Right on! Teen's never get alcohol, cigarettes, marijuana, porn, cold medicine, spray paint, duster, (keep naming things that are age restricted because we're thinking of the children)

Whats with the dig at McDonald's customers?
Wanting a burger and fries in less than 5 min for less than 5$ != ignorant.
Wanting a website for less than 9$/month != ignorant.
Characterizing people that go to McDonald's as ignorant == ignorant.
Everyone knows fast food isn't fine dining, and that godaddy isn't business-grade web hosting. That doesn't mean there is no reason besides ignorance for using McDonalds and godaddy.

BTW, I have seen some very serious eaters at McDonalds.

I agree.
However, when you have 200,000+ POS machines, management wants an AV.
I hate McAfee, I hate using a AV instead of isolating a machine from removable media and the Internet. I hate spending money on AV when we could use it on something else. But when a franchise manager on the other side of the world lets one of his employees use the wifi or a printer or something, I'm glad there's an AV to protect my ass. Even though there shouldn't be a way the POS machines get a virus, the AV is kind of like car insurance: It protects you from accidents, costs too much money per year, someone else forced you to get it, and in the end when something shitty happens it kind of saves your ass.

Just because it can run flash doesn't mean it should run flash. Or java for that matter. Also, how much RAM is in it? I'm assuming that in the PDF they mean storage when they say memory. Is there a gpu? If not, do you want to waste all of your battery life having your cpu process that flash video? Completely off topic: but where is Wireless USB? Aren't tablets a perfect platform for using wireless usb?

The NoScript plug-in for Firefox.

Or run your browser in a VM and revert to a clean image each time your done browsing.

Or disable javascript in Opera, but the web will act a lot different.

While I think all 3 of you are accurate in predicting the typical user response, I still think a message clearly indicating what is wrong is still a lot better than a BSOD. There will always be users who disregard system messages, but I believe a warning message will educate more users than a BSOD.

"Its better they find out this way, than not at all" is not the correct reaction to this. This BOSD is going to happen to the layman a lot more frequently than a tech person. When a BSOD happens to a layman, they don't record the stop code and look it up to see what the error is. The layman will just take it to geeksquad/local tech kid/vendor tech support and say fix this its broken. They wont realize their machine was compromised. They wont change their computing habits so that their machines don't get infected in the future.

Assuming that the affected users will clean up their systems and become more secure is wishful thinking.

However (in a perfect world), if MS validated the files before patching/updating them, the user could be warned of their infection before their machine gets trashed. Maybe an error message saying "We detect that your machine is infected with a rootkit, all of your personal information is in danger of being stolen. Please install a firewall/update your browser/ run your AV". That way, instead of confusion and anger from a BSOD, the user will be educated and possibly secure their system.

I'm sure M$ puts this stuff through a lot of QA to ensure they don't release a update that causes a BSOD on a clean machine. Given the amount of malware infected/rooted/fucked up WIN32 machines out there, I would half-expect part of their QA team to validate updates/programs on infected machines.

I'm also surprised that none of their QA labs are infected with this rootkit.

Are you suggesting that the U.S. or its citizens commit malicious attacks against a possibly uninvolved Chinese company's networks?

Would you also purpose that the U.S. or its citizens commit suicide attacks against the nations of origin of those who commit terrorist acts in the U.S?

Your thought process is reactionary, and not wise. If we are to expect to live in a civilized world, we can't go around breaking the same laws and ethics we are trying to live by just because someone else does.

As children we should have learned that just because little Billy broke the rules doesn't mean we can.

As a civilization we should have evloved past an eye for an eye.

I remember when all imeem did was stream music. Then they added all those stupid social networking and profile modifications to make it more like Myspace. Everyone was complaining that it was turning into Myspace. Then surprise, surprise, they literally turn into Myspace. Who didn't see this coming? Maybe if they'd have spent some development time on making their site stable instead of making it cute and adding stupid features, they wouldn't have ended this way. I guarantee Myspace isn't going to revive it in any remotely similar form. They're just going to reroute playlists to to the bands' pages and that's it.

People tend to be arrogant - we don't know of anything outside ourselves and so it must not exist. Strangely, and I do find it quite strange, many of my fellow Christians intimate that there cannot be life anywhere but here. How that fits with belief in someone else we cannot see or prove, I don't know. It seems to me best to suggest that there might be aliens and there might not be. If the purpose of the universe does not involve such (again, remembering I am a Christian here), then they would not exist. If their existence does fit in with God's plan, then they certainly exist (some have suggested that this is perhaps the identity of "angels" from CS Lewis to various others). The question then becomes not, do they exist, but, what relevance to life on earth do other beings elsewhere have (which might change should there ever be a point of contact).

In the USA the local police department usually sponsors a fingerprint drive where elementary age kids get a coloring book or something for surrendering their fingerprints. Those records are kept in a central location. Moreover, to get any job with a state or federal employer, you must submit to digital fingerprinting. To get a drivers license you get your picture taken. All those biometrics are stored in a central location. Israel is just being smart about it and storing everything in a digital format. Less secure, maybe, but way easier to search through than a pile of papers in some filing cabinet.

So its really not that bad, unless you really want to live off the grid or something.

All he is saying is that if you want complete privacy you shouldn't be using the cloud or internet services. Everyone already knows this. Apply a real world scenario:
You are a criminal, and you don't want to be found. Intuitively you would not open a checking account under your real name, get a membership at the local fitness club, or do anything else that someone looking for you will use to find you.

How is Google any different? They have to abide by laws, that means surrendering user data when required legally by law enforcement (illegally is an entirely different matter). If you want complete privacy, don't use google. I never ever for one second think that what I type and send across the internet is private, unless it is explicitly said so and the connection is encrypted. I think that its pretty common sense to assume so.