Only a few days after the AusCERT announced that the top antivirus firms are the ones least able to find viruses, Microsoft has catapulted itself into the #2 sales position with…wait for it…agressive pricing. Selling for $19.99 instead of $49.99/year seems to make more people buy your software. Who would have thought? Microsoft was quoted saying:

“We see our comprehensive ‘PC Care’ approach as a new and important direction for consumer PC services and are encouraged to see that more consumers are taking steps to effectively protect and maintain their PCs,” Samantha McManus, a business strategy manager at Microsoft, said in an e-mailed statement.

Yes, it is good to see that they can sell more units at half-price the price of their competitor’s product, but do we believe they are selling better units? Can someone find anything to show that “effectively protect and maintain” translates to a reasonable boost in user safety with One Care versus other products (e.g. fair competition on quality/price) or is this just about distribution targets and sales numbers for Microsoft (e.g. price alone)? In other words, will they consider themselves most successful when they have reached the #1 antivirus product by number of users even though they are found to be the least effective against virus infections? Something about the AusCERT warning tells me the whole AV “industry-leader” ranking system needs an overhaul…

The Register has noted that AOL apologized for exposing the search data from their users:

“This was a screw-up, and we’re angry and upset about it,” AOL spokesman Andrew Weinstein said, AP reports. “It was an innocent enough attempt to reach out to the academic community with new research tools, but it was obviously not appropriately vetted, and if it had been, it would have been stopped in an instant.”

That is close to what I had expected would come out of this, as I mentioned before. But the apology is unlikely to cool the jets of the EFF, which has filed a complaint with the FTC. Perhaps most embarassing to AOL is the fact that the EFF is accusing them of violating their stated Privacy Policy. They are also arguing that AOL should not be allowed to store more than 14 days worth of search records on users. And that makes me wonder if AOL might eventually offer an interface like Scroogle for those who want to opt-out of AOL’s analytics/tracking.

I have not seen any reports on how the new security regulations impact flight attendants. I started to wonder about it so I did some checking and found out that flights to/from London have not allowed attendants to bring bags on board. This means that they are working without anything more than their apron and notepad. Moreover, unlike their old method of racing from the plane to hotel, they now have to wait in the baggage claim area, which adds several hours to their workday. And finally, the TSA and airlines have had to discuss how to compensate the attendants for the toiletries, makeup and other items they need to purchase each trip when the new security rules force them to throw it away.

Perhaps someone is reporting on this, but so far I have not found it in the news.