On Sun, 08 Apr 2001 03:01:54 GMT, "kukison"
>I may have been wrong. Perhaps this thread IS self perpetuating.
You're right there fella.
my 2 cents. most of it is unsubstantiated, and I welcome anybody who
wishes to correct me on whatever they like, but i've seen / read /
experienced a lot in my time to believe it 100% until proven
otherwise.
1) It's crazy to use outlook after all the security leaks and
backdoors already documented and abused. Even though MS has patched
most of them, how sure can you be that it won't be exploited in a new
way? MS products are the main source of hackers attempts to cause
mischief. Its not MS's fault, but if a hacker can cause mischief,
he'll put more effort into reaching a larger target audience. Why put
yourself in the firing line. If you're prepared to spend a fortune on
antivirus packages, buy yourself a decent (safe) alternative email
client. I know outlook is pretty good and everything, but still...
2) less than 5% of all viruses actually infect & cause damage. not my
figures folks. I read it on one of the vendor sites(either
www.antivirus.com or www.kaspersky.com). the rest are basically
dormant or contained and just added to the signature files just in
case they do spread. when last did someone actually see the ping-pong
virus or plastique or even michelangelo? *all* the top antivirus
vendors are probably good enough to handle viruses most users are
likely to encounter. if you keep your pattern files up to date and
practise a bit of commonse sense in obtaining software (be careful
with astalavista and alt.binaries.*), you really shouldn't have a
problem.
3) Don't think that norton (or whoever) will save you 100% of the
time. I stopped using Norton 5 when it wouldn't detect variants of
the word macro virii and repeatedly screwed up documents it was
supposed to be cleaning. AVP and also PC-Cillin detected and removed
the virus simply and without fuss.
4) also - regarding the downloads...the best provider, in my opinion,
provides updates daily and not weekly and is able to update the
program incrementally. i hate downloading 2meg patches through the
modem just because the dll needs changing. vendors that score well
imo in this regard are trend and kaspersky, but your mileage may vary.
5) I happened to have GoBack installed on my machine when PC-Cillin
screwed up my pegasus mailbox. i reverted back to a previous version
of the file using goback and recovered it. You can also use these
types of tools to help you recover your machine even if for some
reason, a virus gets through and trashes your system. So another
useful tool to protect yourself could be Roxio GoBack or Powerquest
Second Chance. There was a comparison done by some testing labs
thingy and they recommended GoBack.
6) finally - as regards benchmarks - well, like statistics they should
be taken note of, but I wouldn't use it as a benchmark. user
satisfaction and consistent magazine / web reviews as well as my own
experience does it for me. a few years ago there was an incident with
dr solomon's and benchmarking that caused me to be suspicious of the
whole scene anyway so you can't be sure.
some poor sod is going to crit and flame me for this, but I really
don't care anymore. the situation is a sad joke already. as a
programmer, I can't believe that microsoft couldn't have prevented a
lot of this a long time ago. macro viruses, active x, windows active
scripting, where does it end. there'll probably be a new threat when
OfficeXP and Whistler arrive.
and just to acknowledge the newsgroup... and come back to earth...
I went through my old software and pulled out a copy of 4d stunts.
the one with the audi quattro, indycar, porsche 911, honda nsx, etc.
DSI software. Somebody (eldred?) was mentioning slot cars the other
day. Is there anything like that on the market today? I mean with a
track editor and different cars, etc? Simple to play, yet a lot of
fun?
regards all,
Ian
