Oh Google, how could you betray me

[MrL_JaKiri]

Originally Posted by s|k

...because Norton is more powerful than all the other software and it works better and it does all that stuff from one location and with one update. I can't believe that you're trying to argue that having tons of things installed is better than having one piece of software that does all those things and does it better.

And it does all that and the only down sides are that it eats up an enormous amount of system memory and CPU time, occasionally buggers your PC, costs money, doesn't work very well and gives you syphilis? Wow, where do I sign!

[s|k]

Originally Posted by MrL_JaKiri

And it does all that and the only down sides are that it eats up an enormous amount of system memory and CPU time, occasionally buggers your PC, costs money, doesn't work very well and gives you syphilis? Wow, where do I sign!

I'm sorry if your computer is a sorry piece of junk not able to handle the MASSIVE strain of security software. I'm not so sure that having tons of shit installed and running (when you could only have one) will actually be more efficient...

[furball]

Originally Posted by s|k

...because Norton is more powerful than all the other software

I disagree. It's not specialist enough to be good on all of the points.

Originally Posted by s|k

and it works better and it does all that stuff from one location and with one update.

Ok, so it's centralised. But it's still centralised crap.

Originally Posted by s|k

I can't believe that you're trying to argue that having tons of things installed is better than having one piece of software that does all those things and does it better.

1 x decent web browser - extensions are a one-time thing integrated into the browser.
1 x firewall
1 x AV program that automatically updates.

That's 3 small (trust me, they're hardly any drain at all) programs vs the huge Norton Internet Security that will bleed your system dry.


When I hooked up my laptop to the internet for the first time a week ago, it took me 30 minutes to get all that stuff set up. That's all it took. Oh and <3 Jakiri/Phang.

[s|k]

Originally Posted by MrL_JaKiri

Ah, the old argument between "having to reinstall windows due to the program ****ing up your system" and "having to look at a card to read off a number".

You really have the gift of sophism.

[flapjack]

Originally Posted by s|k

I'm sorry if your computer is a sorry piece of junk not able to handle the MASSIVE strain of security software. I'm not so sure that having tons of shit installed and running (when you could only have one) will actually be more efficient...

Norton security suite, fully patched, on an A64 3200+ with 1gb of ram.

Against my laptop with Avast!, ZoneAlarm and a properly set up Firefox. The laptop has only a P-M 1.6ghz and 512mb ram.

Guess who won the CPU benchmarks?

[meglamaniac]

Oh for heaven's sake, this thread has gone way off topic... but what the hell.

My £0.02:

I use IE6. Why? Since SP2 came along it's "good enough" and I'm enough of a sucker to stick with it for the "just works" factor. Yes yes tabs etc are no doubt useful, IE just doesn't piss me off enough for that to draw me away. In fact, I represent the market that Firefox/Opera would dearly like to target, but have no real way to do so because we're apathetic.

I use Norton Antivirus. Why? Good question, I've had nothing but trouble with it (bits randomly stop working, live update failures, corrupted updates, updates that break bits of it, on one occasion it detected itself as a virus). The most annoying bit is that since they integrated worm protection into the AV product, it blocks almost all traffic if you're using Windows Internet Connection Sharing, which I use to connect my laptop to the spare lan port on this computer. Why in god's name do I carry on using it? Well firstly because, as previously mentioned, I'm apathetic. Secondly because I don't use it that often so it's not worth the hassle of evaluating competitors and trying another one. I rarely install/access anything I don't trust in the first place, so 99% of the time it's actually turned off. The one exception is when looking on various game fix/no cd sites, but most of the stuff from those is more in the domain of antispyware than antivirus (and I have MSAS to cover that).


Finally, I would like to confirm that NIS is crap. I went round to one of my mates houses a mere 2 weeks ago because she wanted me to "fix her wireless internet". What was actually happening was that NIS was blocking everything, and I mean everything.
Was there any way to alter rules or even view what they were and why traffic was being blocked? No. Was it set to "disable internet" mode? No, although it might as well have been. Did turning it off fix the problem? Hell yes.
I also do a level of network support for my hall of residence, and believe me I have seen this problem many many times. I don't know what Norton have done, but NIS has some serious bugs which cause it to go psycho fairly regularly on many different machines and setups. I have been recommending people uninstall it and just use the XP firewall if they don't want to pay/find something else.

[s|k]

I don't deny that it can be a hassle. Back in the day when I had Black Ice Defender and Zone Alarm, I had similiar problems.

[MrL_JaKiri]

Originally Posted by s|k

I'm sorry if your computer is a sorry piece of junk not able to handle the MASSIVE strain of security software.

Oh wow, a sort of e-penis kind of ad hominem.

Originally Posted by s|k

I'm not so sure that having tons of shit installed and running (when you could only have one) will actually be more efficient...

There exist quite a variety of ways of working with an "inventory" in RPG systems. The most simple is an unlimited system, in its most literal sense - characters can carry any number of objects, of any weight, of any size (even assuming these last two properties are in any way measured in game, and not implied by real life experience). This leads to strange things like a party of adventurers carrying a carpet, two reindeer and an elephant around their adventuring path. For people who prefer systems that make a bit more sense, but still are immensely simple to run, you can limit the number of things a person can carry. This can still be taken too far - it's a bad dungeon master who arbitrarily makes his players choose between two items that may prove useful in the future, especially considering that more and more of us have been raised on a diet of LucasArts Adventure Games, where the basic idea is "use everything with everything, and never discard an item". The remaining systems are really just alterations of the same basic premise - imbue items with a property that tells you how many of that item you can carry, and with what combination of other things. This could mean imbuing the items with a weight and limiting the amount a player can carry in terms of pounds, or some other unit. This could mean giving them a defined size, and the amount of room in the players' backpacks are defined. What the property is, and whether there is only one or not, is pretty irrelevent, because it's clear how this system works - there is more that determines how much can be carried than simply the number of items in question.

Computers are like that too. I don't have a number of programs I can run simultaneously, I have an amount of memory that I can use. I can, from this, estimate how many different tasks I can have going at once, but this is a shaky estimation at best because computer software could be using 16k of my memory, it could be using a gigabyte. I could have 800 notepad windows open. I could not have 800 instances of Half Life 2.

What do we conclude from this, then? Do we conclude that fewer programs mean less RAM used? We could guess that, if we knew nothing about the programs, but we must still entertain the possibility of the opposite - that the larger number of programs takes less memory. 800 instances of notepad uses less memory than 799 instances of Half Life 2.

And so it is with this case. Norton is large and inefficient. I can't tell you how much RAM it takes up exactly, because I don't particularly want to install it on my machine to find out. From my interactions with it on other peoples' machines though, I can say for certain it's more than the 4Mb that my security software uses.

[MrL_JaKiri]

Originally Posted by s|k

You really have the gift of sophism.

That's something to do with that 1982 WW2-era movie with Meryl Streep, isn't it?

It is really easy to buy things online. The amount of time spent copying a short string of information off a card is not worth saving by presenting the security risk of having that information saved on your computer, let alone running norton.

[s|k]

Originally Posted by MrL_JaKiri

Oh wow, a sort of e-penis kind of ad hominem.



There exist quite a variety of ways of working with an "inventory" in RPG systems. The most simple is an unlimited system, in its most literal sense - characters can carry any number of objects, of any weight, of any size (even assuming these last two properties are in any way measured in game, and not implied by real life experience). This leads to strange things like a party of adventurers carrying a carpet, two reindeer and an elephant around their adventuring path. For people who prefer systems that make a bit more sense, but still are immensely simple to run, you can limit the number of things a person can carry. This can still be taken too far - it's a bad dungeon master who arbitrarily makes his players choose between two items that may prove useful in the future, especially considering that more and more of us have been raised on a diet of LucasArts Adventure Games, where the basic idea is "use everything with everything, and never discard an item". The remaining systems are really just alterations of the same basic premise - imbue items with a property that tells you how many of that item you can carry, and with what combination of other things. This could mean imbuing the items with a weight and limiting the amount a player can carry in terms of pounds, or some other unit. This could mean giving them a defined size, and the amount of room in the players' backpacks are defined. What the property is, and whether there is only one or not, is pretty irrelevent, because it's clear how this system works - there is more that determines how much can be carried than simply the number of items in question.

Computers are like that too. I don't have a number of programs I can run simultaneously, I have an amount of memory that I can use. I can, from this, estimate how many different tasks I can have going at once, but this is a shaky estimation at best because computer software could be using 16k of my memory, it could be using a gigabyte. I could have 800 notepad windows open. I could not have 800 instances of Half Life 2.

What do we conclude from this, then? Do we conclude that fewer programs mean less RAM used? We could guess that, if we knew nothing about the programs, but we must still entertain the possibility of the opposite - that the larger number of programs takes less memory. 800 instances of notepad uses less memory than 799 instances of Half Life 2.

And so it is with this case. Norton is large and inefficient. I can't tell you how much RAM it takes up exactly, because I don't particularly want to install it on my machine to find out. From my interactions with it on other peoples' machines though, I can say for certain it's more than the 4Mb that my security software uses.

Is that the WoW defence? Just kidding, but I was wowed by it. It's more than just about memory, although I believe each instance of a program running creates extra overhead in windows, but I don't know that for sure. There is also the extra files and directories on your computer that are fragmented all over the place and need to be indexed. There are the extra entries to your registry. There is a greater chance of incompatibility or attempts to use shared resources such as certain system files that may lead to crashes. There's also the issue of complicating your troubleshooting when you have more services running and you have a problem and don't know which running program is causing it. There's also the thing of having to learn more than one software, and how to get help for it or what site to go find and understand, and etc. It's not just about memory. Fewer programs is simpler, even if it takes up more memory.

[MrL_JaKiri]

Originally Posted by s|k

although I believe each instance of a program running creates extra overhead in windows, but I don't know that for sure.

Any overhead is insignificant compared to the amount of memory we're talking about.

Originally Posted by s|k

There is also the extra files and directories on your computer that are fragmented all over the place and need to be indexed.

I keep my hard drive defragmented, true story. And the larger a block of files is, the less chance it has of being contigous.

Originally Posted by s|k

There are the extra entries to your registry.

Oh woe. The amount of programs I have installed is enormous, one more isn't going to do that much.

Originally Posted by s|k

There is a greater chance of incompatibility or attempts to use shared resources such as certain system files that may lead to crashes. There's also the issue of complicating your troubleshooting when you have more services running and you have a problem and don't know which running program is causing it.

May cause crashes, and further problems, but they don't. These aren't unknown entities we're dealing with. We know that Norton causes more problems than ZA (for example).

Originally Posted by s|k

There's also the thing of having to learn more than one software, and how to get help for it or what site to go find and understand, and etc.

Any time spent learning the software is negligable. As for the issue of obtaining help, I would do it either by googling or by looking in the documentation. In my experience, the smaller pieces of software tend to have better sources for help in any case - not only is there the fact that, as the software is more focused, the solution that you're looking for is more likely to be readily available, but there's also the fact that smaller software houses are just more helpful, by and large.

Originally Posted by s|k

It's not just about memory. Having fewer programs is simpler, even if it takes up more memory.

Oh hey, it's one of those absolute statements I commented upon in my last post.

[roadrunner_0]

Originally Posted by s|k

I'm sorry if your computer is a sorry piece of junk not able to handle the MASSIVE strain of security software. I'm not so sure that having tons of shit installed and running (when you could only have one) will actually be more efficient...

AHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA

I'm pretty safe in saying that MrL has the single most ridiculous amount of computing power and storage that i have ever seen in one place

[s|k]

Originally Posted by roadrunner_0

AHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA

I'm pretty safe in saying that MrL has the single most ridiculous amount of computing power and storage that i have ever seen in one place

I see you've resorted to using the NB3 style attack. Normally it paralyzes the victim, turns them blue, and forces them down on the ground where all their hair falls out, but I seem to be fine. I think I've developed an immunity to it, perhaps I should offer myself up to scientific study so that I might help save humanity from this evil thing.

[furball]

Immune to the 'blue screen of death'®? You won't be if you're still using Norton

[meglamaniac]

This thread is making baby jesus sad, and as it's so near his birthday I have elected to close it, the poor little bugger

[meglamaniac]

Re-opened because nice Mr Symm gave me this link on IRC.
Apparently initial worries are unfounded, or at least google would like us to believe so.

Try and behave yourselves this time!

[s|k]

- There will be no banner ads on the Google homepage or web search results pages. There will not be crazy, flashy, graphical doodads flying and popping up all over the Google site. Ever.

lol

Anyhow, it's their website, so why trust them. Here is why Google has lost any credibility in my book:

We're looking forward to what AOL can help us do for you, and believe that our new agreement with them will only create a better experience for you in 2006 and beyond -- one where you can continue to trust that we're giving you a result because it's the best one we can possibly provide.

AOL will create a better experience for me? Pfffffffft. You know if I didn't use Google so much and if it weren't the truth that changes they make could really make better experiences for me, then this silly statement wouldn't be so depressing. That's like a triple nipple negative statement I just made there.