I used to work at a place where we established as part of the 'corporate culture' that it would be OK for a person to set some time during which they were off limits from everyone else. Once we got this up and running, it had amazing results for quite a few of us. We found that people respected each other's off-limits time, no one really abused the setup and the productivity during the uninterrupted time was very significant. I was surprised at how much more effective I was using this technique. (I was Sysadmin there, so my day pretty much consisted of interruptions).
I think the periodic switching off of alerts, particularly from email and IM, would be a lot like this, and very beneficial for concentrated periods of time. Kind of like a 'news fast' (in which you deliberately avoid taking in news from any sources), but call it a 'notification fast'.
Turning off Feedreader is going to be the hardest part...:)
Slightly OT, but part of the frustration of this huge spike in virus activity for me is the fact that our antivirus product is still based on a model that is becoming outmoded. The old model strives to protect against situations in which viruses are piggybacking on legitimate content that someone actually wants. As a result, it's strength is:
1. Detect
2. Clean
3. Deliver if cleaned
4. Quarantine if not
Problem is, about 99% of viruses that have come into our firm in the last 6 months have been nothing but virus - no legitimate content. Despite this, our antivirus tool has no option to use its 'knowledge' of the 100% illegitimate messages and simply delete these outright.
In order to avoid the possibility of quarantining legitimate content, we are still detecting and cleaining, which still lets hundreds of confusing messages through to the users.
I know there are other products which will eliminate this kind of traffic altogether, but it seems to me that a few minor changes to (at least our) current antivirus products could dramatically improve the situation for us.
Are the other major mail-server based "pure" antivirus products any better than Mcafee?
Perhaps not...
The response was just Forsythe's politically correct attempt to cover up his fury at his latest "turn-the-humans-into-slaves-of-the-computers" plan being blown wide open by that question. And by a reporter named 'Olga', no less.
Whew. Close one.
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I think the periodic switching off of alerts, particularly from email and IM, would be a lot like this, and very beneficial for concentrated periods of time. Kind of like a 'news fast' (in which you deliberately avoid taking in news from any sources), but call it a 'notification fast'.
Turning off Feedreader is going to be the hardest part... :)
See also this post at Gizmodo on the same thing, slightly different take on it though.
1. Detect
2. Clean
3. Deliver if cleaned
4. Quarantine if not
Problem is, about 99% of viruses that have come into our firm in the last 6 months have been nothing but virus - no legitimate content. Despite this, our antivirus tool has no option to use its 'knowledge' of the 100% illegitimate messages and simply delete these outright.
In order to avoid the possibility of quarantining legitimate content, we are still detecting and cleaining, which still lets hundreds of confusing messages through to the users.
I know there are other products which will eliminate this kind of traffic altogether, but it seems to me that a few minor changes to (at least our) current antivirus products could dramatically improve the situation for us.
Are the other major mail-server based "pure" antivirus products any better than Mcafee?
Perhaps not... The response was just Forsythe's politically correct attempt to cover up his fury at his latest "turn-the-humans-into-slaves-of-the-computers" plan being blown wide open by that question. And by a reporter named 'Olga', no less. Whew. Close one.