world.
Georgia Tech... buncha geeks. And mushmouf geeks at that. Seriously though, that's way cool.
(Off-topic: Drew may not be a name familiar to many of you, but the university president's name will be recognised by almost everybody. He's Tom Kean, former governor of New Jersey and Chair of the 911 Commission.)
It's so easy for us to lose sight of the fact that, for most people, computers are work tools. People who use them shouldn't have to be constantly on the lookout for problems, simply because the bampots at Microsoft can't be arsed to write decent code. At least, let the companies who sell people their systems add a more secure e-mail client and browser.
Not to worry. The courts will find some reason to overturn the HIPPA Act soon enough, prolly when when some business brings a suit that HIPPA is cutting into their profits.
Really now? Given the overwhelming political corruption on Long Island, corruption that has its tentacles into every part of public life, the game should be re-named Tic Tac Dough.
Horse and Hound
Try hauling a 6'4" kid, with skis, poles, and all the necessary for skiing, who is bringing his fencing weapons, and all the necessary fencing equipment so he can get in his daily practise sessions. Oh, I should mention he is accompanied by his similarly equipped friends.
I have to borrow whatever truck-like behemoth I can wheedle off of neighbours who naturally require bribery. My own car, an ancient Toyota Camry, isn't equal to the task. But neither am I.
The time has come for us to bill the companies for all the time we put into supporting their customers for problems that are caused by faulty products. I'll bet almost every Slashdotter is supporting at least one person, people who are Microsoft, Compaq, Dell, or Sony customers, people like my 78 year-old aunt or my 72 year-old neighbour. Are people like this really going to use a wee screwdriver to replace a memory module?
I just this minute received another call.
What is our time worth? How much responsibility does business have? It has been almost two years since my son was issued his Compaq Evo N1000c by his uni. I can't believe that it took Compaq all this time to discover the problem. There's more to this than meets the eye. All along, my son has been complaining about the computers, saying how 'crappy' they were, how often he and the other students would get the BSOD and other errors and problems.
Oh Gawd! Just thought of it.... I'd better ring my lawyer. She's got a Compaq too. And its always been unstable. I don't support her PCs; no one does. I always attributed her problems to bloody Windows ME. Now I wonder.
Well on the bright side, at times like these, relatives are forced to admit that a geeky girl who would rather mess about with computers than shop for clothes isn't a complete lost cause.
So there it is. Like the Americans, we oh-so-superior Europeans now know that we too have the best 'justice' that money can buy.
Look, I work from home and my work requires concentration. I can't accomplish anything if I am constantly being interrupted. A few years ago, before the DNC list came out, I shattered my leg. Getting round was exceedingly difficult and very painful. Between the telemarketers and the charities, it was not unusual for me to receive twenty calls in one day. One day I received thirty-one calls.
It has been the tradition in my family to give small sums to many charities and large sums to a few favourite charities. Those favourite charities sold my name to other charities, and now I get no peace at all. So no one is getting any more of my money. (Part of the reason for that is my growing mistrust of these organisations. God only knows what these charities do with the donations and how much of what is contributed actually goes where we think it does. I know from personal experience that a lot goes to plush offices and fancy luncheons for charity administrators.)
Neither the peace of my household nor my personal privacy is for sale. I am the one who draws the line: not American commercial interests. I always gave to American charities because I now live in the US. But now, angered by the harassment, I am giving a larger share to charities back in Scotland. American charities, with their greedy tactics, are poisoning their own well, and they are too stupid to realise it. Many of my American friends have stopped giving to charities for the same reason.
[Setting: My teenage son, my son's friend, and I are eating dinner. The phone rings. I answer it.]
Me: Hello....
Telemarketer: Hi! My name is Jason. I'm from AT&T and...
Me : AT&T. That's an American company if Ah'm no mistaken. Dae ye no realise you've called Scotland?
Telemarketer: Um... ah... But we're only dialing American numbers.
Me : Ah'm sittin' in ma wee hoose in a Hielan clachan. Are ye sellin' yer phones in th' Hielans th' noo?
Telemarketer: But...
Me : Haud yer wheesht! Dae ya think Ah dinnae ken where me hoose is, ya wee nyaff. Ye got yer numbers in a pure fankle. Mind an gies a break. Sort it oot an' dinnae call agin!
I ring off, and gaze serenely out the window, enjoying how the sun sparkles over the water of Long Island Sound.
Then the location to be spared would have to be Glasgow. Glasgow is populated by Vogons anyway. Well... aside from the West End which has been taken over by the Borg.
After a long dark hike through deepest, darkest Queens, my teenage son finally found his way to a friend's house in Brooklyn Heights where he spent the night stargazing in her parents' garden. The kids rang to tell me the stars were out over Brooklyn.