* In a message originally to Luther Kolb and Kurt Wismer, rod fewster said:
 rf> If I'd read Luther's reply to Kurt earlier I could have
 rf> saved myself a
 rf> message!
That will teach you to read everything before you reply to anything!  :-)
 rf> IMO, touting one scanner as "better" than another simply
 rf> because it
 rf> accurately names (or purports to accurately name) more
 rf> viruses _is_
 rf> a technowank ... but it's gotta be worth a lot more than
 rf> "inverse
 rf> piggybacking".  :)
Not much!
 rf> Yep ... anyone who could read between the lines knew which
 rf> way Vesselin
 rf> was heading.  (Business is business.)  :)
Sure business is business, but it was clear to me for a long time that 
Bontchev was in F-Prot's pocket.  I would have had more respect for the dude 
if he'd been honest and said "I'm recommending F-Prot out of employee loyalty 
because I'll be going to work for Frisk Software soon."  Nobody expects him 
to promote anything except F-Prot NOW because we all know he works for Frisk, 
but in those days he was pushing F-Prot while still claiming to be unbiased.
 rf> Jimmy Kuo (McAfee) raised a valid point in a.c.v a few days
 rf> ago when he
 rf> said _no_ AV product tests are 100% independent.
 rf> If you think about this carefully, he's 99% right.  For
 rf> example: even
 rf> though I take every possible precaution to ensure that my
 rf> own testing
 rf> is fair to everyone, my tests would be slightly skewed in
 rf> favor of AVP
 rf> and TBAV because, between the two of them, they have all my
 rf> viruses.
I'll accept that, but I think you're putting shit on yourself for no reason.
 rf> (Other AV companies can get these viruses through the CARO
 rf> grapevine,
 rf> but _I_ don't give viruses to anyone except Eugene and
 rf> Frans.)
 rf> It's often said that magazines give "Editor's Choice"
 rf> awards to those
 rf> AV companies with the biggest ads.  Although it sometimes
 rf> looks that
 rf> way I'd hate to think that this is really happening,
Bullshit Rod!  It "looks that way" BECAUSE most magazine awards go to the 
company that spends the most on advertising!
 rf> but even ignoring
 rf> this aspect, IMO most magazine tests aren't worth the paper
 rf> they're
 rf> written on by virtue of the fact that they're written by
 rf> geeks!
You're right about the geeks!
 rf> I personally know of only ONE computer journalist who has
 rf> even the
 rf> faintest clue about viruses.  He has a collection of many
 rf> thousands of
 rf> viruses and usually runs his tests on several hundred,
You're obviously talking about Jan Wikstrom, and I agree, he's the only PC 
writer in Australia worth reading, about viruses or anything else.
 rf> which puts him
 rf> way out in front of that PC World geek who did an
 rf> internationally
 rf> published "antivirus product review" last year using only
 rf> SIX viruses!
 rf> (The same PC World geek canned ThunderByte for Windows95
 rf> "because it
 rf> used heuristic cleaning rather than positive
 rf> identification" ... back in
 rf> the days when TBAV for Windows95 had NO cleaning functions
 rf> AT ALL!  So
 rf> much for _his_ credibility!)
You should have sued that stupid fuckhead for his back teeth!
 rf> Jimmy _is_ 99% right ... if you pull _most_ "independent"
 rf> AV tests apart
 rf> you'll find _some_ bias (in PC magazine tests you'll often
 rf> find blatant
 rf> lies and outright stupidity as well!) ... although now that
 rf> Dr Solomon's
 rf> no longer have a financial interest in Secure Computing the
 rf> Urban Myth
 rf> that "Solly always wins because Solly owns the magazine and
 rf> Solly
 rf> provides all the viruses" carries a lot less weight.
That might be the case NOW, but nobody, not even you, can tell me Dr. Solomon 
winning Secure Computing's Best Player of The Month Award month after month 
after month wasn't the result of biased testing!  Don't you think it's just a 
little bit TOO coincidental that the minute Dr. Solomon's business 
relationship with Secure Computing ends, AVP becomes #1 ???  I'm not knocking 
Dr. Solomon, it's a good program, and occasionally it might deserve to be #1, 
but it has NEVER been good enough to be #1 ALL THE TIME!  That's BULLSHIT, 
and you know it as well as I do!
LuKE
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