On Sun, Dec 05, 2010 at 12:18:47AM -0700, Nicholas Thompson wrote: > All or any, > > > > The digital microscope having arrived (thanks everybody!) I now turn my > attention to the other grandchild, who is 4. Thinking music software. > There are dozens, perhaps a hundred or more, different music software > programs for kids. Does anybody have one they love? And, what about this > business of downloading demo's or freeware? How long will it be before I > REALLY regret it. Do any of those little "stickers" at the bottom of the > website really mean anything? I assume many of you are downloading all > sorts of exploratory stuff all the time. Are you Living On the Edge, or is > there some way to do it safely? > >
Sandboxes. Have a fresh copy of Windows installed in a virtual machine. Make a copy of virtual disk files so as to be able to reset the machine back to the freshly installed state. Disconnect the sanbox from the network if it is not needed. Of course working in virtual machines is a bit of a nuisance - the other approach is at any sign of trouble, scrub the hard drive and do fresh OS installs - I do this on my 12yo son's computer - this probably about once a year, at current rates of malware infections, and I get him to reinstall the applications he cares about. If you can use Linux or Mac software, you almost don't need to worry about malware. I've never had any Linux malware in spite of 18 years of using it as my primary desktop platform with slack security practices and promiscuous downloads of software. I used to run my web browser in a sandbox (I didn't trust java and javascript when it first came out), but now I don't bother. I'd be considerably more alarmed about ActiveX, though. -- ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- Prof Russell Standish Phone 0425 253119 (mobile) Mathematics UNSW SYDNEY 2052 [email protected] Australia http://www.hpcoders.com.au ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- ============================================================ FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College lectures, archives, unsubscribe, maps at http://www.friam.org
