Dare I say this but does this problem actually work with a car analogy? If you dub the Internet as the "Super Information Highway" which I hate but works for the analogy that stupid people may understand. Your vehicle (make, size, fuel economy, etc.) is the content. The roads are owned and/or controlled by various entities (city, county, state, federal) with correspond to the ISPs, telcos, etc. and you have tollbooths at certain road transitions (ISP controlled or government controlled).

Pure Net Neutrality is removing all toll booths but allowing stoplights at on-ramps and intersections to keep the flow efficient as possible without favor or penalty to any the traffic.

Without government control over the ISP's actions, certain cars pay higher tolls or outright banned from their roads. That seems a bit more reasonable if the banned or higher tolled vehicles are overweight vehicles but not if it is Ford cars versus GM cars.

With government control and the fairness doctrine, the government sets the toll rates and gets a cut and also imposes silly rules like there must be an equal amount of Fords and GMs on the road at any given time so you cannot get past the tollbooth in a GM car until another Ford car comes along so the traffic stays equal. This sounds crazy since some days you will wait in line at the tollbooth and other days you get to go through immediately.

Many people are fearful of the overreach of government so they would rather be at the mercy of big business. The reality is that big business has control with or without government intervention since they can manipulate the government with their money more than the average person can with opinion/protest/voting power. The government intervention is like gambling though; sometimes you win but mostly you lose.

Snow is great if you like to ski, sled, or partake in other wintertime recreation that require it. It is nice to have (but not too much) in December for that effect it gives with the Christmas decor. But come January and February, it gets to be annoying as it turns to icy and an ugly yellow/brown from thaw cycles. Come March and April, it damn near angers many people since it slows the warming of spring. Many times in the past few years in South Dakota, we have gotten big snowstorms in the last couple weeks of April. That late snow does not stay around long but sometimes accounts for a large portion of the total inches of snow for the whole winter.

If you are smart (or at least concerned) enough to read a manual or know how to look up the correct warnings for your product on a website, then you are not the target audience for most warning labels. Also, most warning labels are probably at a reading level too advanced for the people who need it.

MBA = Masters in Business Atrophy

I see the appointment of a pure MBA (without any background in what that company makes as a product)to CEO as the sign to get ready to cash out after they do their "Short Term Gain, Long Term Loss" changes that spike the the stocks value and then nosedive it down when there is realization that the cost saving changes hurts the company the most in areas that previously made it successfully.

I swear some of these MBA's read Dilbert to get "good" ideas from Dogbert and the PHB.

Only one other case I would use Linux. I had a customer that had an old Windows ME PC that had issues. I put Ubuntu Linux on it with the understanding that this computer will be OK for games and using the Firefox browser. Considering Win ME only has IE6, the web experience will improve as long as they don't expect much for Flash-type content. I was upfront about the limitations based on the old hardware and compatibility issues with add-on devices like printers and cameras.

In the end, this is just an experiment to see what average Joes would think of Linux as a desktop. The biggest problem they have had so far is with the NVIDIA video driver and the resolution getting reset to Auto (a very low res) and having to manually setting it back to something usable like 1024x768.

Also, in this case, they have a newer PC with Win XP that the wife uses mostly and the old one was the husband's but she doesn't want him messing up hers. He mostly just plays games and goes to websites for NASCAR and local racetracks so it can handle that fine.

I am glad that we don't have a Worst Buy in this town. The closest I have to get to their messes is extended service plans people buy for some of the devices like printers. Don't get me started on my experiences doing Dell hardware warranty work.

Most of my customers are referral so I keep busy now that I have been doing this business for 3 years. I have no problem with being honest with my customers since I can fix a problem and tell them how to prevent it instead of trying to drain them of their cash by fixing the same problem over and over again. There are always other upgrades and repairs that I would most likely be considered for later and happy customers give referrals. Operations like Worst Buy prey upon consumer ignorance and try to get as much as they can before the customer can get wise.

Thanks for software and tool suggestions. I am always on the lookout for other tools that make my job easier and more efficient.

Well, when Worst Buy, as you call it, bought Geek Squad they took an service of flamboyant (VW bugs and nerdy uniforms) technicians and over time replaced educated technicians with sales monkeys shown how to run canned programs and charge about half the value of the computer to fix the simplest problems. They have a bunch of the sales monkey at the counter and possibly a real technician working in the background on machines not fixed (or made worse) by the sales monkeys.

We don't have a Best Buy in my town but I have visited a good computer shop in a town that does. Their rates are much more reasonable than Geek Squad and they shared a few stories of computers brought to them after being taken to Best Buy.

I provide home and small business computer support (mostly Windows, occasionally Mac, and experimenting with Linux for some customers). I find that most malware will disable most anti-virus programs (Norton and McAfee for sure). Why pay a yearly cost for software that slows down your computer worse than the malware and gives you less protection than a free competitor? I used to like AVG Free but have been using the MS Security Essentials instead since people get annoyed with AVG changing versions and requiring a manual upgrade.

My philosophy anymore is to have some type of firewall enabled (Windows Firewall or another free one), an active anti-virus (MS Security Essentials or another free one), and preferably Firefox with ABP instead of IE. Most malware not prevented by these is something obtained by a socially engineered attack (e-mail attachments, web browser ads, etc.) and usually lead to a fake anti-virus program that asks for money to fix the problem it created and will block most methods that can remove it. I find that most can usually be cleaned up with Malwarebytes Anti-Malware running in Safe Mode.

The vendors and the manufacturers are both guilty of selling products and services that are not secure but give the customers a false feeling of being safe from everything. This leads to reckless behavior that those who understand security would avoid doing even with a secure system.

Computer security software is no match for the behavior of ignorant users that will disable or circumvent security provide by others. Computer education related to security doesn't hit home until these people have to pay someone to clean up the malware mess.

True that.

But the GPS navigation and diagnostics system are not part of the CD player (IE) but they make use of the screen and controls on the deck (integrated OS features). That being said, your after-market CD player (Firefox, etc.) might be able to work with a GPS navigation and diagnostic system but that could be more difficult if this deck only uses certain standards and these other systems are using something proprietary.

Few carmakers do such setups unless they are high-end models to the point that the customer would rather pay whatever the factory would offer instead of the more reasonably priced after-market equivalent. Buying an Apple computer is more like this than a PC where many more parts are available and competitively priced.

Your intent of modification/upgrade, desired appearance, required functionality, and willingness to pay will influence car and computer purchases to varying degrees so this analogy works sometimes when discussing consumer motivations.

The diffeence? Three letters for you:

ABP

I have put Firefox with ABP on a few computers for users that seem to have problems with ads and will click anything without concern of the linked site installing malware (like those lovely fake anti-virus programs that Norton and McAfee do nothing to stop). I usually show them the difference using Facebook (if they use that and play game apps) so they see the difference.

Since Internet Explorer is integrated into the OS, does this mean they changed the OS significantly or just removed the interface? If you just get rid of the icon and/or executable for IE, the operating system would still use the underlying functionality of IE for Internet access so some exploits would still exist and would require continued patching. This change does protect the user on behavior abuses involving the user when the browser is in use but not other Windows features using the underlying functionality.

As for a car analogy, isn't removing IE like removing a factory stereo CD deck that also does the GPS navigation and diagnostic interface then replacing it with an after-market stereo CD deck to gain the MP3 playing feature but without those other features. If the user expects to use those other features, they cannot replace the factory deck and would be better off to add a portable player (Firefox, Chrome, etc.) via the AUX input and never use the CD player part (IE).

This fakenamegenerator could be a great resource for those who want to play Facebook games that require "friends" to gain credits or other capabilities without annoying real people. Now my fake Facebook account can have its own fake friends! And Facebook can inflate the number of users to gain more imaginary value even though nobody pays for the service except advertisers who use the ads as a malware vector (Facebook + IE = Malware Apps and Ads; Facebook + Firefox + ABP = Malware Apps only).

Very punny! Maybe I can dig up a few more produce analogies on some other topic. Thanks for sowing the seed of thought on that.

All kinds of businesses do shady employment practices.

My wife works for "one of the better paying" manufacturers in this small town. This plant was spared when they closed a plant in another city and they ended up taking on some of that closed plant's work.

They have been on and off mandatory overtime for the past few months. It is odd since only a few of the lines have enough work (parts to complete orders) available to keep them busy. So far it has been an extra hour per day and will vary between the just the lines with a backlog of work to the whole plant.

My wife told me yesterday that the are now required to come in for 5 hours on the first two Saturdays of December. There is no consideration of previous plans made by employees and this can not be excused. This seems like a gross abuse of manager power and I am not aware of any state or federal laws that forbid it. However, common sense would tell you that this would hurt employee morale since stressing people out with overwork and taking away their days off during the Holidays and Flu season will result in less productivity since more will be sick and come back to work still sick and contagious. Also, when employee morale drops, employees do two things-- 1) quit or 2) if quitting is not an option, they become anti-productive by working slower and making more mistakes which creates more scrap loss and bad product being shipped.

This manager is a douche-bag. He openly refers to the employees as "bodies" and cares more about attendance than productivity. I don't know what he is trying to achieve by these actions. However, my wife is planning to quit when she goes on maternity leave. In the meantime, she is planting the seeds of employee disgruntlement by opening the eyes of the sheeple types to realize how bad the management treats them.

I don't like what strong unions can do to hurt a company but I also dislike what the lack of laws for protecting employee rights can cause in the other extreme such as this.

Try looking at music CDs as pumpkins. My wife and I buy some pumpkins for Halloween and/or Fall decor. After the pumpkins start getting mushy, I take them and throw them in the back yard behind a shed. The next spring, the seeds spread around from the squirrels scavenging through the pumpkin mush grow into a pumpkin vine. I let the pumpkin vine do it own thing and maybe water it occasionally. The next fall I now have a few nice free pumpkins to use for Fall decor. Since I have these free pumpkins, does that mean I am stealing from the pumpkin seller since I will be buying less pumpkins? I actually did this and I still bought a couple of pumpkins to carve for Halloween.

The recording companies would love to make it impossible to copy music or rip CDs to MP3 or simular formats but that would come at a price of more expensive music formats and compatible players which would actually further reduce sales.

Back to the pumpkin seller, they could create a variety of pumpkin that was seedless or that the seeds were unable to grow into a vine. However, some other seller would still sell the other kind so they would just lose sales to them.

The reality in both situations is that a product must be priced correctly that balances profit and theft loss by offering the product at a price that makes it more convenient or making it more feature rich than its alternative. The idea of spending a lot of money to stamp out theft and then tacking that cost onto the item is crazy.

Why do I get visions of doctors that look like FBI agents inserting this device into me via my belly button?