Re: Safari User interface font size

On Sat, 23 Jun 2007 11:14:56 -0400, Dudley Henriques wrote
(in article <2007062311145675249-dhenriques@rcncom>):

On 2007-06-23 10:46:20 -0400, J.J. O'Shea <try.not.to@xxxxxxxxxxx> said:

On Sat, 23 Jun 2007 10:12:50 -0400, Dudley Henriques wrote
(in article <2007062310125050073-dhenriques@rcncom>):

On 2007-06-23 09:59:42 -0400, see_signature@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx (Jon) said:

Dudley Henriques <dhenriques@xxxxxxx> wrote:

Unfortunately not. I'm using Virus Barrier 4.0. It requires a 1024x768
res MINIMUM. No problem though. I'll use Firefox I guess.

Just out of curiosity - why do you use Virus Barrier? Do you work
somewhere that demands antivirus softwaare?

In answer to a prior post; I'm male :-)

Funny you should ask this. I bought the Virus program knowing the virus
situation (or lack of same really :-) for the Macs but gun shy anyway
from my PC background. Just before viewing this post from you, I was
downloading email.
A virus was detected and repaired by the AV program in one of the
emails I downloaded.
DH


But was it a _Mac_ virus? 'Cause if it wasn't a Mac virus... In any case,
I'd
not use an anti-virus app which tried to tell me how to set things like my
screen res. I'd especially not _pay_ for an anti-virus app which does things
like that, not when there are _free_ anti-virus apps, such as ClamXav, which
don't do any such thing. (and are about as necessary as the paid anti-virus
apps, just cheaper.)
<http://www.tuaw.com/2005/07/19/mac-virus-protection-why-bother/> Is it too
late to return Virus Barrier, pocket your money, and get ClamXav?
<http://www.clamxav.com/>

That's a reasonable question about it possibly not being a Mac virus,
and I'm in fact giving some thought to just uninstalling the AV
altogether as I learn more about Macs.
It's my understanding that no Mac virus' exist at this time and that
having an AV program on a Mac is overkill.

The last serious Mac malware which actually escaped into the wild and did
real damage was the autostart worm in 1998. And that was an OS 9 virus/worm.
There are _zero_ OS X viruses or worms. There are a few trojans, but they're
limited in abilities and never have got much traction. (One of them pretended
to be the installer for MS Office 2004. As it was quite small, under 200 kB
in size, and Office 2004 is quite large, over 600 MB in size, anyone who had
any sense _knew_ that it could not be what it said it was. What it actually
did was two things: identify greedy thieves, and erase the home directories
of said greedy thieves.)

The only viruses to run loose on Macs since 1998 are macro viruses, aimed not
at Macs but at MS Office, usually MS Word. Most of them die on contact as
they assume that they're running on a Windows machine; the ones which don't
die immediately are almost all caught by MS's own built-in macro security
system. The two or three left are rare, and have problems working on Macs,
and don't do much anyway as the guys who programmed them were incompetent
even for macro-wielding script kiddies. I haven't seen one in at least seven
years and don't know if they'll even run under OS X. I suspect not.

Buying an antivirus app to run under OS X is a waste of money. ClamXav will
do everything they will, and is free.

Yet, I've gotten some advice from fairly reliable sources that tell me
it's only a matter of time until Mac's are cracked and the fun begins.

It's been _seven years_ since OS X. It's been _nine years_ since the
autostart worm. People have been saying that Macs will soon be as infected as
Windows all that time... and nothing has happened. I'll believe it when I see
it... and even then, I'll install ClamXav. The 'Macs will soon have lots of
viruses, too' line has become as much of a joke as the 'Apple is doomed and
will no longer exist in six months' line... which is _also_ still being
trotted out. <http://www.macobserver.com/appledeathknell/index.shtml>

Not sure at this point exactly what to do about it.

There are no Mac viruses. Remove any anti-virus app and drive on.

But you're right. It's a learning curve for new Mac people coming over
from the PC environment. I've been nailed so many times using PC's that
learning to trust both the Mac basic code and my router's hardware
firewall to keep me clean might take a little time :-))
DH




--
email to oshea dot j dot j at gmail dot com.

.

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