Wow!  Yesterday’s PETA turkey massacre reminded me of an old episode of WKRP in Cincinnati.  To my amazement, I found a video clip from it uploaded onto Yahoo Video!  Isn’t technology great?  I just had to share this holiday classic!

So in less than a month Grisoft has issued false-positives for their AVG (free and pay editions, 7.5 and 8 versions) virus definitions that claimed the incredibly commonly used firewall - CheckPoint Zone Alarm - is a virus, as well as that almost always used (because it’s Windows)  Microsoft Windows XP kernel file: user32.dll.  Now one, but two extemely commonly used files marked as viruses when they’re clearly not.  This should have been caught in testing before release to the world at large, because if these programs aren’t installed on the test bed, then what the heck is?

Well, it ain’t over.  Not by a long shot.

Because now in less than a month we have three, yes, count them, three false-positives from commonly used software.  That’s right.  Just shortly after smearing egg on their face with the Windows user32.dll false positive, Grisoft went and released a false positive of … Adobe Flash.  Yes, that’s right.  That little bit of software used all over the place on the internet.  That practically anyone who surfs the web has installed.  That just as clearly should be in Grisoft’s test bed.  That Adobe Flash.

I don’t think it could possibly get much more embarrassing for Grisoft at this point.  I mean it was bad enough when they instituted their Link Scanner that automatically pre-scanned common search results, causing web page hits across the world to jump insanely high when people weren’t actually visiting the sites, just getting them returned as search results.  That was bad.

But now three major false-positives, one of which rendered customer’s computers inoperative if they acted on it, in less than a month.

Hello?!

There was a time when I would have said that Grisoft AVG was hands down one of the best anti-virus software packages out there.  It had a lot to offer, and was well refined, even for the free version.  It used less resources than the majors from Norton and McAfee and worked just as well.  And so I’d used it for years.

In all fairness, I can no longer make such a statement.  There are others out there that are better.  There are others out there that are actually taking the time to test before release.

I’m not saying don’t use Grisoft.  If you have it, and like it, then by all means, the choice is yours.  But if you’re looking for something new, maybe, sadly, it’s time to look somewhere else.  Grisoft no longer inspires confidence.

It’s almost surprising really.  People actually want Windows 7, so much so that they’re already pirating it.  This is no mean trick since it’s pre-beta.  Yet it isn’t entirely unexpected, as news of the private beta hit Microsoft’s Professional Developers Conference.  All it takes is a single leak.

Well, a single leak, and someone who actually cares.

Apparently, people care.

Torrent sites such as Mininov, Pirate Bay, and Seedpeer are hosting the 32-bit and 64-bit versions of the Windows 7 pre-beta.  (Not that I support piracy.  I don’t.  But it’s interesting that the Windows 7 pre-beta is already being pirated.)  It’s almost like a wildfire.  People haven’t been this interested in a Microsoft OS since XP.  It almost makes me wonder if there wasn’t some intent there, somewhere.  But of course not.  Microsoft would never do anything so drastic to take people’s minds off of Vista…

Meanwhile, Microsoft says that the official open beta of Windows 7 will begin in early 2009.  Just in time for people to have gotten over that it won’t be there for the Christmas rush, but not so far away that people forget it entirely.  Good planning on Microsoft’s part.  The sooner that they can get people to forget the name “Vista”, the better.  But not before they’ve milked it for all they can, of course.  Nothing says sales like Christmas.  Let the replacement’s beta come after then.

Well, whatever games be afoot, let’s just hope that this time, when Microsoft releases Windows 7 for real and in full, that it’s actually tested and fixed.  I look forward to Microsoft’s next great OS … just so long as it actually works.

The scene?  Japan.  The plot: Murder.

Well … virtual murder.

According to a release from the Associated Press, after a 43 year old Japanese woman logged in to her character on Maple Story, she found that her virtual husband had divorced her, without giving any warning or reason. Infuriated by his behavior, she logged in to his account (using the password that he gave her earlier when they were in virtual marital bliss) and deleted his character.  Ha!  Hell hath no fury like a virtual wife scorned!

And then, in the real world, she was arrested on charges of suspicion of illegally accessing a computer and manipulating electronic data.  And she was taken 620 miles across the country - from her home in southern Miyazaki to be detained in Sapporo, where her virtually deceased ex-husband lives - to await trial.

If convicted, she could face a prison term up to five years.  For virtual murder.  In a video game.

Let this be a lesson to you.

So Firefox has released some much-needed fixes.  From memory corruption to privilege escalation.

While it’s nice to see such high priority fixes being worked on, one can’t help but wonder what “Forced mouse drag” was doing in the lot with them.  Still, any security hole that gets boarded up is one less attack route.

What I’m personally really hoping to see is that Firefox 3 can finally address its incredible slowness in closing.  Since Firefox 2 didn’t suffer from such a horrible fate, I know it must be possible to resolve.  Just as the spell checker being suddenly dumber than a brick in Firefox 3 when it was actually useful in Firefox 2.  Can we please just revert that code if nothing else?

Anywho, so at least Mozilla is trying.  They are fixing the turd that is Firefox 3.  Maybe it’ll even eventually, one day, be as useful as Firefox 2 was.

Now if they’d only design it so that you can turn off and hide features that you don’t want…