Nice analogy on a Guardian Technology page in an article by Andrew Brown last Thursday. The topic was anti-virus firms holding the public to ransom with Mafia style tactics.

The warnings that bubble up almost daily from your system tray could all be reduced to one marketing message: “Nice computer you’ve got here. It would be a shame if anything were to happen to it”

However, I don’t completely agree. It’s not as if the big three firms to which he refers are threatening to spread malware if you don’t instal them. Anti-virus firms may rely for sales on the fact that the Internet is seething with malware. It’s certainly true that it’s in their interest to talk up threats and keep everyone in a state of fear. All the same, they don’t distribute malware and I don’t believe they can get much advantage from nagging us into constantly updating.

Andrew Brown is basically saying that av software isn’t necessary because you can keep out intruders with a firewall. I’m not convinced that just having a firewall is always the answer.

He’s saying “Don’t use Internet Explorer” or “Outlook Express,” only use free or legit software, don’t go to shady sites. It’s all good advice but it’s not infallible.

Above all, he’s an industry professional, obviously well-regarded enough to be a Guardian columnist. He knows what he’s doing. I don’t suppose any kids or less-expert friends and relatives ever use his computer. Most (non-Albanian) people have less idea of what’s going on in their PCs than they have of Albanian grammar. Andrew Brown might be able to tell whether an obscure system process needs to connect to location xx.xx.xx.xx but the rest of us don’t. And we certainly couldn’t tell if a worm had spoofed a legitimate process. (I suspect he might have trouble doing that.) We don’t know if registry entries are genuine, given the zillions of redundant just-in-case entries that come with Windows. Most of us don’t even know how to open the Windows registry and would finish off our PCs permenently if we tried to edit it.

Even with Linux, in its new user friendly versions, even an expert user has to take most of its actions on trust. And Firefox is no longer hole-free is it? (In fact, unlike IE, Firefox will handily store your passwords in a human readable format.) Are malware distributors never going to abuse people’s trust by adding code to open-source freeware? Almost any piece of software has weaknesses and the world seems full of evil geniuses who can find them a lot faster than they can be detected.

I prefer to have a stab at eliminating malware myself and at detecting it by looking at the packets my PC sends, just as a half-interesting challenge and because I hate to feel powerless in relation to using my PC. I’m not much better at it than the average toddler is at ballet dancing. When malware defeats me, I’m more than glad there are products that can do better than I can at stopping it.

Good article, very nice metaphor. Can’t agree 100% though.

Tags: technology, malware, firewall, antivirus.

Fortunately I am not a daily mail reader so I was spared the latest fallacy riddled diatribe by Alistair McGrath (who has been mentioned here in the past). Even more fortunately the excellent Nullifidian Blog did endure the nonsense and wrote about it highlighting the (numerous) logical fallacies McGrath is employing.

Dawkins, McGrath and the Daily Mail

I would never go as far as suggesting reading the Daily Mail, but it may well be worth getting in touch (via email or whatever) to let them know what you think of the article.

Extra ironic comedy points are awarded to some of the comments currently on the newspaper’s site. The bog-standard appeals to false authority are very prevalent:

Dawkins’ view of the universe is very 3 dimentional. Surely a great mind rules nothing in and nothing out without proof. Einstein was fully aware of that argument. – Martin Hazelgrove, Bristol, UK

Yeah, and what exactly did Uncle Albert know about evolutionary biology or theology? Just because he was a fantastically gifted physicist doesn’t mean he has any greater authority on this topic than the next person. Might as well have said “My granny was fully aware of that argument” for all the value it provides.

The Cornish Catholic Church is on hand to present a variation on the appeal to fear, appeal to ridicule and the appeal from personal incredulity:

I’m all for removing our delusions and the ‘agnostics’ and ‘atheists’ have plenty. The big question is ultimate, adequate explanation of what we see around us. That has to be. Then to relate our lives to this explanation of explanations. Without this relationship we remain unfulilled and live with more and more delusions.– Father Bryan Storey, Tintagel Catholic Church, Cornwall

If you haven’t already done so – buy the book (The God Delusion…).

And a Roman one on the same site. Yeah. okay, I’ll stop now,

Update – BAH. Ignore that, this one’s rubbish – it only gives you Spartacus as far as i can see. Bah. But the Viking one mentioned in the last post is OK.

Tags: Roman, names, generator, Roman names generator.

I like this – Viking names generator, on archeoastronomy

Tags: Viking, names, generator, Viking names generator,

Following from my last, mercifully brief, post here, I obsessively decided to find out about the YouTube comment posters I mentoned a few minutes ago. I guess that already shows I’m too odd.

Because, obviously I was going to be deeply depressed about the state of American society, humanity in general, yada yada.

Well, duh. No surprises then. I have indeed became deeply depressed about humanity in general. Looking at the YouTube page of “pimpsxycute” – doesn’t the name say it all? – s/he is obviously just not very bright. And, yes, I know I shouldn’t insult people’s intelligence. Obviously no one can help how they are born.

“earmuffs420” is another matter. I still don’t know if the YouTube comment is a joke in any sense of the word , as earmuffs420 seems to be a white racist. Then again I don’t know if the YouTube persona is a joke but this time I am really praying to (insert name of any deity or natural phenomenon of choice) that the whole YouTube personal page is some wierd post-modern ironic joke. Although it’s not even remotely funny. The page is filled with obscure racist crap, an offensive but incomprehensible background and links to racially offensive posts by the writer, with only barely less incomprehensible complaints about them.

Now, people can’t help the level of intelligence they were born with, as I said before. Maybe they can’t even help being complete (insert most offensive word you can think of). But other people don’t have to like it. What you can do about it is another matter. I just don’t know.

My point here is not just the weakness of rationality to deal with the people who are off the scale, which I’ve already whined about. It’s that the Internet lets you see a lot further into the murky depths of humanity than anyone would reasonably want to go. How many aliens are walking amongst us who are seem to be getting mistaken for members of the homo sapiens species by accident?

This is just a link to a clip from The Wire on YouTube There are thousands more. I suspect you could watch half of all 4 series if you look at the clips in the right order. Not recommended.

I only picked this particular clip because
A) it like the way the actors get across the characters of Bunny, Naimond and his evil Mom with a few words and expressions.
B) it has the weirdest comments on YouTube. I really really hope that these people are joking:

earmuffs420 (2 months ago)
naymonds a little bitch. i hate that fuckin kid. his mom has more heart than him naymonds a little bitch. i hate that fuckin kid. his mom has more heart than him
pimpsxycute (2 months ago)
put yourself in his postion . he just a bpy whp grew up in money . he doesnt want to live that life . he mayt be soft . but thats all he knows how to be . i still love namond . and the rest of the cast