Google's malware warning

Google have given more details of the malware warning that they will be issuing at the top of their search engine. They have been able to identify around 2,000,000 infected machines on the basis of traffic sent to their servers.

A couple of things strike me about this:

• I wonder how applicable this technique could be to other servers in general? Could we see other sites performing a similar civic duty of warning users about potential malware.
• Given that one route of infection (which Google blames specifically as the culprit in this case) are those fake "Your computer has been infected" popups already littering the Internet, how do we give out a message to users that these popups should generally be ignored because they're likely to be fake, whilst at the same time issuing genuine warnings in an ostensibly similar manner?

I'm interested to hear your thoughts either here, or by tweeting to BitterCoffey.

Irritation, irritation, irritation...

Over 1,000 users of the Javamex have responded to the site's survey in which they were asked to vote for their most irritating software. It seems that the topic has struck a nerve...

I have a put up an initial hit parade of irritating software based on the first 100 repsonses (a more in-depth analysis of all results to be published shortly).

In first place, perhaps unsurprisingly, are antivirus programs. I've used practically every major antivirus program on the market, and have found every single one to be completely infuriating. Whether it's popping up irritating paranoic messages every few milliseconds, making it difficult to access certain web sites properly or slowing down your eight-core CPU to the speed of a ZX Spectrum on tranquilizers, every single antivirus product appears to be designed to make you want to throw your PC off a very high balcony.

I was somewhat reassured to find iTunes in second place. Especially under Windows, I have also personally found it to be one of the most buggy and infuriating pieces of software ever written. But whether it's freezing every five seconds, launching into a lengthy "sync" process just because I accidentally wanted to upload an extra song or thinking at random intervals that my iPhone has mysteriously transformed into a new one never seen before in the history of humanity, I now feel less alone in the universe knowing that other users share my view.

When your antivirus nags you worse than your mother: the power of bloatware

If you're looking to rub salt into that wound we call life, few things can top the mighty blue screen of death followed by the severe ticking off that comes from allowing thy computer to be shut down in an improper fashion.

But if there's one thing that comes close, it's got to be Antivirus software. Few other inventions succeed in reducing a squillion-gigahertz processor to the power of a ZX Spectrum. And on the scale of severe tickings off, little can beat the scolding that I received today from the antivirus I had trustily installed not four score and ten days ago.

- "For the last 90 days thou hast willingly deterred from scanning thy device for evil malware," quoth ye antivirus.
- "Evil what?", quoth I.
- "You know-- bad stuff like cookies and worms and shit.".
- "But isn't that your job?"

Alas, my assumptions regarding the autonomy of the antivirus software had proven false. Despite years of research into artificial intelligence and the inordinate number of clock cycles that said software consumed, it would transpire that scanning for evil malware was a task upon which it preferred not to take the initiative.

Thanks be to pointless bloatware.