I grow weary of wasting heartbeats while Norton AntiVirus screens every packet of data streaming my way. There must be a better way. We need a Robin Hood character who can seek out and expose all of these miserable wieners who write malicious code. Their pimpled, smirking faces should be plastered all over the web. We should return to the puritanical method of locking them in stocks in the public square for all to come by and hurl epithets and rotten cabbages at them.
Lamentations on Chemistry
Editorials of a Scientist Political
Lamentations on Chemistry 
http://www,kaspersky.com
malware
http://www.zonealarm.com/
firewall
http://lavasoft.com/
Ad-Alert (weekly scan; don’t install continuous)
http://www.spycop.com/
Just because you’re paranoid doesn’t mean they aren’t after you
ESET NOD32 might outdo even Kaspersky, but it’s a giant pain. Your first problem is getting rid of Norton. Uninstall is only the start. Uncle Al recommends ZTREE to manage your hard drive. ZTREE asks permission before it does anything hazardous – idiot resistant.
http://www.ztree.com/
http://www.mazepath.com/uncleal/zt.zip
Default screen colors are awful! You might try this, or go in and reconfigure it yourself.
Bit-defender is O.K. Problem with Norton is you can’t uninstall it (try it-it wraps itself around components). It is evil software that is annoying in the extreme.
Best to just scan once or twice a week then shut it off. A good firewall such as outpost will check for virus like behavior. Outpost (made by Russians) is excellent for this purpose and doesn’t interfere. It will also reveal how much your Microsoft software/operating system is contacting the mothership (which is just about all the time).
Threatfire – for zero day threats
Avira Personal – for general av
Firewall – for blocking outgoing packets from Trojans
Spybot S&D – to kill spyware and immunize browsers
or just go back to your roots…
(i.e. get a Mac)
No, no, no! The problem doesn’t lie in finding a better malware killer but rather stems from stopping the some $8 billion malware protection industry and those evil doers up in Redmond. These organizations rely on malware for their revenue stream and thus have no real intent on stopping it or the billion dollar online malware industry.
If Microsuck and their evil drones really wanted to stop malware it would just go away. They (either through negligence or malevolent plan) leave holes in their crapware that allows “…pimpled, smirking faces…” to create these horrible programs that cost this planet so much money.
How many security updates has Microsuck issued in the last few years? How many people have had to purchase new, faster CLEAN machines because of the holes in Windows?
How many times have you had to update your virus databases? How many upgrades have you had to buy?
Patch the damn holes in the OS and eliminate those cycle-sucking-hack-on-a-patch-on-a-bandaid malware hunters!
It’s like paying protection money. Demand a better operating system and you won’t have this problem.
“cycle-sucking-hack-on-a-patch-on-a-bandaid”
There ya go, the chewy nougat core of the problem.
I do want a Mac. It’s just that I still have 3 older PC’s in the garage each waiting for a monitor and an operating system. One will go to the radio telescope.
Uncle Al- Thanks for the helpful links. I appreciate it.
Yes, a Mac…wonder if I could their educational discount as a consultant to a “.ac.uk”