Buy a new computer, this one has a virus...



  • After the Conficker worm has been found on 170 computers located in a teachers' training centre in Mecklenburg-Vorpommern, Germany, in 2010, the administrators did the first best thing they could think of (thinking obviously wasn't their strong point): they threw all 170 practically new machines away and bought new ones.

    Cost for the tax payer: 187300 Euro

    The best of the best, sir!

    ag.

    Source:

    http://www.ostsee-zeitung.de/nachrichten/mv/index_artikel_komplett.phtml?SID=b7e9640ddee1c1720d11239a37772e4c&param=news&id=3758217

     


  • :belt_onion:

    According to google translate

    @www.ostsee-zeitung.de said:

    Rostock (OZ) - The Court of Audit (LRH) Mecklenburg-Vorpommern, has lodged the initial purchase of 170 computers through the Schwerin Ministry of Education. Having had a virus, called the Conficker worm, the computer of the teacher training institute IQMV in Schwerin, Rostock and Greifswald attack in September 2010, some still "brand new" infected computers were discarded and replaced with even newer. Total cost to taxpayers: 187 300 EUR.

    The Court criticized in his recent report on the basis of a thorough investigation, "a serious review of alternative" to buying was "not recognizable" by the Ministry. Clear: Although it would have been possible to inexpensively and quickly to clean the infected computer, landed expensive computer equipment recklessly in the waste recycling. The cleanup is easy. Programs for it since 2009 are available for free on the Internet.

    Read more in Monday's BALTIC NEWSPAPER.

     



  • Seems pretty "normal" for me as a german.

    Most schools in germany have no IT - the IT is done by someone who happens to know more about IT than the rest of the Staff. And, considering the age of the staff, this knowledge is very little.

    In my school days (until 2004) computer courses where RARE and often covered something like "this is a computer, press this button to start it".

    There where exceptions, but they where driven by individualy



  • Personally, I hate nothing more than removing viruses from my friend's computers. Sometimes I'd really like to just tell them to throw it away and buy a new one. These people did it. I'm proud of them.



  • @HerrDerSchatten said:


    Most schools in germany have no IT - the IT is done by someone who happens to know more about IT than the rest of the Staff. And, considering the age of the staff, this knowledge is very little.
    They could have taken the computers to the nearest "repair shop". They'd probably have charged them >100€ per computer, which is still a huge rip off, but better than the 1102€ (!) that each new computer apparently cost.

    (if it were another country I'd suggest that maybe the administrators were friends with the shop that supplied the computers, but everyone knows there's no corruption in Germany).

     

    @HerrDerSchatten said:


    In my school days (until 2004) computer courses where RARE and often covered something like "this is a computer, press this button to start it".

    My "computer classes" in primary school consisted of: finding photos of things in google pictures, pasting them in word documents, and adding a rainbow WordArt and some filler text. Every day, again and again, because that's all the teacher knew how to do.

    But they let us install and play games in computers, at least until one of those games somehow managed to delete some important documents in another computer.



  • There is lots of corruption in germany, see the Transparency international rport - although it is not as bad as greece or Italy.

    And taking it to the repair shop would have involded privately owned businesses - something most of our teachers frown uppon.




    That sounds like a very nice class ;) I was lucky and had a very good teacher at school - we covered Pascal / delphi in detail, designed CPUs and worked with Prolog. Others told me later, it was probably worth 1 - 2 semesters at the university.

    But that was luck: most of my friends got shitty computer classes - it depends on the teacher(s)



  • @spamcourt said:

    (if it were another country I'd suggest that maybe the administrators were friends with the shop that supplied the computers, but everyone knows there's no corruption in Germany).
    And if corruption did exist in Germany, it would be well-specified, have a DIN number, have industry-wide support and be meticulously engineered.

     



  • You won't find that kind of behaviour in normal schools. We:
    a) don't have enough money to buy new computers and
    b) don't have brand-new computers at all



  • Kind of the opposite -- I bought a computer off of a guy on EBay. Brand new in the box, but it occurred to me that maybe I'm buying a intentionally infected computer. I watched the network traffic for a while and didn't see anything unusual. But I'm still not sure, 4 years on, whether that computer was truly "new in box" or if it had a little something added to it.


  • Trolleybus Mechanic

    @DrPepper said:

    Kind of the opposite -- I bought a computer off of a guy on EBay. Brand new in the box, but it occurred to me that *maybe* I'm buying a intentionally infected computer. I watched the network traffic for a while and didn't see anything unusual. But I'm still not sure, 4 years on, whether that computer was truly "new in box" or if it had a little something added to it.
     

    Maybe he just had sex with it.



  • Worse, I've seen vendor-preinstalled malware before; so even getting a new machine is no guarantee!

    An HP machine, new in box and never connected to the net, was riddled with flashing HP-sponsored "Great Offers For You!"-type popups.
    A Lenovo was pre-configured to ask for a credit-card the first time a digital camera was plugged in; support for cameras is of course built-in to XP (still current at the time), but the Lenovo-branded photo library scamware demanded the user upgrade to its "Professional Edition" before unlocking this "feature".

    Not quite related, but Toshiba wanted to charge me $90 — simply to tell me what one of their undocumented error codes meant, and Gateway wouldn't tell me how to boot an OS other than Windows 8 (the process to hack into the locked BIOS configuration, ultimately discovered through trial-and-error, involved doing a battery-pull).


    In many of these cases, its quicker (and cheaper) to simply reinstall Windows from scratch than to bother trying to "clean up" the machine.



  •  "Repairing" them is a WTF too at least depending on the meaing of repair. The only solution is to wipe the HDD an reinstall the OS. once you are infecdted you have no idea what the infection changed in your system.

    For desktops: Just build them yourself and no crap-ware.

    For laptops: re-install Windows. But that can be a bit cumbersome. Make sure you get all drivers before you do it, at least if it is you only computer.



  • @beginner_ said:

     "Repairing" them is a WTF too at least depending on the meaing of repair. The only solution is to wipe the HDD an reinstall the OS. once you are infecdted you have no idea what the infection changed in your system.

    For desktops: Just build them yourself and no crap-ware.

    For laptops: install your favorite distro of Linux. It's free to get a copy, you can guarantee it isn't preloaded with crapware, and a recent version of most distros will include drivers for your hardware by default in most cases.

    FTFY



  • @beginner_ said:

    "Repairing" them is a WTF too at least depending on the meaing of repair. The only solution is to wipe the HDD an reinstall the OS. once you are infecdted you have no idea what the infection changed in your system.

    For desktops: Just build them yourself and no crap-ware.

    For laptops: re-install Windows. But that can be a bit cumbersome. Make sure you get all drivers before you do it, at least if it is you only computer.

    Why are you telling us? We all already know this. Get the message to the German school system.



  • @SamC said:

    Gateway wouldn't tell me how to boot an OS other than Windows 8 (the process to hack into the locked BIOS configuration, ultimately discovered through trial-and-error, involved doing a battery-pull).

    Sounds like Gateway's managed to get even worse than they were when I had one of their laptops years ago. They wanted $175 to "recover" my "forgotten" BIOS password. Except it wasn't forgotten, it was a bug in the BIOS that prevented it from accepting the password. And the recovery process consists of putting the error code into a program to get a backdoor password.




    Maybe someday, we can outlaw bundling shitware on new PCs? Hahaha.



  • @lolwtf said:

    Maybe someday, we can outlaw bundling shitware on new PCs? Hahaha.

    Wouldn't that put Microsoft out of business?



  • @Gurth said:

    @lolwtf said:
    Maybe someday, we can outlaw bundling shitware on new PCs? Hahaha.

    Wouldn't that put Microsoft out of business?

    Goddamned. Slashdot's leaking again.


  • Trolleybus Mechanic

    @blakeyrat said:

    @Gurth said:
    @lolwtf said:
    Maybe someday, we can outlaw bundling shitware on new PCs? Hahaha.
    Wouldn't that put Microsoft out of business?

    Goddamned. Slashdot's leaking again.

     

    Slashleak is the name of my Julian Assange/Rob Malda slashfic (mpreg/rape/incest/forced/curious/alt-universe/crossover/bondage/my little pony). I just posted the latest chapter but to read it you MUST experience all 89 previous chapters (and the prologe, the tie-in short stories I posted on usenet back in 2005) and it helps to read the plot wiki to get a feel for the timeline and retcons.

    In honor of you, Chapter 91 will be subtitled "Slashdot's leaking again". They'll go pet shopping together on Christmas and they'll want a rodant (for sodomy of course lol), and again in honor of you I'll call it "Blokeymouse" (but we'll all know who it really is wink)



  • The Germans are just as corrupt as anyone else, they just do it more efficiently.



  • @Ben L. said:

    @beginner_ said:

    For laptops: install your favorite distro of Linux. It's free to get a copy, you can guarantee it isn't preloaded with crapware, and a recent version of most distros will include drivers for your hardware by default in most cases.

    FTFY
     

    BAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA

     

    Oh wait, you were serious?  

     

    BAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA

     



  • @DescentJS said:

    @Ben L. said:

    @beginner_ said:

    For laptops: install your favorite distro of Linux. It's free to get a copy, you can guarantee it isn't preloaded with crapware, and a recent version of most distros will include drivers for your hardware by default in most cases.

    FTFY
     

    BAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA

     

    Oh wait, you were serious?  

     

    BAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA

     


    And there you have it, folks. The BEST argument against Linux is "I'm not listening".


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