A couple of years ago, in High School my friend told me that his father claimed that he once hacked into the pentagon (and didn't get caught, of course.)
I thought this was kind of funny, because his father was sort of a freak, and snooped into his privacy by installing a keylogger plus screen monitoring software on his desktop to spy on him.
After giving my friend some advice, he ctr+alt+deleted and looked at the running processes and found that his father was using a retail product for the spying.
Kind of funny, you'd think that someone who had "hacked the pentagon" wouldn't have to buy something to spy on their son.
If people knew just a tiny bit more about computers, they would save a lot of money. I suspect a good portion of Windows licenses sold are those bought after a Windows installation crammed up a computer and the owner thought the computer itself was broken, not the OS.
Microsoft has a good way of pretending their OS is simple, while hiding the facts that make it break. I think this is good for the service industry and for sales, but probably not for the user. People should be encouraged to learn a bit before getting into using the computer.
Or perhaps I am wrong- after all, most people I've helped move to Linux have used it because it's 'easier' and 'simpler'. I think that maybe rather than hiding the problems, they should make the problems in Windows obvious and easier to fix, rather than beating around the bush and letting everyone else deal with their virtual dust.
Anyway, all Windows-meh aside, I know a few people who are this frightened by computers. It's kind of sad to think that I'm just having a great time every time I boot up, while other people I know have crippling fear and immense frustration when they start it up.
I'm not exaggerating here- these people really don't enjoy using their Windows computers, because they're slow and poorly protected. However, even when you defragment and run anti-malware programs constantly, there are other issues that slow down a Windows installation.
I think at that point I would have slapped him and told him to get a grip.
Also, perhaps that the best way to prevent being hacked is to boil your computer and then bury it in a 20ft deep hole in the garden.
Installs a brain firewall to filter out the waffle.
Also, people tend to get frustrated with Linux too. The wifi card on my moms laptop gets 5% better signal strength on Windows, so hers will drop out when my sisters (same laptop with win7) does not at the fringes of their wireless range. (Though for some odd reason the Linux one gets better throughput). Though I never hear the end of it when I am there I tell her sit 10 feet closer. Though she knows well enough why Windows is not for her (she uses it at work and I never here the end of it how bad it is there ).
Last edited by NightwishFan; June 26th, 2010 at 10:24 AM.
I've always found it quite easy to talk my way out of CLI situation simply by remaining calm and telling the truth, as long as you're not doing anything dodgy you've got nothing to be afraid of.
P.S. Switch your terminal from white-on-black to black-on-white - the psychological effect of a simple color change is hilarious .
Perhaps I invented the pending invention the idea?
Reminds me a little of this nonsense. Funny of course, but nonsense all the same.
Ignorance is best met with education not respect.
I would offer to teach him about computers, since he seems to care about security but is misguided about it's implementation that seems to be a good place to start.
Ubuntu offers him encryption for his personal files to keep them safe, no need for an anti-virus, there are no network facing services exposed by default, users are limited in what they can do. Finally it is all open which has a proven positive effect on security and response time to problems.
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