I recall asking a similar question about a friend's daughter (she was 14, her boyfriend 17). The answer was "what is the average 14 year old boy like? She thinks they are childish hence the 17 year old boyfriend". I do still wonder about the 17 year old's motives though.
Back to the topic. Frivilous lawsuits - what are the chances that the 17 year old will be called as a witness for the girl against MySpace? And to then launch his own claim for damages arising from the sullying of his name and reputation by 'setting him up' with a 14 year old date? Stranger things have happened...
'Common sense' and 'computer knowledge' - easily mistaken. I work with many administrative staff who always refer to their monitor as the computer and the PC as 'the box'.
An amusing story was of a secretary who decided to clean her keyboard only to discover that her PC was behaving oddly. I had seen her cleaning the keyboard earlier and asked whether she had left the PC switched on. "It's not that" she said "I switched the computer off - like this" and switched the monitor off. I naturally explained to her in my most sarcastic, condescending tone that switching the monitor off does not disable the keyboard or switch off the PC.
Getting back to the point, firewalls, anti-virus, ad-aware and the like are all to prevent or undo malicious programming - the less experienced the user the more protection required.
A friend of mine is a serious user who thinks Windows is a poor creature indeed (with a grudging exception for Win 3.11). My argument is that it helped bring computer useage to the masses (I owe my whole career to MS Word upon which I built a business with some labour- (correct spelling in the UK!) saving macros in 1996).
If my friend had his way command prompts and UNIX would be the norm but he fails to see that this would not have caught on en masse and we would be trapped in the 70s or 80s. 'Wargames' would still be 'fresh'. Britney would not have been airbrushed and you could see that she looks like a bag of spanners... Flame me on these points if you wish but we will have to agree to differ.
For full protection stick an M&M in the ethernet port (peanut butter my preference although sadly unavailable here in the UK), remove the DVD/CD drives, diable USB and wi-fi and turn the floppy disk connector upside down (if you didn't do it when you built the PC) which also provides for a constantly lit LED which is pleasing.
Email me if think of any additions to the above list. Don't expect a reply mind you, I'm just digging out my abacus - sans ZoneAlarm...
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I recall asking a similar question about a friend's daughter (she was 14, her boyfriend 17). The answer was "what is the average 14 year old boy like? She thinks they are childish hence the 17 year old boyfriend". I do still wonder about the 17 year old's motives though.
Back to the topic. Frivilous lawsuits - what are the chances that the 17 year old will be called as a witness for the girl against MySpace? And to then launch his own claim for damages arising from the sullying of his name and reputation by 'setting him up' with a 14 year old date? Stranger things have happened...
An amusing story was of a secretary who decided to clean her keyboard only to discover that her PC was behaving oddly. I had seen her cleaning the keyboard earlier and asked whether she had left the PC switched on. "It's not that" she said "I switched the computer off - like this" and switched the monitor off. I naturally explained to her in my most sarcastic, condescending tone that switching the monitor off does not disable the keyboard or switch off the PC.
Getting back to the point, firewalls, anti-virus, ad-aware and the like are all to prevent or undo malicious programming - the less experienced the user the more protection required.
A friend of mine is a serious user who thinks Windows is a poor creature indeed (with a grudging exception for Win 3.11). My argument is that it helped bring computer useage to the masses (I owe my whole career to MS Word upon which I built a business with some labour- (correct spelling in the UK!) saving macros in 1996).
If my friend had his way command prompts and UNIX would be the norm but he fails to see that this would not have caught on en masse and we would be trapped in the 70s or 80s. 'Wargames' would still be 'fresh'. Britney would not have been airbrushed and you could see that she looks like a bag of spanners... Flame me on these points if you wish but we will have to agree to differ.
For full protection stick an M&M in the ethernet port (peanut butter my preference although sadly unavailable here in the UK), remove the DVD/CD drives, diable USB and wi-fi and turn the floppy disk connector upside down (if you didn't do it when you built the PC) which also provides for a constantly lit LED which is pleasing.
Email me if think of any additions to the above list. Don't expect a reply mind you, I'm just digging out my abacus - sans ZoneAlarm...