Annoyances: The Necessity for Virus Scanning
I don't have a great deal of confidence with Microsoft's Windows operating system. In fact, but for the rare requirement placed on me by work (e.g. software platform testing), I never use the stuff. The wife, however, has loads of psychological testing software that is, and likely forever will be, available on Microsoft Windows only. So she's stuck with it and as a result has become quite adept at using it. Now, I could ween her off the stuff and run Windows inside of Parallels or WINE or something. But, meh, I don't want to go through the hassle... my operating system worldview is my own and hers is hers.

It seems that - out of necessity - the Microsoft Windows operating system and virus scanning software goes hand and hand. I don't have any virus scanning software running on my Linux desktop. In fact, I doubt that such software even exists for Linux. The same goes for Apple's Mac OS X. But you wouldn't dare run Microsoft's Windows OS on a machine without a virus scanner permanently running in the background... software that takes up CPU cycles and a relatively large memory footprint. Microsoft has built in software, the "Security Center" or some such, that will visibly complain if virus scanning software isn't installed.

Think about how absolutely rediculous such a scenario is... and yet it is widely accepted as the status quo. For example, let's say that I sold a locking file cabinet. I advertise that my locking file cabinet is easy to use and very secure. But I didn't really design the file cabinet all that well and the safeguards to prevent someone from opening the file cabinet without permission are easily circumvented. And not only that, once inside a file cabinet the intruder is able to scan all the documents and install some residual widget that will remotely scan anything put in my file cabinet in the future. Now rather than fix my file cabinet's design, other companies start selling tripwire systems that are only triggered when an intruder uses previously reported unauthorized access pathways. But the tripwires do not prevent all unauthorized access pathways, only the ones that have heretofore been discovered. Not to worry... when new pathways are discovered, new tripwire systems are deployed almost immediately... that is, if you are paying the tripwire manufacturers yearly subscription fees.

Now all things being equal, how successful do you think my file cabinet would be?

With that being said, the tandem of Microsoft Windows and virus scanning software is a farce. Even after you have paid hundreds of dollars to Microsoft for the OS, and even after you have paid for and continue to pay for (via a subscription model) virus scanning software... any one of an innumerable amount of yet-to-be-discovered exploits will circumvent the whole thing. Virus scanning on Microsoft Windows is based on a reactive model, not on a proactive one. It's an absolute joke.

You might have guessed that I spent part of my day figuring out what adware had surreptitiously installed itself on my wife's laptop (it was this one). But I don't blame my wife... she didn't design the operating system. My neighbors up in Redmond did.

(Update Sun May 3 20:45:08 PDT 2009 // changed categories from daily_journal -> annoyances)

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