Intel Buys McAfee

Several readers have noted that Intel has agreed to buy McAfee, the computer antivirus software maker, for about $7.7 billion in cash. There is also a press release available if you are into that sort of thing.

Comments

Why?

[Anonymous Coward]

Just diversifying their portfolio or are there other objectives at work?

Re:Why?

[Anonymous Coward]

Just diversifying their portfolio or are there other objectives at work?

They're gonna add even more bloat, sucking more CPU cycles, forcing people to upgrade, and therefore buy more Intel CPUs.

Re:Why?

[WrongSizeGlass]

It's just a research venture. Intel is trying to figure out how McAfee can use up so much of a CPU that it should be put out of its misery.

Re:Why?

[ZeroExistenZ]

Just diversifying their portfolio or are there other objectives at work?

They want to optimize their support-offices...
Someone realized 90% of their calls was among these lines:"MY COMPUTER RUNS SLOW SINCE I GOT A PENTIUM!"
with the sole fix to uninstall McAfee and afterwards reinstalling the OS if the McAfee uninstal takes the guts of your PC with it.

They are going to fix McAfee.

Re:Why?

[poetmatt]

I was really hoping they'd be buying them out to shut them down.

one can only hope, anyway.

beyond that though, is there really some benefit here or is this just to "make sure it works better on intel" or something?

I didn't imagine security research from mcafee is any better internally than intel just working with them anyway.

Re:Why?

[fuzzix]

It's just a research venture. Intel is trying to figure out how McAfee can use up so much of a CPU that it should be put out of its misery.

Nah, Intel actually bought HP - McAfee just came bundled.

Re:Why?

[Anonymous Coward]

It sounds plausible they might "fix it" and by that I mean make it run faster on Intel processors and not AMD. Or they might go ahead and build in some extra hardware so that McAfee "works best with Intel Core i9 processors"

Re:Why?

[daveime]

At least McAfee can be bundled with something ... Symantec you couldn't GIVE away.

Re:Why?

[daveime]

McAfee "works only with Intel Core i9 processors"

FTFY

Re:Why?

[bigtomrodney]

This I actually believe. Intel have been doing some cool stuff recently. It's in their own interests to do things like this, just remember Powertop for Linux.

Magnanimous and self-serving at the same time, or as I like to call it "Good Business".

Re:Why?

[Captain Splendid]

I was really hoping they'd be buying them out to shut them down.

I wouldn't put it past them. As GP said, no more McAfee, no more bloated, slow machines out of the box. Intel looks better as a result. Question is, is that worth the price they're paying?

Re:Why?

[rilles]

Fix it? to be faster?? why, if it sucks all available CPU resources then it would be a great justification to go and buy a new shiny faster CPU with many many cores from Intel of course.

Re:Why?

[m.ducharme]

Oh come on, no more McAfee, and Norton will just step into their shoes.

Re:Why?

[tattood]

Anti-virus imbedded into CPU functionality? I'm sure they won't include all the extra crap that causes the "CPU bloat" but the underlying antivirus technology alone could be embedded into the CPU to protect against viruses.

Re:Why?

[Captain Splendid]

To be fair to Norton, they've made strides in reducing the bloat their AV engenders. Can't say the same about McAfee. Anecdotal, I know, but I'd choose McAfee over Norton for a swift death any day of the week.

Re:Why?

[Anonymous Coward]

But it's only a trial version. After 60 days Intel will have to pay again to keep McAfee for a year.

Re:Why?

[Rigbyd]

If I still had mod points, I would mod parent up. When I heard about this my first though was about the addition of processor extensions to boost virtualization performance. I could definitely see Intel adding some new antivirus extensions to their CPUs.

Re:Why?

[m.ducharme]

While I don't disagree with you, my impression is that the two AVs have been trading the bloatware king title between them, and that losing one of them would take away the other's incentive to compete. But yes, right now I'd rather see McAfee go too.

Re:Why?

[kpainter]

Now the useless McAfee icon on your desktop will be hard-coded in the CPU and you will never be able to get rid of it.

Re:Why?

[Pichu0102]

I don't think either would be a wise choice if you're looking for a swift anything.

Re:Why?

[CarpetShark]

If I was buying a washed up av company like McAfee, I'd scrape the antivirus, scrap the management, scrap the sales people, but keep the hackers. Then again, I'm on /. :)

Re:Why?

[Anonymous Coward]

I guess I've never used McAfee from a home end user perspective, but from a corporate perspective it is a pretty solid product. The client-side agents are extremely resilient, you could have a box powered off for a year tucked away in some dark corner of the office, fire it back up, and it would check in and update just fine -- that is hugely important. Yeah, [full] system scans eat up a lot of CPU, thats why you effectively set your policies (which are pretty damn granular) to scan at certain times, disregard certain file types, etc... so that it doesn't impact the business. Schedule full system scans during the week ends and during scheduled maintenance windows. On-Access scanning is enabled, and I'll admit you can see it chews up a decent amount of proc for compressed file types. But I feel McAfee (again,from a corporate perspective) delivers a pretty nice suite of products. From my experience, the only thing that is a bit lacking (which is seemingly because it's in its infancy stages) is the Endpoint Encryption. Integration with fingerprint readers is somewhat lacking, many common biometric co-processor models are not yet supported, also, even if they are supported, managing the tokens and linking them to user accounts on the server-side is pretty manual. It's a bit silly... but they are making progress in that area.

Either way, there's no denying that McAfee is a major player in the AV scene... and since Intel already damn near has the market cornered on CPU/Motherboards/etc... Imagine how much integration can be done at the hardware level between AV/provisioning/inventory/imaging/etc using TPM/IAMT. I don't see how any of this is a bad thing.

Home computing is not the bigger market here.

Re:Why?

[Joce640k]

I figure they'll "optimize" it for Intel (read: "detect AMD chips and add delay loops when they find them") then use it as a benchmark in the sort of magazines that pointy haired bosses read.

Re:Why?

[HermMunster]

McAfee is called McAfee. What will it be called now?

Re:Why?

[Nikker]

Maybe implement some IP in hardware?

Re:Why?

[BrokenHalo]

...but from a corporate perspective it is a pretty solid product.

Last time I used McAfee, it was a great product. It successfully killed any virus I cared to throw at it.

1992 was a great year...

Re:Why?

[Dushnock]

Hi,

I guess I've never used McAfee from a home end user perspective, but from a corporate perspective it is a pretty solid product. (...)
I don't see how any of this is a bad thing. (...)
Home computing is not the bigger market here.

Couldn't agree more. I'm getting tired of whiners who can't help complaining about McAfee... as you mention, I guess they're mostly home users. Last time I used (stopped using) McAfee on a home computer was about 1999.
Been using (managing) it at work for some years now and I'm quite happy. It does take 'some memory' not too much CPU (depends on the config) and it keeps computers are work (reasonably) safe. No software is perfect and this one is no exception, but it's definitely not worse than any other and better than many (or most). And it's definitely more manageable!
I guess this will bring mostly change in the embedded world and possibly in appliances.
Serge
PS: for the conspiracy theorists (help, they're gonna introduce special 'kill AMD feature') get a life (or a brain, or both).

Will they kill it?

[guruevi]

Pretty please? Just give all their victims - I mean customers - their money back and just kill it off already. McAfee has no right even existing.

Re:Will they kill it?

[elrous0]

And deprive millions of corporate IT drones of their false sense of security?!?!? Are you insane, man???

Re:Will they kill it?

[couchslug]

If you want to drive demand for new processors, sell bloatware. :P

Re:Will they kill it?

[morgan_greywolf]

Seriously, though, this is exactly why Intel would buy McAfee. They're not interested in the consumer product; hell McAfee isn't very interested in their consumer product anymore. They make big bucks selling magic security fairy dust to corporate IT folks without a clue.

Re:Will they kill it?

[cgenman]

But McAfee has given so many people so much incentive to upgrade to faster processors.

Re:Will they kill it?

[drooling-dog]

McAfee has no right even existing.

You're a Linux user... Am I right?

Re:Will they kill it?

[JeffSpudrinski]

One has to wonder what Intel was thinking. The *only* thing McAfee had of any worth was name recognition, and due to their total frak up back in April, their name gets recognized for the wrong reason.

We recently moved our corporate network away from McAfee due to lack of decent support.

Just my $0.02.

-JJS

Re:Will they kill it?

[Syberz]

Don't worry about that man, Norton would still be around for that.

Re:Will they kill it?

[tyrione]

McAfee has no right even existing.

You're a Linux user... Am I right?

or an OS X, Solaris, FreeBSD, NetBSD, OpenBSD, Haiku, etc.. user.

Re:Will they kill it?

[pseudorand]

> And deprive millions of corporate IT drones of their false sense of security?!?!? Are you insane, man???

It's not the IT drones that you'd be depriving of a false sense of security, it's users and management. Most of us drones realize AV doesn't do much other than bloat our budgets, slow down our systems and waste our time. But the sense of security we get from it is not that we're protected from viruses but that we're protected from the criticism that we didn't do everything possible to prevent a virus attack should be we be infected. Imagine a virus takes down lots of computers on your network. Your boss's boss or your internal audit department comes around asking what AV software you were running. Do you really want to answer "none"? Even if you know full well that McAfee, Symantec and the like had no protection from that virus, explaining this to the higher-ups wouldn't be pretty.

Re:Will they kill it?

[HermMunster]

Peter Norton's history and the products (for the time) were very cool. Today Norton is just a name and has little value. There's absolutely nothing of value to me in any of their products.

Re:Will they kill it?

[Syberz]

That's true, for instance, I remember Norton Utilities back in the day, they were some very useful tools.

Re:Will they kill it?

[schwaang]

I was thinking the same thing. Then again McAfee software scans every email, every http request, and file on a user's system. That software plus an appropriately opaque EULA would make a rockin' platform for targeting advertising. Just sayin'...

Holy cow

[mike260]

That junk is worth $7bn?

Re:Holy cow

[elrous0]

No, but it probably wastes at least that much each year in CPU watts.

Re:Holy cow

[RabbitWho]

I think we're all thinking that. I'm so amazed at this. Someone paid 7 billion for the right to sell people magic beans.

Re:Holy cow

[HamburglerJones]

That junk is worth $7bn?

No... Intel was up too late and made an impulse buy. It is trying to see if it can throw in McAfee with its sham-wow and shake-weight to trade for the neighbor's old lawnmower.

Re:Holy cow

[gad_zuki!]

I imagine intel has watched the home AV market get gobbled up by MS Security Essentials and may want to join in the free for home use game.

I'd love to see a shakeup in the AV industry as its pretty terrible right now. I'm sick of seeing machines with horrible infections because the trial of the AV has expired. End users cannot be trusted to maintain subscriptions for something they barely understand. I also imagine intel is so deeply in bed with MS that AV is now their problem as well.

McAfee's enterprise products sell for whatever reason. I imagine those will continue to be expensive.

Re:Holy cow

[FredFredrickson]

I see infected machines with still current antiviruses. Norton, McAfee, etc... I hardly think antiviruses do much good without somebody who knows how to avoid infections in the first place..

Re:Holy cow

[tayhimself]

Disk Encryption is another big part of McAfee. We not only use their software, an update of which caused BSODs a few months ago, but we've also moved to this Safeboot encryption product which is now called endpoint encryption. Intel has recently added AES-NI encryption instructions to its chips which they will likely port safeboot over to.

I like truecrypt and MSE for windows systems myself but I am not an IT director.

Re:Holy cow

[poetmatt]

who said improving AV programs is going to increase security? Those things are completely unrelated.

There are issues of user security, issues of network security, and a whole load of other aspects that come before the antivirus issue can ever come into play.

Re:Holy cow

[fuzzyfuzzyfungus]

Why would the existence of MS Security Essentials possibly convince Intel to shell out billions to get in on that action?

AV, as it stands, is basically a thankless, reactive chore, with the occasional destructive false positive to brighten your day. Now that Microsoft has come out with a competent(by the standards of the industry) and unobtrusive(by the standards of the industry) free offering from a trusted (if you are running Windows, clearly you trust them to some degree) name, the only gold left in home AV is fool's gold.

There is still some cash to be had in corporate AV, since MS ain't exactly giving ForeFront away; but what would a company whose software experience consists largely of compilers, drivers, and the occasional linux project want getting in there?

And, even if they do have some clever plan involving leveraging their Intel AMT motherboard stuff, why McAfee? There are plenty of smaller, presumably cheaper, outfits that are at least as competent, many more so, and the brand name won't matter once Intel starts using theirs. One imagines that they could have gotten Kaspersky for half as much, if that.

Color me confused.

Re:Holy cow

[Binestar]

The only virus's I've seen infect machines recently are what I call "0-day" viruses. Ones that were released that day. I've also found that they come in 2 pieces. the "obvious" virus portion (AV 2010 and the like) and a rootkit that gets attached to a random driver file in %windir%\system32\drivers. They completely hide themselves from a scan run with the local machine, and you either have to boot a livecd or yank the drive and scan in another PC. Waiting 24 hours or more for the definition to be updated before you can even detect the file. It's a race. Malware writers get about 24 hours of use out of a specific variant they write and they know it. I wish I had the link, but I remember a report saying that new variants of the AV2010 series has upto 2 releases a day to keep ahead of the antivirus programs ability to detect.

Re:Holy cow

[LUH 3418]

I don't get why intel would buy a software company in the first place, much less one that makes not-so-great antivirus software. Seems to me they should have put that huge wad of cash into R&D.

Re:Holy cow

[gstoddart]

I think we're all thinking that. I'm so amazed at this. Someone paid 7 billion for the right to sell people magic beans.

Ignoring the fact that we think McAfee is a PoS ... it's sold in retail stores, and people recognize the name. Heck, I wouldn't be surprised if you can buy it at Wal Mart, which makes for a huge potential customer base.

Those magic beans are already positioned to be marketed to the people who least understand it and who most need it because they don't know much about their new computer other than they need antivirus. I can see that being worth $7b. How many billion dollar industries are essentially 'magic beans'? (diets, crappy exercise equipment, lotteries, Nigerian scams)

Doesn't make the product any better, and the notion of Intel being involved in security kind of makes me a little worried. But, I can definitely understand why they'd be interested in the product.

Re:Holy cow

[Ziktar]

They also got a list of names of people who are willing to buy magic beans. That might be worth a lot...

Re:Holy cow

[Crafty Spiker]

You apparently have too much sense and knowledge to be one of today's "IT Executives". As I look around I have to say, "Is this the best we can do?"

Re:Holy cow

[tlhIngan]

I don't get why intel would buy a software company in the first place, much less one that makes not-so-great antivirus software. Seems to me they should have put that huge wad of cash into R&D.

Simple - to drive sales of their core product.

Intel has a TON of software. Each in some way is to drive sales of Intel processors. Sure you still have to pay for them, but that money's just peanuts. E.g., their compilers emit code optimized for their processors (of course, they also emit crap for non-Intel CPUs).

This AV thing might be for Intel to explore new ways of protecting computers. And of course, it'll only be availble on Intel CPUs. (I still remember what, 10 years ago AMD sent out "care packages" that illustrated why their CPUs were better, and they were touting NX bit).

It's just like Apple and the iTunes/App store. Apple isn't in the music, TV show, movie or software distribution business. Yet by doing so, it complements their core products (iPods, iPhones, iPads) helping them sell. Apple's "pro" apps and consumer levels apps are there to help move Macs.

It's all about complementary markets - they don't need it, and probably don't make much money off those products, but it helps generate core business sales.

Re:Holy cow

[lavardo]

No, the administrative assistant just misspelled million.

Re:Holy cow

[lavardo]

There wuz a virus on her computer!

Re:Holy cow

[labradore]

Actually, Apple is the largest retailer of music. Also, they are doing their best to become the most important distributor for TV, Movies and eBooks. Apple sells about $5B per year in thru the iTunes Music/Apps/Movies/TV/Books Store and those sales are growing at about 25% per year. While that's only about 7% of their sales right now, it's growing steadily and likely to be about as profitable as the hardware businesses. It's also likely to equal or outstrip Mac sales within a year or two.

No, Apple is not primarily a distributor, but they are in line to become the biggest distributor. That scares the distribution competition because Apple can afford push down distribution margins to promote high-margin device sales. So, you're right they don't need the money from iTMS but iPhones and iPods and iPads aren't nearly as attractive without iTMS--that's part of what you buy when you buy the device.

And that's the difference. Intel doesn't NEED McAfee, whereas Apple can't really operate without iTMS. Intel might find a way to differentiate future processors by adding industrial-strength security to their chips by integrating AV and management suite facilities with specialized hardware, but Intel has always benefited from being the premiere supplier of open-platform technologies and they are forced to be that way both by the market and by regulation. If they change that significantly to increase margins, they may become vulnerable to attack on both fronts. To me, $8Bn is just too much for McAfee. I think they could have got the same capabilities for a lot less money. McAfee sells low-margin, crappy AV software. They earn a few hundred million a year. Intel earns 4x the return on investment in its existing business (relative to McAfee). Also, I believe the embarrassing products McAfee sells will dilute Intel's brand. In the words of Warren Buffett, as an INTC shareholder "I feel poorer".

Re:Holy cow

[LinuxIsGarbage]

The intend on it being used for home use only and the EULA says

"Use. You may install and use any number of copies of the software on your devices in your household for use by people who reside there or for use in your home-based small business."

Whether that's enforceable I don't know, but it also lacks central management tools that Forefront has which corporations would look for.

Microsoft's security products have a good track record for detection, low overhead, and it's a relatively "trusted" brand. Free offerings like Avira or Avast! are good, but some people are afraid of them because they've never heard of the company before.

Unfortunately antitrust stuff prevents them from bundling it with the base OS, so we'll continue to see demos bloating up preinstalls, demos which will expire and provide no protection.

Re:Holy cow

[Creepy]

Aside from McAfee being a mediocre product, they do have market penetration and are a known name brand, probably more-so than BitDefender or Kaspersky, which are far superior products. This also may be a move to infuse money into the company to make them competitive again, and Intel has that.

It is possible to improve a mediocre product - for years I badmouthed Norton for overhead, intrusiveness, slowness, and late updating to new threats, but since 2006 they've made HUGE strides in all those areas. I still think rootkits have their way on far too many Norton protected machines, but as a product it is much, much, much better. McAffe has brand name recognition, now they just need to get their product up-to-snuff.

Incidentally, my biggest issue with McAfee, aside from mediocre protection, is that it is intrusive and hard to remove - I've never found it to be particularly slow or resource intensive. Of course, the only box I've tried it on (accidentally due to it being bundled with Acrobat or something like that) was built for speed - quad core 2GHz (Core 2 Q9000 - note the box was built in early 2009) and 8GB of high speed RAM - the only time I've brought that box to its knees was doing a parallel compile while running Linux in a VM also doing a parallel compile (of the same software) and running an extremely GPU intensive pre-processor program to create relaxed cone-step maps (and that sucker was throttled...).

Re:Holy cow

[nine-times]

Not only that, but I believe Intel owns Grisoft, which means they already own an antivirus package. I don't get what they're doing here.

Re:Holy cow

[Kaboom13]

This is my experience as well. The old "use an up to date AV and don't browse porn sites" line is completely outdated. The modern source of infection is either through using exploits in rarely patched software (Adobe, Flash, Java, etc.) combined with using SEO techniques to boost malware sites to the top of google rankings for big breaking news stories, infecting wordpress and other blog systems en masse, and infecting the servers used to host advertising on major sites (or just buying the advertising straight up and redirecting it to malware after it goes live). A lot of them don't even rely on an exploit, they just make it appear that a site they trust is telling them they need to download something, so they do.

The variants change multiple times a day, and no AV product can keep up. Once installed they install rootkits that hide them from the AV. The rootkit part normally fails on Vista/Win 7, but the usermode still runs, and users will happily click an escalation prompt. The only defense is to lock machines down tight enough nothing unauthorized can be run on them and users don't have admin rights (note that I didnt say don't run as admin. Sudo won't help you here. They will enter the admin credentials anyways, because users are dumb and don't read things) . I've taken to doing some forensics on some of the pc's that come by me with fake av, and about 90% of the time, at the time of the infection they were reasonably up to date, had working AV, and from the browser history were on normal, everyday sites like msn.com or whatever immediately before being infected.

AV is useless for the new generation of exploits, at least in it's current form.

Re:Holy cow

[Binestar]

AV is useless for the new generation of exploits, at least in it's current form.

I've had some luck with the Corporate edition of McAfee with some very locked down defaults. Set it up to not allow programs to be run from temp folders (The default is to log it but not deny it) and I've stopped these from getting in. Doesn't mean that the next version isn't going to set itself to run from a non-temp folder though. Want to be secure? Very easy recipe...

Binestar's Mostly Secure computer Recipe
An up to date AV Program (I recommend Avast because it is free.)
Flash Updated
A PDF reader that is not Adobe Reader -- If it must be adobe reader disable javascript in the configuration and keep it up to date
The latest Java (6v21 as of this post)
Firefox with the following Addons: Flashblock, noscript.
Whatever the latest version of VLC is
AND SET WINDOWS UPDATES TO AUTOMATIC

Follow that recipe and you can browse as much porn as you want, just don't install anything from those sites. If they insist on you using their plugin, you should insist on going to another site. Trust me, their porn isn't any better with their custom plugin.

Re:Holy cow

[PipsqueakOnAP133]

Huh? You fail to state how or why.

And why do you expect Intel to be able to improve McAfee any bit? We're talking about Intel, the creator of the Pentium 4, FB-DIMMS, and the i740.

(I do own Intel stock. I just wish I didn't.)

Re:Holy cow

[GameboyRMH]

2 or 3 releases a day seems about right from what I'd seen in the golden days of the "fake antivirus."

Re:Holy cow

[GameboyRMH]

"don't browse porn/warez sites" was somewhat outdated advice in the late 90s/early 2000s, and is totally irrelevant today. Viruses are now served to users through scripts in ads while they browse perfectly legit sites. I wouldn't be surprised if the porn/warez sites were cleaner in terms of malware.

Re:Holy cow

[hairyfeet]

Actually I just came back from a Walmart supercenter (they were having a sale on memory cards and didn't feel like waiting) and both McAfee and System Mechanic were prominently displayed. Considering how many McAfee and Norton crapware uninstalls I've had to do on PCs my guess is they have a HUGE business with the retail stores, so even if they don't do anything but continue on the same path Intel could be making a wise investment here. Even if it is a crappy product.

I never could figure out why folks keep shelling out for Norton, McAfee and System Mechanic when there are plenty of cheaper, better, and/or free products that do the same without the bloat, like Comodo, Avast, WinUtilities, and Tuneup Utilities. I guess that old "fool and their money" thing applies.

Re:Holy cow

[WoTG]

Huh... I didn't know that Intel owned a big chunk (not all) of AVG (Grisoft renamed themselves at some point).

Assuming the Wikipedia is accurate, Intel (and partners?) bought 65% in 2001: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AVG_Technologies

Re:Holy cow

[RocketRabbit]

Why would Intel spend time and money optimizing a compiler for a competitor's cpu?

Re:Holy cow

[FredFredrickson]

There's still the porn sites that require a download of "player.exe" to watch this awesome vid !!11

Strange

[lennier1]

Couldn't they have bought something that's actually worth the money?

Re:Strange

[WrongSizeGlass]

Sorry, but AOL isn't for sale at the moment ;-)

Re:Strange

[lennier1]

Only to choose between the pest and cholera?

Re:Strange

[matrim99]

This is actually a brilliant strategic move on Intel's part. 1) Buy McAfee
2) Give McAfee Antivirus away free with every AMD based system sold 3) Wait for masses of users to start complaining how slow and unstable the new (McAfee bundled) AMD based systems are. 4) PROFIT!

Re:Strange

[badkarmadayaccount]

I wouldn't be surprised.

Finally...

[Anonymous Coward]

McAfee is finally in the hands of someone qualified to figure out how to completely uninstall it.

Re:Finally...

[Anonymous Coward]

McAfee is finally in the hands of someone qualified to figure out how to completely uninstall it.

Or at least 99.999967217864781687% of it.

Re:Finally...

[RivenAleem]

They intend on replacing the software with a looping .gif that pretends to scan your computer when you click on the icon in the systray. Thus they will continue to provide the same core functionality* at a fraction of the processor capability

*core functionality may consist of, and won't exceed convincing idiots that their computer is secure

Re:Finally...

[NetNed]

I have that already silly. Antivirus 2006, 2007,2008 ,2009, 2010, Antivirus scanner, Virus scan 2010, etc, etc, all running at the same time cause you can never be to safe. Each scan only takes fraction of a second, finds something every time and I pay whatever one found it to remove it. Strange that they all find things every time, but that's the price of security!

Now if you'll excuse me I have to go find my placebos, I mean pills!

Re:Finally...

[damien_kane]

They fixed that bug in 1999.

Re:Finally...

[alx5000]

Do you mean 1998.999967217864781687?

Re:Finally...

[alexhs]

Do you mean 1998.999967217864781687?
--
My 0.02 cents

Well, that's where your 0.02 cents come handy as:
1998.999967217864781687 + 0.0002 = 1999.

Re:Finally...

[Bill, Shooter of Bul]

Yes, but good jokes never die. The floating point jokes are also a lot funnier than the itanium jokes as they tend to be mathier.

Wow!

[spiffmastercow]

You could buy a cross country railroad for that kind of money!

Re:Wow!

[R.Mo_Robert]

You could buy a cross country railroad for that kind of money!

Finally, some standard units instead of all this USD nonsense!

Re:Wow!

[LinuxIsGarbage]

How many cross country railroads does it cost to buy a library of congress?

Re:Wow!

[spiffmastercow]

Would you people stop mixing up your units of measure? LoC is a unit of data, whereas cross country railroads are a form of currency that varies in value from day to day depending on the stock market.

Uh

[blue l0g1c]

for about $7.7 billion in cash

Uh, really? Cash?

Re:Uh

[Anonymous Coward]

Would you rather do a stock swap and let the people who made mcafee into such a successful enterprise with a strong product portfolio have a say in what intel does?

Re:Uh

[Carewolf]

Ehmm.. it is just that 7.7 billion dollars in cash is highly unpractical. I mean how much space does it take up?? How heavy would it be? and how are they going to distribute it? Much more likely is that it is NOT cash, but just a mistake in the summary trying to convey that Intel is buying and not merging with McAfee.

Re:Uh

[Ihmhi]

Assuming they were classy and used $100 bills (volume: 0.69 cubic inches), it would occupy about 4,427,500 cubic feet. Anyone care to take a swing at the weight? d:

Re:Uh

[AlecC]

It will, of course, be in the form of a check or or other financial transfer, but these are commonly regarded as cash. Intel is paying $48 for each McAfee share, not offering Intel shares. Therefore Intel really is buying McAfee, not merging.

Re:Uh

[tepples]

it is just that 7.7 billion dollars in cash is highly unpractical. I mean how much space does it take up??

In the context of corporate acquisition, "cash" doesn't mean currency; it means money in a highly liquid form such as a money market account. So $7,700,000,000 takes up no more space in databases belonging to Intel, the auditor, the bank, and the IRS than any other 64-bit integer.

Re:Uh

[Carewolf]

No, that's money, not cash. The problem is that "7.7 billions dollars in money" sounds stupid because it reveals quite obviously that "in money" is redundant. Because this sounds stupid the journalists replace "in money" with "in cash" meaning "in money", which is just as stupid, but also happens to be wrong. Since dollars default to being "in money", removing the words would make everything okay, but not sound nearly as cool, because "in cash" just sounds cool(*)

(*) I will gladly admit that 7.7 billion dollars in cash would be really cool, but also really really impractical and stupid.

Re:Uh

[daveime]

Units off by at least 1 Library of Congress ...

0.068 Cubic Inches x 77000000 pieces = 5236000 Cubic Inches = 3030 cubic feet.

Re:Uh

[daveime]

According to the US Treasury, $1 million in $100 dollar bills weights 10kg.

So we're talking 77 metric tonnes for 7.7 billion ... sorry, my Imperial skills are limited to feet and inches, once we get onto mass I have to revert to the system that has been in place since 1971.

Re:Uh

[omni123]

It's not journalists who do it, it's economists, business directories, financiers, etc. Essentially the entire business world regards anything that is not stocks, bonds, real estate or in an otherwise un-liquified state to be cash (as cash is something you can spend NOW with no other transaction required, not necessarily paper money).

As an illustration consider the phrase 'to cash a check'. If I'm not a good enough source, I'm sure Wiki is!

"In bookkeeping and finance, "cash" refers to current assets comprising currency or currency equivalents that can be accessed immediately or near-immediately (as in the case of money market accounts)."

Re:Uh

[will_die]

When used in financial situations it means money instead of thing like stock, corporate bonds, land, etc.
You will usually see thing like company purchased for $1billion in cash and $2billion stock.

Re:Uh

[Surt]

When financial articles say cash, they mean paying in dollars rather than one of the other options available to large corporations. Intel, for example could pay in:

Cash
Stock
Processors

at least ... there are probably additional options.

Re:Uh

[cgenman]

Exactly. Cash, in this case, is compared to a stock swap or borrowed money. It just means that they paid out of pocket with their own real money. Ridiculously large stock swaps for acquisitions are normal when a stock is overvalued... it's difficult to "sell high" without falling afoul of insider trading rules, or killing the value of your stock. Stock-based acquisitions are one way to take advantage of the periods when your stock is overvalued. Paying with real money, on the other hand, usually means people are more serious about the valuation of the acquisition.

Re:Uh

[danlip]

"Cash" is a term that indicates that real money is changing hands (as opposed to stock). It does not imply physical currency, it can be a bank transfer or check (or in this case, probably many checks to individual stockholders). This is a very common usage in English, and I would not consider it a mistake in the summary.

Re:Uh

[tepples]

As an illustration consider the phrase 'to cash a check'.

I've heard a plain deposit called "put the check in the bank"; it's only "cashing" when the person making the deposit asks for currency back. But then my Walmart* Discover Card's "Cashback Bonus" does come in the form of $10 checks attached to the credit card bill.

Re:Uh

[Anarki2004]

At approximately 1 gram per bill, by my calculations it is 169,755 lbs, or 84 tons.

Re:Uh

[omni123]

As an illustration consider the phrase 'to cash a check'.

I've heard a plain deposit called "put the check in the bank"; it's only "cashing" when the person making the deposit asks for currency back. But then my Walmart* Discover Card's "Cashback Bonus" does come in the form of $10 checks attached to the credit card bill.

I don't know about the US but in Australia checks (cheques!) take time to clear--usually 2 or 3 days--and you cannot immediately get the money. This would make the concept of requesting currency in printed money impossible and it is still phrased as cashing a cheque.

Re:Uh

[Ihmhi]

Eh, I just Googled volume of a $100 and got 0.69 in^3, which is about as far as I'm willing to go for a joke.

Re:Uh

[daveime]

The size of a 100 dollar bill is 2.61" wide, by 6.14" long, and 0.0043" in thickness. That gives 0.06890922 cubic inches.

Wow, Intel jumps the shark

[DeafDumbBlind]

WTF are they thinking. Granted they're sitting on a pile of cash, but this is silly.
If I were an INTC shareholder I would be pretty pissed off.
If they were looking for something to do with the cash, they should have just paid out a nice dividend.

Re:Wow, Intel jumps the shark

[Carewolf]

WTF are they thinking. Granted they're sitting on a pile of cash, but this is silly.
If I were an INTC shareholder I would be pretty pissed off.
If they were looking for something to do with the cash, they should have just paid out a nice dividend.

I would suggest putting it in a bank. What are they? Scrooge McDuck?

Re:Wow, Intel jumps the shark

[DeafDumbBlind]

Revenue != profit.
GM had revenues in the 100+ billion range when it needed to be bailed out.
McAfee's net income was 172.21 million; at that rate, it would take over 50 years to make back their money.

Re:Wow, Intel jumps the shark

[bouldin]

McAfee does a lot more than consumer AV, and is a serious security company. They bring in $2B in revenue per year. They acquired Secure Computing a couple years ago, which included the former CipherTrust products. I'm not sure exactly what Intel has planned, though. Either they have some grand strategy to integrate the two lines of business, or they just want a slice of the security pie to subsidize their research.

Re:Wow, Intel jumps the shark

[Anonymous Coward]

This is corporate policy for about 30-40 years now. Since the 70's (and each successive decade it has only gotten worse), businesses have grown through mergers and acquisition. This serves a dual purpose of allowing monopolies to grow while killing off competition. It's just so much easier to do business this way.

It doesn't even matter if the buyout was a good one. Imagine this scenario. A large investor (2%) in McAfee buys a large chunk of Intel stock (1%). He's now one of the largest owners, and the board at intel gets chummy with him, since they need his good graces to keep their jobs. He suggests buying McAfee. When they do, his investment in McAfee pays off. He's then free to sell off his Intel stock at a similar price for what he bought it.

It's capitalism in action. He takes his capital, throws his weight around, and makes more money. Remember, it's important to keep his capital gain taxes low so that doesn't experience any loss whatsoever when all this investment money trickles down. It's going to get down here one day. I believe!

Re:Wow, Intel jumps the shark

[Mongoose Disciple]

This, I think is the key: all the parts of McAfee's business that aren't antivirus.

For example, a company I'm currently contracting for uses a McAfee product to encrypt/secure all the hard drives of their desktops, among other things. Maybe there's some kind of value in being able to optimize that process or build some/more of it into hardware.

Re:Wow, Intel jumps the shark

[indeciso]

Revenue != profit.

Ooops you're right, sorry for the bullshitting comment!

Re:Wow, Intel jumps the shark

[corbettw]

Put down the hashpipe, dude, and take a look at McAfee's balance sheet and cash flow:
http://www.google.com/finance?q=NYSE:MFE&fstype=ii

They have total current assets of $1.5B, and total liabilities of $1.8B (I'm ignoring their total assets, because so much of it is in "goodwill" and I think that number is grossly overrated given the bad press they've gotten over the last few years). That means they have negative value of $300 million. Why would you spend $7.7 billion in cash to have a guarantee of losing $300 million???

Not to mention, their cash flow for this year so far has been horrible. For the first two quarters, they had a net gain of only $2.4 million, from a starting total current assets of $1.7B at the end of last year, of which $893 million was cash and short-term investments. That's a 0.2% rate of return, the same rate of return you currently get from six-month Treasuries. If whatever you're doing can't beat the risk-free rate of return, you need to do something else, pronto. Their CEO and CFO should've been fired months, if not years, ago. And Intel's board need their collective head examined for okaying this deal.

Re:Wow, Intel jumps the shark

[mobby_6kl]

They have .7 of a billion of total assets less the goodwill, but it's nice that you're ignoring that to get your negative numbers.

Re:Wow, Intel jumps the shark

[LinuxIsGarbage]

McAfee does a lot more than consumer AV,

True. They make corporate AV, which jams my work computer into PARK for about 5 minutes once a day while it updates. Preventing me from doing useful work.

Re:Wow, Intel jumps the shark

[corbettw]

You're right, spending $7.7B to gain $2.2B worth of assets completely changes the picture.

Also keep in mind that Intel is spending cash, a current asset. So ignoring total assets and focusing on current assets in the correct accounting to use in this situation.

In other words, you don't know what you're talking about so stop gumming up the conversation.

All part of their core business

[PingSpike]

Intel plans to release a final update to all Mcafee users that will force uninstall the software from their machines, increasing the performance of Intel systems by 300%.

Re:All part of their core business

[omnichad]

But even that uninstall tool won't get 100% of it removed.

Re:All part of their core business

[plams]

Or, they plan to make it even slower, and encourage users to upgrade their processors!

Re:All part of their core business

[chmodman]

And in other news.. Owners of AMD based computers noticed the latest update to Mcafee reduced the performance of their machines by 300%.

Re:All part of their core business

[Spatial]

they plan to make it even slower

Impossible. You know how the Planck time is the smallest meaningful time unit? The McAfee is the longest.

Re:All part of their core business

[gstoddart]

Or, they plan to make it even slower, and encourage users to upgrade their processors!

Or, make it incompatible with AMD.

"McAfee has identified you are using an insecure AMD processor and should upgrade to the latest Intel Unobtanium model".

Re:All part of their core business

[Spatial]

Why do you believe it is the smallest meaningful unit of time?

I don't. I also don't believe the McAfee is the longest possible unit of time, in case you were wondering. ;)

Re:All part of their core business

[jvkjvk]

Well, we could certainly define "the McAfee" to be that... - the length of time of one standard universe. Not much good, probably but...

I asked because although someone is likely to know that you were joking about "the Mcafee" many people do indeed consider a planck-second to be a limit instead of just some number derived from a bunch of other constants, or simple (theortetical) measurement of the passage of time.

Regards.

Re:All part of their core business

[LinuxIsGarbage]

They'll just make sure to compile it with Intel compiler, which optimizes for Intel, and doesn't optimize for AMD, even if it has the required instruction sets. http://www.theinquirer.net/inquirer/news/1567108/intel-compiler-cripples-code-amd-via-chips

Lycos part deux

[aliens]

I can see it now 10 years from now, just like Lycos, "McaFee purchased for $7.7 billion in 2010, sold for $200 million in 2015 has just been sold again today for $34 million to some company in Vietnam." Seriously, has anyone personal or enterprise had good experiences with their products?

Re:Lycos part deux

[Andrewkov]

I work for a company that's in the top 20 of the fotune 500 list, and we're rolling out McAfee right now.. Not my decision, but large companies are using it.

Re:Lycos part deux

[aliens]

Yeah we use it to. And in the past year we've had 2 instances I can think of where McaFee updates blue screened Exchange servers. Good luck make sure you test all updates before rolling them out.

Re:Lycos part deux

[healyp]

No. Bloated, resource hogging, snake oil. Doesn't detect anything. EPO(Enterprise Policy Orchestrator) would be a nice feature if: 1. It didn't require a dedicated machine 2. Updating policy actually mattered But it doesn't because no matter how well you orchestrate policy, it's still not going to detect any viruses.

Re:Lycos part deux

[hedwards]

Possibly, but I suspect that Intel might be after patents. While McAfee is crap software, it wouldn't surprise me if they had some patents that could help Intel with putting better anti-virus protection into their processors or adding acceleration for heuristics.

Re:Lycos part deux

[arch]

Yes. When managing Linux/AIX/Solaris, Mac OS, and Windows from a single console. ePO FTW. Cause my proxies, DLP, etc integrate into it.

Sure, bit of homer, but it is helpful with a small staff in enterprise environment.

Re:Lycos part deux

[athlon02]

Seriously, has anyone personal or enterprise had good experiences with their products?

I'll let you know once Windows finishes loading it and my machine becomes somewhat usable.

Re:Lycos part deux

[eulernet]

Seriously, has anyone personal or enterprise had good experiences with their products?

Yes, I do.

I complained during a long time about having an antivirus installed on my computer.
After an update of our antivirus server, my computer would become unusable every monday at noon exactly, with the antivirus taking 100% of CPU on my computer (probably a faulty update, nobody was able to explain what happened).

I went to the IT, and they were forced to remove this piece of junk on my computer.

Yay !

Re:Lycos part deux

[BlackSupra]

The meat of TFA

> Intel was advised by Goldman Sachs & Co. and Morrison & Foerster LLP. McAfee was advised by Morgan Stanley & Co. Inc. and Wilson Sonsini Goodrich & Rosati, P.C.

Re:Lycos part deux

[aliens]

Yeah I didn't think about that point. Quite possible their portfolio is where to good stuff is, and their products are just poor implementations of them. Kudos to you sir.

Re:Lycos part deux

[hedwards]

Some companies just buy anything they can, but I've never had the feeling that Intel was poorly run. Monopolistic and dirty at times yes, but they're not known for being technologically incompetent. Well, with the exception of their graphics chips.

Bad implementations happen, if you've got incompetent management that doesn't allow for the time it takes to properly debug things, then you get crashy software that sucks up resources. Ironically enough that aspect of things is probably the easier bit of things.

Goal: boost need for per clock cycle performance

[SlappyBastard]

Good move by Intel. If people become desperate for better per clock cycle performance, they'll favor the new Intel chips over AMD. And what program ropes your computer and drags it down faster than McAfee?

The press release is fluff

[Iamthecheese]

100% marketing fluff. I really, REALLY want to know what happened under the table, what's still happening under the table, what McAfee has that 15 cheap startups don't, and how this is going to affect Intel hardware in the future.

Re:The press release is fluff

[RabbitWho]

"what McAfee has that 15 cheap startups don't" A deal with Microsoft.

Re:The press release is fluff

[Tridus]

Mcafee has lots of corporate drones who think it's a good idea to install Mcafee on everything, including database servers. When Mcafee then decides randomly to start terminating Oracle as a virus, they do great business blaming someone else.

(Yes, that did just happen to me. No, I don't know why it was on the database server. Sounds like a very poorly thought out corporate policy though.)

Re:The press release is fluff

[Dr. Eggman]

I really, REALLY want to know what happened under the table, what's still happening under the table, what McAfee has that 15 cheap startups don't

Some people'll pay real good money to own something as simple as a name. Others'll pay good money just because it's from somebody with those names.

Re:The press release is fluff

[troll8901]

Is it the one about the RAID corruption?

... and oh, You love Windows 7? Blasphemy!! We only love Unix here on Slashdot!

Re:The press release is fluff

[gtall]

Sounds to me like Mcafee called that one correctly. Let us know if it takes King Larry out back and shoots him in the butt.

Re:The press release is fluff

[AmericaRunsOnDunkin]

I really, REALLY want to know what happened under the table, what's still happening under the table, what McAfee has that 15 cheap startups don't

paying customers

What???

[whisper_jeff]

Does McAfee offer other products of significant value because, quite frankly, it blows my mind beyond words that an anti-virus software manufacturer is worth $7.7 BILLION. Someone, please explain what the hell I'm missing here. Besides the boat...

Re:What???

[fvandrog]

Does McAfee offer other products of significant value

They have encryption software -- making those less CPU intensive (especially for cell phone and other mobile use) might actually be moderately useful.

Re:What???

[hedwards]

I strongly suspect that we'll find out that this was a move by Intel to integrate McAfee's IP into their hardware. With the way malware has been spreading in recent years, integrating some acceleration for heuristics would likely go a long way, and now Intel will have both the IP and the additional access to researchers to do it efficiently.

Re:What???

[gstoddart]

They have encryption software -- making those less CPU intensive (especially for cell phone and other mobile use) might actually be moderately useful.

Intel doesn't have any corporate interests in making things less CPU intensive. They'll give you more power in the same wattage, or the same power with less wattage.

But, really, the more you need to upgrade hardware the better.

Re:What???

[cgenman]

They offer a name and a suite of companies that is on profitable corporate servers, including SafeBoot and others. Intel is probably betting that they can offer "business CPU" chips for the more intensive "protection" that the suite offers. That way they lock in hardware and software, and can dominate a high-end security market. They also buy a shed full of people who already work with each other, and theoretically understand security.

Intel didn't pay 48 per share for their value. They paid 48 per share for the combined potential. That, or someone on Intel's board owns a lot of McAfee stock.

Re:What???

[corbettw]

"Moderately useful" is not worth $7.7 billion.

Re:What???

[PipsqueakOnAP133]

An Intel exec starring on, "I'm on a muthafucking boat!" ?

Seriously? I'm with you on the harbor with this one. What the heck is Intel thinking of doing?

What to do, oh what to do...

[Ornlu]

A list of better things you could do with $7b:

1. Fill a swimming pool with $100 bills and go nuts.

2. Buy several sky scrappers and blow em up, just for shits and giggles.

3. Buy Kaspersky.

4. Nothing. Absoluetly nothing. Ever again.

Any other suggestions?

Re:What to do, oh what to do...

[MrFrank]

I'll tell you what I'd do, man: two chicks at the same time, man.

That's it? If you had a billion dollars, you'd do two chicks at the same time?

Damn straight. I always wanted to do that, man. And I think if I were a billionaire I could hook that up, too; 'cause chicks dig dudes with money.

Re:What to do, oh what to do...

[cgenman]

5. Buy Nvidia, and have an on-board graphics card that isn't terrible.

6. Buy AMD. Twice. Getting ATI in the process. Twice.

7. Buy Analog Devices and make a play for the low-powered market.

8. Actually bring Canoe Lake to market.

9. Send everyone in the United States two stuffed Intel Bunnies.

Re:What to do, oh what to do...

[magus_melchior]

5. A nice dividend payment to INTC shareholders.

And the list of things to top the madness that is the McAfee purchase:
1. A solid gold Humvee for every executive.
2. A diamond-studded swimming pool at every Intel office (but not for employees).

Re:What to do, oh what to do...

[badkarmadayaccount]

Scrape some extra chanage together, and buy Rambus and nVidia.

Makes perfect sense

[Are You Kidding]

As most slashdotters already know, nothing slows your computer down more effectively than Mcafee AV--even if you have the latest and fastest Intel CPU. Optimizing Mcaffe's code would probably add more real horsepower to Intel's processors and be less expensive than designing a new generation of chips.

Re:Makes perfect sense

[xtracto]

The main performance issue with antivirus is not in general within the amount of "CPU code" that is executed but with the amount of file read/write (mainly read) that is performed while deciding if each file you open (and nowadays, each document or file you get or the AV *thinks* you may get) is indeed infected.

Thus in this same reasoning line it would make more sense if someone like Seagate or WD bought McAfee (yeah... that really makes no sense).

Just try comparing Antivirus benchmarks between a Spinning HDD vs a Solid state disk (flash SSD); I am sure you will see a very different performance.

Re:Makes perfect sense

[badkarmadayaccount]

And who is the prime producer for consumer SSD?

Perfect match

[Tridus]

Intel needs people to think they need these faster multi core CPUs they keep cranking out.

And who is better at slowing Windows down to the point of uselessness then Mcafee?

It's a perfect fit. We'll see you slow, bloated software, then also sell you CPUs to make your computer usable.

Don't let any of them near the CPU operations!

[Chas]

Seriously. Your best bet is to stuff them into a closet someplace and forget about them.
Otherwise we'll start having CPUs that take up their own cycles just so they can figure out how to take up more cycles, all the while corrupting any software run on them, cheese-grater'ing your data, and generally prohibiting you from actually USING the machine under the pretense of "entertaining" you with myriad popups, warnings, and better still complete instituting random, undocumented refusals of various portions of the OS and apps permission to run.

Intel will make good use of McAfee...

[Drakkenmensch]

... assuming of course they manage to get every last Norton AV registry key purged out of their systems first.

$7.7 billion in cash

[Rik Sweeney]

I guess they brought it in suitcases. Reminds me of the Austin Powers deleted scene.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wgOYMCtv1aw

Hardware-based AV?

[Anonymous Coward]

Seems like this is the logical goal. Integrate AV at the hardware level and you should see a significant performance increase, plus tasty vendor lock-in.

Re:Hardware-based AV?

[magus_melchior]

Or, on a more cynical note, they can undercut AMD and Via by offering a really sweet deal on AV software for OEMs. McAfee may make a lot of bank in the enterprise, but if they can get more OEM sales of home PCs/netbooks with McAfee software on them, that means a LOT of easy money for Intel.

Devious and underhanded, but it's what I've come to expect from them.

Re:Hardware-based AV?

[badkarmadayaccount]

Doubtful. INTC is gonna get ass raped by the FTC and the EC if they try that.

It's a trusted name with the uninformed

[assemblerex]

I would never use Mcafee, but to my mother they are a brand name. $7 Billion? They must be offsetting tax income with this purchase, or Mcafee has some killer patents.

Cash?

[Dancindan84]

I understand trying to make the distinction between buying with stocks, but the way the summary is worded it made me picture dump trucks full of $100s being dumped on McAfee's front lawn.

er...

[veeoh]

Intel have actually used the software yes?

What area they going to do when the 30 day eval is up! :)

mcafee corporate is better then the home ver

[Joe The Dragon]

mcafee corporate is better then the home ver and has less bolt in it.

Re:mcafee corporate is better then the home ver

[Anonymous Coward]

Yep, welded software is way stronger.

Re:mcafee corporate is better then the home ver

[Rude Turnip]

Yeah, I need to disagree. It slows things down on my work laptop. I so want to replace Mcaffee on this machine and use MS Security Essentials like I have at home. Microsoft actually put out an AV scanner that doesn't feel like a lead weight.

Re:mcafee corporate is better then the home ver

[zebs]

mcafee corporate is better then the home ver and has less bolt in it.

Yep, and going rapidly downhill. Soon they will be the same

Re:mcafee corporate is better then the home ver

[LinuxIsGarbage]

Yeah. No unnecessary SVChost.exe http://tech.slashdot.org/story/10/04/21/1735211/McAfee-Kills-SVCHostexe-Sets-Off-Reboot-Loops-For-Win-XP-Win-2000

Given that McAfee "Oopsie" actually shutdown Intel operations for a day, maybe they do want to take it out back, and put it out of its misery?

Direct quote from my boss

[jayhawk88]

"I've got a quarter we can flip to see if this is a good or bad thing."

Re:Bizarro world we live in

[zlogic]

What's so bad with Intel's drivers? Even though some are outdated (especially for outdated HW) and don't have fancy GUIs doesn't mean it's broken. I've been using Intel's drivers (chipsets, grahics, storage) for 10+ years, didn't have a single problem. Unlike nVidia or ATI where uninstallation doesn't necessary mean the software is completely removed and the drivers keep crashing. And ATI drivers look even uglier than Intel's.

McAfee is crap

[SpryGuy]

Why does anyone use McAfee? It's crap. In my life I've only ever had two "infections" on my PC... both while McAfee was installed and running. It costs money, and yet free alternatives (like Microsoft Security Essentials) typically rank better in terms of protection. And it constantly causes slow-downs, hangs, and even crashes. It's just utter crap. Why would anyone use it? It should be left to die on the vine.

If you currently use McAfee, you should immediately uninstall it (and top paying for it!) and install Microsoft Security Essentials instead. Say good-bye to the bloat and slowness and other complicated crap, as well as the expense.

Re:McAfee is crap

[DrXym]

I use Security Essentials at home. It's hard to say if it's working (like most AV products) but it's non-intrusive, non-annoying and very importantly free. Kudos to Microsoft for once.

I use McAfee at work and again I have no idea if its working but I do know it drags my machine down to its knees during recompiles. I had to beg the admins to exclude some of my directories to lessen the impact it had on some of my build times.

Re:McAfee is crap

[Tacvek]

I've personally found that it is working, since it detects the temporary files that Firefox has created on occasion that contain code for an exploit in say IE. So I would have been safe anyway, but it still caught the code.

Of course, I've always found it almost comical how it scans just about every file archival format known to man, including several not native to windows. It scans the obvious ones, like zip, rar, 7z, cab, and the like. It scans those that we often don't think of as archive formats like CHM. It scans ISO disk images. It scans RPM and DEBs. It scans the expanded form of UPX'd executables. And so on.

So you occasionally see strange things like it scanning the contents of RPM files in an ISO image. It was even more comical when it did that back when it was just Windows Defender, with only non-viral malware signatures.

Re:McAfee is crap

[Haffner]

My current non-tech savvy user package that I install for relatives consists of firefox running adblock plus, noscript (configured to auto-allow only first party scripts) and avg. If they get an infection, I have a handy script (on their desktop) they can run if anything ever breaks that will system restore 7 days back. I have not had to repair one of these computers in well over a year.

Re:McAfee is crap

[badkarmadayaccount]

If I were Intel, I'd open this up and tweak it for linux storage server integration, as a backend for Win client networks.

Why?

[kabdib]

What a colossal waste of money.

Social Philanthropy

[allometry]

This will, by no doubt, be the greatest give to charity for the entire human race. Intel has bought McAfee, so it can finally be killed!

HARK INTEL!!!

Re:Goal: boost need for per clock cycle performanc

[durdur]

Most of us know them as a consumer-oriented AV software company, but they have a lot of products targeted at corporate users, too, and not just AV. So it may sort of make sense. They may even have some decent products buried in their rather large portfolio.

The problem I see, even with good products, Intel as a parent company may lack the ability to effectively market and sell them. That was Sun's problem, pre-Oracle - they were always a hardware company first, and their software division, except a few products, barely got traction. They also bought quite a few companies that subsequently went south.

Any ideas about feds back doors?

[AHuxley]

As many of the top security and end user crypto firms seem to be lost into a subset of the US military industrial complex....
Thinking back to the 'safe list' for an FBI logger, CryptoAG and the sale of European cryptography devices during the cold war ...http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Magic_Lantern_(software) ..
this is rather fun in a historic context.
The gift of KL7 US units to NATO - safe from the Soviets, not the NSA/UK.
History tends to show that anything cheap and centralised from the US is usually NSA bait from inception or after its world wide take up.

Re:Any ideas about feds back doors?

[gtall]

English isn't your first language, is it?

Best Investment Yet

[johan_from_cape_town]

Wow - somebody is thinking outside the box, and actually spending money wisely.

It might not be obvious but consider the scenario. Intel needs to double performance of its equipment every 2 years, with Moore's Law and everything. So how do they do it...

1) Spend $7 billion on making transistors smaller and maybe get a 1% performance increase -
OR
2) Spend $7 billion to buy McAfee and KILL IT and get a 1000% performance increase guaranteed.

I thought Intel was smart

[frist]

Why would they buy the absolutely worst A/V sofftware company ever?

Re:Goal: boost need for per clock cycle performanc

[Spatial]

Although it's a CPU hog, that doesn't matter much because [last I looked at it] the scanning process is single-threaded and every CPU has at least two cores nowadays.

The main performance drag is its never-ending HDD thrashing. Constant random reads are murderous for HDDs.

Of course, Intel also make SSDs, which don't suffer quite so much from that. :)

McAfee haters? there is more to this deal...

[arch]

Wow, I'm really surprised at this announcement and that Slashdot still has my account on profile. Good jobs on keeping that database!!!

But seriously folks. Bashing McAfee? Are you ignorant to exactly what McAfee is? The largest AV player in the Government/Military sector. They have very large banks as customers too. But, I know it is more fun to joke about their AV performance, which is in fact on par with most AV products.

So let me get to the business of trying to decide what this means? It is without a doubt a huge plus for Intel. They have entered into SaaS/cloud email arena with MxLogic, now have a viable FW in the Sidewinder. Can be knocking on checkpoint's gate with a EndPoint Encryption product, is the DLP solution going to rival RSA? Intel gains other network based tools such as IPS/IDS (reconnex), Network Behavioral Analysis, Foundstone, etc.

I say the deal doesn't go through. At least, getting this past federal regulators will be quite an interesting test.

Re:McAfee haters? there is more to this deal...

[russotto]

They have very large banks as customers too. But, I know it is more fun to joke about their AV performance, which is in fact on par with most AV products.

Yeah. Like Symantec, which exists only to bring all work to a screaming halt, and to give BOFHs reason to beat up on developers for bypassing it. "On par with most AV products" == "A steaming pile of crap".

Kill it

[spacefight]

'nuff said.

YOU ARE EDUCATED EVIL!

[Thud457]

Why in the name of timecube are you running Oracle on an architecture that McAfee can even run on?!!!

Re:YOU ARE EDUCATED EVIL!

[troll8901]

He did say "Sounds like a very poorly thought out corporate policy though.", which means it was decided by someone else in the past + it is currently not under his control. Perhaps he's an outsourced IT administrator?

Re:YOU ARE EDUCATED EVIL!

[JarinArenos]

The same reason I'm still stuck with two servers running Win2k and one running NT4. Vendors who never updated their software (or went out of business), and upper management unwilling to shell out the money (and associated headaches) to upgrade and transition to a different vendor.

Short answer: Lousy third-party software requirements.

LANDesk

[sshoop]

What I find interesting about this is that Intel sold their LANDesk virus protect product to Symantec in the late 90s, which became Symantec's enterprise product. In fact, they spun the entire LANDesk division a few years later. Can't imagine why they want to get back in the software business.

Re:Goal: boost need for per clock cycle performanc

[GrumblyStuff]

Norton.

Re:Goal: boost need for per clock cycle performanc

[TheGratefulNet]

I used to buy a lot of AMD cpus for my home builds. around the time the core2 came out, I switched (low power, yummy!) and have not gone back. still, intel has the lower power systems (for people who want fanless or nearly fanless systems, low heat means it needs to be low power).

their chipsets are also way better than the ones for the amd cpus. plus, for those what want the intel gig-e NIC onboard, you can only find that (sigh) on intel mobos.

other things come to mind: for those who use SSD's, you need to run your sata controller in ahci mode AND it has to be running either the intel win7 driver OR the intel one. if you run AMD, you lose the TRIM pass-thru feature in the driver.

I hate supporting intel, being the big guy and bully and all; but they do have their shit together in many areas.

I'll ignore this software company they purchased and intel will absorb them and no one will care who doesn't need to. antivir is for 'believers, only' anyway and so it doesn't affect a lot of us ;)

But...but...

[ITBurnout]

I'm safe as long as I'm running my Mic-CAFF-ee! (At least that's the way my boss pronounces it).

Re:But...but...

[Leebert]

That's the way I always heard it pronounced in the 90's, until apparently people started thinking "McAfee" is spelled "MacAfee".

I guess I've heard enough people talking about fixin' to go down to the Mac-Donalds that I shouldn't be surprised...

Re:Goal: boost need for per clock cycle performanc

[SlappyBastard]

Now we're just talking about who's the winner of an ugly pig contest.

From my experience, Norton isn't as much of a clock cycle killer as it is just downright ineffective.

I'm not a fan of either of the big pay players in AV.

Comment removed

[account_deleted]

Comment removed based on user account deletion

Hardware, Onboard security solutions.

[abhishekupadhya]

Intel was trying to develop a solution to enable Protected Execution. A hardware mechanism against attacks by software. A large chunk of that $7.7billion might be a talent acquisition to go ahead in this field. Enterprise security might be a good field, since Intel already has the user base in the form of installed hardware, and a near monopoly.

Re:Goal: boost need for per clock cycle performanc

[aus]

I used to work for Secure Computing, came over to McAfee after the acquisition in November of 2008, left McAfee in January 2010. Being a developer, I don't have much experience with the A/V products themselves. However, the Sidewinder is a damn serious enterprise firewall. I knew a lot of the engineers that worked on that product, and those guys/gals are *crazy* smart. I wonder if McAfee has managed to get rid of all of them yet?

Add to that the IronMail appliance (never had a false positive while I worked there) and the TrustedSource system from Ciphertrust, and you have some of the coolest technology I've ever personally dealt with.

Good luck to my McAfee (formerly Secure Computing) friends that are still there.

Worth every penny ...

[BitZtream]

Lots of comments and jokes here about the worth of McAfree ...

And you've got it almost completely wrong. The value of McAfree isn't in their software, its in the fact that it comes preinstalled on a massive amount of computers, it has a subscription model for recurring revenue and LOTS of people use it.

The fact that their flagship product is a pile of crap is irrelevant because people buy it anyway, without hesitation.

McAfee Antivirus might suck and be next to worthless, but McAfee the company is worth a lot of money because people are too ignorant to get the first part.

Second, as far as system slow down, and this one hurts as I hate defending such shitty products ... but ...

ALL ON-DEMAND SCANNERS KILL PERFORMANCE. They open and scan every file (EVERY file, not just exe and dlls) before passing the result along to the actual program.

There is no way around this, the data must be check before it can be used in order to be safe. Well, no matter how fast you right code, it takes a while to scan all the files that go into making even a simple program run. There are thousands of files that get openned when an app like Firefox for Photoshop starts running, and all of those files get read into memory and checked ... BEFORE they are passed along to the app calling them. Unless you invent time bending or something, this will always end up taking a very noticeable amount of time, making your computer seem slow.

Want your computer with McAfee to not run slow? Turn off on-demand scanning. Want a middle ground? Change the on-demand settings to be less agressive, but its probably not going to make much difference since the speed issue is mostly opening and reading the files in the first place.

You won't find anyone with an on-demand scanner that doesn't have these problems.

You also won't find an anti-virus company worth more other than symantec.

So yes, this was a good deal for Intel, even if most of slashdot is too blind to see the logic in the move.

I like slashdot a lot more when it was just real geeks with a clue, you know, before all the angsty idiots who happened to be socially inept and own a computer started calling it home as though they were geeks too.

Re:Worth every penny ...

[ITBurnout]

Your last sentence just killed the premise of your post. So, Slashdot is now invaded by angsty idiotic inept clueless poseurs who think they are geeks but are not, and...and...somehow these clueless idiots know enough to be aware that McAfee sucks. That seems to tell me that a growing number of people are becoming *less* ignorant and more savvy and knowledgeable about these things. If even the "clueless idiots" know enough to make fun of McAfee products, then maybe Intel's $7B purchase isn't such a smart thing. But what do I know, I'm just a socially inept clueless poseur pseudo-geek.

Re:Worth every penny ...

[Fnord666]

I like slashdot a lot more when it was just real geeks with a clue, you know, before all the angsty idiots who happened to be socially inept and own a computer started calling it home as though they were geeks too.

It's starting to feel like 4chan lite!

Re:Worth every penny ...

[gadders]

I like slashdot a lot more when it was just real geeks with a clue, you know, before all the angsty idiots who happened to be socially inept and own a computer started calling it home as though they were geeks too.

Yeah, I can see how it would piss off old timers with single figure slashdot IDs like you.

Re:Worth every penny ...

[Twinbee]

I don't think it's too surprising so much as depressing. That there could be that many people who feel the need to use this tripe (or at least convince their bosses that they need 'protection'). How much time and energy is being wasted because of all this? A heck of a lot.

On the upside, at least it means CPUs progress faster because the people who buy these AV products will have naturally slow machines. I don't think that's good enough compensation though.

Re:Worth every penny ...

[Dr_Barnowl]

McAfee is much worse than Symantec though.

We had an enterprise license for Symantec that we let expire and went for McAfee instead. File-intensive operations that previously took about 5 minutes now take in excess of 12. During the process, the virus scanner process eats about 60% of one of the CPU cores (it's a multithreaded app designed to exploit as much CPU as possible). I never noticed Symantec eating any amount of CPU - logically it must have happened, but I reckon it was about 1 or 2 percent.

Eclipse now takes MINUTES to open instead of a few tens of seconds.

So my subjective opinion of McAfee is very low indeed.

Re:Worth every penny ...

[iammani]

Two reasons why I think it is not worth $7B. This is my general opinion of the anti-virus industry as a whole.

1. Windows has improved a lot in terms of security. There were times when you could not run a Windows XP system for a few seconds without an AV and Firewall. Win7 hardly has remote exploits and any serious vulnerabilities.
2. There are excellent free alternatives that are backed by strong players, that makes both the subscription model and pay-per-install model worthless.

Re:Worth every penny ...

[malloc]

Second, as far as system slow down, and this one hurts as I hate defending such shitty products ... but ...

ALL ON-DEMAND SCANNERS KILL PERFORMANCE.

I invite you to try eset's NOD32. On our R&D build servers we had been forced by IT to use Symantec and McAfee at various times. Both sucked horribly: very slow, occasional file access conflicts. It got to the point that we had to say "Screw IT's policy", and tried NOD32. Wow, what a difference. We no longer notice the slowdown, and never get any trouble from it.

Yes, you're right, the act of scanning files is going to take CPU/IO, but it doesn't have to suck as badly as McAfee/Symantec make it.

Re:Worth every penny ...

[Ephemeriis]

The value of McAfree isn't in their software, its in the fact that it comes preinstalled on a massive amount of computers, it has a subscription model for recurring revenue and LOTS of people use it.

I honestly haven't seen McAfee come pre-installed on a system in ages. Seems like it's normally Norton these days. Not saying you're wrong... Just pointing out that I haven't personally seen it in an awfully long time.

ALL ON-DEMAND SCANNERS KILL PERFORMANCE.

All on-demand scanners affect performance. They don't all kill performance.

I've had very good luck with Panda, Sophos, NOD32, and the newer versions of Symantec. They generally stay out of your way when you're trying to get work done. Sure, if you compare benchmarks there's a slowdown... But it's nothing compared to what McAfee does to a system.

Re:Worth every penny ...

[aCC]

Here is a question regarding the on-demand scanner: why isn't anti-virus software tracking which files are new to the system, i.e. need to be scanned, and which ones it has already scanned? Surely, it must be possible to do this to a high level of reliability and therefore reduce the performance bottleneck by scanning only new software. Or is this already being done? If yes, why is there still a major slow down?

Re:Worth every penny ...

[gotpaint32]

Sadly you are also flat out wrong. McAfee is worth a boatload of money for their various other offerings. Antivirus is the most public to the general user so we have all this flamebait floating around here about how much their AV sucks. Mcafee has tons of government and fortune 500 contracts, that alone is worth a bundle. They also have a huge IP portfolio and tons of actual commercial products that are very valuable to large enterprises such as IPS or HIDS systems as well as data security and email protection and compliance technologies. Thinking all Mcafee does is sell crappy AV software for thirty bucks at best buy is a very myopic view of their operations. As a Intel shareholder I am glad they made the decision they did.

Re:Worth every penny ...

[oxygen_deprived]

I think you mean on access scanner, and not on demand scanner. On demand will scan only those files that you ask it to, and when you ask it to. On access scan will have a kernel hook that will intercept I/O and do a scan If you have a traffic check point on the highway where each and every passing vehicle is stopped and checked completely, then the traffic *will* slow down. There is no escaping that.
BTW , McAfee is not just anti virus. There is a hell lot more going on there.
Any IT admins around here who use ePO ? Can you speak up please ?

Re:Worth every penny ...

[fprintf]

Maybe it is because there are so many responders with 6 or 7 digit UIDs. But we know that soon enough someone will come along after this post with a 4 or 3 digit UID just to say they can. I was here at the beginning, wish I knew enough to sign up when I started reading Slashdot!

Re:Worth every penny ...

[alexo]

All on-demand scanners affect performance. They don't all kill performance.

So what system make a good compromise in terms of security vs performance vs price?

Re:Worth every penny ...

[Ephemeriis]

All on-demand scanners affect performance. They don't all kill performance.

So what system make a good compromise in terms of security vs performance vs price?

Seems like it's the old conundrum... Security, performance, price - pick two.

Seems like the better software (security + performance) usually costs more. I'm a big fan of Sophos myself, but it isn't cheap.

For a home user, I've been pretty happy with NOD32.

Re:Worth every penny ...

[jewelises]

There are thousands of files that get openned when an app like Firefox for Photoshop starts running, and all of those files get read into memory and checked ... BEFORE they are passed along to the app calling them. Unless you invent time bending or something, this will always end up taking a very noticeable amount of time, making your computer seem slow.

This isn't time bending, but it might be mind bending. Use a kernel hook to check files as they are written and you don't have to do anything when they are read.

From there you can get more sophisticated and queue up files that are written and process that queue as an idle task while the data is still in memory cache. A simple read hook could do immediate scanning of files that are requested before they have been processed by the idle job.

This idea was invented by Shampoo.

Re:Worth every penny ...

[alexo]

Microsoft Security Essentials, I'm not much for Microsoft, but this piece of software is actually rather brilliant.
Aces all the detection tests I've seen, and I honestly don't even feel it running on my machine.

I am running MSE now and it seems to have a taste for CPU cycles (on an Athlon 3500+)

Re:Worth every penny ...

[PipsqueakOnAP133]

Probably because managing a database of already scanned files is a lot of overhead. Whether it is more or less than scanning, I don't know. I just know it's not trivial.

Re:Worth every penny ...

[coolsnowmen]

Your idea comes down to "scan on read" versus "scan on write"
The bigger problem with scan-on-write is things like: Plugging in a new HD, or more commonly, plugging in a thumb drive, or even inserting a cd. You would have to scan the WHOLE THING to verify it safe before letting the user do anything.

Re:Worth every penny ...

[aCC]

A "scan on write" would definitely not be a solution. It really comes done to some kind of detection mechanism if a file that is being read has been checked before and is unchanged or not. If you plug in a new HD, it should detect that those file are unchecked. Obviously I don't pretend that a system like this is trivial, but I would expect it is possible.

Re:Worth every penny ...

[mattrad]

You're right that on-demand scanning has a high CPU cost. But Intel haven't bought McAfee to change the on-demand settings.

They're going to move security into hardware. Moving it out of the OS and further down the stack is smart, especially regarding rootkits, and will make attack vectors harder and more firmware-specific. Intel has already been adding support for virtualisation and cryptography (see i7 series).

All of this combined is very interesting to anyone running a lot of iron and/or VMs on top. You get a performance increase, plus remove the hassle from keeping AV up to date at OS level. Consumers will probably benefit eventually too.

This acquisition is also quite interesting in light of Intel's move into mobile. Sandboxing isn't going to keep mobile OSes safe for long.

But coming back to your original point about massive govt/military AV subscriptions, I'm presuming that Intel has a clue, and isn't doing this just to bump short-term company figures.

Re:Worth every penny ...

[coolsnowmen]

How could you detect that the files are checked versus unchecked when inserting media? This isn't a technical problem, it is a trust issue. Viruses exist because there are people of shady morale character, you can't trust any sort of metadata on the file, so any sort of field that says 'this file has no viruses' is like requiring that their be an 'evil bit' set on or off.

Wow...

[hesaigo999ca]

Intel bought HP, so they now have hardware, and they bought McAfee, so now they have an antivirus and malware program (does mcafee also doe firewall, ???) , they only need their own OS, and they are good to go to have no part in running windows ever again on their machines...

watch out Apple, here comes Intel computers!

I for one welcome our new computer-clad, chipmaking, virus-protected, OS challenged overlords

Re:Wow...

[JonJ]

they only need their own OS

Yeah, if only there was some sort of system they could base it on, that their engineers has been working with for a while. Too bad there aren't any operating systems out there besides OS X and Windows...

Re:Wow...

[hesaigo999ca]

Of course they could use linux, but what would that prove, ...penguin power???

PR company who could fool Intel must be awarded

[Ilgaz]

I really wonder which PR genius company fooled Intel that they can turn around MCafee's horrible image.

If they can do it, I am sure it will be part of .edu lessons.

Intel made a horrible choice, they were all fine investing/helping smaller AV companies and help them to take off. For example, AVG/Grisoft. That really helped to sustain the security damage to "Wintel" planet. There are companies like Grisoft, lesser known but does have amazing technologies and amazing detect rates and a very different, modern way of looking to the issue.

Lets say these companies are the ones who fits to "atom processor powered" or "arm powered", "3G+ connected" future which arguably happens right now in first World.

For example, this company from China recently started to take off. Besides "Chinese" image and usual engrish quirks, their products should really worry established AV companies.
http://www.netqin.com/en/

The company Intel purchased was just recently (a week ago or so) claiming Steve Gibson's grc.com was full of viruses,trojans and offers "dangerous downloads", showing on Yahoo search results. It was so absurd that I mailed to Mr. Gibson telling about the weird results, he seems to have contacted them and kinda got manually fixed the absurdity. It still shows some stupid results at bottom:
http://www.siteadvisor.com/sites/grc.com

As Mr. Gibson replied, it still claims "dangerous downloads" but fails to show any actual ones.

That is the company you bought Intel shareholders.

McAfee hate?

[KnightBlade]

This is probably going to get modded down but oh well. I've used McAfee on a laptop for about a year now and I've found it's worked quite satisfactorily. It does not slow down the computer half as much as norton does. In fact, it's barely noticeable. The suite did a good job at blocking malicious stuff. The interface was alright for standard users. Adding port rules was a pain though. But overall, it wasn't as bad an AV as the comments here indicate.

Re:McAfee hate?

[Spatial]

Well, let me recount my experience with it.

McAfee came preinstalled on my netbook. It took around 5 minutes to boot. After logging in it took another minute for the desktop to become interactive. Opening a context menu took a few seconds. Starting applications usually took several seconds. Doing ANYTHING took seconds.

I don't know about you, but when I buy a new computer only to find that it's less responsive than my 1987 Amiga, I get pretty annoyed. And when I run taskmgr and see that one program is solely responsible, it kinda sours my opinion of that program.

So I uninstalled it. No more waiting for context menus, random stalling, long boots or tedious desktop loading times. It's almost as responsive as my primary desktop computer, as it should be.

In stark contrast with McAfee, installing MSE made no noticable difference to its responsiveness. I haven't used McAfee since then [last year].

How Far They've Come

[BlindSpot]

20 years ago when I got my first modem (wow it's been that long, I feel old) McAfee was *the* virus scanner. Sysops used it to scan uploads and users used it to scan downloads. Of course back then it was a small command line app that fit on one floppy and ran in 256KB (yes, K) of memory, not the massive piece of bloatware it is now. It was also free... paid versions didn't appear until Windows took over IIRC.

Never would have guessed that they woulda end up developing into a software giant worth $7.7B. And sold to Intel of all companies.

Heard a guy on the business channel speculating that Intel might be wanting it to develop on-chip virus scanners. Sounds like a promising application if it'll speed it up. As it is now scanners as no faster now as it was 20 years ago, but back then we only had 30MB drives to scan so it ran a full scan in under 30 seconds. Now we have 300GB or more and it takes about 3 hours... no wonder people hate virus scanners.

Re:How Far They've Come

[Phrogman]

Amazing change yes. I too ran McAfee, and ran a BBS back in the day (and am feeling old).
I don't hate anti-virus companies (although I am running a mac now, and have to worry far less about viruses for the most part), I hate Microsoft instead, because the existence of the whole virus/malware/trojan world can be laid at their feet for writing such incredibly insecure operating systems. Everyone else in this chain is just responding to MS ineptness. The virus writers and malware writers can get away with it because PCs running windows have such a poor security system, and because generations of users have grown up ignorant of how their computer works. Can MS Windows be secure, sure, but it takes effort and intelligence on the part of the user and that's asking too much. The average computer user is too stupid to actually operate a computer competently, or too lazy to learn.

Re:How Far They've Come

[Reziac]

And then in the mid-1990s McAfee's DOS scanner stopped finding hoary old-hat viruses (I always tested new releases on my zoo before trusting them, so I can say this for sure) and that's when I switched to F-Prot.

They bought McAfee so they can keep Dell away from

[wsgeek]

Instead of giving Dell cash to stay away from AMD (which is frowned upon), they will give away McAfee licenses. It's that simple.

or is it?

[Ilgaz]

Does Mcafee corporate offer a different concept like white list instead of black list, e.g. like guys Kaspersky or Avast (5+) does or they keep on checking same, unchanged and signed system files over and over?

Svchost scandal wouldn't happen if they carried that approach which requires actual R&D people instead of signature hunter outsourced people so... no I guess.

OMG you figured it

[Ilgaz]

1) Buy the worst performing AV on planet ever
2) Hand it out for free or some cheap price
3) Let them NEED your CPU upgrades!
4) Profit!!!

Re:Goal: boost need for per clock cycle performanc

[SlappyBastard]

Um . . . dude? What I said was a joke.

Re:Goal: boost need for per clock cycle performanc

[itsme2]

And what program ropes your computer and drags it down faster than McAfee?

Norton?

intel video sucks next to ati and nvida

[Joe The Dragon]

intel video sucks next to ati and nvida

and part of it is the drivers as some of the hardware looks good on paper.

intel new chip sets are to pci-e lane limted

[Joe The Dragon]

intel new chip sets are to pci-e lane limted the x58 is not but only x16 2.0 lanes?

that forces video down to x8 to fit in usb 3.0 / sata 3 / a x4 slot / other on board stuff.

some board have a switch that give video x16 but it's still the same x16 lanes. what will light peak need? x2 x4 x8

History Repeats Itself?

[NormAtHome]

Novell buys WordPerfect and Quattro Pro... nuff said

re: good experiences w/McAfee ?!

[King_TJ]

Heck no.... I've worked for 2 different businesses that standardized on McAfee corporate AV - about 5 years apart from each other. In neither case was the product worth a darn. Did it protect against any virus infections? Well, yes - I think maybe once at one company, and once at the other one, at least one or two PCs reported an infection that it cleaned/removed. But in the meantime, it killed performance on hundreds of workstations and caused a number of blue-screen crashes when various engine updates didn't work properly. The central administration console for it, I'd describe as shoddy at best. If I clicked around enough in it, I regularly got Windows exception errors and the console closed out. All around? It felt to me like a product someone might have given away as freeware ... but definitely not worth paying for.

On the "personal" side? I've had equally poor experiences with McAfee as it came pre-loaded with various laptops. I'd have to say Symantec/Norton was often worse - but that's not saying much.

Intel No Viruses!

[lavardo]

Wait! Maybe our Intel processors will never ever have viruses again!!!! :) That's one way to put AMD down the hole...

Re:first

[Beardo the Bearded]

I wasn't sure how that could be possible until this morning.

Mcafee does far more than antivirus

[Tragedy4u]

What makes you think this move was purely for their antivirus software? I see a lot of negative comments on here, all about their antivirus, look at their website...they do far more than that and have for years.

Mcafee made some very smart acquisitions in the security appliance field, they have a gartner magic quadrant leading IPS appliance (only behind Tipping Point by a slight margin). Their firewall product is excellent, just not widely known about, and I'm told used by departments of the US government (military/FBI etc) it's a proxy based firewall something most firewalls on the market SHOULD do but don't.

Re:Bizarro world we live in

[Ephemeriis]

What's so bad with Intel's drivers? Even though some are outdated (especially for outdated HW) and don't have fancy GUIs doesn't mean it's broken. I've been using Intel's drivers (chipsets, grahics, storage) for 10+ years, didn't have a single problem. Unlike nVidia or ATI where uninstallation doesn't necessary mean the software is completely removed and the drivers keep crashing. And ATI drivers look even uglier than Intel's.

Agreed.

Intel's drivers generally work. Even older drivers that aren't really supported anymore generally work.

Sure, I've had issues from time to time... Everything breaks now and then... But compared to HP, nVidia, or ATI? I'll take Intel's drivers any day.

Intel did it to fire someone

[Necroman]

If remember the McAfee bug from a few months back, Intel was hit by this bug and shutdown their network. Maybe Intel is forking over the cash to fire whoever screwed up at McAfee and caused this problem.

Re:Intel did it to fire someone

[quacking duck]

If remember the McAfee bug from a few months back, Intel was hit by this bug and shutdown their network. Maybe Intel is forking over the cash to fire whoever screwed up at McAfee and caused this problem.

It would've been at least a couple orders of magnitude cheaper, both short- and long-term, to arrange an under-the-table "understanding" with the right higher-ups.

Re:Intel did it to fire someone

[dbcad7]

This is what makes the AV programs not much better than what they are trying to protect you from. By taking all control and automatically removing or disabling a program, with the user having no way to stop or undo it you have much the same experience you would have had when you got a virus or malware.. Where I work, we also use McAfee but our IT controls the updates apparently because we were not hit by this. I don't know if the corporate version of McAfee is better, or if it is because the people who use the machines are monitored (so they don't do stupid things), but going by our systems you would think that McAfee must be the best AV software out there.. We just have no problems. In a year and a half I haven't heard of anyone getting infected with anything (and it would have gotten around).. but the flip side of this, is that our customers who have the commercial version seem to get hit with things all the time.

new world record

[ILuvRamen]

Well, I guess someone read the slashdot story about Time Warner purchasing AOL going down in history as the worst company purchase ever and they wanted to get in on some of that world record stupidity competition action.

Intel Markets

[helix2301]

I guess Intel figures its easier to buy an AV company then it is to start one from scratch. I am happy to see Intel growing as a company. They must need other revenue and wanna break into other markets with AMD on the rise.

The login back in the day

[popeye44]

ftp.mcafee.com

licensed

321.

That right there made them more popular than they ever should have been. "everybody had that login"

In other news...

[q-the-impaler]

BP makes public plans to buy Oil Skimmers, Inc. to decrease the amount it spends on implementing safe drilling practices.

Not on my watch you don't...

[bradbury]

There should be a CEO, or at least Members of the Board, who are saying to the individual who decided to spend $7.7B in cash for a virus surveying company (which we all know would not have existed, had not Windows 95 been released on insecurable hardware manufactured by Intel...)[1] The answer is simple. Everyone runs Linux and the McAfee investment turns out to be a boondoggle. Now I realize that may not be easy, but there is an argument that every single Linux fan reading /. should be down at their local town hall meeting citing the municipality of Munich. If they can do it we should do it -- and we should do it across the board and make both Microsoft and Intel pay for their sins. [2]

1. Point of order, for those tracking this, prior to the 8086/8088 UNIX ran on minicomputers (mostly manufactured by DEC) or before that on hardware manufactured by IBM, Honeywell, etc. And those CPUs had hardware with memory protection which prevented on from scribbling outside of ones address space. I.e. on the hardware of that era one could not corrupt other programs (most importantly the O.S.). Intel led us into an era in which the hardware could no longer secure itself. Interesting that now some 15-20 years later they are making an effort to clean up the mess they created.

2. An entirely side argument would be to say to the Intel Board -- "Buying a virus scanning company for $7.7B is the best you can do with such cash?" My god, what about nanotechnology development. Please someone tell me that my numbers are wrong -- but it looks to me like $7.7B could pay 77,000 engineers ($100K/yr) for 10 years). And that would put us a hell of a lot closer to "real molecular nanotechnology" than we are today. Oh wait, Intel doesn't want "real molecular nanotechnology" because once it hits I have no reason to pay Intel a microprocessor tax. Now it all makes sense...

Re:Not on my watch you don't...

[bradbury]

Ok, yes, I caught the math mistake. Its 7,700 engineers working on nanotechnology for 10 years (even if one isn't outsourcing them from India or China). Still, given that I can count on two hands the number of really qualified nanoengineers that exist in the world today. It sounds like Intel would have some serious job training efforts required to utilize their funds effectively.

Interesting point, as I read that there are many cash rich companies who have waded through the recent downturn. Why aren't more of them spending their resources on building the future -- rather than maintaining the past?

Re:Not on my watch you don't...

[frist]

You're a nutcase. Point # 1 is pure ignorance. Intel CPUs/MMUs have had memory protection - or do you think that Linux, QNX, Windows NT, etc. all implement it in software? I've also run UNIX-like OSs on hardware that didn't have memory protection. Having an MMU with memory protection does NOT prevent you from running malware and having your system compromosid. Memory protection is just a total non-issue since all modern general purpose OSs implement it. The question about why they are buying a shitty AV company is valid, but your point #1 and your ridiculous rant about Linux vs Windows just demonstrates you're a typical underinformed freetard talking about things you don't understand.

Re:Not on my watch you don't...

[bradbury]

Ok, having grown up in the era from 8088's to current reality intermixed with "real" CPUs, i.e. DEC PDP-10/11 CPUS (and I've got the processor handbooks sitting in my bookcase). You lay out a premise. That "Intel CPUs/MMUs had memory protection. I would assert that they did not (given the memory protection allowed on a DEC-PDP-11/45 or 70 circa 1974-1982.

And so we have to compare the CPU handbooks of the 1970's CPUs (real computers) against the 1980's or 90's CPUs (toy computers).

And the bottom line will come done to this -- was Microsoft Windows 95 a secure operating system? Compared with AT&T Bell Labs Unix or BSD Unix circa 1974-1980. And by that question I mean did the operating system take full advantage of what the hardware provided to guarantee and enforce user security.

So we have a tipping point, either you argue that Intel released chips without robust memory management that created the ongoing virus propagating culture because PCs are not secure, or you argue that Microsoft, by not taking available of hardware capabilities to protect the software (which I would argue was not done until Windows 2000), promoted the growth of the "lets use PC's to compromise PC's" culture.

I await a response documenting that the 8088/8086 had memory protection capabilities (give me the pin number on the chip -- I can go to that level). I further await a detailed explanation as to when Microsoft released operating systems actually made use of them.

And yep, I'm a "nutcase". But as a suggestion -- one best handle "nutcases" carefully -- one never knows what other qualities the box contains.

Re:Not on my watch you don't...

[SwashbucklingCowboy]

"Everyone runs Linux and the McAfee investment turns out to be a boondoggle." ROFLMAO!!! Dude, seriously. You need to start scanning the CVEs that come out for all the ones that apply to Linux.

Re:Goal: boost need for per clock cycle performanc

[Spatial]

So what?

That's neat in theory, but...

[Benfea]

...wouldn't you want antivirus software that doesn't suck big sweaty donkey testes? I mean, if you're going to embed it in your CPU and make it all permanent, shouldn't it be important to choose decent antivirus software?

Re:$2 billion revenue from stupid users

[LinuxIsGarbage]

The number of autorun or other viruses that travel around on USB flash drives at work is amazing. Of course Corporate McAfee is willing to sit idly by, but placed in my personal machine running Avira it will suddenly alert.

McAfee is way more the just AV Ya'll

[spitek]

I work in Info Sec and never touch AV but use McAfee products all the time. Their IPS appliances are magic quad and nice devices at that, Foundstone VA scanners are good and their NexGen firewall has promise. Those are just the McAfee Network Security tools I use daily and are happy with. Let's not forget the signature base AV is limited no matter who makes it. All the bad feels about McAfee or mainly annoyance with the performance of signature based AV technology as a whole.

Re:first

[Miseph]

Yeah, now that it can't process basic arithmetic properly, it will likely start reporting that computers are infected with 1.33374 viruses. That will be a headscratcher for sure.

For Benchmarking?

[Fippy Darkpaw]

They need a benchmark program that brings a system to a crawl h than 3DMark or PCMark?

Re:All the A/V firms.

[j-pimp]

Their not necessarily in cahoots, they just were educated by the same system and cut their teeth on the same hardware.

These are the people that gave us WinRar, 7zip, and Farmanager. They know how to do this kind of low level programming, and a lack of capitalism probably means they did not spend a lot of time learning how to make things pretty.