The problem is lay users like me do not even know what ethernet traffic is, let alone what (indeed even where) to look for that constitutes unusual activity.
My modem logo on the screen gives character counts. Way back that meant something since most of the traffic was characters that went onto the screen, there were a few bytes for formatting. But as time went on formatting got fancier and fancier and then of course we went away from DOS text screens altogether. Now, many thousands of bytes are sent in both directions before I type a single key, and I have no idea what any of them are.
I do not agree the virus/spyware/phising threat is over reported. There's always been some brilliant but malicious technies. Today's Internet makes it easier than ever because so much unknown happens "under the hood".
For me, the virus alarm detected something a few weeks ago which is why I'm nervous. In the old days of plain text I didn't have to worry since I never executed anything from the net. Now, stuff "executes" and I don't even know about it through java applets and the like. By the way, early on I tried turning java off, but almost every web site today requires it on. (There are various levels of java, but I don't know what they are nor which ones are particularly vulnerable and which are relatively harmless; again, the frustration of being a lay user).
For my employer, from time to time bad emails slip through and do really nasty stuff by getting into the address books and propagate like crazy. Lots of companies get nailed this way.
The two issues are unrelated. Just because there is one bad practice does not mean another bad practice is acceptable.
As mentioned, reputable sites can host viruses for numerous reasons. Some sites might seem reputable but actually not at all.
As to the issue of not using common applications, for us lay people that is difficult. Specialty programs that I've seen often aren't so easy to use for lay people; it's like replacing your carbureator or fuel injection with a speciality model after buying your car. You better know what you're doing.
We lay people basically are stuck with what is delivered on our machines; especially with today's complex layers of junk. In my old DOS 3 days I could load something else easily. Today, with "registries" and all sorts of DLLs floating all over the place it is very risky for someone to do that. I learned that the hard way with Windows 95 when my machine was new -- after tinkering several times I had to restore the hard drive back to ground zero with the initiall install CDROM (which killed off a lot of my work I wanted to keep).
Your statement is very true and people will indeed be saying what you wrote. But what are we consumers supposed to do about it? What can we do about it? Not a damn thing! Heck, I come from a world where we ran an entire hospital on a mainframe with all of 128K with a 16K operating system. It blows my mind that 'core' memory is so cheap today we measure it in gigabytes, but it annoys me that people bloat up everything to milk it.
As I said, it's no different than cars of the 1950s. Every year they added more chrome and bigger tailfins. Didn't do anything for the car's real quality, but buyers loved it. Admit it, you know damn well the make/model of your automobile, but do you know the brand of your refrigerator or air conditioner? Today people want the baddest a--- SVU they can get.
There was an article just today in the New York Times about how important fancy features are important to kids to look cool with their cell phones.
The computer >> DSL, the transmissions contain so much more bytes. Some sites won't
"Some"? A lot more than some.
But much of the blame goes to their employers or business partners or marketers who put on the pressure to push something out the door quickly before it's optimized or cleaned up, or overloaded with unnecessary bells and whistles.
In the specific case of CW, their target viewer market is young people who would be a lot more likely to be up to date than an oldster like me. Indeed, the young people would be impressed with the whiz bang graphics. I have to admit I was that way when I was a kid, too--I wanted to see the latest and greatest on-line real-time stuff in computers, and could care less about batch processing that was the true reality of the industry.
However, I don't understand the NYC Metropolitan Transportation Authority
Agreed.
The key wood is "good web site design". As you pointed out, many developers can't or won't, and they like making things as fancy as possible.