Black screen of death

[Jonathan183]

The problem with computers is design ...it's not the users fault ... same goes for the VCR and the design of lots of other things It's just that some people are a bit better at coping with poor design ... computers should never have a blank screen - unless you select a blank screen saver or turn it off

[grnorris]

Well, I'm 65, going on 66, and I have no problems with computers. But I do have a serious psychological problem with Windows. When I used to use Windows on the Internet I was always terrified of picking up some horrible virus. Even though I never actually did, it took all the pleasure out of surfing. Now I use Linux and I feel safe as houses.

In my experience, old people need above all to feel secure. We're not stupid; we can learn to use a system. But it needs to be a system we can trust, one that we know won't do things behind our backs. At the same time, we are less likely to want to do the kind of things that you need to use Windows for. We don't usually play games or download stuff from iTunes. That makes Linux an ideal system for our age group. It's just that most of us don't know that yet.

I hate to burst your bubble but, the problem isn't really viruses so much any more. No matter what OS you use your browser is the weakest link. If the browser isn't safe then someone can still steal your private info and possibly put you into debt (identity theft). It is true that using Linux currently protects you from Windows Viruses but more and more black-hats (evil hackers) are using things like sniffers (look into firesheep, it's homepage tells you just how easy it is to steal peoples info with a Windows System, a far greater multitude of programs exist for Linux). Also, since Mac uses the Unix core and Mac's are becoming more popular it wouldn't surprise me if more people started building viruses that attacked some weakness in the Unix-Core (I'm not sure of any at the moment but, there is almost always a weakness to be exploited). Since Linux also depends on a similar core said viruses may even affect Linux users.

Still, though most of the problem is now in the browser universe I do still practice good security measures on my Windows OS. Things like Comodo Firewall (I believe it's got some of the same ideology as the Linux firewall, though far more strict). I also do a virus scan on a regular bases. I don't allow programs to run from new externals. In my browser I use things like WOT and NoScript. I've also been using ForceTLS (though I just found that NoScript has the same ability just a bit harder to use). Since I'm on this mini-rant I'll go ahead and list what these plugins do:

WOT: Web of Trust; People vote on different aspects of a site (a number system) and the aspects are represented by green circles. If any of the categories have a Low (Red) rating, especially something like privacy or security WOT will automatically block it.

NoScript: Blocks All Scripts from a domain until and exception is made (blocks ads and potential bad script even in a good site, not that long ago I found a site that had an excellent rating for everything but, on the site was a link to a site marked malicious. I of course continued to block the malicious content and reported it to the site admins). NoScript also has a few other features.

ForceTLS: Forces certain sites (assigned by the user) to use TLS (HTTPS).