RANDOMLY EVER
AFTER
Diary of a Computer Repairman
By Gus Mueller
I've been borrowing stuff again, without permission, but this guy really
does have some of the most cogent and sensible arguments against plunging
headlong into the Wintel/Microsoft lifestyle, that I've ever heard. I
daresay that he has managed to throw fresh light on even these old topics.
This time around, it is the perils of Adware, and how it can literally take
over your Wintel box, in the way that unattended choking weeds can do for
even the tidiest garden. Here we go now!
Computers of teenage girls -
Friday, August 29 2003
I returned again today to the computer client up in Saugerties. I'd been
working on two different computers when I was up there last. One of these
was a new Vaio laptop running Windows XP, which needed little except an
installation of Mozilla, the MSBlaster vulnerability patch, and the
transfer of some old data. But the other was an old desktop PC belonging to
a teenage girl.
In the course of my day-to-day experience with the computers belonging to a
variety of people, I'm quickly coming to the realization that there is
nothing quite as useless as a computer belonging to a teenage girl. The
problem is usually apparent the moment you sit down and grab the mouse.
Now where could the cursor be? It's usually not even a cursor anymore, but
has been replaced by something unhelpful like an animated rainbow. And
it's usually lost in hideous high-contrast wallpaper featuring flawless
fakely-smiling faces from transient pop culture, be it a boy band or the
brightly-clothed characters from Sex and the City.
Just glancing at the System Tray is often a terrifying experience. More
likely than not, there are at least a dozen programs loaded into memory
during the boot process, and all of their icons continuously throb and spew
for attention.
RealPlayer, with its constant nags to be updated (though the code never
improves) is bad enough. But how about icons of green dollar signs? How
did those get there? After starting up such a computer, one typically has
to wait at least ten minutes before it becomes useful. During that time,
all sorts of crapware loads into memory so it can track your every
movement, phone home information on what products to market to you, and
assail you with pop-ups of mysterious origin.
In terms of vulnerability to the makers of computer-burdening spyware,
teenage girls are something of a perfect storm. Compared to boys, they tend
to be technically unsophisticated, yet they are nonetheless comfortable
with the technology, since to them it has always existed. They view a
computer as a communications device that can also do really awesome things.
In response to the pressure of their peers, they try to make their
computers stand out as especially rad within the suffocating confines of
their teenage orthodoxy.
This usually involves the installation of garish wallpaper, annoying sound
effects, and the like. But it can also mean clicking "Yes!" in response to
celebrity-studded advertising pitches appealing to their teenage
insecurity.
Though it's assumed that teenagers are inherently rebellious, it's been my
experience that what they really want to do more than anything else is
conform. What's rebellious about this behavior is that the conformity is
to a culture the parents do not recognize. Few teenagers want to be
considered weird, and if they believe all the beautiful people are
installing SaveNow, the Burger King sound effect collection, the Pepsi
screensaver, and HotDealzRUs, they're going to want to install them too.
It's rare that they have any qualms about the mainstream brands of global
corporations.
This particular teenage girl was so intent on conforming that she nearly
threw a fit of categorical refusals when I meekly suggested that instead of
using AOL to surf the web and check her email, she use Mozilla the way I've
taught her mother to. Admittedly, this particular girl has been badly
spoiled and still manifests many of the worst traits of the terrible twos,
but the reaction that her level of maturity kept her from containing was
probably a typical one for teenagers. They so don't want to be shunned by
their AOL-using friends by firing up a Mozilla browser in their presence.
It only took me about fifteen minutes of Add/Remove Programs and a RegEdit-
facilitated search & destroy jihad to get rid of all the crap that was
bogging down this teenager's computer. When I was done, it booted right up
and was usable immediately, a condition made all the more unusual by the
fact that its operating system was Windows Millennium Edition, a product
that all by itself should have resulted in the discontinuation of
Microsoft's being an ongoing concern. (But no, our concern continues.)
Making that computer work so much better brought me a certain amount of
satisfaction, but this had a sad, defeated undercurrent. Already the
daughter had successfully lobbied for a "new computer" (a solution everyone
has been conditioned to accept as a reasonable one for their computer
problems), and her old one would be used only as a stop-gap. Against the
tyrannical demands of a spoiled teenage daughter, it would have been
pointless for me to argue that she would never find a use for a new
computer that she couldn't do just as well on her old one. All that
crapware had served its purpose and shown the old computer to be "old" and
"in need of replacement." The fact that it was now all better was useless
against a promise already made to the teenage tyrant. (If it wasn't for the
widespread installation of crapware, I wonder how Dell's stock price would
be doing.)
A place for this kind of madness -
Tuesday, September 30 2003
Today on a housecall, I encountered a computer so badly diseased by adware
that I couldn't fix it, not even after two hours and repeated use of the
adware-fighting program Ad-Aware.
So I had to take it home with me. This is the worst kind of computer
repair gig, because I always end up putting in a lot more hours of work
than I can possibly bill for. At this point, though, I tend to think of it
as educational.
I'm become fascinated by adware and how it can be so horrible and so
widespread at the same time. The fact that something so uncelebrated
quickly turns a bleeding-edge computer into a 486, sending the owner out to
spend a thousand dollars on a replacement - I'm just amazed that capitalism
has carved out a place for this kind of madness. Why aren't all these
adware writers in jail? Compared to adware developers, virus authors are
positively benign.
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