Microsoft Security Essentials - Free anti-virus from the Great Satan

[sausage]

But is it any good?

link to the software (http://www.microsoft.com/security_essentials/market.aspx)

Microsoft has said it isn't out to steal business from companies like McAfee and Symantec, which make popular antivirus programs with more features. (http://www.nzherald.co.nz/technology/news/article.cfm?c_id=5&objectid=10600292)

Ahh, but what about muscling in on AVG and the likes?

[Filthy Old Drunk]

Not available in your country or region - it's already shit.

[Fenrir]

Seems like a reasonable, and arguably long-overdue move by Microsoft. Operating system vendors have an obligation to provide a secure system to their customers, and this is arguably a part of that duty. Whether or not this is "anti-competitive" is a moot point.

[StorminNorman]

Microsoft has said it isn't out to steal business from companies like McAfee and Symantec, which make popular antivirus programs with more features. (http://www.nzherald.co.nz/technology/news/article.cfm?c_id=5&objectid=10600292)

Why the **** not? Why should I have to pay a third-party money for them to defend me against Microsoft's terrible software engineering practices?

Come on, Microsoft, steal their business. This is your mess, and it's your godsdamn responsibility to fix it.

**** I hate Windows.

[aubergine]

It's kind of hilarious as how we've all accepted something which is, at it's core, ****ed up, as normal or the natural order of things just because that's how it's always been. For what, 15 years or something.

Microsoft should simply buy up whoever makes NOD32 and maybe a couple of others and combine them to make the bestest anti-virus imaginable.

Just like how I wish they'd buy up corel or whoever owns Wordperfect now and just make one decent word processing program for the whole world. I mean it's an electric typewriter, how ****ing difficult does it have to be?

[Fenrir]

Why should I have to pay a third-party money for them to defend me against Microsoft's terrible software engineering practices?

Come on, Microsoft, steal their business. This is your mess, and it's your godsdamn responsibility to fix it.
Qualify this.

[faceless]

I love opening these threads and reading the opinions of people who clearly have no idea about the software industry.

[Cerebral]

This is a commendable move from a respectable and trustworthy organisation.

[TAT]

Has anyone used it and can they vouch for its legitimacy?

[fishfishmonkeyhat]

It's not even allowed in this country!

[VanAce]

Why the **** not? Why should I have to pay a third-party money for them to defend me against Microsoft's terrible software engineering practices?

Come on, Microsoft, steal their business. This is your mess, and it's your godsdamn responsibility to fix it.

**** I hate Windows.

One of my lecturers was discussing something like this the other day. He said computer programming and engineering is the only profession in which they will settle for second best. The attitude in which they say, "We will fix that problem in the next version" doesn't happen anywhere else. If some one built you a house and they didn't put doors in it they wouldn't go "we will put them in next time we build a house". They put the doors in because they should be in it.

I wonder if that made any sense to anyone else?

[TrinityJayOne]

People are forgetting that some bugs are inevitable. We're talking about an OS here, not a house. It is infinitely more complex and they can't possibly predict every single thing that could happen if Program X is run on it.

Also, that link is for the beta. I was under the impression that it was the full release that went out yesterday, no reason why we shouldn't be able to download that, wherever it is.

[StorminNorman]

I'm not talking about bugs, though. I'm talking about bad design. Several aspects of Windows appear to be badly designed. These aren't bugs you can fix in a patch. When your entire GUI is subject to a by-design privilege escalation attack (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shatter_attack), you've probably made a terrible mistake.

Qualify this.
Windows. Office.

[Fenrir]

One of my lecturers was discussing something like this the other day. He said computer programming and engineering is the only profession in which they will settle for second best. The attitude in which they say, "We will fix that problem in the next version" doesn't happen anywhere else. If some one built you a house and they didn't put doors in it they wouldn't go "we will put them in next time we build a house". They put the doors in because they should be in it.

I wonder if that made any sense to anyone else?
It's irrefutably short-sighted - no reasonably competent programmer will ever claim to be capable of developing a bug-free system on a commercially relevant scale. For example, every boolean decision (If statement) essentially doubles the complexity of a program - that is, if execution can currently follow any of 60 possible paths (which is probably only ~6 If statements, so this would be a trivial program), adding another condition statement will blow that number out to 120 - and comprehensively testing it would require double the test data. This sort of thing [EDIT:testing] doesn't scale well - despite automated tools - so test plans err towards common and borderline use cases (and sometimes, misuse cases), and inevitably, bugs get through.

Also keep in mind that building and architecture are among the oldest professions known to man, whereas it's been barely 60 years since the works of Turing, von Neumann, et al.

People are forgetting that some bugs are inevitable. We're talking about an OS here, not a house. It is infinitely more complex and they can't possibly predict every single thing that could happen if Program X is run on it.
^This, too, generally.

I'm not talking about bugs, though. I'm talking about bad design. Several aspects of Windows appear to be badly designed. These aren't bugs you can fix in a patch. When your entire GUI is subject to a by-design privilege escalation attack (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shatter_attack), you've probably made a terrible mistake.
What faceless said, pretty much, except I don't necessarily "love" it as much as it makes me cringe that you're probably spreading this shit around.

You may possibly come to understand the exploit you just linked if you actually learn to write code for the Win32 API one day, but those who do understand and get all alarmist over this one are just exaggerating what is otherwise an obscure and low-risk flaw. Hell, it's a non-issue in Vista. Also, it has very, very little to do with the GUI.

[Vicious]

I'm not talking about bugs, though. I'm talking about bad design. Several aspects of Windows appear to be badly designed. These aren't bugs you can fix in a patch. When your entire GUI is subject to a by-design privilege escalation attack (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shatter_attack), you've probably made a terrible mistake.

Which isn't an issue in Vista is it? So why do you still bang an outdated drum that sounds so run down?

Windows. Office.

2007 is freaking AMAZING from a student's point of view. Source management, citing interface, and a well laid out GUI. If you expected us all to have negative views of the software and that it in itself would going to be evidence you're sorely mistaken. I suggest you qualify how Office is a bad product now.

EDIT:

I also love how some people are screaming MS should fix their own problem, and people on other boards are screaming it's anti-trust all over again. People just love to hate on MS to hate on them apparently.

[ThePhotoshop]

The new Office is crap; it seems to randomly space my text out horizontally instead of having consistent spacing like in 2003. No idea how to fix it.

ie. Sometimes spaces between words look like a double space, even though it's only one, and sometimes it'll look like there's no space at all.

[Vicious]

The new Office is crap; it seems to randomly space my text out horizontally instead of having consistent spacing like in 2003. No idea how to fix it.

ie. Sometimes spaces between words look like a double space, even though it's only one, and sometimes it'll look like there's no space at all.

It could just be the font you're using. I have yet to encounter that problem myself, and I've used it for ages now.

[Cerebral]

The new Office is crap; it seems to randomly space my text out horizontally instead of having consistent spacing like in 2003. No idea how to fix it.

ie. Sometimes spaces between words look like a double space, even though it's only one, and sometimes it'll look like there's no space at all.

Your text is set to 'justify'.

[ThePhotoshop]

The new Office is crap; it totally just made an arse of me in front of the whole Hyper forums.

[Vicious]

Your text is set to 'justify'.

Never even used that myself . . . the more you know I guess :p

[Vindik8or]

One of my lecturers was discussing something like this the other day. He said computer programming and engineering is the only profession in which they will settle for second best. The attitude in which they say, "We will fix that problem in the next version" doesn't happen anywhere else. If some one built you a house and they didn't put doors in it they wouldn't go "we will put them in next time we build a house". They put the doors in because they should be in it.

I wonder if that made any sense to anyone else?

Mate, that is bullshit. Every single industry will settle for second best. Our entire economic and social system is built upon the work of the lowest bidder. Every functioning capitalist unit aims to do the most stuff at the smallest cost, and even if you pretend like you're going to use only the best to make the best, at some point in some function your industry is going to use things from the lowest bidder, or the people you're buying from built their device made out of components from several of the lowest bidders.

Industrial standards and regulations are all that keeps every second thing from falling apart, and they are nothing more than a minimum and treated as that. Even the term 'best practice' isn't related to a practice being the best it possibly could, it is just better than all of the others (who are shit).

[Cerebral]

Never even used that myself . . . the more you know I guess :p

It makes text look more professional, but you have to make sure to end your paragraphs with a breakpoint (usually this is automatic but formatting can screw up from time to time) to prevent it from stretching text incorrectly.