| Subscription
Services
Indeed, a huge industry has sprung up dedicated to creating
software to combat these Internet infections. These services
require a subscription (although you can download limited
function trial versions of most) and can be costly. Such anti
virus software includes Spybot, Ad Aware, PCcillian and others.
There is, however an excellent solution to 99% of the problems
that come with cruising the web and best of all, the solution
is absolutely free! Firefox
is a brand new Web Browser created by Mozilla that, for my
money is right up there with Microsoft’s Internet Explorer
…Oh wait a minute, I don’t need my money cause its
free! Two questions spring to your mind: why does it work,
and why is it free?
A Free Solution
First the free part. Mozilla software is part of a movement
started at the dawn of the programming age called Open Source.
The various hippies, deadheads, and ne'er do wells that kept
the Internet going after the Department of Defense lost interest
in maintaining it, were an idealistic lot. They believed that
software, and operating systems in particular should be free
to the public since in the future it would literally be like
water to a fish, all of us swimming around in this information
soup…you get the idea. Bill Gates disagreed, to put it
mildly. These young programmers created a very loose organization
called Open Source, and both Unix and Linux (two alternative
operating systems to Windows) are associated with this movement.
Bill Gates and Microsoft took advantage of this free flow
of information to take credit for a bunch of other people’s
ideas and charge you a lot of money for them. In doing so
he really pissed off a lot of programmers and that began the
whole virus mess.
Why Mozilla
Works
Mozilla has been making an excellent operating system for
years but its hard to avoid Microsoft operating systems because
so much software is written specifically for Windows. And
that brings us to the other question. You see, although Firefox
works just the same as Internet Explorer and integrates with
Windows seamlessly, its software code is completely different.
That means that all those rotten pimply faced social misfits
who are writing code to make your life miserable are targeting
Internet explorer because about 90% of the planet uses that
browser. They aren’t bothering to write code targeting
Firefox yet! That’s because its just not worth it to
them, not until a sizable fraction of the populace starts
using Firefox. Ands that’s a ways off. Unless Bill Gates
makes people even more unhappy than they are now.
Easy Installation
Downloading and installing Firefox is fast and simple and
the layout is nearly identical to Explorer so there is no
steep learning curve. The only negative is that some third
party add on must be installed separately. I’m talking
about things like shockwave, which provides graphics animation
and real player for video streaming. But these plug ins can
be downloaded just as easily and, in face, you will be prompted
to do so the first time you encounter a web pages that requires
one of these freeware devices.
We all need to take advantage of every resource we can these
days to insure we keep up with the hectic pace of modern life.
Taking advantage of the benefits of Mozilla Firefox is one
of the easiest ways I know to do this.
Firefox can be downloaded at www.getfirefox.com.
Enjoy! And by the way, they do have products you can buy so
support them in that way if you are happy with their free
stuff. | 
