Posts by Gareth Tansey

AVG disguises fake traffic as IE6

To Pat Bitton

You say "We're also continuing to gather data, and work with webmasters and analytics folks, and we still enable those webmasters who want to filter our requests out of their results to do so". Can you please explain this comment in more detail? I'd love to work with you, so give me a Web site to look at, or an e-mail address to start with. And how exactly can I filter if you look exactly like IE6.

By the way, my company's AVG license (25 user) has just expired and we're installing an alternative product. This is directly due to the fact that you are wasting processing time and bandwidth on our customers' Web sites. I did e-mail your sales e-mail address before we took this decision to invite your feedback, but I was ignored.

You fail to realise that some of your customers are also web hosts. And ignoring your customers is just plain rude.

It is not acceptable to "break eggs" to make omellettes when you don't own the bloody eggs!

You also haven't answered the question that's been posed time and time again when this story has been posted: "why don't you scan on demand instead of in advance" ?

Or the question of "hmmm.... how a malicious host can fool link scanner". If that were me (and I'm not the first to say so), I'd do it like this - don't put out any malware on the first visit from an IP address to a page in case link scanner identifies me, I'll put it out a bit later when the user actually visits. Or perhaps use a delayed or user initiated JavaScript redirect that Link Scanner won't pick up, to then go to another page stuffed full of malware.

Not only are you hurting the hosting industry and your customers, but your solution is inept.

Frankly, AVG are swimming against the tide. When will you listen? Turn this crap off.

Brit scientists brew up three-parent embryo

Back to David Cornes

David - enough "deep sympathy" to flame without reading my original post it would seem.

If you think I'm an idiot for wanting my own children, then I suspect you have never been (or decided to try to be) a parent. Fair enough, your choice. But are you abusive to everyone who makes a different choice?

I said in my original post that adoption was a choice we had and that it's a perfectly valid choice for some people. We're not all the same David, and it wasn't the option we went for. Don't think for one moment we didn't consider it and I really don't see why you think I'm insulting you or anyone else who is either adopted or who adopts.

Personally I respect the choices of others - it's called live and let live. The reason I posted was because Ian didn't respect other people's choices - he'd rather dictate that anyone who'd discovered a possible genetic problem should "get over themselves" and be forced to adopt. (It's Ian's choice to post and mine to flame in response...)

To IanKRolfe

Coming back to Ian... you're an idiot. A lucky idiot who, unlike me, has not watched their first born child die aged just shy of 7 months from a genetic condition.

If you had an informed opinion you might know that many genetic diseases are 'recessive' and are not passed on to every child. For example, Spinal Muscular Atrophy which killed my beautiful daughter, is a genetic condition for which 1 in 40 people are carriers - you might be a carrier yourself and not know it. If you happen to marry someone who is also a carrier there is a 1 in 4 chance of each child getting the condition.

Hence you might find that some mothers (and fathers) with "damaged" DNA (in one strand, not both, hence carrier not affected) would still like to have children!! For many conditions you simply have to procreate and hope for the best. If you've ever sat waiting for 8 weeks for a CVS test to tell you if your next child will die, then I'd consider you qualified to comment.

So yes, any research like this that might stop children dying is valuable in my opinion - I don't value yours. On the plus side we do have two healthy kids now - thanks to research that let us know if they were going to be affected or not and giving us the opportunity to make a decision not to terminate the pregnancy. Of course we did have the choice whether to go for adoption as well, and that's a perfectly valid choice too. We wanted our own children though.