Top 10 unfairly vilified technologies

This list originally was going to be the top 10 technologies we'd like to ban, inspired by the foolhardy decision to allow mobile phone calls on the London Underground, which our poll shows is an unpopular move.

However, when Shaun and I started to put down a list we found ourselves stumped. Once you eliminate criminal stuff like spam and malware the pickings are very sparse. So instead we went for technologies that people dislike for irrational reasons.

A lot of technology is new and difficult to understand, and this makes some people very nervous. There are good reasons for this; we didn't get where we are today as a species without a healthy distrust for the new and unknown. But neither did we get this far by needlessly denigrating things and shying away from the new.

So here's the list. As ever, if you feel we've missed anything then the Comments section is open.

Honourable Mention: Anti-virus software
Shaun Nichols: Anti-virus software gets a mention here because a large part of the problem is of the industry's own doing, or at least the doing of certain bad actors in the industry.

People often complain that anti-virus software does nothing to prevent systems getting infected, and in many cases they are right.

A large number of security tools being offered online are what is known as rogue anti-virus software. Such tools promise to clean and protect systems, only to leave the user vulnerable, and in some cases even install more malware after the software has been purchased and installed.

This isn't the case with every security product, however. There are plenty of legitimate products that will do an excellent job of protecting your system, at least they will if you keep your PC well maintained.

A system that isn't patched regularly and run responsibly will be open to malware infection regardless of the security software in place.

Iain Thomson: This one yo-yoed up and down the list like Charlie Sheen's mood swings, but we settled for an Honourable Mention.

As Shaun rightly points out, the anti-virus industry only has itself to blame. There was, is and always will be a certain amount of hype about the industry, because scaring people into buying something is a tried and tested method.

But the industry also does not do enough to weed out the bad apples, i.e. vendors selling useless systems or poorly designed products.

Where I would say the industry is unfairly maligned is in the persistent belief that security companies generate viruses to keep themselves in business. It isn't happening, but you'd be amazed how often I hear it from people who should know better.

Honourable Mention: The command line
Iain Thomson: This is less of a problem these days, but back in the early part of the computing era you couldn't move without seeing images of hackers poised over a command line about to wreak havoc. To some of the GUI generation, even using a command line control looks dangerous.

Now to be fair, no true hacker is going to be caught dead using tools with a GUI; these people are coders. Someone who writes their own scripts and crafts unique attacks does it line by line; it's the script kiddies who buy the GUI-based virus creation kits.

I'm a command line fan. DOS 5 was one of the easiest to use operating systems out there, once you'd got a base level of knowledge, but I suspect that's a feature of age more than anything.

In a sense, the skills used to navigate directories via command line are the same as navigating a graphical system, just more prone to error and requiring a hell of a lot more code. Such is the price of progress.

Shaun Nichols: People used to clicking on icons and navigating folders don't like using the command line anymore, but the fact remains that it is still a very powerful tool which can greatly simplify certain tasks.

Mac users in particular would be well served to learn a bit about the command line. Mac OS X is based on Unix and some of its variants, and there are any number of extremely useful hacks that can be performed through the system's Terminal function.

At the same time, users should take care, as one can really mess up a computer if you don't know what you're doing. It's well worth learning, but essential to learn properly.