Slashdot Mirror

I am certainly aware that Microsoft employees have been recommending SysInternals free utilities over Microsoft's sloppily coded and primitive utilities that do the same thing.

I am also very aware that Microsoft has no utilities at all for some of the Windows functions people need, and Microsoft employees have long been recommending SysInternals utilities for those functions.

Remember, the Windows Command Line Interface and command line utilities are upgraded DOS programs. DOS is shockingly primitive compared to the Linux command line interfaces, for example. And not all of the DOS utilities have been converted completely to 32-bit Windows; they fail in weird ways that have not been fixed even though the failures have been discussed thoroughly over the years.

The SysInternals programmers are some of the finest Windows coders in the world, if not THE finest, in my opinion. However, I don't think the SysInternals employees will stay long in the abusive and adversarial and socially backward and ignorant Microsoft climate.

I think what will happen is that Microsoft will embrace and extend and poison the SysInternals software, as they have done for the dBase language, or, much more recently, for Giant's AntiSpyware.

Microsoft began tinkering with Giant AntiSpyware, which became Windows Defender. Giant was considered the best in its field. Now the Microsoft version has problems. Sometimes, for example, it will fail, and re-installing will not fix the failure.

Of course, Giant AntiSpyware was only a bandaid for problems that exist because of Microsoft's sloppy coding that leaves huge numbers of vulnerabilities. Remember that Microsoft makes more money if there are more vulnerabilities, because people buy new computers as their old computer become slow because of infestation.

Anyone who thinks that an OS is complicated, and therefore must have vulnerabilities, should buy a secure OS like OpenBSD for $5,000 per copy. The really expensive operating system organizations can hire extremely skilled programmers who know how to eliminate vulnerabilities. Oh, wait, sorry, OpenBSD is FREE, and is coded by volunteers.

Microsoft is a socially backward and adversarial organization, in my experience, but they aren't so dumb they don't know how to hire people who can write secure software. The reason for the huge number of vulerabilities seems to be that, when a company effectively has a temporary monopoly, more vulnerabilities make more money.

Also Age of Empires III won't run on anything below XP, but there's no reason I can think of for such a restriction, esp. against Windows 2000, except to push towards the newer platforms.

think of the the amount of scammers that would go out of business

when there is so much money in it, its never gonna stop until we kill the disease, not treat the symptoms

If you look at my other posts you'll see that I don't think too favourably about small software companies.

I can name several small software companies that make great software, and will likely be purchased by bigger companies due to the quality of it. It's happened countless times in the past. A couple that come to mind at the moment are Bradsoft, Syntrillium, and Giant Software.

MSFT's solution to not be quite as good as third party offerings.

Perhaps you forget, this used to be a third party offering. And the reason MSFT bought them is they were the best at remeoving the spyware, and had the best detection methods.

I was using Giant Antispyware for a few months before MS bought them. And I've seen very few changes (maybe because the Giant Company developers are still working on it.)

How many times do we need to see reviews on ANY anti-spyware programs. NONE of them get rid of all spyware!!!!!!!!!!!

I'm going to point to a review that was on /. a while ago please check it out. It seems from the review that Giant AntiSpyware was this best in this review. Odd, how about 2 weeks later Microsoft has an AS program, that looks like Giants. Oh wait, MS bought Giant Company. Oddly enough it's the same product. I wonder if the reviewer in this article would have gave it a better review if it still siad "Giant" instead of "Microsoft."

I for one am not a fan of Mr. Gates, or MS, but this is still a quality product. I've been using Giant AS for a while and and a change in name doesn't change the product. Well, not yet anyway.

... and Microsoft might have already sneaked in a pay subscription service.

Now, I wonder... where does that come from? As far as I can tell from http://www.giantcompany.com/commonQuestions.htm, it already uses a subscription service. It really sounds like the common anti-Microsoft slogans that seem to be based on nothing. You would expect more from /. :)

I wonder if this has anything to do with Microsoft buying out that Spyware Removal Company?
Slashdot post here
Giant Company Software In. site here

I've been a long time fan of Spybot, AdAware, BHODemon and hijack this, but I've recently been very impressed with Giant AntiSpyWare and thought it deserved a mention.

So where does this guy get his "paid" spyware removal applications? Clicking on popups? Oh... wait...

many of these utilities use aggressive marketing tactics in pop-up ads, spam, and keyword ads appearing alongside Google search results

Though I suppose this is how they sucker a lot of people and some people expect results if they pay for a utility, I would probably do at least a LITTLE research before paying for any app like that. The thing is, I would hardly consider this "most commercial anti-spyware software." So as far as this "test," he might as well do an article about Virtual Bouncer and how it removed his parasites for him.

Why didn't he test something like Spy Sweeper or Giant AntiSpyware? Those are paid ones that I would probably recommend if someone did want to pay for a program. At least that way, people would see that not ALL commerical products are crap - it does almost sound like that.

But really, Spybot isn't even cutting it anymore, IMO. AdAware is still doing well, but I've actually been more impressed with the other two I mentioned above - worth a look if you haven't checked them out - both have free trials that you would have no problems doing a removal with.

Give Giant AntiSpyware a try. I am most impressed with their research center.

Give Giant AntiSpyware a try. I am most impressed with their research center.

Give Giant AntiSpyware a try. I am most impressed with their research center.

According to this web page, RealVNC is spyware, ha!

Spam Inspector is a plugin for Outlook 2k,2k2,2k3 (also works for Eudora, Incredemail, and Hotmail.) Not only does it do a pretty good job filtering spam, but it seems to also stop that 1 pixel image trick, cause it wont let outlook download anything unless you tell it to specificaly.

Unless SMTP is re-worked to disallow false source addresses, spam is not going to be stopped by a system like this. As long as there is no accountability from the sources of spam, it will continue to be pumped out from overseas. Though projects like PennyBlack and SpamNet are good in concept, the only one that has proven to work is intellegent filtering. Spam filters like Spam Inspector remove around 99% of junk email... You need to have one to make using your e-mail account worth using again...

I couldn't imagine my Yahoo mail without their spam controls... (Unlike Hotmail, which spams you themselves)

I don't know how many of you use Outlook, but if you do check out Giant Company This prog works wonders for me. It filters all your email via its predefined filters, so you don't have to come up with your own filters. Prior to using this I would receieve 300+ articles of spam a day to my inbox, now maybe one slips through if its lucky.

T