I saw an interview with Frank Zappa when I was younger, and I think he hit the nail on the head. He said (paraphrasing, it was a long time ago...) "They're only _words_! If you give them no weight, then their meaning is worthless to kids and they won't bother saying them!" What was so unbelievable was that the interviewer didn't "get it". I was maybe 20 at the time, and I most certainly did, and I think he was absolutely correct. If the parents tell the kid "Don't say the f-word, it's bad!", the kid will do it... because it's bad! Because the word has "weight". It's the human condition - kids long to be "bad", to do things that adults don't like.

Case in point: My coworker has a 2 year old daughter, who picked up "What the Fuck!" from someone. She saw the opportunity to shock mommy and daddy one day, so she drops the F bomb. Dad cautioned mom against saying anything to the daughter at all... just to ignore it. The daughter hasn't said it since. Had they made a big deal about it... you bet they would have heard it again... even the 2 year old knows what is "bad" and wants to say it.

It is the global imperative of every single being on this planet, from ants to elephants, with the odd exception of Panda bears, to perpetuate the species. It's the underlying driving force of evolution. We are born, we grow, we procreate, we die... rinse and repeat.

What Hawking is saying is simply that if we wish to fulfill our evolutionary destiny... for this driving force to continue... we will need to find another hospitable home to do it since we will eventually outgrow and probably make this one uninhabitable in the process.

Life is just a fantasy...

One patent to rule them all, and in the darkness bind them!

Mr. Perfect World meet Mr. Real Situation.

The dad and mom don't have the time nor inclination to maintain separate user accounts. They made her promise not to install any of that stuff and she agreed, and now that she knows the real world results of installing that software, I think she has learned her lesson.

I offered to set up separate accounts for them, but they opted out. I got a great dinner out of the deal, so I'm hoping it happens again... soon. I always look on the bright side of things ;-)

You are absolutely correct. UAC is enabled, as I received no fewer than 30 requests to authorize the system to perform tasks while I was removing said trojans.

The problem is that both Kaspersky and Windows Defender didn't prevent (or defend the computer from) the trojans from being installed. Even with admin privileges, any trojan or virus should have hit a brick wall when trying to do *anything* to the installed AV program's installation or runtime... and either Kaspersky or Windows Defender should have been able to completely remove the trojan or virus when it was initially installed.

As it turned out, I had to download a special program from Kaspersky's website in order to clean up the computer. At least they read their forums, where hundreds of other unfortunate Windows users were posting their terrible experiences.

... and I hope it remains "not worthwhile" for a long time to come. I enjoy using a computing environment that I don't have to worry about.

You are correct. I am a Mac user, and I do worry about viruses and trojans being on my computer. I worry that I'll receive them in an email attachment and unknowingly pass them along to my less fortunate Windows using friends. I worry that I will get one in my installation of Windows in VMWare.

I've been thinking about running an a/v program to prevent this from happening... I like those people; I don't want them to suffer unnecessarily.

I will not fear trojans and viruses until they start appearing en masse on the Mac platform. Until then, I will sleep more soundly than my Windows using friends, that is for sure.

That may be true for Windows based PCs, but even the most novice Mac or Linux user doesn't have to worry about it at all.

Yep, exactly. Had Kaspersky actually protected the PC, I would not have had to do anything.

As for the girl, she was told twice not to run that program, yet she did it anyways. She promised not to do it again.

The weakest link will always be the human seated at the computer... Anna Kournikova anyone? You'd think with that bit of information, the AV programs would be geared towards eliminating the PEBKAC error altogether... but apparently it is more difficult than one would expect.

I just had to repair a friend's Vista PC which had 3 Trojan programs running that had taken control of her internet even though Kaspersky antivirus was installed. The Trojan had worked its way onto her computer via a P2P program that her daughter was using to get music, and that stopped Kaspersky from being able to update its definitions, which it was set to do every day. I couldn't even go out to Microsoft's Windows Update site to get Windows updates, and Windows Defender (which was also installed and running) was disabled by one of the Trojan programs. It took me over an hour to clean it all up and get her machine running properly again.

Not even 2 antivirus programs could stop this from happening on the latest Windows PC.

This is what is stopping me from being even the slightest bit excited about Windows 7.

Proof of actually committing the crime shouldn't be an obstacle of someone getting convicted of committing the crime.

Hmmm sounds fishy to me... ;-)