Extortion ware?

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Originally posted by karahd
Mac OS -> Vastly different and simplified
Linux -> Actually does not require that level of knowledge. You would need someone to set it up for you, but Windows people who don't know anything need people to set up their systems, too.

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To an extent. But you can't expect someone who's used MS Windows and MS Office to just sit down on a Linux box and use it. Linux needs a lot more work on usability before it'll quite achieve that. HOWEVER! This is not necessarily a bad thing. There's something appealing about a computer knowledge criterion prior to using a real operating system. All the 12-year-old twinks, the morons, and the people who "don't want to understand computers, just want to do email and internet" - let them use Windows. Intelligent people can choose something better.

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Not only is OS/2 not popular, but it is also no longer offered by IBM and standard support ends on the last day of 2006.

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Yep. IBM largely dropped OS/2 a long time ago - in fact, they tried to on many occasions. But the OS/2 community keeps it alive. There's lots of places where people are writing things for OS/2 - applications, drivers, compilers, the lot. Serenity Systems now distributes OS/2, under the name eComStation (eCS) - they've made a few things worse (Windows-style wizards where they're not needed!), but a lot of things better. Underneath it all, though, the base code hasn't needed to change for years. In fact, OS/2 Warp 4 (which was really the last big change to the kernel) was released August 1996 - coming up to a decade. One of the beauties of OS/2 is that the base code is so flexible that a third-party programmer can do whatever he needs to, flexibly and (in practically all cases) safely, without any changes needed to the base code.

So... OS/2 may not be popular, and IBM may be dropping support at the end of this year (I'm not certain that will actually happen though), but OS/2 is far from dead.

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Originally posted by Rosuav

So... OS/2 may not be popular, and IBM may be dropping support at the end of this year (I'm not certain that will actually happen though), but OS/2 is far from dead.

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Dude. OS/2 is deader than a doornail.

Saying OS/2 is not dead using the above arguments is like saying COBOL isn't dead because there are ancient, legacy systems still running it.

For all intents and purposes, OS/2 is dead and has been for quite some time.

Sad? Yes. But still dead.

Heh, I think we have different meanings for "dead" here. If by "dead" you mean "abandoned by the original manufacturer", then yes, OS/2 is dead - and has been for over a decade (IBM tried to drop OS/2 but had to pick it up again - more than once). But if "dead" means unsupported and having nothing new written for it, then OS/2's far from dead.

In spite of appearances, there's actually no disagreement here :)

I actually got my dad to install linux a while back. By the sound of it he uses it about half the time and windows the other half. Ubuntu has been a good gateway for him, there's some stuff he apparently still needs windows for though. On the bright side I think he's been doing all his internet related stuff in linux, as I haven't had to help him with spyware/viruses in ages. :)

Are you sure that's spyware and not a virus? I understand those two things are different entities. Spyware secretly gathers info on your surfing habits, personal info, etc... Where I think a virus, either a worm or a trojan, attempts to hijack your computer or just flat out trash it.

These things don't quite fit either category. I haven't had to deal with any for a couple of months, but back when I was dealing with them typically neither spyware removal programs nor virus scanners would get rid of them. Generally I had to spend a couple hours poking around the net to either find a removal tool specific to the infection, or to find out how to manually remove them(ie deleting the files, removing registry keys).

Oh and something else people need to watch for are IM's. I read somewhere that they are one of the most popular vectors for delivering computer viruses. I say this cause I get bot-generated IM's all the time (aol), almost periodically. I always ignore or block them, otherwise I think you have to block everything to completely eliminate'em.

Yeah, safe internet habits is something that only comes with experience though really. I can give them advice, but I generally find that people don't follow it until it really gets hammered into their heads by all the problems they get.

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Originally posted by leira
Yeah, safe internet habits is something that only comes with experience though really. I can give them advice, but I generally find that people don't follow it until it really gets hammered into their heads by all the problems they get.

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Yep. Yep. So true.

You can lead a user to the docs, but you can't make 'em read. You can lead a user to a clue, but you can't give them one. (Mind you, periodic LARTing of the clueless has been known to improve the average cluefulness of the userbase, but this has only been proven on a small scale, and its ramifications on the wider community have yet to be demonstrated beyond doubt.)

The number of people I've tried to explain things to who just plain don't "get" anything is amazing. Even something as simple as "Don't run this program while you're using that one or it will crash that one" is forgotten by next week. :rolleyes

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Originally posted by Ismenia
I downloaded/subscribed to Webroot Spy Sweeper which actually caught the problem and removed it.

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As an update, this is the method I eventually used to get rid of the problem. I don't know the long term effects of this program, I don't know of it's potential to also be spyware or whatever. All I know is that it fixed my problem.

I won't recommend it, but I will say it gets the job done. I just don't know enough about it to recommend it. I've found too many programs lately that even when recommended by "professionals" or those who suposedly know about this kind of stuff often has bugs and whatnot that negatively affects you down the road.