Oh god, why do old timers fall for scammers this easily?

Currently away from home base at a business center with a horribly spastic mouse, so click-and-drag in particular is a royal pain. Just glad this is only for today and tomorrow...

Reader-added tags include "Ransomware", "Bank deposit transfer scam" and "Swindlers get the gap-transport penalty".

Kurai_Tora said:

Oh god, why do old timers fall for scammers this easily?

You kind of answered your own question. The fact that the scam was in English further threw him off his guard.

Kurai_Tora said:

Oh god, why do old timers fall for scammers this easily?

Don't think this counts as falling for a scam, more a case of "push random button and bad shit happened".

If its just a pop-up ad, he got off lucky. I thought it was one of those encrypt-your-hard-drive ransomware attacks.

I want so badly for it to turn out to be this: https://twitter.com/malwrhunterteam/status/850031671244193792

Ahhh yeah, the classic fake-virus-scanners that tell you the 'virus files' that are actually important system files(so if you try to be clever and delete them yourself, you're screwed) . And then some of them also rewrite your registry so that ALL EXEs open the fake virus scanner again. And then after four hours of cleaning you visit deviantArt and get the exact same flash-advertisement and the virus starts alllllllllll over again! =)

I wonder if Kogasa will end up deleting those important files or if Papagasa will just get the same virus again immediately afterward...

For the record, it's been almost a half hour with no upload.

He's late today.

Jarlath said:

For the record, it's been almost a half hour with no upload.

He's late today.

@Jarlath It's there now.

It's those 'old timers' who invented computing.

Even further back if one includes Konrad Zuse, and before him, Charles Babbage or the Jacquard Loom Punch Cards.

While being elderly doesn’t preclude technical expertise, it’s still a significant factor. (How old were Babbage, Jacquard, et al. when they made their respective innovations, anyway?)

Tapper said:

@Jarlath It's there now.

Too late for me to access a proper computer for many hours, darn it. Have to tackle it late tonight or maybe tomorrow.

As for modern computing, I was thinking of people like the late Dennis Ritchie, who invented C and co-invented UNIX ( died aged 70 ) or the late Douglas Engelbart who invented the mouse ( died aged 88 ); all in the 1960s. Even in their dotage they could probably handle complex stuff better than teenagers.

Plus modern computing is turning into pure acceptance of delivered apps rather than fiddling to roll your own ( not that I'm any better ).

.

Looking it up, Babbage was in his 30s when he started his Difference Engine and the Analytical Engine followed, but he was still working on new variants when he died aged 80. Jacquard was born in 1752, started inventing in 1800, so was already pretty old; died aged 82.