Better tools let hackers strike more quickly

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Why should users care?: This is a good question! Why should a user care? My thought is that since users of anything don't generally consider anything more of any product or service than what the various advertising tells them, they will have little forethought about anything they may need to know with the reality of anything. On the other hand, they are usually also not so realistic in knowing that they really need to know a good deal about the service or product. Not necessarily to be an expert, but enough to recognize certain problems, hazards and such so as to know a proper course of action before something gets out of hand.

In my eleven years online I have never had a virus invade my PC. Maybe my being a licensed 1st Class communications technician helps my awareness of possible problems enough to prevent things such as this. Awareness of these possibilities helps to provide answers as to how to prevent problems, as well as what to immediately do to solve them when/if they do happen.

However, I do feel that much of the blame for the Windows flaws must be held to Microsoft. With the old Win3.1 and 3.11 there were fewer problems. One could even delete things from use without affecting the overall performance. I always deleted all traces of Internet Explorer back then. Why should I waste the space on my system when I was going to use Netscape? Ever since Win95, one cannot delete anything that MS has made part of the Windows OS. A number of problems exist ever since MS made Windows to allow for outside 'control'.

Even more to the problems comes the email providers. With the desire for higher profits email providers started charging for certain services that had previously been free. Along with this, due to the extra burden of doing things that caused them to retain people that cost them money, they stopped allowing things so that they could reduce their payroll costs. One such thing was allowing individuals to actually control a 'bounce' of particular emails. Not merely to automatically delete them, but actually bounce them back to the sender. If this were allowed by everyone, it would very quickly identify spammers and also those that start the path of virus attachments to email. Faster identification would allow for better prevention.

There are many things that would help with all the problems, but we must understand that blame must first be placed upon those who have created the situation to allow the problem to get such a widespread start; the Windows OS. Next, we users should not only try more to help ourselves in a reasonable awareness for prevention, but to also stress the need for manufacturers to provide a product with fewer problems, less outside control by the manufacturer (and its' multitude of 'affiliates'). Such acts by them that is built into any software always screws things up and causes more problems. For those of you who remember well enough, Windows 3.11 wasn't broke. Why did it need 'fixing'? Simple conversion to such simplicities as longer file names, fancier desktops and screensavers, and the 32 bit applications would have been more than enough. Win95 was the start of a very screwed up approach to everything since.

Why should users care? We have the right to expect a product to do as is advertised without problems! Maybe we should insist that the companies producing anything should list all the prossible flaws, drawbacks, and problems in large print before they begin making their pitch on why we should buy the product or service.; Posted by: DJnRF Posted on: 07/28/04 You are currently: a Guest | Members login | Terms of Use