[Mimedefang] OS wars... [was Viruses: Bounce or Discard?]

[David Meissner]

> We havent been able to rely on the 
> end user who seems completely unwilling to accept any kind of 
> responsibility and unfortunately I dont see any major change in this. 
> 
> Why arent there any classes that deal with internet behavior? 
> Or TV commercials about updating your virus engines. They're 
> there to buckle your seatbelt, or have safe sex. 

Not to belabor my earlier point, but I don't think end users are unwilling
to accept responsibility, I think that computers are impossible to use and
end users have no way of knowing what to do. Classes or TV commercials can
do very little about this.

I've seen McAfee VirusScan completely trash the OS. I've seen Symantec Live
Update fail for no apparent reason. I'm sure other products have their own
share of bugs. How can the end user deal with this?

Another example: while surfing the Net, a user gets prompted "do you want do
download and install....." several programs. One might be Macromedia Flash.
One might be RealPlayer. One might be Gator. One might be something
completely new that no one has ever heard of.

You and I know what action to take for each of those choices, but how is a
regular user to know what to do? How could they keep up with the industry to
the point where they know who is reputable and who is not? 

You could say, "never say yes to anything", but that would severely limit
our industry, and we'd miss out on some fun as well (I'm not a RealPlayer
fan, but some of that Flash stuff is pretty cool). 


-David Meissner