XP is hard to secure for the man on the street
The problem isn't XP. You can't make an idiot-friendly OS that is secure*. The problem is in part the consumers, and in part documentation.
The consumers don't want know how to do these things. They "just want it to work". If they treated their cars the same way they did their computers, they'd have to buy a new one every 25-30,000 miles because they never changed the oil. Any OS requires basic maintenance, just like a home or a car or anything that is that complex.
New (and resold) PCs also have totally insufficient documentation. People aren't being informed on how to keep themselves safe on the internet. Computer manufacturers, OS developers, and ISPs should all do everyone a favor and distribute printed literature that explains the basics of internet security and how to protect yourself from internet crime. If enough people learned to protect themselves, eventually anyone who uses a computer without proper security will be looked at like someone who lets their car seize up because they never checked the oil: idiots.
*: For those whose first thought was "APPLE!" I have experience with trying to introduce people to computers with both OSX and Windows. Windows has a much easier learning curve to the completely clueless.
What's more interesting is a system I saw years ago that was supposed to recognize whether a cat was carrying something in its mouth (like a mouse) by looking at its profile. No more "presents" left for you to step on when you get out of bed in the morning.
On long stuff like that, I tend to use the "Simon" method (I just made that up, no idea what it would really be called).
Look at the first card, say the name in your head. Look at the second, say the first and second. For every card, repeat the whole series. You develop a rythm and it almost becomes a song in your head. I tired and just got to 18 cards in 30 seconds that way.
I don't know if I could memorize an entire deck of cards in one sitting, though. If I could look through it for two or three minutes, wait an hour or two, then come back to it, I could probably look through it for another minute or two and recite it.
I got concerned a couple of weeks ago because my network performance ground to a halt. I thought I had a some malware/spyware eating my bandwidth. Ran four different scans, found nothing. Turns out a P2P application had gone berserk and needed to be reinstalled.
I've used it at home for a little over four years and worked with it for three years as an administrator. I have NEVER had a virus on any XP system I was responsible for.
In fact, the only virus I've ever had a problem with was an infected Windows 2000 domain controller that was SUPPOSED to be managed by corporate IT. They hadn't updated it in well over a year and wouldn't let me touch it until it started crashing (and those geniuses had it as the exchange server as well...again, I couldn't change that).
In both cases, I didn't go to extreme measures to secure the systems. I used automatic updates, both a standalone firewall and Windows Firewall, and antivirus (AVG Free at home, Symantec Corporate at work). That, and I educated my users on what NOT to open from their e-mail.
A good way to teach your users not to open strange attachments is to give them a dummy one that will just let you know who opened the file. I arranged with management to do this one day...send out a trojan-like e-mail with a script that would write a file with the username in it to one of the network shares and see who opened it.
The next day I unplugged one of the network switches for fifteen minutes at the beginning of the day, told them it was because some people had opened "virus e-mails" (management knew the truth) and then plugged it back in. I talked to the people who had opened the "virus" e-mails and gave them an in-depth training session on why it's a bad thing to open every attachment you get on e-mail. From then on, they wouldn't touch anything that was even remotely suspicious.
Three years, nearly 100 users, and ZERO penetration on my systems. It's not rocket science.
I haven't had a virus on my XP system in four years, including during my dial-up days.
If you keep your system updated, use a firewall, and just generally understand how the typical virus/worm/trojan works, you're 99.9% protected. However, there's always the possibility that someone will get clever enough to get through that, so I use AVG just to be on the safe side.
I'll take MCE over MythTV any day. Myth has one of the most convoluted installation processes I've ever seen. It assumes a level of experience with Linux that a lot of Linux users don't have. And before you say KnoppMyth, I have NEVER had it install correctly. So I shelled out the money for MCE and got a nice out-of-the-box package that actually works.
TFA isn't a review, a comparison, or anything resembling a thorough consideration. They're comparing a single experience without any apparent research.
A few telling quotes:
Noisy PCs with fans blaring don't really appeal to many of us...Unlike our experiences with most Windows PCs, you won't have to turn up the volume to mask the sound of the small jet plane taking off inside.
Near-silent PCs are easy to build and readily available; there are companies who specialize in HTPCs that produce VERY little sound. My homemade unit produces very little noise. It's not the PC's fault they don't recognize the difference between a desktop system and a HTPC.
That said, the Mini probably is quieter than even most of those PCs; it hasn't been a priority for PC manufacturers.
the last thing you want to do when you get home is run a spyware removal tool and edit the registry before you can get Shrek to play.
The mantra of Mac zealots, neither of these things are regular events. I haven't edited my registry in well over a year, and spyware detection is easily automated and generally unnecessary--especially on a dedicated media PC protected by a firewall....the hair-pulling ceremonies we've held getting Window Media Center PCs to display anything at all on a TV...Compared to the hours we've spent coaxing similar results out of a Microsoft Media Center system, the Mini is definitely ahead so far.
Oddly enough, I've never had a problem with any of this at all. It's rather telling that they neither link to articles regarding their problems with MCE nor go into detail on the problems with the process in this article.
If they're going to declare one product a winner over another, they need to actually show us the duel. Let us see the process for evaluating both products. Let us see how they selected a particular model of PC that is similar to the Mini in form factor, then discuss volume level. Demonstrate the setup process and discuss the pros and cons for each system. If one peripheral product is problematic, try another brand to determine whether it's a shortcoming of the OS or a problem with the product itself. Then delve into the functionality of both products; how does each one handle different tasks? What does FrontRow do that MCE doesn't, and vice versa?
This article needs a lot less fanboyism to be taken seriously.
...and I, for one, am quite glad. The closer the two competitors are, the better products each releases. This will keep AMD from coasting the way Intel did in the nineties.
If the new generation of disks really are yet more fragile, that spells bad news given the increased efforts to prevent legitimate backups. They'd love to see us buying the same movie three or four times because of damaged disks. No, thanks. I'll stick with DVDs until I can buy HD movies online.
Right, so Apple won't compete in the Dell firesale price range. You'd have to spend at least $700 to get a Mac system with kvm and a printer. Just like Toyota won't compete in the Chevy Aveo price range - the base model Corolla is 50% more expensive than the Aveo and it has the same features! Ergo, nobody buys Toyota?
I'm not sure what you just replied to, but it's not what I wrote.:p
You're closing in on it - functionality != usability. That's why Toyota and Apple both sell their product.
I use Apples on a daily basis. I also use PCs, both Windows and Linux, on a daily basis. I prefer the PCs to the Apples in every way.
I ask again: what am I missing by not using an Apple?
To an extent, since volume does drive down price but there is a hard wall at which prices are not going to go below on things like display, battery, CPU and RAM. I imagine the touchscreen costs quite a bit more than a simple LCD and keyboard.
Even with CPUs, volume reduces cost per unit. The figures I've heard are in excess of 100 million units, which is why these laptops would work for that.
What you are looking for is really Negorponte's $100 laptop.
I think that's what was alluded to here.
Uncle Bill also wants his cut out of this and that alone pushes the price out of the range you are looking for, which is why Negroponte didn't use Windows on his $100 laptop.
I've heard that Bill offered Windows for that laptop for free, but they declined because of stability concerns, instead going with a custom Linux installation...which probably makes the most sense as you could tweak it for the specific hardware to get much better performance than Windows would allow.
I think the point of the $100 laptop was supposed to be making it affordable to charitable groups so that we could flood the poorest nations with them and give children access to technology that might help them find a way out of poverty.
What I don't get is what we're talking about here: they are supposedly (I haven't heard anything to the contrary) only going to make them available in those poor nations. If they could make this a viable platform for American students, American (and other first-world) schools would snap these things up as a budget-friendly way of acheiving a 1:1 students-per-computer ratio. The more they sell, the cheaper the laptops are to make. They could be sold in the first world at a 100% markup and still come out VERY cheap, allowing a second laptop to be provided to the third world at the cost of shipping. And if they manufactured twice as many as a result, they'd be that much cheaper to make, which means even more free laptops for the poor.
As for plugging it in: the MIT model is supposed to have a hand crank for charging.
I don't find any OS particularly intuitive, though I do find Microsoft's to be the closest to it probably because I grew up on DOS and Windows 3.0+. OSX is a huge improvement over past efforts by Apple (just like XP for MS) but it still leaves me wanting more. Linux is catching up nicely, I'm hoping it takes the lead something in the next generation of OS releases.
Apple is notoriously bad at ergonomics. I've got a box full of iMac mice to prove that point. I'll take Microsoft's peripherals over Apple's any day.
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XP is hard to secure for the man on the street The problem isn't XP. You can't make an idiot-friendly OS that is secure*. The problem is in part the consumers, and in part documentation. The consumers don't want know how to do these things. They "just want it to work". If they treated their cars the same way they did their computers, they'd have to buy a new one every 25-30,000 miles because they never changed the oil. Any OS requires basic maintenance, just like a home or a car or anything that is that complex. New (and resold) PCs also have totally insufficient documentation. People aren't being informed on how to keep themselves safe on the internet. Computer manufacturers, OS developers, and ISPs should all do everyone a favor and distribute printed literature that explains the basics of internet security and how to protect yourself from internet crime. If enough people learned to protect themselves, eventually anyone who uses a computer without proper security will be looked at like someone who lets their car seize up because they never checked the oil: idiots. *: For those whose first thought was "APPLE!" I have experience with trying to introduce people to computers with both OSX and Windows. Windows has a much easier learning curve to the completely clueless.
haha that's it. I didn't think it was patented, I just remembered seeing it a long time ago (2000?)
So this is how they make all that money.
We need to bomb their Internet Center ASAP before they build another tank rush.
What's more interesting is a system I saw years ago that was supposed to recognize whether a cat was carrying something in its mouth (like a mouse) by looking at its profile. No more "presents" left for you to step on when you get out of bed in the morning.
On long stuff like that, I tend to use the "Simon" method (I just made that up, no idea what it would really be called).
Look at the first card, say the name in your head. Look at the second, say the first and second. For every card, repeat the whole series. You develop a rythm and it almost becomes a song in your head. I tired and just got to 18 cards in 30 seconds that way.
I don't know if I could memorize an entire deck of cards in one sitting, though. If I could look through it for two or three minutes, wait an hour or two, then come back to it, I could probably look through it for another minute or two and recite it.
I got concerned a couple of weeks ago because my network performance ground to a halt. I thought I had a some malware/spyware eating my bandwidth. Ran four different scans, found nothing. Turns out a P2P application had gone berserk and needed to be reinstalled.
Apparently, it is.
I've used it at home for a little over four years and worked with it for three years as an administrator. I have NEVER had a virus on any XP system I was responsible for.
In fact, the only virus I've ever had a problem with was an infected Windows 2000 domain controller that was SUPPOSED to be managed by corporate IT. They hadn't updated it in well over a year and wouldn't let me touch it until it started crashing (and those geniuses had it as the exchange server as well...again, I couldn't change that).
In both cases, I didn't go to extreme measures to secure the systems. I used automatic updates, both a standalone firewall and Windows Firewall, and antivirus (AVG Free at home, Symantec Corporate at work). That, and I educated my users on what NOT to open from their e-mail.
A good way to teach your users not to open strange attachments is to give them a dummy one that will just let you know who opened the file. I arranged with management to do this one day...send out a trojan-like e-mail with a script that would write a file with the username in it to one of the network shares and see who opened it.
The next day I unplugged one of the network switches for fifteen minutes at the beginning of the day, told them it was because some people had opened "virus e-mails" (management knew the truth) and then plugged it back in. I talked to the people who had opened the "virus" e-mails and gave them an in-depth training session on why it's a bad thing to open every attachment you get on e-mail. From then on, they wouldn't touch anything that was even remotely suspicious.
Three years, nearly 100 users, and ZERO penetration on my systems. It's not rocket science.
One of the top 20 was Chess.
First of all, Persian != Islamic. Second, Chess predates Islam.
He'd been drinking, and there was this bird...
I haven't had a virus on my XP system in four years, including during my dial-up days.
If you keep your system updated, use a firewall, and just generally understand how the typical virus/worm/trojan works, you're 99.9% protected. However, there's always the possibility that someone will get clever enough to get through that, so I use AVG just to be on the safe side.
Didn't read the whole post, did you? :D
Oh wow someone with mod points needs a sense of humor.
"That's nice, but will Linux run it?"
I'll take MCE over MythTV any day. Myth has one of the most convoluted installation processes I've ever seen. It assumes a level of experience with Linux that a lot of Linux users don't have. And before you say KnoppMyth, I have NEVER had it install correctly. So I shelled out the money for MCE and got a nice out-of-the-box package that actually works.
TFA isn't a review, a comparison, or anything resembling a thorough consideration. They're comparing a single experience without any apparent research.
...the hair-pulling ceremonies we've held getting Window Media Center PCs to display anything at all on a TV...Compared to the hours we've spent coaxing similar results out of a Microsoft Media Center system, the Mini is definitely ahead so far.
A few telling quotes:
Noisy PCs with fans blaring don't really appeal to many of us...Unlike our experiences with most Windows PCs, you won't have to turn up the volume to mask the sound of the small jet plane taking off inside.
Near-silent PCs are easy to build and readily available; there are companies who specialize in HTPCs that produce VERY little sound. My homemade unit produces very little noise. It's not the PC's fault they don't recognize the difference between a desktop system and a HTPC.
That said, the Mini probably is quieter than even most of those PCs; it hasn't been a priority for PC manufacturers.
the last thing you want to do when you get home is run a spyware removal tool and edit the registry before you can get Shrek to play.
The mantra of Mac zealots, neither of these things are regular events. I haven't edited my registry in well over a year, and spyware detection is easily automated and generally unnecessary--especially on a dedicated media PC protected by a firewall.
Oddly enough, I've never had a problem with any of this at all. It's rather telling that they neither link to articles regarding their problems with MCE nor go into detail on the problems with the process in this article.
If they're going to declare one product a winner over another, they need to actually show us the duel. Let us see the process for evaluating both products. Let us see how they selected a particular model of PC that is similar to the Mini in form factor, then discuss volume level. Demonstrate the setup process and discuss the pros and cons for each system. If one peripheral product is problematic, try another brand to determine whether it's a shortcoming of the OS or a problem with the product itself. Then delve into the functionality of both products; how does each one handle different tasks? What does FrontRow do that MCE doesn't, and vice versa?
This article needs a lot less fanboyism to be taken seriously.
...and I, for one, am quite glad. The closer the two competitors are, the better products each releases. This will keep AMD from coasting the way Intel did in the nineties.
If the new generation of disks really are yet more fragile, that spells bad news given the increased efforts to prevent legitimate backups. They'd love to see us buying the same movie three or four times because of damaged disks. No, thanks. I'll stick with DVDs until I can buy HD movies online.
That, or it's a rather unforunate solution of liquid oxygen and hydrogen bubbles.
(is that even possible?)
Don't light a match.
Yeah, but you can't watch movies on a furnace.
Right, so Apple won't compete in the Dell firesale price range. You'd have to spend at least $700 to get a Mac system with kvm and a printer. Just like Toyota won't compete in the Chevy Aveo price range - the base model Corolla is 50% more expensive than the Aveo and it has the same features! Ergo, nobody buys Toyota?
:p
I'm not sure what you just replied to, but it's not what I wrote.
You're closing in on it - functionality != usability. That's why Toyota and Apple both sell their product.
I use Apples on a daily basis. I also use PCs, both Windows and Linux, on a daily basis. I prefer the PCs to the Apples in every way.
I ask again: what am I missing by not using an Apple?
Can't read the article (yay for school content filters) but that's the first I've heard of them actually talking about that.
To an extent, since volume does drive down price but there is a hard wall at which prices are not going to go below on things like display, battery, CPU and RAM. I imagine the touchscreen costs quite a bit more than a simple LCD and keyboard.
Even with CPUs, volume reduces cost per unit. The figures I've heard are in excess of 100 million units, which is why these laptops would work for that.
What you are looking for is really Negorponte's $100 laptop.
I think that's what was alluded to here.
Uncle Bill also wants his cut out of this and that alone pushes the price out of the range you are looking for, which is why Negroponte didn't use Windows on his $100 laptop.
I've heard that Bill offered Windows for that laptop for free, but they declined because of stability concerns, instead going with a custom Linux installation...which probably makes the most sense as you could tweak it for the specific hardware to get much better performance than Windows would allow.
But, who sez Apple computers cost more than PCs do? Hasn't been true for a while now. Check out the mini, or the iBook.
Apple makes a $500 anything? That's a typical promotional price for an entry-level PC, complete with monitor and printer.
And where could you get such software functionality in any PC at any price?
What is there that I can't do with my PC? I've been trying to figure out what functionality I'm missing, and I just don't see it.
I think the point of the $100 laptop was supposed to be making it affordable to charitable groups so that we could flood the poorest nations with them and give children access to technology that might help them find a way out of poverty.
What I don't get is what we're talking about here: they are supposedly (I haven't heard anything to the contrary) only going to make them available in those poor nations. If they could make this a viable platform for American students, American (and other first-world) schools would snap these things up as a budget-friendly way of acheiving a 1:1 students-per-computer ratio. The more they sell, the cheaper the laptops are to make. They could be sold in the first world at a 100% markup and still come out VERY cheap, allowing a second laptop to be provided to the third world at the cost of shipping. And if they manufactured twice as many as a result, they'd be that much cheaper to make, which means even more free laptops for the poor.
As for plugging it in: the MIT model is supposed to have a hand crank for charging.
I don't find any OS particularly intuitive, though I do find Microsoft's to be the closest to it probably because I grew up on DOS and Windows 3.0+. OSX is a huge improvement over past efforts by Apple (just like XP for MS) but it still leaves me wanting more. Linux is catching up nicely, I'm hoping it takes the lead something in the next generation of OS releases.
Apple is notoriously bad at ergonomics. I've got a box full of iMac mice to prove that point. I'll take Microsoft's peripherals over Apple's any day.