[Tfug] 2 weeks of Hackintosh fun..

[Bexley Hall]

> >>I don't think so (obviously).  I see lots of people that manage to
> "get by" with their Windows machines -- at least until the next
> Windows release, etc.<<
> 
> Uhhh...wait.

I was refering to being able to install software, peripherals, etc.

> In my case, I had over 16 years IS support/admin under my belt,
> experienced as hell Windows user, and my own lappy got botnetted to
> hell and gone.  I had every possible update plus a paid-up Zonealarm
> Pro for firewall and anti-vir.  Something got past all that and nuked
> me good.  Spent three days chasing it, going nuts, sat back and said
> "oh hell no, never again".
> 
> Zero Unix-family background, downloaded Ubuntu Dapper, haven't booted
> Windows since.  Was it tough?  Yeah.  I knew I was in for something
> different right from the get-go, but I stuck with it.  Zero regrets.
> Sept. of '06 I achieved freedom.
> 
> Now granted, one issue is that I was (and still am) using a cellmodem
> as my main Internet connection, which meant no hardware firewall.  I
> admit that a good external router would have likely helped - I'm quite
> sure something "crawled up the pipe" and got me versus anything I did.
> 
> But if *I* couldn't protect that XP box, then I'm purely puzzled as to
> how typical newbies manage.  I swear to God, they're just..."prey
> species".

Windows "out of the box" isn't very secure.  I, early on, decided that
I didn't want to be in a pissing contest with all the little urchins
working to screw over any computer they could "discover".  So,
I keep my entire network "unrouted".  I use one free standing
machine to talk to the outside world.  If something happens to it,
I wipe the disk and reinstall Windows.  There is *nothing* on the
machine that I need to save -- with the possible exception of
bookmarks (and, a regular housecleaning is a good way of trimming
those down to a manageable size  :> )

If I need to move something onto another "routed" machine, I do so
with a thumb drive or an external SCSI drive (if the item won't fit
on a thumb drive).  The "exposed" machine never gets a chance to
"talk" to anything.

This represents a *huge* savings, IMO, when it comes to keeping the
rest of my machines "up" -- as well as "secure" (I don't want to
get slapped with a lawsuit because some proprietary information
that happened to reside on one of my machines somehow made its
way to a competitor, etc.)

> I ain't meat for the beasts no more.  I grew me some
> fangs and armor, thank you very much...