Stories
Slash Boxes
Comments

SoylentNews is people

posted by martyb on Sunday April 30 2017, @01:22PM   Printer-friendly
from the Ask-Soylent dept.

Recently, someone in my family was not able to get into their home PC with their password, and called for assistance. This means having to drive down to the machine to see what they are doing, and log in with the appropriate account that can reset that password. Work commitments preclude driving there right away to see what is happening, and I am trying to locate a remote access solution. If they were logged into the machine, I could use some sort of remote assistance tool, but that is not an option in this case. There is the possibility of setting up SSH or OpenVPN to access the machine via the Internet, but I am not certain leaving those tools running all the time is the smartest idea in this day and age.

What recommendations do the Soylent community have for securely managing a machine over the Internet when someone is not logged into it?


Original Submission

 
This discussion has been archived. No new comments can be posted.
Display Options Threshold/Breakthrough Mark All as Read Mark All as Unread
The Fine Print: The following comments are owned by whoever posted them. We are not responsible for them in any way.
  • (Score: 4, Informative) by Appalbarry on Sunday April 30 2017, @07:07PM (6 children)

    by Appalbarry (66) on Sunday April 30 2017, @07:07PM (#501953) Journal

    Any child over the age or 3 or so likely has better intuition about how to deal with computers and other modern tech than a 70+ year old family member.

    Um, which 70 year olds are those? I'm well past sixty, and have worked my way through programming on punch cards, C-64, many versions of Windows, an Apple, and Linux, along with a couple of dedicated word processors.

    I know at least a few people over seventy who have a programming background, plus a lot of time spent doing graphic design and computer music composition on various machines.

    In fact, with the single exception of my 89 year old mother I don't know a single person over the age of 65 who doesn't have smart phones, computers, or tablets, and usually all three.

    We are the generation that invented, and grew up with personal computers. It's absurd to suggest that we are any less capable of using technology than you are.

    In other words, you can't complain about old people not understanding tech, and then also complain that they've taken over Facebook and Twitter. The problem is aptitude or training, not age.

    Starting Score:    1  point
    Moderation   +2  
       Insightful=1, Informative=1, Total=2
    Extra 'Informative' Modifier   0  
    Karma-Bonus Modifier   +1  

    Total Score:   4  
  • (Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday April 30 2017, @07:37PM

    by Anonymous Coward on Sunday April 30 2017, @07:37PM (#501960)

    The 'tech savvy generation' is a complete myth. Most people can do little more than access their Facebook accounts (and they are suckers for having such a thing anyway) and use the same software they are already familiar with (typically proprietary Microsoft garbage); that's not even remotely tech savvy.

  • (Score: 4, Insightful) by hemocyanin on Sunday April 30 2017, @08:31PM (1 child)

    by hemocyanin (186) on Sunday April 30 2017, @08:31PM (#501983) Journal

    It depends on who you flock with. In my work I run into lots of people not in technological field and the older they are, the more mystifying the tech is. By the same token, I've hired plenty of millennials to do receptionist type work and I'm always disappointed at their computer skills. Yes they can use Facebook fine, but I really feel like I shouldn't have to explain that cmd-c is "copy" and cmd-p is "paste" -- this isn't esoteric knowledge.

    Secondly, you're a programmer and know other programmers. The way most people see technology is as a magic black box and if it doesn't work like they expect, they won't even make a methodical attempt to understand it. Certainly as a programmer, you've looked at the way a program fails to understand how to fix it, probably even tried to make it fail. When you experience glitches in a program you didn't write, you can methodically attack the program to see exactly what makes it fail to come up with a work-around. You get that there is a logical interaction between what you do and how the program was written. Most people don't -- it is simply magic to them which works until it doesn't, and once something is outside the rote learning they used to get to whatever skills they have, they quit.

    So anyway, you may be a geezer (and I'm right behind you), but your technical skill level is not the norm, your understanding that tech is not black magic is not the norm, and your faith that people will care enough to learn it is not the norm.

    • (Score: 2) by gidds on Tuesday May 02 2017, @12:53PM

      by gidds (589) on Tuesday May 02 2017, @12:53PM (#502773)

      Exactly!  As you say: people treat technology as magic; they don't want to understand it, they just want to remember the specific sequence of actions to achieve a particular goal, and treat everything else as ‘Here Be Dragons’.

      And I think it's less about details than about the whole mindset.  For example, I had a family member who simply couldn't get his head round softkeys.

      This wasn't on a computer, nor even a smartphone, but back on what we'd now call a ‘feature phone’ (i.e. a dumb mobile) — and a simple one at that.  It had just one softkey (a button below the screen that could do different things, with its current meaning shown on screen next to it).  He wasn't a stupid guy, but he just couldn't grasp the idea that you needed to look at the screen to see what the button did.  He expected to remember a sequence of keypresses to do what he wanted, and it frustrated him no end that pressing the same keys in the same order could have different results.

      Actually, I think that mindset is much wider.  People ask me “How do I do X?”, and (because I'm often not familiar with the device or software in question) I have to say, “I don't know. But let's take a look…”  And I can often do it, not because I know what buttons to press, but because I look at the screen and try to see what it's telling me.

      It seems that many people just don't look.  Perhaps especially older people; perhaps because when they grew up, controls were hard-wired, and devices didn't have any state other than the control settings, so you never needed to look.

      How do we avoid getting like that?  How do we keep up with technology?

      That's tricky.  I think one thing is to try to set aside preconceived ideas.  Perhaps that's why young folk pick this stuff up quicker: they're not trying to fit everything into their existing understanding, because they don't have any existing understanding.  They just accept what they see for what it is.

      And another is to play.  Children are also very good at this, but adults tend to look down on it.  Which is a shame, because exploratory play is how we learn about new things!  Obviously, with technology you have to be a little bit careful to avoid doing real damage, but having a good old play and poke around is a vital way of getting to grips with something new.

      In the Olden Days™, of course, this was easier: you could look through all the menus (or press all the buttons) to get a good picture of what was possible.  As software moves away from such old-fashioned UIs and is controlled more by gestures and swipes, that gets harder to see.  I think we're laying down a real problem with software discoverability.

      But I think it's just as important simply to keep your eyes open.

      --
      [sig redacted]
  • (Score: 2) by AthanasiusKircher on Sunday April 30 2017, @08:53PM (2 children)

    by AthanasiusKircher (5291) on Sunday April 30 2017, @08:53PM (#501993) Journal

    Um, which 70 year olds are those?

    People in my family. Relatives of my friends. Lots of older folks.

    I know at least a few people over seventy who have a programming background

    So do I. Please re-read my post. The one sentence you quoted sounds like an overgeneralization, but you will note that I specifically referred to blue-collar workers, many of whom may have retired before they got a lot of computer experience.

    In fact, with the single exception of my 89 year old mother I don't know a single person over the age of 65 who doesn't have smart phones, computers, or tablets, and usually all three.

    My family members I referenced have all three too. That doesn't mean they have any clue how to use more than their most basic features.

    It's absurd to suggest that we are any less capable of using technology than you are.

    I didn't suggest any older people are "less capable" of learning how to use technology. I used the word "intuition" in the very quote you used, which is something that generally comes from experience. I merely suggested that many older people lack significant experience, and it's pretty much an established psychological fact that older folks have a harder time absorbing new skills. I myself will admit to that -- I certainly don't "pick things up" as fast as I did 10 or 20 years ago.

    In other words, you can't complain about old people not understanding tech, and then also complain that they've taken over Facebook and Twitter.

    Who is complaining about older people taking over Facebook and Twitter? I don't give a crap about either.

    The problem is aptitude or training, not age.

    And my statement was that a larger percentage of people over the age of ~70 (maybe closer to ~75 now) had significantly less exposure to technology (which means less training) than people tend to in everyday work, etc. today. Therefore, the minimal skills many of them have are somewhat limited to tasks they actually do everyday (see the list at the end of my email).

    By no means did I mean to imply (and I certainly didn't say) that older people are all stupid or incompetent or whatever you think I said. And plenty are experienced and have spent decades working with computers, etc., but it's more likely to find those who AREN'T among older people than younger ones.

    • (Score: 2) by AthanasiusKircher on Sunday April 30 2017, @09:14PM (1 child)

      by AthanasiusKircher (5291) on Sunday April 30 2017, @09:14PM (#502001) Journal

      By the way, if anything my statements were meant to mirror the adage that was popular about 20 years ago about how people needed the grandkids to program their VCR. I assume you remember when people used to say that. And I'm sure, given your background, you were able to program your own VCR at the time. That didn't make the statement less apt for lots of older folks.

      But really what it was about was unfamiliarity with interfaces coupled with decreasing desire to experiment with new tech. How many older people back then really cared enough to program their VCR? Most of them certainly didn't fiddle around with buttons on the remote just to see what they did as their grandkids did.

      Now we have devices like tablets that have dozens or even hundreds of times the number of functions that those VCRs did, often with interfaces that are just as unintuitive, non-discoverable, and filled with jargon.

      • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday April 30 2017, @10:28PM

        by Anonymous Coward on Sunday April 30 2017, @10:28PM (#502022)

        the adage that was popular about 20 years ago about how people needed the grandkids to program their VCR. I assume you remember when people used to say that.

        Hey, Gramps! What's a "VCR"?

        (See, now the grandkids need a grandparent to explain what magnetic tape was, why we say "dial" a phone, and how to wear on onion on your belt.)