AVID: A Trend In Motion

I was asked last week why I keep changing the D-word in AVID e.g. Antivirus Is Dead, Doomed, Dying and Dysfunctional. To be honest, it's a cheap and obscure trick; here's a tortuous explanation.

I am running a campaign to bring down the $3.7 billion AV industry. The idea is simply to tell the truth, week after week about the fact that AV technology provides inadequate protection and it also happens to be unnecessary, because there is perfectly adequate technology from at least 3 companies; AppSense, Bit9 and Securewave that does the job properly and actually does stop all viruses.

This blog gets somewhere between 4000 and 25000 readers each week. The number varies dramatically because a good number of visitors are drawn by headline and topic. Apple, Firefox and Linux, for example, boost the numbers. Of course if I just repeat the message: Anti-Virus is Dead, everyone will get bored and I'll lose at least some of the readership. And that's not what I want. What I want is readers returning regularly every fortnight to read the AVID posting even if they read nothing else.

So every AVID posting has to be colourful and different and cover another aspect of that utterly inadequate technology that fails to protect your PCs very well. I'm expecting that some readers will drop in just to see which D-word I've chosen this week. This week's D-word, by the way, is Demise and thus AVID stands for AntiVirus In Demise.

This is very appropriate because of what I have to report: I am reliably informed that a trend to abandon AV is in progress. A growing number of organizations are evicting AV technology from their networks and no longer paying the AV protection money. I have also been told that this blog has had influence in those sites.

So here's the point. Previously, sensible businesses were buying and deploying product from AppSense, Bit9 and Securewave, because it does more than just protect against malware. It can be justified in other ways. For example, it also ensures good governance of the installation of software on PCs. However these businesses were loathe to evict the unnecessary AV technology in case some security auditor or other started to raise objections. The AV mindshare was too high and they felt exposed. Now it's not so high.

So there's a nascent trend here. The numbers are still small, but they include some government sites! Hearing that was big news for me, because government sites nowadays are very particular about security.

So is AntiVirus In Demise? “Not yet” is my answer. If you're thinking it takes more than 5 blog postings to bring down a $3.7 billion lack-of-protection racket, then I agree with you. I expect it to take at least 20.

Firefox Rocks

Last week I mentioned that I had upgraded Firefox to version 1.5. I never realized at the time, but have quickly come to realize that this is now no ordinary browser. It's not Firefox per se that's impressing me, but the fact that Firefox has a wealth of useful plugins. Once you get used to them, they create a dramatic transformation in browser usage. The ones that I have found useful are:

Tab Mix Plus: This is awesomely good. It has many features. In particular, it allows you to pin tabs permanently and lock them and protect them. It also lets you configure the browser so that any link you click on opens a new tab by default. If you are a user of Writely (the web word processor), web spreadsheet (Zoho or Google), a web calendar (Yahoo, Google, whatever), web mail (Gmail, Hotmail), web presentation (thumb-stacks.com just started up) and anything else. You can use Tab Mix Plus to create a kind of desktop within the browser. I recommend it.

Scrapbook: The scrapbook plugin is useful for me. It allows me to build a scrapbook of web pages that I'm referring to when I write this blog or research into something. Browsers should have provided an easy way to do this years ago.

Google PlugIns: The Google search bar helps you get the most out of Google search, binding together a lot of Google's search capability. More useful, if you use more than one PC, like me, is Google Browser Sync which will sync all Firefox settings across 2 or more computers.

If you add these up, it improves the browsing experience significantly. What we are probably witnessing here is the gradual evolution of the browser as it becomes a desktop of a kind.

IT Without Gates

Bill Gates is leaving the $50 billion monopoly he established in order to work for a non-profit. It is to be a long goodbye.

Version 1.0 of Retiring BG was released on July 15th last week, but the implementation is not expected to become robust until version 2.1 which is scheduled for July 2008. Given Microsoft's recent track record it is doubtful whether such an early release date will be achieved and whether Retiring BG 2.1 (code name FTP) will have the same features that Microsoft is currently talking about. Commentators are already suggesting that July 2010 is a more realistic release date, while cynics are plumping for 2012.

Retiring BG 2.1 will include the following features:

• The Ballmer control interface will remain in place.
• CTO functionality will be added to the Ozzie wizard.
• Chairman functions will remain with Bill, but will be invoked by RPC.

A Microsoft spokesperson said, “Microsoft is very excited by the benefits that Retiring BG will bring to all our customers.” According to a closed source inside Microsoft, the code name FTP stands for Full-Time Philanthropist.