{"id":351,"date":"2006-09-14T15:00:19","date_gmt":"2006-09-14T12:00:19","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/toddbolen.com\/2006\/09\/14\/computer-sins-part-1\/"},"modified":"2006-09-14T15:00:19","modified_gmt":"2006-09-14T12:00:19","slug":"computer-sins-part-1","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/toddbolen.com\/blog\/2006\/09\/14\/computer-sins-part-1\/","title":{"rendered":"Computer Sins, Part 1"},"content":{"rendered":"

This post is not about what you might expect to hear – the standard sins mentioned in sermons and such. Things like time-wasting, gossip, violating copyright law, pornography, and rude behavior are serious sins, but not the subject of my concern today. No, my concern probably affects more<\/em> of computer users than the above, believe it or not. And frankly, I’m not hearing many people address these sins. You’ve probably heard about them as problems, but I want to raise the stakes a bit and tell you why, if you are a believer, these things are morally wrong and in violation of God’s Word. My goal, of course, is that you will repent and stop doing these things.<\/p>\n

1. Not having an antivirus program installed, with up-to-date definitions. Wait,<\/em> you say, what business is it of mine<\/em> whether you have an AV program or not? Good question, and I confess that I have strong libertarian tendencies (meaning that I hate seat belt and motorcycle helmet laws among other things). Unless you never connect to the internet, this is not a seat belt issue. That is, if you are connected and your computer gets a virus, it can easily be sent to everyone whose email address is on your computer. That may include me! Thus not having an up-to-date antivirus program is a sin because your negligence could destroy my property (see Exodus 21:33-36; the biblical ox is today’s Word document).<\/p>\n

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This is not hard to solve. You can spend some money and get highly regarded AV programs like Norton Antivirus<\/a> or you can get the AVG Free Edition<\/a> for no money. You have no excuse. Personally I think it should be a chargeable criminal offense for those who do not do this.<\/p>\n

2. Not having a firewall installed. This is not so different from #1, but it is different and it is possible that some of you are in violation. The reason why a firewall is necessary is to keep evil people from taking over your computer. Again, why does this affect anyone other than you? Because those evil people aren’t going to use your computer to play games, they’re going to use it to send me a billion spam<\/a> emails. Or worse. So if you don’t have a firewall installed, you may be guilty of violating the principle to love your neighbor (see Romans 13:9-10).<\/p>\n

This also is easy to rectify. If you have Windows XP SP2, you probably already have a firewall. (Here are instructions<\/a> to check if it is active.) If you don’t have SP2 or if you have some other operating system (Windows 98, etc.), you probably need to download a separate firewall. I use ZoneAlarm<\/a>, which is free.<\/p>\n

There’s at least one more major sin, which I will address at some length, tomorrow, Lord willing. I’m also hoping to go see some newly discovered Middle Bronze tombs in Jerusalem and take my boys to the Israel Museum and Jerusalem model. Yesterday I was at two cool<\/em> places in Jerusalem for the first time in my life.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

This post is not about what you might expect to hear – the standard sins mentioned in sermons and such. Things like time-wasting, gossip, violating copyright law, pornography, and rude behavior are serious sins, but not the subject of my concern today. No, my concern probably affects more of computer users than the above, believe\u2026 Read More »<\/a><\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[12,36],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-351","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-computer","category-software"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/toddbolen.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/351","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/toddbolen.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/toddbolen.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/toddbolen.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/toddbolen.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=351"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/toddbolen.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/351\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/toddbolen.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=351"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/toddbolen.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=351"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/toddbolen.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=351"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}