I am going broadband (Do not read if you haX0r me.).

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If I don't kill all of Arcor's customer service idiots first, I will be rockin' the DSL in a few days. I will begin downloading vast quantities of music and videos of cute kittens romping in the fields, but I do not wish to suffer attacks at the hands of the 3l33t or to brodcast my identity and surfing history everywhere I go. So, in y'all's humble opinions, what are the minimum software requirements for safe Interweb multimedia enjoyment in a paranoid post-Echelon world?

― Colin Meeder (Mert), Monday, 14 April 2003 15:04 (twenty-two years ago)

Get a Mac.

― Ned Raggett (Ned), Monday, 14 April 2003 15:12 (twenty-two years ago)

Get a Mac. If you have a mac get Brickhouse to fine tune the firewall so that the right messages get in and out. The configuration in the System Preferences is rubbish.

― Ed (dali), Monday, 14 April 2003 15:14 (twenty-two years ago)

http://windowsupdate.microsoft.com/

http://www.info.apple.com/support/downloads.html

Overkill.

― Stuart (Stuart), Monday, 14 April 2003 15:14 (twenty-two years ago)

Ned & Ed, they're MAC COPS. (But Chris Barrus is our stern yet warm-hearted supervisor.)

― Ned Raggett (Ned), Monday, 14 April 2003 15:18 (twenty-two years ago)

"Get a Mac" is to security advice what "Get a SUV" is to highway safety advice.

― Stuart (Stuart), Monday, 14 April 2003 15:20 (twenty-two years ago)

There are less spyware, trojans, viruses, capable hackers for mac because there are less macs, so its pretty sound advice.

― Ed (dali), Monday, 14 April 2003 15:24 (twenty-two years ago)

If that's your security philosophy, shouldn't you *not* advise other people to get Macs?

― Stuart (Stuart), Monday, 14 April 2003 15:26 (twenty-two years ago)

If you're concerned about security and people snaking their way into your computer, at the very least you should consider getting a software firewall program like Norton Internet Security or ZoneAlarm; keeping in mind that these programs can sometimes be overagressive and may actually forbid you from doing some of the file-sharing applications you want to do, unless you're willing to do massive security setting configuration and port mapping. If you have some money kicking around I'd also suggest a hardware solution between your broadband modem and the PC, in the form of a broadband sharing device; these feature Network Address Translation, which gives your internal network a different set of IP addresses than the outside world, which means that hacking computers behind that box becomes more difficult.

The important thing to keep in mind is that you shouldn't ever accept any of those popup boxes that say "do you want to install such and such", whenever you go to a webpage, unless you've specifically asked to install that program (quicktime, realplayer, flash, etc). If it's something you don't need, don't install it. And for god's sake don't surf to porn sites or warez site until you have a software firewall in place unless you want to be window-bombed.

― Sean Carruthers (SeanC), Monday, 14 April 2003 15:27 (twenty-two years ago)

Thanks, Sean -- I actually do have such a device (I got it for cheap of part of the DSL package) and shall install it forthwith.

I know about "do you want to install COMET CURSOR", that's not really my worry. I'm more concerned about not passively leaving a trail for crooks and spooks to follow, or passively picking up obnoxious spyware (like, for insatnce, Comet Cursor).

Additionally, what are the decent spyware free media players?

― Colin Meeder (Mert), Monday, 14 April 2003 15:39 (twenty-two years ago)

QuickTime.

― Sean (Sean), Monday, 14 April 2003 15:56 (twenty-two years ago)

AdAware from Lavasoft should be worth a mention here -- free program that scans for and removes spyware.

― OleM (OleM), Monday, 14 April 2003 16:02 (twenty-two years ago)

Quicktime is total garbage. Windows Media Player 6.4 and Winamp are (almost) all you'll ever need. Maybe let quicktime onto your system if you like movie trailers. Otherwise, stay away.

― Chris H. (chrisherbert), Monday, 14 April 2003 17:23 (twenty-two years ago)

Quicktime is total garbage

― Ned Raggett (Ned), Monday, 14 April 2003 17:34 (twenty-two years ago)

Quicktime for Windows isn't very good. Probably fine for Macs, though.

― Bryan (Bryan), Monday, 14 April 2003 17:39 (twenty-two years ago)

Quicktime isn't a media player its a set of tools, defintions, codecs and file formats for distributing streaming and storing movies.

― Ed (dali), Monday, 14 April 2003 18:33 (twenty-two years ago)

No, QuickTime is a media player. I go to the start menu, and it says Programs->QuickTime->QuickTime Player.

― Andrew Farrell (afarrell), Monday, 14 April 2003 18:42 (twenty-two years ago)

But quicktime isn't meant to be there for all of your media playing needs. It meant for playing quicktime files (it can do other things aswell because you can composite different media types withing quicktime files)

― Ed (dali), Monday, 14 April 2003 19:17 (twenty-two years ago)

Yes, QuickTime is also the file format that QuickTime plays (along with avi, mpeg etc).

― Andrew Farrell (afarrell), Monday, 14 April 2003 20:10 (twenty-two years ago)

is this like video? ie "i set the video to video some videos on [insert music channel of choice here]"

― CarsmileSteve (CarsmileSteve), Monday, 14 April 2003 20:43 (twenty-two years ago)

Quicktime will always be rubbish as long as you can't watch files full screen without having to pay for the privilege.

I really like the free multi-OS media player VLC at the moment, It has a few minor bugs but is very good at playing a whole range of files that would otherwise require you to install a new codec (Mpeg2, DIvX, Xvid, DVDs etc.)

http://www.videolan.org/

― Chewshabadoo (Chewshabadoo), Monday, 14 April 2003 22:39 (twenty-two years ago)

in terms of firewalls, i recommend the sygate personal firewall. very easy to choose what programs and whatnot get to send and receive. and free for personal use. the only file sharing i ever used was ssk, never had any probs through the firewall.

i use this guy's tests: https://grc.com/x/ne.dll?bh0bkyd2

― ron (ron), Monday, 14 April 2003 23:09 (twenty-two years ago)

Quicktime will always be rubbish as long as you can't watch files full screen without having to pay for the privilege.

But also totally worth it for the ability to encode in MPEG4, which is how I've been archiving all of my TiVo transfers now (after I burn a DVD of them).

VLC is the DivX player of choice though.

Anyway, getting back to Colin's initial request, getting a Mac is a decent move if you're worried about spyware and all that. Plus I'm happy to see that this morning's Safari beta release stores ILx cookies correctly.

― Chris Barrus (Chris Barrus), Monday, 14 April 2003 23:16 (twenty-two years ago)

Taking Chris's advice, I've just downloaded Safari for the first time and am running it. V. nice, I have to say. This will almost certainly be my default at home now.

― Ned Raggett (Ned), Monday, 14 April 2003 23:29 (twenty-two years ago)

Wait, QuickTime lets you do DVD->MPEG4?

― Chris P (Chris P), Tuesday, 15 April 2003 00:02 (twenty-two years ago)

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