Re: Networks are for corporations and offices, right?

["Patricia M. Godfrey" priscamg@xxxxxxxx]

Robert Holmgren wrote:
> What the "average" user, the user with a single machine, doesn't realize is how
> very little it takes to become a "network" and, consequently, to avail of
> network options and tricks.
Fine. So long as it is MY network. In fact, I have both
desktops networked and sharing each other's printers
and data drives. (Even on systems that no one touches
but me, I don't share c:)
> If you are permanently connected to the Internet
> (broadband, or dial-up that never times out), then you are permanently
> networked.
And THAT is what I am vehemently opposed to. MY PCs are
not and should not be nodes on anybody else's
epithetted network.
I mean, isn't that precisely why we have this epidemic
of malware? Because, as you once put it (accurately
enough as things ARE, but outrageously, IMO, as things
ought to be) "a network is a network." The Internet, a
corporate extranet, and a personal or corporate
intranet SHOULD all be absolutely different KINDS of
networks, with different protocols and unmistakably
different kinds of addresses. And, of course, different
permissions. (And I realize 9x's permissions are a bad
joke. No need to preach to the choir on that.)
It's not that I'm either selfish or a control freak
(well, I probably am the latter). But how much time and
effort must one spend "securing" one's PCs from not
just the deliberate bad guys but the clueless dweebs?
(I have very good friends to whom I cannot give this
e-mail address, because I know their PCs are wide open
to being scanned by all sorts of address-harvesting
bots. At one point I was getting spam on the Juno
account from my own spoofed address!)
> (it is soooo handy to have more than one machine, especially
> when you run into difficulties -- the second machine is there to retrieve the
> answers, or the files, that get you out of trouble).
No argument on that. I've had a backup machine ever
since my PC (3d one I owned) died a week before my
taxes were due.


--
Patricia M. Godfrey
PriscaMG@xxxxxxxx