@jharbert:

@maztec: I'm sincerely glad to hear the scan turned up nothing. Like I said before, viruses and other malware can get in without any noticeable signs of infection, and can come from sites that you trust, so run the trend housecall scan from time to time just for safety's sake if you're not going to run an AV. I…

@teatime: That's just not the whole story. Yes user education is very important, but boring, everyday websites get hacked to drop malware on your computer. I'm a freelance IT technician, and I've seen it happen to boring, mundane, everyday websites - there's no place on the internet that's one hundred percent safe.

@jharbert: In my above mentioned example where my client had a hacker make it so their site opened an invisible window that installed a trojan on your computer without providing you with any prompts, how would you go about keeping yourself safe?

@CyberCowboy: If you run linux, you're the exception to the rule. There are almost no pieces of malware programmed to run on linux. Also, trend micro won't find much if you're running linux anyway - it's set up for windows file types. It'll find some stuff, but not all. Like I said though, Linus is fairly safe all on…

@bachcottage:

I have a challenge for all of you who think you're clever enough to not get any sort of malware without the help of an antivirus:

Alright, I'm sorry if any of this comes off as harsh, but I absolutely can not believe that people just try and go about their business w/o an antivirus running.

in fact, rather than turning this into a tech support forum, anyone having the "endless loop" start up problem that ends w/ a blue screen displaying a stop error, email me

@Rob Davis: do you have an xp install cd handy? I can teach you what to do in the recovery console to fix that.

it crashed my computer at first - had to swap a file from the service pack files dir into system 32 folder. Once I did that it started working fine. If anyone installs it and can't boot up, let me know - I'll give you detailed instructions on the fix

oh what the hell - I'm feeling saucy today, I'll give it a go.

judging by the pic, someone banks at commerce.

@holymogwai: I live in NJ, and usually go to Lowes. The tickets alone are $9 a piece. Forget it if you want something other than popcorn - the other food is expensive as hell. Whenever possible I try to go to a matinee at the cheap ass theater a couple towns over.

@pkoutoul: Piracy will die down when the RIAA and the MPAA take on reasonable practices when it comes to DRM and pricing. I'm inclined to download DRM free versions of songs I already own over bittorrent. Why? Because if I want to listen to my music on something other than my ipod or one of the three CD's I'm…

@mwinslett:

One solid practice that I do that I haven't seen anyone else mention is I never, and I mean NEVER allow my isp to install their software on my pc. It's been suspected for a long time now that their software provides a back door to your system, or at very least sends data to them you'd rather they didn't have. If they…