Wednesday, August 24, 2011

Our choices are limited



I have to be careful in blogging as I haven't put up all of my programs yet. I have to get a really strong virus protection thingy because I steal photos from all over the internets and they often have viruses attached. The wife is always yelling at me and this is the second computer I crashed in the last two months.






I might have to buy a mac or something just for blogging.

20 comments:

The Dude said...

Be sure to wear protection when shagging pictures.

ndspinelli said...

It's all that porn you download.

Trooper York said...

I wish.

But when you get a really good picture to steal there is almost always a virus attached.

TTBurnett said...

Hold off buying that Mac, Troop. It'll probably get cheaper soon enough.

Trooper York said...

Yeah that's what I am doing.

It is just the fact that they don't get the virus that makes it attractive.

TTBurnett said...

Oh, Macs can get viruses, Trojan horses, etc. It's just that they are a lot more hip and cool than Windows viruses and Trojan horses.

I've been attacked a few times w/sundry Mac malware. Fortunately, OS X is maybe a smidge intrinsically safer than Windows (dunno about 7; should be better than Vista), plus it's easier to get rid of Mac malware. Between my Intego antivirus software (the McAfee of Macdom), and keeping OS X up to date and tickety-poo (which you should also do with Windows), I've never had any bad effects from such sieges as have been laid to my overpriced laptop. And I do download and/or link to various pictures à la Trooper, against the day I may blog again.

Bottom line: Get a discounted MacBook, somehow, somewhere; install Intego anti-malware (readily available on the Web); install FireFox with ScribeFire blogging add-on; blog away; be happy.

Of course, you'll have to get some wide masking or packing tape to cover over that white apple logo. You don't want to look like some hipster doofus carrying around a Macintosh, do you?

P.S.—MacBook Airs are serious hipster accoutrements, no?

Titus said...

My UK Indian Husband with a hot body purchased for me and Ipod, Ipod Phone, Ipad2 and MacBook. I love them so much.

Buy a Mac.

You won't regret it.

Also, you will be fab.

MamaM said...

If a hot hub offers to build an I-Taj, watch out.

TTBurnett said...

Troop, you said, "the virus." Unfortunately, computer viruses, Trojans, etc., etc., are not like the clap. They aren't just one disease. The generic term is "malware." This covers maladies that, if they occurred among people, would fill all the wards of a busy hospital.

Mostly, however, malware is involved with trying to use your machine behind your back to sell or to spy. Your very laptop, while telling stories out of Laura Bush's Diary, could also be the source of e-mails directing the recipients to, say, "hot Russian babes," an oxymoron if there ever was one. Discovering this has the potential of humiliating the budding blogger or writer if it's found that the spam sent by the computer is better than the blog posts or literary productions of its owner. How many times, for example, have I wished for a link to Hot Russian Babes buried somewhere in one of C.H.'s amazingly unreadable comments over at you-know-where? I'd gladly follow a link to a site covering the History of Putty if it appeared in these posts.

But to return to the main subject, it looks to me like you're just not a Macintosh type of guy. You are not hip, nor do you study irony for effect, nor do you strike me as someone to waste money on those or anything else. My advice is to buy a cheap Lenovo netbook for a few hundred dollars, and throw it away, like a disposable razor, when it, too, gets dull and starts nicking you.

Everyone knows that disposable razors are cheap, per use, compared to the overhyped multi-blade monstrosities, designed more to shave money from your bank account than whiskers from your face.

The Dude said...

Carol Herman took the brown acid.

TTBurnett said...

Sorry to be giving you contradictory advice, but as someone who runs Windows on his MacBook at least half the time, you can see I am ambidextrous.

But please don't accuse me of being a switch hitter.

TTBurnett said...

One advantage of running Windows on a Mac is that when the Windows side becomes the steaming pile of excrement that Windows installations inevitably do, you can flush the whole thing away and reinstall it afresh.

Of course, you'll have to re-register everything, &c., which is a pain. But it's less of a pain than applying cures to diseased Windows, which resembles curing the clap in the days before antibiotics.

Also, your Windows installation can serve as a lifeboat against the day when Mac OS X, too, will stumble and need to be reinstalled. Doing that resembles a quick amputation rather than the chronic illnesses often afflicting Windows.

This approach is the best of everything. Except you do have to carry around a Mac laptop, something my older son, for example, would not be seen dead with.

edutcher said...

You can install Linux (try RedHat or Suse or Ubuntu) on a laptop and download F-Prot (a DOD virus-killer we used at the IRS), although there are very few viruses on a Linux system.

Linux, on the surface, has the same kind of GUI as Windows, so there's a very small learning curve. You can have a dual boot, flipping between windows and Linux, if you want.

PS You and the family be careful with Irene (and I don't mean the nice one over at Althouse).

We're both East Coasters, so we know how bad those storms making landfall in NC can be.

You and LeeLee stay safe.

Trooper York said...

Thanks but we are well prepared.

I have a closet full of macroni and sauce and lots of bottled water.

And wine.

Beth said...

Hi Trooper,

I'm drowning in work down here in NOLA, but you take care and don't do any drowning up there in Brooklyn, okay? Have a backup plan. It's never a bad idea to know where high ground is.

TTBurnett said...

There is no natural disaster that cannot be alleviated with enough 2-liter bottles of good Shiraz.

chickelit said...

Wer hat die Wahl, hat auch die Qual.

Titus said...

Irene will produce wet t shirts which will produce erect nipples and hard tits.

Hurricane Tits.

jungatheart said...

Take care, Troop.

blake said...

I really hate to be, well, accurate, but a picture cannot contain a virus. I mean, to get super-technical, a picture could theoretically contain a virus but your machine would have no way to be infected by it.

See, a picture is data. It doesn't do anything; it just is. A virus is a program: it does stuff.

Used to be you had to download a program and execute it deliberately to get infected. Microsoft was a pioneer in making it possible for you to be infected just by visiting a website.

Dunno. Unlike most people, I don't use any anti-virus or malware software--well, I guess I do since I switched to Windows 7 and they built it in. Occasionally, I'll run a Spybot sweep or Microtrend's online scanner. Never been infected.

Go figger.