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• Sunday, November 30, 2008 03:43 AM

  OT -- Retzilian and computers

  I'm back from a gruelling experience of fixing a computer that had a horrible series of trojans and viruses (viri?) and it took killing the beasties with a complete reinstall to rid the machine of them. Just in time to meet our new whackjob, Zoltan. Whatever ...

  For the record, I think I have seen the name Zoltan around before.

  Around '97 I was working with a 386 box and Windows 95. I was in the middle of some important work (important to me at least) when a nasty new virus took down the whole box. All files lost.

  At that time, I decided that the Linux I had played with was just going to have to be "good enough". So, I installed Debian "bo" and have never allowed a Windows product in my house. I am now up to Debian "Lenny" on one partition, with Debian "Sid" on the other. I have not paid for any software since and I claim that OpenOffice 3.0 is much nicer than the MS Office stuff that I sometimes use at work.

  My wife surfs all over the net clicking on god-knows-what and my mother sends us both virus infected chain mail daily. No worries here. And she has never complained that her 3 year old computer is "getting slow". :-)

  My decision was reinforced a couple of summers ago when I read about a poor bloke in London. Seems he was arrested for having illegal images on his computer. It looked like he was going to prison for being a pervert with a special interest in the kiddies. But, he had enough money to hire the best computer security firm in the country (or so the news claimed) to investigate the impounded computer. Turns out there were 100s of viruses and worms. Turns out that some bad guys were using his box as a server of illegal images! All this without his being aware --- just as most people I work with think getting another virus is just part of computing. The case was tossed out, and he got his life back. But I am poor; and I could not afford a defense --- so I'll make sure the box I am typing on stays free from others control. (if I can)

  Dell now sells computers with GNU/Linus pre-installed. Worth a look to those who need their computer and do not want to "share" unless they give permission.

  Even better; when you have that "old" box that is just "too damn slow" to use anymore, put a Linux distro on it and see what it is like.

  —heru-ur Read heru-ur's other letters
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