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Time to learn
by Anonymous on Thu 2nd Dec 2004 22:41 UTC

People should learn how to do basic maintance on their own computers, its that plain and simple. With the car analogy, no people don't need to know how to change the oil but they should know when to change the oil. People should learn to recognize when there is a problem with their machince and either fix it or call someone who is qulified. I have seen enough zombie / trojaned / virus infested PC to last me a life time.

"That's bad practice because people develop the mentality of "oh I have anti-virus/firewall/popup blocker, I don't have to do anything." That just creates a lazy user. Knowledge is power, not software to clean up after your mess."

I agree 100 percent. There are some commercial firewalls that do not take a complete deny stance. I have seen software based firewalls allow pings, ICMP to port 0 and so on. Why is ping so important? It lets people know that your alive (virus or hacker). Most assume that hey, I have it installed and its doing its thing. Basically, people are trusting that the software vendor has done an adequate time to protect them, sometimes yes and sometimes no.

Some basic maintance:
1) How often do people actually make backups?
2) How often do people do a complete virus scan or verify their definitions are up to date?
3) How often do people run something for checking adware / spyware?

I have seen enough people to know that most do not make backups and they are typically hesitant to upgrade their system because transfering their files would be a week long process.

I have also see users running virus software that is 3-4 years old and believe that they are getting up to date definitions. These same systems have never had a complete system scan, done, ever.

Adware, sypware, no, no, no.... It only takes my system 15 minutes to boot, right, no problem there. I just don't know what to say about this whole spyware/adware epidemic.

You have to learn basic maintance or when to have someone do the maintance for you. And as a default, OS' should ship secure. Damn the user convience of enabling a service or a feature by default. Make them point and click 2 or 3 times to turn something on, not just have something plug in and just plain run.

PC's should not be stupid proof by any means. Todays PC's are point / click and poof it now works. What did that point and click enable? Was it the bare minimum? Did it secure itself for the local network or leave it open for the Internet as a whole?

O'well, it will probably never happen. It looks like the way OS' are heading creates new job opportunities. Look at how many industries and markets that have been created by making OS' (its current attempts) somewhat user friend.
1) Virus
2) Firewalls
3) Spam Filters
4) What is next.