Spyware - is the crisis really that bad?

No program (!) with the exception of the operating system and device drivers really need unfettered access to the computer's resources.

I'd like to see a world where all applications come in the form of something similar to flash or java applications. Just change the JVM so that the "Do you trust this one" dialogue doesn't appear and always defaults to no.

Death to the .EXE file!

In the past 2 weeks I've had 3 coworker's hard drives in my machine just getting them bootable again, they all use AOL. And somehow they've gotten the impression that AOL's browser is safer...trying to explain that it's just an overlay on IE is not easy. They all got their machines back w/ a fresh installation of Firefox among other things but who knows what they'll do, I need one of those T-shirts that says "No, I will not fix your computer."

LOL. You can get that shirt here: http://www.thinkgeek.com/tshirts/frustrations/388b/

However you want to call these programs and however you want to list the statistics, more windows users are not "using" their computers or having full use of their computers, because something they did not install is taking up valuable resources and this is a shame. I use 5 computers at home and one computer at work every day and I don't have any problems. It's not relevant to mention that 4 of the computers are macs and 2 are pc's because even the pc's I run do not have problems. Why, because I don't have children. I know this is oversimplifying the problem, but most of my friends and coworkers who are experiencing problems have kids who use their computers and haphazardly download anything.

This is why all of the admonishments do not work for windows. I also have friend who have Macs and have kids and they do not have these problems. Restore points are the best solutions, but even getting people to understand and use them is difficult.

This is a shame because when you spend money on a product, and you can't use it because someone else's actions (spyware and the like) prevent it, it's stealing.