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Symantec to Buy Veritas
jortega writes "Symantec is looking into buying Veritas for $13bn." The linked article is mostly about biz stuff. Seems like a kind of strange deal to me.
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Is anyone sick of all the buyouts/mergers recently? AT&T/Cingular, Sprint/Verizon?
What's next, IBM/Microsoft?
We dance to all the wrong songs.
--Refused.
a some of the virus problems. Clearly someone is making a lot of money from them!
The BBC and others are reporting that it's a done deal. In a merger deal valued at $13.5bn (£7bn) the all-share deal will see Symantec swap 1.1242 shares of common stock for each Veritas share.
This will make Symantec one of the largest software makers out there. As if they were not big enough in the first place. Personaly though on my WinXP partition I use F-Prot for virus scanning.
KNEEL BEFORE ZOD!!
doesn't like this much, Symantec is down 8% and Veritas is down slightly as well, and so far has failed to approach the takeover price of around $30 bucks a share. Probably due to increased competition in the secuiruty market.
This makes Symantec a one-stop shop for all things IT enterprise/security related: anti-virus, anti-spam, data recovery, network security, etc.
A successful utility vendor buying a sucessful utility vendor. What were they thinking?
Its only to make more $$$$ and get rid of the competition.
Nextel and Sprint. http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/6687709/ http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2004/12/11/tech/mai n660486.shtml
http://www.theinquirer.net/?article=20181
http://www.internetnews.com/wireless/article.php/3 446571
Who does Symantec think they are? Computer Associates?
This is probably a good thing. I sure as hell wouldn't install anything from Symantic without doing a backup first.
I wonder how bad they will screw this company up.
Sorry, but M&A activity is not for your amusement or enlightenment. No one should care one bit whether you're "sick" about it.
Make a case that it's a bad merger because it doesn't serve customers or shareholders, and you've got a good argument (and personally, I don't have a strong opinion either way on those points). But you're "sick" of them? Geez...
Symantec isn't actually buying the company, they're giving them a bunch of copies of Norton Antivirus and will slowly drive them into bankruptcy via the subscription fees. At which point they'll take over the company based on the money owed.
I still use Norton Utilities http://www.norton.com/
SYMC has recently dipped down so this might be a good buy opportunity, markets usually like hearing about acquisitions.
Have a look at their enterprise product listing to see what else is available.
I want to drag this out as long as possible. Bring me my protractor.
Another company they can screw up. Wasn't screwing *their* employees enough for them? That's right - this company is flush with so much cash, but they have no problem getting rid of their permanent employees, then rehiring them as contractors.
The only thing I want to know is whether Symantec execs will remove their dicks from the asses of their employees now, and will transfer that love to Veritas employees.
Didn't Microsoft buy an AV company about a year ago? I look for MS to include their own AV software built into Windows. That makes Symantec and others MS competitors and MS will crush them. Smart move by Symantec.
I think that last sentence was meant to read: "Seems like a kind of strange smell from me." Apparently this continues the new editorial trend of appending random blog entries to the end of front-page write-ups.
We resell Veritas on every major server we build, and when I mentioned the aquisition this morning the comment from everyone was effectivly "I guess we will need to find new backup software to sell with our servers." It wasn't even a thought, we just don't want to deal with symantec.
I agree...
On Arrakis: early worm gets the bird. Magister mundi sum!
Microsoft has purchased an anti-spyware company, so in fact Microsoft might simultaneously be entering the security market to compete with Symantec. This news is fresh, and might be depressing the market's enthusiasm about Symantec/Veritas.
I mean, almost nothing good ever comes out of them for the consumer. Service takes a hit, products get dropped, prices go up. Where are the so called synergies?
I know I would diversify if I were them. With predictions of new vulnerabilities being exploited within hours it seems like anti-virus software would be a risky business to be in right now. If a major organization got rooted via an exploit that their software didn't protect them from quickly enough they might try to sue Symantec for failing to provide adequate protection. I don't think such a case would be have much merit or be successful, but it would still cost money to defend against it. It might be a very savvy move to have another field to expand into if the market on AV got tight.
-- Gargonia
Never play leapfrog with a unicorn.
Veritas does more than backup as well.
...Master of None.
Once, long ago, Peter Norton made some damn good tools for DOS. Then came their antivirus product, and it was pretty good, too.
Then came Symantec, and so far I'm not impressed with anything they've done. Have they done anything? Other than buy other companys' products and rebrand them?
All the cool stuff, like Ghost, Tools and AV, came from Norton. The Raptor/Velociraptor firewalls were purchased.
Veritas makes some good stuff. Unfortunately, I believe Symantec will fix that over time.
Mediocre seems to be their watchword.
-Charles
Learning HOW to think is more important than learning WHAT to think.
From http://www.veritas.com/
"Symantec Corp. and VERITAS Software Corp. today announced a definitive agreement to merge in an all-stock transaction. Based on Symantec's stock price of $27.38 at market close on December 15, 2004, the transaction is valued at approximately $13.5 billion."
TruePunk | Games
If Symantec is buying Veritas, I'm not share how much they understand Veritas' business...I don't expect good things. Does anyone know of any good example of similar technology company mergers that have created better products for their end users? Compaq/DEC=failure, HP/Compaq=failed, IBM/Lotus=mostly failed...
it was conner backup exec in 1993.
then it was purchased by acada (? - acadia)
then it was purchased by seagate
then it was purchased by veritas
and amazingly enough, backup exec has continued to get better over time.
eric
Billion should always be spelt with a capital B... even if it is Symantec.
albeit differently. Good synergy here and probably more market consolidation in this space to follow
"I'd rather be a lightning rod than a seismometer." -Ken Kesey
Veritas 1 year stock performance:
http://finance.yahoo.com/q/bc?s=VRTS&t=1y
Symantec 1 year stock performance:
http://finance.yahoo.com/q/bc?s=SYMC&t=1y
If you notice Veritas halved its stock price and symantec doubled the same during 1 year. Nice cheap acquisition !
M
you and me. Tis the season!
from the art:
...It would be somewhat surprising to see Veritas agree to an acquisition , given that the company's CEO Gary Bloom has long said he thinks Veritas can grow at a steady pace on its own. Veritas has acquired numerous companies over the past two years, trying to build out its server software portfolio....
Gary Bloom used to work for Oracle...he was the VP that oversaw Oracle's swallowing of e-travel so he knows exactly what he is up against. [disclosure...I was one of a small handful of SW engineers who escaped with some dot.com lucre when Oracle later disgorged e-travel.]
I would look at Symantec buying Veritas as a defensive move...EMC has moved into new markets aggressively and managing the security of all that data they already store/fetch would be logical. It would also seriously crimp a growth path that Symantec could take into the same market space from its position as a security provider.
Now, who can tell me if I should sell my VRTS?
SLASHDOT: news for people who can't concentrate on work or have no life at all and got tired of yelling back at the TV.
Would it not be sick, evil irony if we all found out that, after Symantec purchases Veritas, Symantec's "other" software lines include:
- Symantec Virus DevStudio 7
- Symantec Spam Server 5
- Symantec Gator
- Symantec Hard Drive Eraser 4
- Symantec Registry Hoser XP
- Symantec Network Trojan 5.5
- Symantec EZ Spyware 4
- Symantec RAID Drive Ejector 3
That would pretty much cover their business development needs for the OTHER product line that we're already aware of.
IronChefMorimoto
All Symantec needs to complete this picutre is a good monitoring software...
Norton Antivirus vs eTrust
Backup Exec vs ARCServ (Brightstor)
___________ vs Unicenter
Can anyone fill in the blank?
You've ever delt with the crappy ass software Semantic sells.
Veritas goes to Semantic and I dump Veritas with a vengance.
Ultrabac does the same stuff with a lot smaller install, and for less money.
Apple free since 1990!
If Symantec can give the same good support for an Enterprise Data Backup software as their anti virus (enterprise, not the nazi home user edition), I'm all for a merger. My $1000 a year for support access just goes to Symantec instead....whoopdee doo.
They buy these companies and then "poof" goes decent support. Except that shitty knowledgebase. The only company that has managed to fuck things up worse is Business Objects. They bought Crystal reports (the most sold company around) and their support is just aweful. They have forums that people post to but no employees seem to monitor. The instructions in the Crystal reports for installing things like the report server are written as if they wrote a functional version and then stripped any pertinent technical info.
These software companies are becoming like patent holding companies. They're just there to collect the tolls at the tech support gate. Sure, the software is expensive but nothing compared to the revenue they can get by squeezing people that plunk down $700 for the software and then pay several hundred per incident.
I'd like to flog whomever it was that sold crystal reports to those idiots.
"Seems like a kind of strange deal to me."
Not to me. If you ever get into the infosec theory stuff, you'll study the CIA acronym; the "A" in it stands for availability, and that's what backups provide.
A backup company is a smart addition to a security company.
dmiessler.com -- grep understanding knowledge
Does anybody know what Symantec's size is saleswise?
MS is #1 Oracle is #2. Are they #3 at this point?
In Soviet Russia, Trojan exploits YOU!
It's stuff like this that keeps me excited about Linux, I still have choice.
Take your anti-Chinese trolls elsewhere, ya douche! Someone please mod this troll down, he posts the same link in every story and tries to make it look on-topic, even though it is most definitely not.
I suppose this means Sun's going to go back to pushing Solstice DiskSuite.
As a CA employee who works on ARCserve, I encourage you to dump Veritas as quickly as possible. I know- don't bother telling me: You won't be buying my product anyway - but anything that hurts their marketshare helps ours :)
this could move symantec into the Disaster Recovery world with anti virus and security solutions the next logical step is to have a segment that can secure data. With the Veritas backup suite of products it could realy provide them with the full suite of software packages.
All in all it could be a great merger. However having seen how both of the companies work it maybe a very difficult transition for the two companies to amalgamate properly. That could lead to problems.
to "Vino" which makes for a snazzy Latin slogan.
I dont know about Symantec, but the VERITAS Foundation (want a link? Use google) is quite dedicated to giving to good, deserving sources. This was brought about by the genuine 'do-gooder' nature of Mark Leslie while he was still CEO. I did a lot of work for the Foundation, and am proud of my contributions and the work the people who volunteer their time for this organization.
I doubt that this work will end with a merger/buyout/whatever.
As for Breast Cancer directly, that I do not know. But their projects are listed in the Foundation page.
I know- don't bother telling me: You won't be buying my product anyway - but anything that hurts their marketshare helps ours :)
Do you really work for CA? Is CA as aware of how people feel about them? If the answer to these questions is yes, why doesn't CA do something about it? Why must CA destroy products and anger customers?
Would this possibly mean layoffs? I have a relative who works for Symantec securing large server environments. Do the backup people have security people working for them? Does Symantec have a department that focuses on backups?
All one has to do is a simple google to see that there are several anylysts who question this move.
HERE
Analysts downgraded both companies. Legg Mason analyst Todd Weller wrote in a note to clients that Symantecs' 20 percent sales growth rates will be dragged down by Veritas's slower sales, which are forecast to rise 10 percent. ``From a near-term perspective, the negatives outweigh the positives.'' The merged company will have a low-teens growth rate, he wrote.
Standard & Poors Downgraded it as well
Sure the acquirer MAY lose value, but not usually 25% but the Coward that posted the above is too busy showing his own ignorance.
The world of Information Security has been turned on its ear in the past two years. Little - if any - corporate security measures are focused on methodology such as Threat Analysis or Risk Assessment. The brave new world is mandated compliance - with Sarbanes-Oxley taking the lead at publicly-traded corporations.
Symantec probably has their eye on the data-retention provisions of SOX and GLBA. This is their sales message - because CEO's get jail-time for SOX violations.
"Flyin' in just a sweet place,
Never been known to fail..."
Symantec was probably looking at their annual licensing and support fees for VERITAS software and decided it was cheaper to just buy the company.
seem too harsh, but if you see that anonymous coward post, I was still fuming over that (while responding to yours). I am not sure about the long run, AND like you have an interest in this deal working out. (I just purchased several out of the money calls several months out, due to the beating it took recently)
Why is the percentage of H1Bs a key question? I don't get it. Is this just another xenophobic rant or is there a relevant point to this question?
If a company honestly does its business, thus providing valuable services to willing companies, is that not enough? Why is it important for corporations to support your favorite charity? A corporation is not a person, so why personify it and assign moral points to it?
Sorry, I just don't get your post. Could you kindly expand on it?
Thanks.
All your favorite sites in one place!
I think this may improve Veritas. :)
If anyone in the support industry has been watching Veritas lately, you'd know that while they offer some nice feature-rich products, said products generally don't always install out of the box and *work* properly. This has been a problem with niche OSes (i.e. Netware) for a few years and the problem is starting to creep into the Windows products (i.e. Backup Exec 9.x) as well. In fact, it reminds me of Computer Associates...
Symantec Products, regardless of what you think of them, generally work out of the box without much hassle. They are not perfect, but they're pretty feature-complete and work quite well. We use Symantec AntiVirus Corp. Edition a LOT in the field because it works and has a decent management interface--McAfee doesn't work as well, CA's eTrust doesn't have good management tools... etc. It's the _least bad_ of the products on offer (Trend Micro is pretty good too, but I still like the centralized Symantec AV Console--it's quite clean)
There aren't a lot of great feature-complete backup offerings out there (the archival storage industry has always lagged behind IMO - look at how expensive good-quality tape drives still are) thus Veritas *almost* has a monopoly on the market, especially for SMBs. As they've gotten bigger over the past few years (once they spun off from Seagate Software) the quality of their product has (I think) dropped dramatically.
I still like Symantec overall- they do a decent job considering the size of the company. They've still got some neat products. Their antivirus division is industry-leading. I can't say that about every huge software company out there... most generally start crumbling under their own weight.
So I'm optimistic...
(is it just my imagination, or can Backup Exec trace its lineage to Norton Backup?
is it:
Norton Backup -> Norton Backup Exec -> Seagate Software Backup Exec -> Veritas Backup Exec -> Symantec Backup Exec?
I could be dreaming)
Just fyi, I use both Vertias BackupExec and Powerquest V2i Protector (It allows one to backup a machine using a method simlar to ghost). However, now that both of these are owned by symantec, I suppose I will have to investigate using Rsync with Cygwin over SSH for the windoze machines.
Sig Return: 204 No Content
Security does not encompass only AV or firewalls or IDS. It encompases the entire enterprise. A major portion of security is business continuity and disaster recovery..i.e. backup and restoration of your data.... Now ask your self again why they are buying Veritas...
I have seen Symantec's approach to product development and Veritas'. Hopefully Symantec can learn from Veritas and not vice versa.
You can release a virus scanner first and perfect it later but not a storage volume manager or a piece of Backup software. The market will have a lot to say in the coming days.
Symantec got wind of a project they want to get in on at Veritas. I have yet to see that possibility posted. Though I also don't if it's actually feasible, since I know nothing of business, or economics...
Not a big Symantec fan here. I have to support a program that somebody wrote with Symantec C, just before they gave up on that very buggy compiler. Then our org bought Norton, er, Symantec Anti-Virus, which has a bunch of rough edges, and now on this Pc I'm typing on the uninstall feature has broken, so I can't even cleanly uninstall the mess and switch to AVG. I expect the Veritas stuff to go to crap within a release or two, if old trends continue...
I've just spent the past year going from zero to local Veritas NetBackup Enterprise Server guru. The reason it's SO convoluted is that it is actually a very complex problem. You could can a solution -- indeed, many such products are available -- but it wouldn't be flexible enough for "enterprise level" installations. Even Backup Exec only comes close, and it's certainly a non-trivial product.
Madness takes its toll. Exact change please.
You owe me a new keyboard! I read your post and promptly spit Dr. Pepper all in it. :-)
Slashdot, home of supporters of free software, free music, and free speech.Except for Moderators that disagree with you.
hahaha... oh man. post of the month.
bravo, sir.
I have linux on the machine as well, and everything works fine there. Oh well, now this gives me more of an excuse to not use windows!
And to those who say I should reinstall windows... Why do I need to reinstall an OS to solve every problem?
Compaq/DEC certainly didn't turn out fruitful. I don't know that I would say that HP/Compaq has failed just yet. IBM/Lotus certainly hasn't taken over the industry, but Notes is still out there and IBM pushes it all the time. 3Com/USR - that was a failure!
Symantec buying Central Point Software(of PC Tools fame). In DOS days PCT was my whole operating environment. Loved it. After Symantec, down the drain.
My opinion's hardly a comprehensive one, but as a Macintosh user who has seen tonce-great products for the platform such as Symantec C++ and Norton Utilities come and go, the title of an old Hollies song comes to mind. They truly are "King Midas In Reverse."
Veritas meanwhile, should prepare to change its name to Falsitas.
Those who can, do. Those who can't, write technology blogs.
Off topic, but the only thing that sucks worse than Business Objects' support, is their software.
Have you actually *used* anything they have besides Crystal Reports? I'll just say there is a damn good reason they bought their competition, and it's not to "pull a Microsoft"
Slashdot still doesnâ(TM)t support Unicode after it was added to the HTML standard in 1997.
You're all talking about Backup and Recovery, but Data Protection is only about a quarter of what Veritas does. The other three main areas of their product and services line are High Availability (failover clusters, local and global), Data Management (Volume manager, Veritas File System, SANpoint) and Application metrics (Command Center).
I work for a Veritas reseller and am a Veritas certified specialist in backup and HA for Solaris. I'm very worried that with this merger, focus will be taken off their Solaris/Linux products. Right now, for Sun machines, HA is either Sun Cluster or Veritas. Sun cluster is very immature for many of the features that VCS is known to be rock-solid on, such as global clusters with independent volume replication (via their own VVR or Hitachi True-Copy, StorEdge Availability Suite, etc.).
For backup, they're in higher competition, with IBM's TSM and Legato nipping at their heels.
But there is absolutely no comparison for volume management. You need clustered shared SAN volumes, you get VxVM. No questions. Sun's SVM is just not there yet. And now you can get VxVM for Linux as well, and have it be cross-platform (probably using UFS on both sides)
With Symantec's shoddy support practices, this will hurt Veritas' current offerings of some of the best support and documentation that I've seen in the server software market. I hope for all the customers with production HA and data environments using Veritas' products that Symantec has the sense to stay out of way and let Veritas handle the Unix side of the house.
From an e-mail I just received:
Dear Valued Customer,
Information is the lifeblood of an organization. Information Integrity - ensuring that information is always secure and highly available across the enterprise - is what your company requires to manage your business with confidence.
Given this requirement, I am pleased to inform you that on December 16, 2004, VERITAS, the world leader in Storage Software and Symantec, the world leader in Information Security, announced entry into a merger agreement. The combined company will be named Symantec and will be uniquely capable of delivering measurable value to you by providing a complete suite of security, storage, availability, and performance management solutions.
After completion of the merger, we plan to offer you an enhanced way to view, secure, and manage your most valuable asset - your information - from the desktop to the data center. And because VERITAS and Symantec are each independent software companies without a hardware agenda, we will enable Information Integrity across a heterogeneous set of operating systems, hardware platforms, databases, and applications allowing you keep your options open by avoiding "vendor lock-in." This value proposition has been received as very compelling to our customers because it allows them to achieve Information Integrity while simultaneously driving cost and complexity out of their operating environments.
The proposed merger is subject to regulatory and shareholder approvals and we anticipate closing in the second quarter of 2005. Between now and the close, we will work with you to ensure that we continue as "business as usual." After the close, we are committed to continuing to deliver the high level of service and support that you are accustomed to from both organizations.
In closing, thank you for your business and we look forward to establishing an even greater partnership in the future. Our belief is that you will receive significant benefit from a company capable of providing end-to-end information security and availability solutions. If you would like more information, please visit www.veritas.com.
Best regards,
Art Matin, Executive Vice President of Worldwide Sales
VERITAS Software
SYS 64738
Products page. (I was going to cite examples, but it's easier to just link that page.)
How relevant will VxFS be since Solaris 10 now has ZFS included?
BTW, ZFS looks even better than SGI XFS. I have used Redhat 7.3 + SGI XFS on some file servers for several years. Never lost a bit even after several horrible UPS failures. I am hoping to migrate these servers to Solaris 10 for x86.
But didn't JBuilder people buy Symantec several years ago?
Simpy
That was the sound of a toilet flushing.
Symantec: The Microsoft Of Utilities
I might know what I'm talkin' about, but then again, this is Slashdot...
So it appears that Language (Greek - semantikos) has purchased Truth (Latin - veritas).
Fox News has wisely already made the adjustment.
Si tacuisses philosophus mansisses. If you had kept quiet, you would have remained a philosopher.
It's not managing the tape library that makes Veritas special. It's being able to keep point-in-time images of running machines handy, and not having to worry about managing duplicity.
That's the _hard_ part. I mean, volume management is great, but you only have to worry about that on the server. Vertias's multitudes of client agents is magical.
THIS THING CAN TURN ON A DIME, MACROSSZERO STYLE ALSO FUCK BETA, ~NYORON
So Symantec are now the MS of the security world?
;-)
They just bought Powerquest to put their Drive Image 7 functionality into Ghost 9, after killing DI at 7.03 (Powerquest was at 7.01)
Acronis had better watch out next or it won't make v9
Then who's left? The author(s) of dd/parted?
#include <sig.h>
shudda sold in 2000 when it was at $160/shr. Like I did.
These are my friends, See how they glisten. See this one shine, how he smiles in the light.
...at least in my experience. AV programs sometimes spout scan errors during backups, both with regular files and Exchange IS backups. Don't know if this is an issue with Symantec, but I'm sure they could offer better integration than others, and maybe lay some Easter eggs ;-)
actually it all makes perfect sense however you must be able to think strangely...
Unless you consider the PalmOS pdas from USR to be a form of success; although it only lived for a short time under 3Com before being spun off.
http://shit.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=04/12/16/1 757213
could always try: http://www.feyrer.de/g4u/
Merry Xmas!
Why is it that every time a big company swallows a smaller company the products get worse and not better?
Is it reflective upon the piss poor management system within the business (or big business itself?)
I may be a geek but surely they must recognise MOST users would prefer a program which "just works" and performs better instead of bloat ware?
I've seen far too many GOOD programs become progressively worse rather than better in the retail / windows arena, whereas most open source applications I use (still sadly windows based) continue to get better.
Have a look at BakBone's NetVault backup software. We're in the process of ditching Veritas for BakBone right now... even before we ever learned about this merger... because ever since version 9.x came out and we installed the upgrade, Veritas's Backup Exec hasn't worked reliably for us and the quality of tech support seems to have gone down the toilet too. We're fed up with both the product and the company and have coughed up the extra money to buy a more "enterprise" class of software. Veritas Backup Exec is a lot cheaper, and used to be a reasonably good product for us back in version 8.6, but that version is not supported on W2K3 servers.
Veritas is doomed. They charge outrages price for software like Volume management and then hit you up with fee every year. cost 5K and up in Server world.
Plus most of the *nixes out there can do without it.
Unless of couse you have a "corporate standard" or a need for support number. Most of their software can be either replaced by free native or open source tools or is just not good enough anyways (netbackup...ehhhhh) Sell me another license for V880 for 10k to mirror a root drive.
Veritas is doomed. They charge outrages price for software like Volume management and then hit you up with fee every year. cost 5K and up in Server world.
Plus most of the *nixes out there can do without it.
Unless of couse you have a "corporate standard" or a need for support number. Most of their software can be either replaced by free native or open source tools or is just not good enough anyways (netbackup...ehhhhh) Sell me another license for V880 for 10k to mirror a root drive.
Very smart business move. Too bad that Symantec above all is a "security industry" player who is much more about "industry" than about "security" (or, frankly, any of the other stuff they bought up, like Ghost).
Best thing they could do for product quality: Leave Veritas alone as much as possible.
Best thing they could (and will) do for business: Integrate Veritas completely, so they don't crumble when their core business goes away in a few years (with M$ integrating most of the stuff into the OS and Linux becoming stronger in the home market, the days of desktop-firewalls and virus scanners as sellable products are numbered).
Assorted stuff I do sometimes: Lemuria.org
I used to work with Symantec, and I hear quite painfully where a lot of you are coming from. We used to call new software acquisitions the "Symantecization" process - where a new product is eaten, digested and excreted in a new, "improved" yellow box version. Usually in a broken way. Then commences the multi-year, multi-$million project to try and undo the damage done by product management in the re-branded launch. You can imagine what a nightmare this causes for the guys in support - so go easy on them. Their job is far harder than you imagine and the problems you folks experience are _not_ their fault. You want to yell at someone - yell at the sales reps, marketeers and product managers. The single biggest problem that I've seen is that each product team has their own GUI design people - none of whom speak with any of the other GUI designers. The result ? You have firewalls, IDS systems, network audit systems etc. that are all administrated via a browser console - each requiring its own build of Java and none of which are compatible with each other. I'm glad I left. Digging holes and carrying bricks is a far more enjoyable way to make a living. And FYI, there _was_ a genuine Symantec created product - http://www.symantec.com/sabu/n2000/n2000_ret/
smilies are for reetards