World's Most Secure Computer

[Tsukuru]

So I've had this fine Gateway computer for something like four or five years, and yesterday this pops up: (nam)

http://img.villagephotos.com/p/2004-9/832887/norton.jpg (http://img.villagephotos.com/p/2004-9/832887/norton.jpg)

I remember disabling Norton Anti-Virus a very, very long time ago. I tinkered with it recently trying to install a program, so it must have been reactivated. It's almost nostalgic to see that number, and remember the hundreds of thousands of hours staring at this luminescent screen. I'm thinking about not evening updating it and seeing how high the number gets before I finally get a new computer.

[AtmaWeapon]

Why not mosey on over to http://housecall.antivirus.com and run a quick scan; if you're running a 4-5 year old Gateway I'm sure you've got something or the other unless you've never used dialup and are always behind a NAT router + a firewall.

*edit* For goodness sakes, don't try it in Firefox. The scanning engine uses Java since it can't use ActiveX in Firefox. True to Java form, the page immediately sends my CPU usage up to 99% and causes Firefox to freeze. Remember, by the year 2000, Java will be the primary development language for all platforms!

(I now predict someone will post about how they don't use a firewall or AV and never get anything. I'm curious to see if Tsukuru has anything nasty; I'm fully aware that with the proper computing habits one will never encounter viruses and spyware, I just prefer to have extra layers of security.)

[vegeta1215]

I didn't know you could run House Call with Java. :odd: I've used House Call on the Windows XP laptop that we have here at our summer house, but I always used it with IE since I thought you needed ActiveX for it.

But yeah, Java bugs me. The idea is great, and you can do some cool stuff with it, but it's just slow for anything on the web :( (from my experience anyways)

We have hardware firewalls in both of our Linksys broadband routers, and software firewalls on most of our computers (to stop outgoing junk), but not Anti-Virus. Anti-Virus programs feel like they slow down things too much (and with old computers, I don't want anything to feel slower!) House Call is enough for me for our XP laptop, and I'm not terribly worried about our Linux or Mac computers.

[AtmaWeapon]

I didn't know you could run House Call with Java.

As far as I can tell, you can't. At least they made an effort though. :thumbsup: None of the other online scanners have even created a browser-crash applet, just pages that say "Use Internet Explorer, you alternative-browser faggot. I bet you drive a BMW and have an Ipod and wear sunglasses and flip-flops all the time. Get off your high horse." I can't wait for CS3 where we write client/server apps in Java!

Anyway, my company runs NAV on everything, even the slow computers. We have a very large user base, and a lot of people who bring laptops home and back each day. All it takes is for them to get that laptop infected and all of our firewalls become useless. So an active AV deployment is the strategy we follow.

*edit* Hey Tsukuru, how'd you spend hundreds of thousands of hours in front of your monitor? There's only 43,800 hours in 5 years (not taking leap year into account). :confused:

[Tsukuru]

I'm curious to see if Tsukuru has anything nasty; I'm fully aware that with the proper computing habits one will never encounter viruses and spyware, I just prefer to have extra layers of security.
I suppose by proper computing habits you mean no warez or pornography? Seriously, those sites seem to put a lot of strange things onto your computer (it's common internet knowledge, really! ;)).

Our DSL was serviced a couple weeks ago and the technician ran House Call on my computer; it came back clean. I do use SpyBot regularly, per your recommendation on these forums a while back.