Broadband internet

Frederik - So true - here we are in Grants in New Mexico just about to catch up with the Archers Omnibus - so sad

Dear Derek,

Very sadly, having listened to Any Questions, I am now half way thru' Walter Legge (part 3 of 4) on R3. And I can take phone calls, and do look at Naim's Forum as well. Truely, I am catching up!

Sincerely, fredrik

George;

Welcome to the wonderful world of BB. I love the BBC re-play facility, and get a lot of my new musical discoveries from Bob Harris' Friday and Saturday night shows on Radio 2.

I have the programme play-list up as well from Bob's web-site which has very useful links to relevant artiste's web-sites and CD's.

John.

Update. After nearly slowing the little laptop to death with all the new software, the whole thing has settled wonderfully. Habits change, of course, as one is not paying by the minute, and so I read online, and answer at will, without fear that an hour spent composing is costing two pence a minute, and so on. Also it means I can look in the morning before work, when dial-up costs over thirty pence a minute!

I wonder if people would agree that Norton is the best anti-virus arrangement? I have the promise of it for my birthday in a few days time. Actually the risk is minimal, I would think, as my only visits are to this place and my email account. My links to the outside world, except work, and Radios Three and Four... and a good paper, when I have the time. Just watching Those Magnificent Men In Their Flying Machines. I am being threatened with gonad removal at the moment by the TV License people, but then they can huff and puff all they like as I don't own or watch a TV. I found it used to annoy me and I prefer silence or music to it, and the radio news of course.

All the best from Fredrik

Little sod, I think anyone that wants to access BBC content around the world should pay first.

I have too.

quote:

Little sod, I think anyone that wants to access BBC content around the world should pay first.

I rather like the way that the World Service acts as a weapon of mass inclusion and think my money well spent.

quote:

Little sod, I think anyone that wants to access BBC content around the world should pay first.

I have too.

Gary - ????

JN is in Norfolk which is just inside the UK and can be driven to withourt crossing too much water

Given the availablity of satellite, cable and computers to access international TV/radio services one might have thought the purchase of a license in one's country of residence should cover any overlap between nations? Particularly in the EU.

The irony is that I can no longer receive the danish national TV services on satellite because the SP has changed its coding to overcome piracy problems with their expensive packages. To receive the danish national channels I would need to purchase a new receiver which has the new, more secure coding.

We can receive the commercial channel with a wet piece of string. But the DR terrestrial TV channels are a snowstorm.

Sorry to dump on your thread Fredrik. I lasted just two weeks with a 56K modem when I first went online. Then I grabbed the offer of broadband with both hands. I really couldn't see myself paying long term for advertising that was slowing down my browsing. I greatly admire your patience and fortitude to have survived on a dial-up connection. As you say, broadband is a completely different experience.

The electricity company is laying a high speed optical fibre net over here at the moment. Just as the national phone service/ISP is being taken over by international investors. Interesting times ahead. I wonder if the customer will win?

[QUOTE]Originally posted by Fredrik_Fiske:
I wonder if people would agree that Norton is the best anti-virus arrangement? I have the promise of it for my birthday in a few days time. Actually the risk is minimal, I would think, as my only visits are to this place and my email account.
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Norton isn't without complication but it does the job. Be warned, once installed its almost impossible to uninstall. Also, you are certain to become infected within hours if you aren't running suitable anti-virus and firewall software.

Malky,

What was the problem with uninstalling Norton? Stuff left over after the uninstall that needed to be removed manually?

Fredrik,

Get a Mac instead, no viruses. Norton is ok though, still running it on the kids networked pc's.

Nic

Dear Friends,

I never knew that Macs don't get viruses! Why doesn't everyone use them then? If I ever change the machine, Mac it is, by the sound of it...

Sincerely, Fredrik

AVG and AntiVir both offer a free antivirus program download. AVG Pro (paid for) was easy to uninstall recently. I couldn't get online with Norton so took it back and had a full refund. AVG worked first time and went on working. Their technical backup is the problem with AVG. I believe they are in Eastern Europe. They don't seem to be able to understand the simplest user questions when a virus got past their screen with no explanation of what to do about it! They always answered another irrelevant question with highly technical terms as if I was a computer scientist or experienced programmer. Surprise! I'm not.

[QUOTE]Originally posted by nicnaim:
Malky,
What was the problem with uninstalling Norton? Stuff left over after the uninstall that needed to be removed manually?
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Spot on.

quote:

Originally posted by Fredrik_Fiske:
Dear Friends,

I never knew that Macs don't get viruses! Why doesn't everyone use them then? If I ever change the machine, Mac it is, by the sound of it...

Sincerely, Fredrik

The reason Macs don't get viruses is that there are so few about the virus writers don't bother. If everybody had them the viruses would rapidly follow.

Mark

Mark can you back that up?

I would argue that if a virus writer wanted to seriously piss off a whole user base a virus for mac would be ideal.

The fact is its not particularly easy to write a virus for OSX. for one thing to install anything you need the admin password. No applications can be run for the first time without the user being warned and downloads come with a warning where applications are within.

I think the age old argument that mac base is too small has been blown out the water with the iPod, every one knows about macs now, and yet here we are year 30, and in all that time only a handful of successful viruses have been written and all for the old OS9 system.

So come on don't spout the line, back it up?

quote:

Originally posted by garyi:
Mark can you back that up?

I would argue that if a virus writer wanted to seriously piss off a whole user base a virus for mac would be ideal.

The fact is its not particularly easy to write a virus for OSX. for one thing to install anything you need the admin password. No applications can be run for the first time without the user being warned and downloads come with a warning where applications are within.

I think the age old argument that mac base is too small has been blown out the water with the iPod, every one knows about macs now, and yet here we are year 30, and in all that time only a handful of successful viruses have been written and all for the old OS9 system.

So come on don't spout the line, back it up?

I put my hands in the air and call surrender, no I can't really, not being that technical.

However " No applications can be run for the first time without the user being warned and downloads come with a warning where applications are within." this is really no more than a Wx pc with a sensible Zone Alarm type package in operation (is it?).

"I think the age old argument that mac base is too small has been blown out the water with the iPod, every one knows about macs now, and yet here we are year 30, and in all that time only a handful of successful viruses have been written and all for the old OS9 system." But how many large businesses, institutions, local and even national governments use Mac systems, these are the areas where the virus writers can cause the most potential disruption and I've always thought that that was what motivated them.

As a side question, as you have exposed my ignorance.... Are Macs also less vunerable to spyware etc and not so in need of firewalls and the like?

Mark

Mozilla stops spyware. I've had only one get past it in several months. Using IE spyware ran into the hundreds and required a daily scan just to stay on top of them. Mozilla Firefox catches the few spams that still get past my ISP's own filter.

There is not any spyware or maleware that I am aware of for macs. again before anything can be downloaded your are warned, and again as I understand it these types of things are small programmes or EXE files.

If you were to have one of these in OSX try to run, or if a programme tried to run a file for the first time the mac would pop up with a warning.

As for firewalls. I have one running as its built in so it seems silly not too. I have however switched it off for various reasons and forgot to put it back on for months

I am not complacent. The day will come. I would rather think something to completely knacker an iPod over the mac base will occur. I have Virex as this comes with my .Mac subscription, but to date have not installed it.

As mac users are frankly an annoying bunch of twonks, its for this reason alone that I am very surprised nothing exists, but there you go. Mabye virus writers are lazy?

Another helpful extention from Firefox is NoScript and this magic little helper keeps a tight hold on any Java or JavaScript that attempts to run on your machine by way of a user built whitelist of trusted sites. I've been using it for a few months with very few problems if any, I expect that after a couple of days surfing that most of your trusted sites will have then been added to the whitelist so as the only time you see it working is when it stops something unexpected or unwelcom from executing on you machine. Well worth a look.

Thanks Roy... er..why do I now have two lines on the bottom of the page? Both seem to have much the same purpose? What with google toolbar's two, my ISP banner etc I'm beginning to browse in widescreen.