* In a message originally to Rod Fewster, Kurt Wismer said:
 KW> exact identification is important for relief from false
 KW> positives and
 KW> also from false negatives with polymorphs...
 KW> exact id is more about an increased degree of certainty
 KW> about the
 KW> diagnosis than about avoiding screwing up the
 KW> disinfection... false
 KW> alarms are more of a problem than mistaken identity (it's a
 KW> very big
 KW> problem with some scanners... and false positives will
 KW> always be a
 KW> problem with scanners that don't do exact identification...
How do you know any given identification is exact ?  YOU DON'T!  ALL you know 
is what the scanner tells you!  If Dr. Solomon says you have One.Two.Three(a) 
how do you know your virus isn't really One.Two.Three(b) or any of the other 
350 variants ?  YOU DON'T!  In fact you don't even know for sure that it's a 
virus and not a false positive.  ALL YOU KNOW IS WHAT THE SCANNER TELLS YOU!
Have you ever noticed that the only people who stress the "importance" of 
"exact identification" are the anti-virus companies who claim to have more of 
it than the next guy ?  Nobody else gives a fuck about it as long as their 
scanners can clean up the mess.  Like Rod said, it's a buzz-word for 
techno-wankers, worth about as much in real life as 
reverse-fucking-piggybacking!
 KW> take a look at vesselin bontchevs paper on the maintenance
 KW> of a virus
 KW> zoo, in it he praises f-prot (this is before he started
 KW> working there)
 KW> for being the best at identifying the family to which a
 KW> virus belonged
 KW> (and this is despite f-prot's exact id capabilities)...
It's a fucking long time since Bontchev was independent.  It was obvious long 
before he joined Frisk that he was paving his way for the job.  Everything he 
said was "F-Prot, F-Prot, F-Prot", even though F-Prot has NEVER been #1 in a 
serious comparison.  Even Dark Avenger predicted Bontchev would join Frisk!
LuKE
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