Today is mainly concerned with a review of software, in this instance Norton Anti-Virus. The background of these applications is unknown to many, so allow me. These organizations employ programmers to write “anti-virus definitions” for each new virus that appears. That means before your computer can perform an effective anti-virus scan, you have to go get those new definitions. This is called doing the update and if your definitions are more than a single day old, you are wasting your time doing a scan.
That scan can be confusing, as you are offered two options: a quick scan and a full scan. The difference is that the quick scan, instead of looking at every last file on your computer, only scans those whose archive bit shows it has changed since the last scan. Thus, a quick scan will suffice for daily use.
I found it interesting to learn the two options for scanning. One is to look at each file and search it for every virus on the list, then move to the next file. The other is to search every file for the first virus, then go back and search again for the next virus on the list. As you imagine, these processes take up a lot of computer resources and can visibly slow things down. Mechanically, both search methods are identical and take the same time, but for reasons unknown, the second method is preferred by the coders.
The new “vista-ready” Norton anti-virus is on the market, but as explained often, I don’t hear about it until months later. Norton was bought out by Symantec a couple years ago and its performance remained sluggish at best. But this new version, which I tried out this afternoon, just sizzles along. Among the nicest improvements are the way it now spots cookies as potential threats and the automatic scanning of email attachments and other downloads.
Things that are not so swell are the consistent lack of a user-friendly interface, although Norton is not any worse than the others. One still has to peer over the commands to find the manual update and scan hotspots. (And manual operations are the only ones you should trust implicitly.) There is a Spybot style readout of the virus being searched for, but no timer to indicate nothing has seized up on you (there is a caterpillar, but those have been known to keep on caterpillaring after a glitch).
And as usual, nothing in the packaging, instructions or help link gives any clear warning about the proper ways NOT to use the software, which are legion. Rule of thumb: if you have spent less than an hour learning your anti-virus software, you probably are not using it correctly.
Here is a first-person account, of which I am not, repeat not, a witness. Got that? There are not that many cross-streets on Dixie Highway. So imagine my surprise to see a black late-model car come flying across, and I mean flying, across Dixie where it should not. It must have been a high-speed chase, estimate around 75 mph. The perps tried to cross Dixie, the crown on the road sent all four wheels flying across the swale (shallow drainage ditch). They landed some ten feet short of the railway tracks, bounced, and landed again almost past the rails.
I said almost. They were high-centered on the tracks, and decided escape on foot. There was a squad car in pursuit (had anyone been crossing the same intersection, they would have been broadsided). The police spurred around Dixie. All this happened in the dark in a few seconds. There you go.
