2 ms·
Not so hard to argue: Because it is antisocial. In the case of your neighbour with that careless attitude, there is a good chance his computer is part of a bot
by alecco 18y ago
Not so hard to argue: Because it is antisocial.
In the case of your neighbour with that careless attitude, there is a good chance his computer is part of a botnet or at least infected with some virus. Therefore a source of spam and even denial of service attacks.
I'm sure a lot of people felt the same a hundred years ago with old schoolers refusing to keep their horses away and just leaving manure all over the place. I'm sure car owners hated them the most. (Just to add a colourful simil.)
- litewulf 18y agoWell, often times, browser choice is out of your control. Anyway, my view is that this kind of attacks the problem from the wrong end. (Ideally people would have up to date software because it just happened for them.) I think telling people their software is deficient just hurts the cause because it makes them angry at the web and not the browser. (PS: I've worked at places standardized on Ubuntu Dapper. Its so old that getting Firefox 2 was a hack, and forget about Firefox 3... so the other end is similar, though perhaps not as deleterious to webmasters.)
- coffeeaddicted 18y agoThat doesn't sound right. Windows 98 had no webservices running by default, so I would say it's actually a rather safe choice.
- alecco 18y agoDrive-by Installs: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Drive-by_download http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Drive-by_download This is the wild frontier in computer security right now.
- coffeeaddicted 18y agoBut how many of those will still run on 98? ;-)
- alecco 18y agoThey aim to old vulnerable versions in particular because the chances to infect are just higher. There are millions of unpatched Windows 98 online, specially in developing countries.
- coffeeaddicted 18y agoMaybe you are right - I don't have any numbers on that. Anyway, most people I know which still run Windows 98 don't do it because they like the system, but because newer Windows versions don't run on their hardware.