Well Tiger~ that is what I have been saying for years, and several times on this forum..........AV products are largely reactive rather than proactive. I think that is why we all emphasise how important it is to keep the definitions/patterns up to date. These days the first thing I do is check for security software updates when I go on the net. OK it takes 15 minutes out of my life, but that is how things are today?

I liken the situation to a fruit machine (one-armed bandit)........the house get 30% and the punters are just playing for eachother's losings......a virus gets out, people get infected, the AV company release a solution..........if you don't get that update you could be another Luser. Same goes for software patches. You are winning from someone else's misfortune are you not?

My main gripe about AV companies is they don't have the balls to ship their product with the security settings on maximum (I am talking home, SOHOproducts here). You have to go in and activate heuristic scanning, scan all files, scan compressed files etc. I would guess that 80% of users have no idea what all that means or the implications?

I think the author of that article was rather shallow and trite............they call them different names? so what? does a guy who has just been shot in the head care if it was a .308 Winchester or a 30-06 Springfield?............do you care about the name of the hurricane that just trashed your house?.............I think not

I am surprised he missed the fact that some AV companies give each and every virus variant its own name, whereas others just say "generic". Actually it takes courage to describe them as "generic" because that implies that your product should have detected the threat and dealt with it. Calling it a new name does not, and hides the fact that a rival product did a better job three days earlier (ME...........cynical?)

Yes it is competitive. And whilst he appears unaware that the major AV companies do share threat information, he is naive in thinking that they would share solution information. Would Ford help out GM?...........but if the government came out with some new road safety regulations they would probably work together because that is just like sharing a tax bill?

I personally think that the article does more harm than good, because it over emphasises the naming convention issue at the expense of what I would consider to be far more important shortcomings in the AV industry today.

Well that's my £0.02...........nah, £0.03..Saturday: time and a half