Windows bashing was: Re: Voxin was: Re: Switching to Linux

Fri May 10 12:27:27 EDT 2013

Tyler,
I have had a lot of success fixing viruses on computers by tapping the hard 
drive with a USB to IDE or SATA cable and scanning the drive like an 
external drive.
Glenn

----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Littlefield, Tyler" <tyler at tysdomain.com>
To: "Speakup is a screen review system for Linux." 
<speakup at linux-speakup.org>
Sent: Friday, May 10, 2013 9:11 AM
Subject: Re: Windows bashing was: Re: Voxin was: Re: Switching to Linux

Hello:
I understand that it's not always people that view porn. Basically
though, you know what to do to disable attachments and you don't click
on random weird links. usually that's enough to save you the trouble.
End-users on say, facebook usually aren't as lucky. My grandma clicks
everything that looks like a link and usually has a virus. The
difference is mainly that you know what you're doing and she doesn't.
Also, I recognize that it's not just porn browsers, I guess that was
more of a genearlization. There are sites like Sendspace that do give
popups, but usually the flood of popups (porn or otherwise) appears with
viruses and it doesn't really matter what site you're on.

I do know Norton sucked, but that's far from the only solution now if
they're still even around. I don't remember seeing Norton on a system
for a long time, regardless. Usually I replace it with something like
AVG that doesn't store resources.

Either way, I'm not sure where the bigshot programmer that knows php
came in. That obviously is one of the languages I use since I use it on
my site, but it's not even relevant. I just thought I'd reply to the
windows bashing since it's done by a guy I've seen make totally ludacris
hardware suggestions and shove arch at people that probably shouldn't
use it. On another note, while I love Linux as a server and I use it all
the time on my desktop, I'm not really sure that it should be used for
end-users who just want a desktop. I guess it does offer him job
security, though.
On 5/10/2013 7:19 AM, Tony Baechler wrote:
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> OK, we're getting way off topic here, so this will be my only response on
> this thread.  My comments are below.
>
> On 5/9/2013 5:54 PM, Littlefield, Tyler wrote:
>> First, the fact that Windows gets viruses is a user issue, not a
>> Windows vs Linux issue. with UAC it's a lot harder and if the user runs
>> as something besides admin it's even harder still. Those "pesky popups"
>> come up because well, your pesky users are actually viewing porn with a
>> horrible browser.
> That's somewhat true, but not totally.  First, I don't have a virus
> scanner or firewall running here.  GASP!  Yep, I ran Windows 98 and XP
> with no virus scanner, malware remover or firewall.  You know, I've never
> had an active virus on my system.  The last time I had a real and true
> virus was after I got a new install of Win98 and the computer shop who
> built it installed a virus for me.  It was a rogue process running a
> backdoor ftp server and calling itself notepad.  I couldn't figure out why
> I always had notepad running in the background.  Once I got that cleaned
> up, oh, about 10 or mor years ago, I've not had a virus since.  However,
> with OE in particular, it opens email attachments without the knowledge of
> the user, so it's next to impossible to prevent getting a virus at some
> point.  Thunderbird is better, but you still have to turn off the message
> preview by hand.  Eudora would automatically save and open attachments
> unless you turned it off.
>
> What's not totally true is your comment about people who view porn and get
> pop-ups.  Well, first of all, I don't view it.  I have no interest.
> Second, I'm totally blind so there would be no point.  I still get pop-up
> ads all the time in IE since it has no blocker, but I hear that IE 7 is
> better about this.  I also get them with Firefox 19, but not often.
> Sendspace is the really bad one and the Firefox blocker doesn't seem to
> block it.  Another one is sfsite.com.  As you say, it's not a Windows vs.
> Linux issue.
>
>> There are alternative solutions such as Firefox and Chrome which are
>> much better  suited to acting as a browser.
> See above.  I only use Firefox here.  Does Chrome work with Orca nowadays?
>   Yes, I know Google built their own Chrome screen reader, but I wasn't
> impressed with it.  Also, sometimes people have good reasons to use IE,
> like stupid government sites requiring it.  I know the DMV is one.  Some
> banks still require IE as well.  Some content can't be viewed with other
> browsers.
>> I'm not sure what you mean by "manually finding keys that don't belong
>> there." If you were worth your weight in whatever people were paying
>> you for this random manual registry key removal, you would've used a
>> registry cleaner like CCleaner and been done with it. As to anti virus
>> solutions, I routinely install them for people and they still have the
>> resources to spare, funny enough. Perhaps you should've done more
>> research there as well.
> Yeah, that's pretty funny.  When I ran a virus scanner here at one time,
> also many years ago, it took so many resources that it was hard to get
> anything else done.  Literally, my machine came to a complete stop every
> morning at 8 AM for five minutes.  Norton managed to lock up the system
> completely after it was installed and doing its routine virus check.
> Don't get me started on Zonealarm and spyware removers.  While I agree
> with you about a registry cleaner, that doesn't remove everything.  After
> Mcafee was completely uninstalled because it was a trial and we weren't
> going to buy it, the registry had a lot of keys left which I manually had
> to find and delete.  That only took me about 30 minutes or so.
>
> You think you're a big shot programmer because you know php or something,
> but it's amazing to me how many programmers don't seem to know the basics
> of system administration, regardless of the OS.  I guess that's what keeps
> security professionals employed full-time.  Just to be fair, I don't
> totally agree with Kyle either and I think he makes too many general
> assumptions based on his own preferences which are not always true.  Not
> everyone runs Arch, for example.  His prices to build a computer are
> unrealistic.
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-- 
Take care,
Ty
http://tds-solutions.net
He that will not reason is a bigot; he that cannot reason is a fool; he that 
dares not reason is a slave.
Sent from my Toaster (tm).

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