|
Wednesday, February 22, 2006So in London a computer security firm handed out free CDs with a Valentine's Day promotion to see how many people would open them. Bruce Schneier is appalled, wondering where people would get the idea you could pop in a free CD without thinking twice about potential dangers.I found out about this after firing up AOL. Yup, my very first time using AOL, thirteen years ago, I popped a 3 1/2" disk in the floppy drive - a free disk they had out front at the college bookstore. Five minutes later, I typed in a credit card number and the computer automatically dialed the phone and connected with a computer in Virginia. Where do people come up with this stuff. Tonight, I'm looking at this stuff with my Mozilla web browser. I downloaded and installed it because some guy whose site I like said it was all the rage. I wonder where people come up with this stuff. The bottom line, in this day and age, is that there's a fine line between being secure and being paralyzed. I gave blogger the password for the server space TurkeyBlog is hosted in too. After my fifth post, I'd had it with re-entering my information all the time. I've gotten burned a few times, but the only time I really got clobbered was when I used a disk in the college computer lab and brought it home. * * * Where I work, we have a computer for clients to use in conjunction their education programs. We can't run most of the programs because the regional IT guy has the computer locked for safety and we can't upgrade QuickTime. We also can't connect a printer. Which is great: when we do corporate testing, we have to email the results to another computer to print them. Which is also idiotic. Those who say that the biggest job for IT is to take it out of our hands and spend extra resources to protect us from ourselves are, I think, probably right. Because in our office, which has seemingly been virus-free quite a while, computer security is a hassle that prevents us from doing our jobs, rather than something that creates an environment in which we can get our work done effectively. Just like the cop is only supposed to arrest criminals, not stop you for going seven over when you're late for work... Just a few thoughts. 
posted by gbarto at 10:32 PM |
Archives
|
Day By Day© by Chris Muir.Old TurkeyBlog here.
