Firstly I am completely convinced software patents are a big mistake and all available effort should directly to completely abolishing them, no less.
This debate has been rehashed so much, but I really get tired of hearing some things like:
"Software patents are here to stay get used to it."
Bloody hell, how defeatest is that. They aren't here to stay, but they will be if that is going to be people's attitude. Also aiming at stop gap measures is a complete waste of resources and will only give software patents more time to get a strangle hold. Allowing some "strong-er" software patents through simply opens legal loopholes and abuse.
"Richard Stallman is a raggy looking, hippy, commi, socialist, fanatic protagonist..."
So the hell what. So people feel more comfortable hearing carefully crafted corporate messages from some clean shaven multi-millionaire in an expensive suite. It that really what makes people feel more comfortable about issues. Though I don't have to agree with all his beliefs, *each* issue deserves individual attention.
"Software patents aren't any different normal patents"
I am not going to reiterate what countless people have said about the difference. Look at the history of how patents came into being.
But what about killing, is that ok? We kill animals and eat them. That is acceptable (by most), but we certainly don't condone killing humans.
So don't go generalising and saying all "patents" are ok, just as we clearly don't consider all killing to be equal.
Their are philosophical and logical reasons why software patents are different. If you're interesting in protecting a fairplay capitalist market in the future, don't just give into the political and corporate pressure. We lose.
When I went from High School to Uni there was a distinct feeling "this is where real learning begins".
Usually because for the first time in your life you actually had some say in your choice of education - you chose it.
Sure I have friends who went to College/Uni and partied a bit too hard, but partying is part of learning:)
Everyone survives, everyone finds their place. Not everyone can be Donald Trump and quite frankly alot would never want to be.
Having a degree or certificate out of tertiary education is a huge advantage in getting a job initially, but really its worthless after job experience kicks in.
The IT industry is notorious for having a sub-industry of futher certifying its groupies, for large amounts of money, to keep "up to date" with latest technologies.
Though this has merit, a bit too much weight has been associated with many of these certificates. Word starts getting around that certs are a bit of a tug and easy to get ones can be used as a ticket. Easy path, cheating, its a fine line and "professionals" are doing it every day.
Students hear about these things and it certainly doesn't help their faith in the value of study or their final certification.
There are certainly better approaches than expending huge amounts of effort trying to stop cheating.
It can never be stopped and really the temptation really needs to be there for people to make a choice, for themselves.
Most parents instill enough values through their kid's life that they know the consequences of cheating and the feeling of accomplishment of doing work themselves.
But for the sake of everybody, in first year Uni/College lecturers should be re-instilling some real world motivation not to cheat rather than just saying "DON'T". (Alot probably do already).
Basic anti-cheating methods should be in place, but nothing Draconian. However, the penalties for being caught cheating should be quite high, as they are in real life. If they get away with it, they may learn a lesson in guilt, or maybe not and have a fruitful career in crime.
W.r.t to the net being a cheating source, that is plain ridiculous. Our open book exams were the toughest damn ones of the lot.
I guess this is just civil court type sentencing but stay with me, my granddad was always against capital punishment because no matter how you cut it, someone has to kill someone, and that was a mortal sin in his eyes. Doesn't matter if its lethal injection by a machine, firing squad with half dummy bullets. Someone is directly or indirectly a murderer, accountable and guilty even if they are doing their job or its for the better good.
Even if this sentencing by machine has some supposed merits like removing implusive emotion from the decision, someone had to write the software. They are now the ones responsible.
They can make mistakes (bugs), forgivable but inevitable, but may make the system unusable. Every member of the team would have different agendas (its human) and more chance of applying their views or allowing corruption to take a hold.
Yeah writing code is essentially putting something in writing, possibly with your name attached to it, but corrupt code could sneak in unnoticed.
So really its just diverting accountability from a single high profile judge to a corporate and bunch of designers/programmers.
Anyone see that Futurama episode where the judge is a PC:
About half my friends use AVG and the rest use Avast. I used to use AVG (v6) when it was a bit clunky and email scanning was a hack. So I switched to Avast (Free version). Avast is never in your face, except a voice message telling you that its "Virus database is updated".
Avast seems to protect well at first contact. It will alert and block at browse time if things are suspect and even things like sending exe's in emails will get a warning. Its also low on resources.
I was actually having a look just today at this very topic and came across this.
http://anti-virus-software-review.toptenreviews.co m/
But of course (to me) there's alot more than just reviews stats to clinch it.
I have a friend who works for Trend Micro (PC-cillin) and its definitely a nice product aswell.
From the above link and other reading it also seems that NOD32 claims to have the best ITW catch rate of any.
I've heard good things about that too.
Not to cast dispersions, but in all honesty, one friend in particular who has only ever used AVG has a very tainted machine. He constantly runs AVG scans hoping to catch whatever is affecting it, but it never seems to get better.
Admittedly, that could just be Windows XP for ya:)
But personally, like most people, I use what works for me, and tho I have voyaged to many a dangerous corner of the web (using Firefox mind you) Avast certainly gets an A+ from me (and all those I've convinced to use it).
I think I have run an Avast scan once or twice ever. I just rely on On-Access protection and everything is great.
The only brief freak out I had a few months ago was a sudden false positive on a Microsoft Visual Studio file after the virus DB auto updated. I was pretty certain it was ok, so I googled then emailed Avast Support and got a prompt reply saying it had already been fixed and to simply get Avast to fetch the DB file again. Presto problem solved.
No software application is perfect, and being a software developer myself I actually feel comforted by Avast's occasional automatic software self-upgrades (no reboots usually). So you know you are getting any bug fixes and performances improvements the minute they become available. Its a freshing change from alot of slow stale buggy software out there.
You certainly can't go wrong with any of your listed choices but I'm sure you won't be disappointed at least trying Avast.
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Firstly I am completely convinced software patents are a big mistake and all available effort should directly to completely abolishing them, no less.
..."
This debate has been rehashed so much, but I really get tired of hearing some things like:
"Software patents are here to stay get used to it."
Bloody hell, how defeatest is that. They aren't here to stay, but they will be if that is going to be people's attitude. Also aiming at stop gap measures is a complete waste of resources and will only give software patents more time to get a strangle hold. Allowing some "strong-er" software patents through simply opens legal loopholes and abuse.
"Richard Stallman is a raggy looking, hippy, commi, socialist, fanatic protagonist
So the hell what. So people feel more comfortable hearing carefully crafted corporate messages from some clean shaven multi-millionaire in an expensive suite. It that really what makes people feel more comfortable about issues. Though I don't have to agree with all his beliefs, *each* issue deserves individual attention.
"Software patents aren't any different normal patents"
I am not going to reiterate what countless people have said about the difference. Look at the history of how patents came into being. But what about killing, is that ok? We kill animals and eat them. That is acceptable (by most), but we certainly don't condone killing humans. So don't go generalising and saying all "patents" are ok, just as we clearly don't consider all killing to be equal. Their are philosophical and logical reasons why software patents are different. If you're interesting in protecting a fairplay capitalist market in the future, don't just give into the political and corporate pressure. We lose.
(flame on)
When I went from High School to Uni there was a distinct feeling "this is where real learning begins". Usually because for the first time in your life you actually had some say in your choice of education - you chose it. Sure I have friends who went to College/Uni and partied a bit too hard, but partying is part of learning :)
Everyone survives, everyone finds their place. Not everyone can be Donald Trump and quite frankly alot would never want to be.
Having a degree or certificate out of tertiary education is a huge advantage in getting a job initially, but really its worthless after job experience kicks in. The IT industry is notorious for having a sub-industry of futher certifying its groupies, for large amounts of money, to keep "up to date" with latest technologies. Though this has merit, a bit too much weight has been associated with many of these certificates. Word starts getting around that certs are a bit of a tug and easy to get ones can be used as a ticket. Easy path, cheating, its a fine line and "professionals" are doing it every day. Students hear about these things and it certainly doesn't help their faith in the value of study or their final certification.
There are certainly better approaches than expending huge amounts of effort trying to stop cheating. It can never be stopped and really the temptation really needs to be there for people to make a choice, for themselves.
Most parents instill enough values through their kid's life that they know the consequences of cheating and the feeling of accomplishment of doing work themselves. But for the sake of everybody, in first year Uni/College lecturers should be re-instilling some real world motivation not to cheat rather than just saying "DON'T". (Alot probably do already). Basic anti-cheating methods should be in place, but nothing Draconian. However, the penalties for being caught cheating should be quite high, as they are in real life. If they get away with it, they may learn a lesson in guilt, or maybe not and have a fruitful career in crime.
W.r.t to the net being a cheating source, that is plain ridiculous. Our open book exams were the toughest damn ones of the lot.
I guess this is just civil court type sentencing but stay with me, my granddad was always against capital punishment because no matter how you cut it, someone has to kill someone, and that was a mortal sin in his eyes. Doesn't matter if its lethal injection by a machine, firing squad with half dummy bullets. Someone is directly or indirectly a murderer, accountable and guilty even if they are doing their job or its for the better good.
.... please wait .....**System Error***"
Even if this sentencing by machine has some supposed merits like removing implusive emotion from the decision, someone had to write the software. They are now the ones responsible.
They can make mistakes (bugs), forgivable but inevitable, but may make the system unusable. Every member of the team would have different agendas (its human) and more chance of applying their views or allowing corruption to take a hold. Yeah writing code is essentially putting something in writing, possibly with your name attached to it, but corrupt code could sneak in unnoticed.
So really its just diverting accountability from a single high profile judge to a corporate and bunch of designers/programmers.
Anyone see that Futurama episode where the judge is a PC:
PC: "Processing judgment
voices: "(whole room gasps). Quick press ESC. No, press Ctrl-Alt-Shift-1. No, hit it on the side....."
well put and very true :)
About half my friends use AVG and the rest use Avast. I used to use AVG (v6) when it was a bit clunky and email scanning was a hack. So I switched to Avast (Free version). Avast is never in your face, except a voice message telling you that its "Virus database is updated".
Avast seems to protect well at first contact. It will alert and block at browse time if things are suspect and even things like sending exe's in emails will get a warning. Its also low on resources.
I was actually having a look just today at this very topic and came across this. http://anti-virus-software-review.toptenreviews.co m/
But of course (to me) there's alot more than just reviews stats to clinch it.
I have a friend who works for Trend Micro (PC-cillin) and its definitely a nice product aswell. From the above link and other reading it also seems that NOD32 claims to have the best ITW catch rate of any. I've heard good things about that too.
Not to cast dispersions, but in all honesty, one friend in particular who has only ever used AVG has a very tainted machine. He constantly runs AVG scans hoping to catch whatever is affecting it, but it never seems to get better. Admittedly, that could just be Windows XP for ya :)
But personally, like most people, I use what works for me, and tho I have voyaged to many a dangerous corner of the web (using Firefox mind you) Avast certainly gets an A+ from me (and all those I've convinced to use it).
I think I have run an Avast scan once or twice ever. I just rely on On-Access protection and everything is great.
The only brief freak out I had a few months ago was a sudden false positive on a Microsoft Visual Studio file after the virus DB auto updated. I was pretty certain it was ok, so I googled then emailed Avast Support and got a prompt reply saying it had already been fixed and to simply get Avast to fetch the DB file again. Presto problem solved.
No software application is perfect, and being a software developer myself I actually feel comforted by Avast's occasional automatic software self-upgrades (no reboots usually). So you know you are getting any bug fixes and performances improvements the minute they become available. Its a freshing change from alot of slow stale buggy software out there.
You certainly can't go wrong with any of your listed choices but I'm sure you won't be disappointed at least trying Avast.
Good luck :)