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Official Announcements / The countdown.
« Last post by Josh on July 26, 2006, 02:30 PM »Only 8 hours 30 minutes left (EST)...
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Hi there!
I'm glad that you are suggesting new names for the program
Josh: thanks for the screencast!
I noticed it's quie weird, though. This means i need your full specs, to try to trace the bug. Tell me, normally the command is on the right of your screen or did it happen only on the screencast? (did you change your resolution or are you using some function of the screencast program?)
I also noticed the grid is all messed up :S-jgpaiva (July 23, 2006, 02:38 PM)
And again jgp, great job! Let me know and thanks!I've found Microsoft's recent forays into customer relations with Windows Genuine Advantage (WGA) to be somewhat amusing. I mean, after all, Microsoft is a huge company just brimming with really smart people. How could they do something so silly?
If you're not up on the WGA saga, here's a recap. Microsoft announced its Genuine Advantage software initiative in March 2006. It's designed as part of the company's wider assault on software piracy (another infamous part of this fight, Product Activation, won fame and fortune for Microsoft went XP was released in late 2001). The Genuine Advantage initiative is comprised of three parts: Education (customers should understand the risks of pirated software), Engineering (Microsoft's ongoing investment in anti-counterfeiting technologies and product features), and Enforcement (Microsoft is helping law enforcement agencies go after the world's worst software pirates).
WGA is a component of the Engineering part of that unholy triumvirate. It's a bit of software that gets installed on Windows XP (it's part of Windows Vista right out of the gate, naturally) and is comprised of two components. The first, dubbed WGA Validation, determines whether the version of Windows on which its running is legitimate. The second component, WGA Notifications, displays annoying alerts on pirated Windows copies and provides a way for the user to pay for a legitimate copy of Windows.
Antivirus applications from Symantec, McAfee or Trend Micro -- the three leading AV vendors in 2005 -- are far less likely to detect new viruses and Trojans than the least popular brands.
This has nothing to do with the quality of the software or how long it takes the respective firms to update their clients with signatures and other malware countermeasures.
AV companies continue to refine their products and most will tell you they stopped relying on purely signature-based systems many years ago. These days they use all sorts of clever methods to try and detect suspicious behaviour but the problem is that malware authors are also very clever. Very, very clever.
