We suggest taking it out to the parking lot and dousing it in gasoline. Here's some matches.

[coyoteden.livejournal.com]

You thought 10K in Ad-aware was bad?

A friend of mine who works at the local CompUSA told me the tale of a machine that finally locked up somewhere around 400,000.

And if that's not scary enough, how about a 90-car pileup?

Comments

[loosechanj.livejournal.com]

I'll take the pileup plz.

[chaobell]

Yeah, it'd be easier to clean up. Just bring out a few bulldozers and scrape 'em off.

[swwinchester.livejournal.com]

You're implying you'd actually attempt to clean a system with that many spyware traces.

You don't try to clean that off, you just remove the HDD, deposit the HDD into a car crusher, and start fresh.

[chaobell]

But we don't have a car crusher. All we have are a couple of ball-peen hammers. Those aren't enough to kill CoolWebSearch. We'd have to actually drive somewhere. At least with the pileup all you really have to do is pick up the phone and call for heavy equipment.

[swwinchester.livejournal.com]

One call to modern equipment rental later, they bring you a cute 5-ton log splitter. For a computer HDD, these work just fine, especially if the HDD is placed on the splitter correctly.

one word

[irishmasms.livejournal.com]

thermite


(the drive will die in a firey burst - as it should)

Re: one word

[swwinchester.livejournal.com]

Yes, well. Thermite would be nice, but there's that matter of it melting through the drive, through the bench, through the computers UNDER the bench, through the shelf they're on, and through the floor.

There's also the whole "OSHA" thing ...

I'd prefer to keep it simple, and just crush the drive.

Re: one word

[irishmasms.livejournal.com]

That is why you take care of it outside, off of company property. No OSHA bullshit, no damage to company property.

Geez, do we have to teach you kids everything???? ;)

Re: one word

[dmsalem00.livejournal.com]

Why buy thermite when Styrofoam + gasoline = napalm?

Re: one word

[irishmasms.livejournal.com]

the noise Styrofoam makes rubbing together drives me insane; and you need a lot of napalm to melt hard drives.

And who said anything about purchasing thermite? ;)

[buckaction.livejournal.com]

nah, cleaning up the spyware is easier - format/restore

[otana.livejournal.com]

OT ...

I just saw your icon and was like, "oh, I love that comic!"

Then I saw the name ...

*laughs*

[vtladyhawke.livejournal.com]

Y'know, I've been reading your posts on this forum for awhile...never realized you were from MD as well! I actually grew up in Ellicott City, now live in Woodlawn (for the week), and this week my fiance and I are moving back to EC! Gotta love Maryland drivers...*eyeroll* At the first sign of rain...."OHMIGOD I HAVE TO SLOW TO A CRAWL OR I'M GONNA CRASH AND DIIIIEEEE!!!"

Heh...see why I want to move to BFE and avoid people entirely? ;-P

You know what's really nuts?

[coyoteden.livejournal.com]

The day after it happened we nearly had another pile up because everyone just had to slam on their brakes and stare at the ruts left where the semi plowed across the median.

I have to admit the tire left sticking halfway out of the mud was amusing.

Re: You know what's really nuts?

[vtladyhawke.livejournal.com]

Ahahahaha....as I said, Maryland drivers are morons. :-P

[naggy.livejournal.com]

This is why they've started just reinstalling people's PC's rather than run Spybot at my work. They figure punishment is better than resolution as a teaching tool.

[gravito.livejournal.com]

impossible, spybot only checks for around 14k different things (most of them stupid cookies and not technically "spyware" or "adware".

Not impossible:

[coyoteden.livejournal.com]

Spybot and ad-aware check for about 14000 different items, but there can be multiple copies of the same thing cluttering up a computer. In fact, a lot of spyware and viruses (and ad-aware does remove some common worms) create thousands of randomly named temp files.

The system in question here likely had one of those viruses that creates a lot of fake files in shared folders. They are a pain in the ass and will tie up a scanner for hours.

Spybot 1.3 also has much lower counts than ad-aware because it groups all objects from the same problem into one. Ad-aware SE can be set to present a summary count, but I like high numbers. It scares some of the lusers into not downloading stupid shit again.

Re: Not impossible:

[gravito.livejournal.com]

Yeah, I don't disagree with the end result. It's worth it to be able to say:

"You had x thousand instances, which translates to about y hundred different programs all collecting information about you. Do you have CC insurance? Cause if you don't, and you have been purchasing online, I would definitely get it."

I just checked again to see, Spybot checks for 17,889 different files/registry changes/cookies while ad-aware checks for maybe 20 some thousand different ones (don't know about corporate edition). The big thing is that they all fix the 5 or 6 so major ad/spywares, like CoolWebSearch, various breeds of Gator, and WebRebates.

I suppose you are right about the temp file issue. But still, it could very well have been maybe 90 pieces of spyware, one of which was on the computer leaving randomly named files for the last 3 years.

[jacobine.livejournal.com]

Oh good lord re: that pileup.

I was in Baltimore this weekend -- that explains why some people were griping about the traffic!