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Dvorak blames obsessive compulsive disorder, not Microsoft for virus problems

Wednesday, April 28, 2004 · 1:37 pm · 62 Comments

“An estimated 3.3 million Americans alone have obsessive compulsive disorder, or OCD, and more attention is being paid to the problem than ever before. At least two hit TV shows have main characters who exhibit the problem (Monk and Law & Order: Criminal Intent). The latest iterations of e-mail

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62 Comments

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Reality Check

Wednesday, April 28, 2004 - 5:53 pm · Reply

I can’t help it. I’m a loser and trolling is my life.
G5Man

Wednesday, April 28, 2004 - 5:57 pm · Reply

Sanguish,

This guy doesn’t have the first clue about what he is talking about. If he did he would know that OCD does not necessarily affect every aspect of your life. I find it very, very offensive too. Someone should contact one of the American Medical bodies to come down on this guy. It’s just not right to pin something on a group of 3 million people that is absolutely baseless, incorrect and ridiculous.

I am offended by this notion. I find it to be slanderous and verging on defamation. If anyone knows a body that we could forward this article to, please post it and I will do that. This guy needs to be educated about the effect his articles have on people.

He needs to write a retraction on behalf of people like sanguish.

Anyone agree?
chris

Wednesday, April 28, 2004 - 5:57 pm · Reply

i wouldn’t buy a mac just because if i wanted to talk to a pc user about it i’d get bashed, and if i wanted to talk to a mac user about it i’d shoot myself in the head. YOU’RE ALL ASSHOLES. it’s like some mad scientest cloned hitler a million times and bashed each one of them in the head with a pc when they were young.
For...Chris

Wednesday, April 28, 2004 - 6:00 pm · Reply

Chris…well that’s the diff buddy…..you wouldn’t need to ask anyone questions about your mac……because it WOULD WORK THE FIRST TIME!!!!
Patrick Offord

Wednesday, April 28, 2004 - 6:03 pm · Reply

Dvorak is a Mac fan though, I do not see how he is defending Windows at all, he is just pointing out in a round about way that most people are complete idiots. Dvorak is an Avid Mac fan, uses Mac, Praises Mac, and hates bullshit, thats why he so loves to point out bullshit when he sees it
G5Man

Wednesday, April 28, 2004 - 6:09 pm · Reply

Patrick,

Agreed….however what I dislike about his reporting is that he squarley attributes virus propogation to one group of people, with absolutley no facts to back it up. I know this is not an OCD forum, however this is the kind of reporting that is so rampant in the PC wolrd that someone needs to say something about it.

The easy way to answer the question would be to recommend OSX to everyone

Later…..
Peter

Wednesday, April 28, 2004 - 6:12 pm · Reply

Just to get on topic for a moment, this reminded me of something that happened a couple of days ago.

I got home after work and went to read my e-mail. I had three messages from people I didn’t know. The subject read “Osama bin Laden captured!”. I opened the e-mail and it suggested going to some random site where they had pictures and video.

I was tempted to click on the link, but I figured I’d check in with CNN first–if it had happened, they’d have it on the front page. Nope. No sign. Checked Google News, nope. Now I was REALLY tempted to click on the link. I fired up a terminal session and downloaded the page through curl and it was all obfuscated JavaScript. I didn’t feel like figuring out what it was trying to do, so I went in and erased the messages and went on with life.

But I was tempted. Dvorak is right that no matter how “secure” the system is, it’s the person behind the keyboard who is ultimately responsible. If I sent an e-mail to a bunch of Mac users saying “Here’s a cool new screen saver!” and enclosed an Installer package, most people would blissfully enter their administrator passwords without even thinking twice.
Patrick Offord

Wednesday, April 28, 2004 - 6:12 pm · Reply

G5Man, I agree, I have been on a Mac now for 2 months and so far I have switched my wife, my best friend, and 2 more are going to follow. Once they see it in action and try it they do not want to go back to Windows.
G5Man

Wednesday, April 28, 2004 - 6:27 pm · Reply

Peter…

I sort of agree with you…but blaming the person behind the keyboard will only go so far. I actually work in the defence industry in IT security. One of the things we do occasionally for testing purposes it to email around harmless trojans. One of the typical files we email is an excel sheet entitled Pay Raise.xls. In the past we have had over 90% hit rate on our own employees opening that file.

Education sometimes works….but who wouldn’t open an excel sheet called pay raise.xls?

The solution is easy…….do what OSX did and institute authentication for installer packages.

If a user got an authentication dialog when clicking an attachment, there is a very good chance they would abort. However relying on the human factor alone is a recipe for disaster….
Road Warrior

Wednesday, April 28, 2004 - 6:47 pm · Reply

May seem funny but Dvorak does have a point, although I think that he has the wrong disorder. Social conditioning is a very powerful “lemming like tool”. Ask yourself this question. Of the % of people you know, how many would continue a conversation with you once a phone rang?

I daresay that an impressive % from my perspective would answer the phone and give them priority to someone face to face.
Sailfish

Wednesday, April 28, 2004 - 7:14 pm · Reply

I have obsessive compulsive disorder…

1: Obsessed with Macintosh computers
2: Compulsive that everytime I pass the Apple Store I have to stop in
3: My room is in disorder because I spend too much time enjoying my Mac

What a wonderful problem I have. Too bad there’s no cure. LOL
oldmacfan

Wednesday, April 28, 2004 - 7:22 pm · Reply

Wait, so 3.3 million have it and most of them work in front of computers and have no self control?

“All you need is an attached virus or Trojan horse program and a note that says, ‘Open me!’ Millions of poor souls with OCD will open it,’ Dvorak spews.”

So is he saying that 70-90% of all people with OCD will end up this way?
maczac

Wednesday, April 28, 2004 - 7:52 pm · Reply

RC: with the MacOS X being based on FreeBSD, it is in fact, the most secure OS with a nice GUI front end, PERIOD. This is not a debatable opinion it is a fact. Is the MacOS X impenetrable? No, way. But today and for the last several years, it has been the most secure commercially available OS.

As for Windows: well, it was never designed/intended for being let loose on untrusted networks (eg the internet) or even WANs with remote logon.

As for those who think a MacOS X trojan is impossible . . . well one can be written that is exactly 8 characters long and will delete your home folder. (I wont post it, but most of you know it). This is easy to make as a shell script or an applescript, email it as an attachment with a corresponding message that says, “Open me by double clicking.” Reminds me of the old joke UNIX email virus. Heck this has been possible for a long time. Applescripts, as long as they can auto-perform tasks, can easily do nasty things.

But one of the most fundamental differences between *NIX variants and Windows, is that only the users local home folder is at risk from trojans, and only if that user takes actual physical steps to launch the trojan (double clicking, etc.) The OS, as well as other users directories will remain untouched, no matter what the local user does (unless of course the user is stupid enough to be running as root). Windows, on the other hand will welcome with open ports all sorts of unknown and undetectable malware. NO USER INTERACTION IS REQUIRED. Lets repeat that . . . NO USER ACTION IS REQUIRED. In fact, merely viewing a web page in IE (pre version 6) can allow remote root access! This is frightening. Windows, has absolutely NO WAY of stopping automatic execution of remote exploits! Why? Because it was designed from the ground up to allow them. Subsequent versions and SPs have only succeeded trying to turn off some of the more dangerous “features” (Yes some were intended to be features) and plugging the obvious holes (Yes, microsoft was never know for software design and inovation) and just barely at that. Indeed, M$’s only saving grace to date is precisely because it is CSS and not OSS and therefore making holes harder to find . . . INITIALLY . . . But, boy oh boy, when they are found . . . what <sarcasm> wonderful </sarcasm> results are unleashed.

Zac
G5man

Wednesday, April 28, 2004 - 8:40 pm · Reply

You asked who Dvorak is… well, in the late 80s he had the back page anti-editorial at one of the mac magazines. (it was a while ago, the mag was either Mac User or Mac World) As the Anti-Editor, his job was to deconstruct stuff, call smelly stuff smelly stuff, and poke fun of buzz words and fads, exposing them with humor for what they were. He was a no holds barred kind of guy who bashed Macs, PCs, Intel, MS and Apple with equal energy and zeal. Unfortunately, he slipped from witty, funny and sometimes insightful to negative, whining, and condescending. After the mac rags merged, he got a gig at ZDTV (Ziff Davis TV< the forerunner to Tech TV) When he got axed from ZDTV he turned very bitter and cynical. His writing has been in a slump for almost ten years now.
darknite

Wednesday, April 28, 2004 - 8:43 pm · Reply

Please excuse my sloppy post, the above labeled as G5man is from me, in response to G5man. Sorry for the confusiion and identity theft. (infringement?)
Less is More

Wednesday, April 28, 2004 - 9:58 pm · Reply

Switchers should go the whole hog and change their email address and client. It’s easy to become spam-free like I am if you apply common sense. Of course, most of the websites asking for an email address before you can post are part of the problem — kudos to MDN for its anonymous all-posts-in-one-window site.

Hey, life’s sweet in the no-spam, no-virus universe.
John

Thursday, April 29, 2004 - 12:19 am · Reply

I agree with the editor on this one. Use a Mac and forget that viruses exist it’s that simple! He needs to blame who is really at fault and that is Microsoft for there lack of vision in the security department. They still don’t have it right even today. Even Bill is making exuses that because there are more windows users is why there are more viruses. No it’s because Windows is not secure and many programmers have said it many times. It’s like swiss cheese and Microsoft can’t seem to plug the holes. I’ll stick with Panther and Apple.
Patrick Offord

Thursday, April 29, 2004 - 2:05 am · Reply

Dvorak does do some writing for PC Magazine and while he mostly talks about coming standards and the usual he does once in awhile praise the Mac side of things in the mag, something I found suprising in a PC mag. I find he usually has a good point, wrong or right he makes you think, and I always welcome a good honest opinion on things to make myself think.
mac user 47

Thursday, April 29, 2004 - 2:13 am · Reply

I have tried in recent years to give microsoft the benefit of the doubt cause of their mac unit, but….

Today I went to test a site on my windows 98 dell(that I use about once a month to test my sites), and check this out:

Using IE, I found out that a ton of adware had been installed without any notifcation/warnings/download signals nothing…. and one of the stupid adware things PUT FAKE LINKS IN OVER TEXT THAT REPRESENTED THEIR ADVERTISERS!

So you look at a page that has the text “auto” in it somewhere and there is an ugly looking fake underline and boldness to it and when you click it it opens up a window to carsdirect or something! Unbelievable. I know the site didn’t have the links, because it WAS MY SITE!!!

I won’t even get into the joy of trying to find and get rid of the crap that was installed which I still haven’t been able to completely do.

Why anyone that has a choice and knows there is a choice could still use windows is absolutely in love with pain.
smucker

Thursday, April 29, 2004 - 6:42 am · Reply

Walt Kelley, the creator of Pogo and the other characters who inhabited the comic strip of the Okefenokee Swamp, was referring abstract art (or maybe Windoze) when he came up with: “A product of the untalented, sold by the unprincipled to the utterly bewildered.”