[Ti] MASSIVE Virtual PC hard drive

[b]

Glenn L. Austin paused, thought it over, and spoke thusly:

>My VPC has even been affected by other Wintel machines on the network, just
>by connecting to the network.  I just hope that M$ finally is able to shut
>down all of the holes in the OS -- one day.

Microsoft can't do anything about it all anymore. They're past the 
point of diminishing returns, wherein one 'fix' opens up multiple 
additional vulnerabilities.

The internet, and cheap dial-up, and cheap intel boxes all adss up to 
one thing: phenomenal, exponential growth in PC users in the least 
likely population to be security 'savvy'.. newbies. it's not their 
fault.

Next up the chain comes the local WANs and small to medium large 
corporate nets... and the IT/Sys Admins, there, are more and more 
reluctant to just download/install a 'patch' every 3 days, or 
whatever it is that they come out.  A small net is 'mission critical' 
to the people whose livelihoods are hooked into it, so, jeoparding a 
functioning system because of 'email' viruses, or some 'arcane IIS 
problem, isn't in the cards, or 'automatic', the way it once was.

There's only two groups of PC users that are probably adequately 
inoculated, at any given time: Internet backbone Sys Admins (and they 
get hit regularly, hence the 'public' nature of some of the more 
serious flaws, or 'vulnerabilities', and guys like me, excessively 
paranoid, loaded to the gills with anti-hacker/cracker/spy/adware/ 
port-blocking, etc...

One piece of anti-trojan scanning app. and a "Little Snitch"-like 
utility will keep any PC from spreading anything harmful... but when 
'free' screensavers and wallpaper, and free 'credit checks', etc, are 
packing software that dials papua ne Guinea, in the background, and 
getting massive phone bills and crap like that... it's amazing the 
web still works at all..

People open the door (port) a crack, and the next thing you know ... 
the boogeyman's in the house. people predict the fall of Apple, and 
assume there'll 'always be Microsoft, but who knows? The military is 
bailing out on MS...foreign gov'ts are really leery.... there's 
probably ten world-class programmers in India/China for every AOL 
user.. heheh, it could get real interesting from here on out.

I've only had two very minor adware probs in VPC in years. The 
utilities are out there, people have to use them. Meanwhile, the 
Yahoos, and ATTs, and other corporate 'backbone types are 
transmitting what? 70% SPAM? why? Doesn't that impinge on available 
bandwidth? That wouldn't artificially keep the 'cost' of bandwidth 
high, would it?

It's a mess. Oh, Trevor, go to your home Library/Prefs, check out the 
"Windows Applications" folder in Virtual PC 6 preferences, and see 
what's listed there. Maybe you're running more apps than you think. 
Also, get a copy of System Suite, or Super Utilities, and trash your 
temp files, do the Windoze clean up business, you'd be surprised how 
much bloat there is...

~flipper