The eyeclops has arrived ...

[Nick Thompson]

All or any,

 

The digital microscope having arrived (thanks everybody!) I now turn my attention to the other grandchild, who is 4.  Thinking music software.  There are dozens, perhaps a hundred or more, different music software programs for kids.  Does anybody have one they love?  And, what about this business of downloading demo’s or freeware?  How long will it be before I REALLY regret it.  Do any of those little “stickers” at the bottom of the website really mean anything?   I assume many of you are downloading all sorts of exploratory stuff all the time.  Are you Living On the Edge, or is there some way to do it safely?

 

Nick

 

Nick  

============================================================
FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv
Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College
lectures, archives, unsubscribe, maps at http://www.friam.org

[Russell Standish]

On Sun, Dec 05, 2010 at 12:18:47AM -0700, Nicholas  Thompson wrote:

> All or any,
>
>  
>
> The digital microscope having arrived (thanks everybody!) I now turn my
> attention to the other grandchild, who is 4.  Thinking music software.
> There are dozens, perhaps a hundred or more, different music software
> programs for kids.  Does anybody have one they love?  And, what about this
> business of downloading demo's or freeware?  How long will it be before I
> REALLY regret it.  Do any of those little "stickers" at the bottom of the
> website really mean anything?   I assume many of you are downloading all
> sorts of exploratory stuff all the time.  Are you Living On the Edge, or is
> there some way to do it safely?
>
>  

Sandboxes. Have a fresh copy of Windows installed in a virtual
machine. Make a copy of virtual disk files so as to be able to reset
the machine back to the freshly installed state. Disconnect the sanbox
from the network if it is not needed.

Of course working in virtual machines is a bit of a nuisance - the
other approach is at any sign of trouble, scrub the hard drive and do
fresh OS installs - I do this on my 12yo son's computer - this
probably about once a year, at current rates of malware infections,
and I get him to reinstall the applications he cares about.

If you can use Linux or Mac software, you almost don't need to worry
about malware. I've never had any Linux malware in spite of 18 years
of using it as my primary desktop platform with slack security
practices and promiscuous downloads of software. I used to run my web
browser in a sandbox (I didn't trust java and javascript when it first
came out), but now I don't bother. I'd be considerably more alarmed
about ActiveX, though.


--

----------------------------------------------------------------------------
Prof Russell Standish                  Phone [phone] (mobile)
Mathematics                        
UNSW SYDNEY 2052                 [hidden email]
Australia                                http://www.hpcoders.com.au
----------------------------------------------------------------------------

============================================================
FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv
Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College
lectures, archives, unsubscribe, maps at http://www.friam.org

[James Steiner]

I've never had trouble, malware-wise, with programs obtained from FileHippo, Softpedia, PCworld, or freewaregenius, among others.

DO watch out for when the program installer subtly offers to install additional software, such as seach-bars and other shovel-ware. 

Avoid advertisement-paid software. The advertising subsystems are sometimes hard to remove, later.

Look for reviews on software blogs for ideas and warnings.

There are  USB (musical) keyboards that attach to the PC via USB that are pretty inexpensive, and might also have young-person friendly software. Anyone can get pleasure out of banging out tunes (or noise) on a keyboard.

You can't go too wrong with Disney software.

Don't sweat it too much, the 4 YO will grow out of it, whatever it is, very soon, anyway.

~~James

On Sun, Dec 5, 2010 at 2:18 AM, Nicholas Thompson <[hidden email]> wrote:

All or any,

 

The digital microscope having arrived (thanks everybody!) I now turn my attention to the other grandchild, who is 4.  Thinking music software.  There are dozens, perhaps a hundred or more, different music software programs for kids.  Does anybody have one they love?  And, what about this business of downloading demo’s or freeware?  How long will it be before I REALLY regret it.  Do any of those little “stickers” at the bottom of the website really mean anything?   I assume many of you are downloading all sorts of exploratory stuff all the time.  Are you Living On the Edge, or is there some way to do it safely?

 

Nick

============================================================
FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv
Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College
lectures, archives, unsubscribe, maps at http://www.friam.org