The IT industry isn’t as boring and technically obsessed as many outsiders believe. Viruses and malicious hacker threats in particular have been increasingly sensationalised in the popular press, squeezing the issues gradually into the public consciousness.
The Network Poltergeist
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Eugenia Loli
Ex-programmer, ex-editor in chief at OSNews.com, now a visual artist/filmmaker.
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Slowly entering the public consciousness. None to soon. Most users don’t really care about said invasions into their home PC.
I have explained this concept and was advised, “Hey, if they want to read my email, more power too them”. Well, once you explain that if they go shopping and that their keystokes can be logged, the tune changes (a little).
User still don’t take this seriously.
1) Updating
2) Patching
3) Scanning their machine
4) Watching what you install (Commercial or non-commercial).
It seems that users expect some type of junk in installed software. Why else would it be free. Tis sad state.
User still don’t take this seriously.
1) Updating
2) Patching
3) Scanning their machine
4) Watching what you install (Commercial or non-commercial).
They should not have to, either. When we buy a car, we expect it to just work. Computer systems would, too, if they were designed by engineers rather than by salesmen and accountants.
I agree completely.
When I buy a new car I should not have to worry about technical details like checking the oil level, rotating the tires, tire pressure, or filling the gas tank, and if I decide to buy a trailer hitch from that guy on the side of the road, it should just work, no matter what. I can not wait to tow a semi trailer with my car! My car gets much better gas mileage than those big diesel trucks, how come no one thought of this before?
Really these OS things are more like normal scheduled maintenance. If your new car has a part that is later determined to be faulty by design, they replace it with a new version, for free even if it has not failed yet.
“Really these OS things are more like normal scheduled maintenance. If your new car has a part that is later determined to be faulty by design, they replace it with a new version, for free even if it has not failed yet.”
Bull. We’re talking basic security holes here that should have been taken care of before the product hit the shelves and certainly before it gets pre-installed on a computer. The simple fact is a lot of OS programmers are either lazy or inept. They certainly are paid well enough though. They all need to be doing a better job on security, and if they can’t then maybe they ought to be driving a forklift at Walmart.
Expecting the user to watch what they install is one thing, but malware writers have it far too easy when they can infect a machine halfway around the globe in 18 minutes. We’re not talking Lex Luthor, evil genius types here…we’re talking wanna-be hackers and such. Script kiddies. The internet has become and will continue to be far too imporant a part of our lives for OS security to be as half-baked as it is. But it’s always easier to point the finger at the common user than re-think their security procedures.
Seriously, 5 years ago…
Security IS a big issue…
the press is waking upto the reality now.
However, most of the home users still don’t understand the implications of having spyware and adware on their PCs, till it just makes their PCs sluggish or unusable. There is a need to educate the common PC user about detecting and removing spyware and adware.
Interesting cars and computers analogy. I’ll add my point of view to this.
If your car was broken into, you’d put it down to the fault of the car manufacturer, and expect something to be done about it straight away. You don’t often update your car (i.e. not buy a new one, add to it), and therefore you don’t need to dive into it’s internals often, unless it breaks.
If the car breaks down, you don’t complain that the automated widget on the car engine is way too hard to understand, you send it off to an engineer (unless you know what you’re doing of course). The trouble is that there are few people who make a job out of fixing your computer when it breaks down software-wise, and so it falls to down to the person using it somewhat.
There are very few differents parts in a car, there aren’t a huge variety of engines for example, and very few ways to break into a car (most of those have been covered a long time ago). Compared to a car, a computer is a very complicated system, and when you link up a computer to another computer (you can’t do that with cars atm), the complications skyrocket. Therefore, I don’t think comparing cars and computers is fair.
Thank you, and others, for serious comments.
Yes, computers are more complicated than cars; but driving an email system as a home user is easier than driving a car. So computers should be simple to use, and this means not failling because of security issues.