Jerbl.com Forums

jerbl

Member

Restoring Sanity to Computers and the Internet

--UPDATE--

This is what I turned in for my information paper, I know its kind of weak, if you have any suggestions post them.

--/UPDATE--

What is it about the internet and computers that encourages so much discussion, doubt, uncertainty and fear?  Many of us have heard the horror stories of countless hours wasted trying to get a computer to connect to the internet or even that the computer function properly.  How about even more countless hours spent yelling at the computer as if it were responsible for its frozen state in the middle of our huge projects.  Most of us have received the e-mails that ask us to send money to somebody in India for a return investment of several million, or to divulge our credit card number to someone that wants our money.  We have had to endure mountains of pop-up advertisements after browsing for only a few minutes.  We have been exposed to viruses that shutdown our computer, laugh at us through our own speakers, or record our keystrokes to send our passwords and accounts to some eager tracker.   We endure some things that we don't see, but most assuredly feel, as our computer slows to a crawl, bogged down by what is probably mountains of ad-ware, spy-ware, viruses, or spam.  How did something such as computers and the internet invade our lives so methodically and so totally, yet be like us, so unperfected?  It?s pretty obvious that the computer is unsafe, all the whispers and rumors were right, we should just get rid of the computer entirely.  There is no better alternative, our worst fears have come true.  We must purge the world of computers or the computers will purge us of our sanity!   The best way to fix the whole thing is to turn the computer off, unplug it from the wall and get it very far away from us.  Maybe we should just go back to pen and paper.  Or not?  Then what perhaps can we suggest as the solution?  Much of our problems with computers stem from two sources, inside the computer bubble, and outside it.  To be inside the bubble, is to directly use the computer.  Outside that bubble would be anything else, computer manufactures, programmers, evil and conspiring men, just about anyone that affects our computer in some way, shape, or form.

Unfortunately, many of the problems we have should be laid at our feet.  We are responsible for a large portion of what goes wrong.  Laying all the blame at our feet isn?t entirely fair, but we do share in quite a bit.  Computers should be impervious to the unknowing, but the unknowing are only a tiny fraction of the computer user world, so why are the rest of us responsible?  Many of us are guilty of the most common computer sin, we think that we know what we are doing.  How many times have we set out on a task to purge the computer of evil, and ended up making it several times worse?  It is on these occasions that we either break it ourselves, or open it up in such a way that allows others to enter and break it for us.  Problems like these can come from programs that we install, settings that we change, hardware that we put in or take out of the computer, games that we play, people we chat with, attachments we open, spam we read, internet sites we browse, security updates we don?t download, advice we ignore, computers we leave on, cords we hook up.  Even the everyday tasks that we do on the computer can do it. 

Since we are not entirely to blame, outside sources are also a important part of the whole picture.  With the spike in computer and internet use came a surge of people that wanted to exploit everything about it.  Especially now, that broadband internet, or internet that is much faster than the old standard dial-up, has become more popular.  Access by the evil at heart to our computers store of personal information and resources keeps getting all the easier.  One of the biggest problems lies in the confidence placed by many major software companies on something called security through obscurity.  This concept refers to what they (the software users or us) don?t know can?t hurt them (us).  Millions of the problems or bugs left in programs are often ignored because of this, perhaps you have heard them tell you ?its not a bug, its a feature!?   The biggest software maker in the world, a name we are all familiar with, often refuses to fix problems that are common knowledge to both good and evil.  Normally, because security through obscurity works in most smaller issues this wouldn?t be that big of a deal, but strangely enough, roughly 95 percent of the world?s computers are powered by the software from this company.  This includes not just users, but many businesses, schools, universities, and government agencies.  Small wonder that we have such a problem with our computers.  Studies have shown that a 'virgin computer', one that has been freshly put together and set up, can be connected to the internet for an average of 30 minutes before being detected by people with evil intent.  Those thirty minutes includes the amount of time it takes to compromise that computer, in other words, take the control of it from the rightful owner without him/her knowing it.  Many people refuse to get anything faster than dial-up because they think that the slower speeds will protect them, unfortunately they couldn't be more wrong, and dial-up computers are usually pooled together to make one reasonably fast computer network and are exploited it all the same.

What then is to be done?  Computers aren?t going to go away anytime soon, and few, if any of us, can affect what goes on in the larger companies of the world who make computers and their software.  What can affect us the most  is in our little bubble of how we use the computer.  Treating the computer like it will break whenever we touch it might work.  This will make sure that everything hard to recover be separated from the computer in some way, shape or form.  We can also educate ourselves about the programs that we use.  For instance, we can make sure that when the government agency in charge of National Security says that a leading software maker?s browser is unsafe, what we need to do.  We need to inform ourselves of current symptoms of viruses and keep an eye out for them as we use the computer.  Most of all, we need to learn how to discover choice in the world of computers.  Going with the status quo is what makes us the most susceptible.  With millions of people using the same exact thing, and few taking the time to find out about what else is out there, who do you think the viruses are going to target?