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From: ddaniel@lindy.stanford.edu (D. Daniel Sternbergh)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.mac.misc
Subject: Re: Disinfectant 2.0 vs SAM vs ?
Message-ID: <1990Aug14.014046.23305@morrow.stanford.edu>
Date: 14 Aug 90 01:40:46 GMT
References: <8918@ur-cc.UUCP> <1990Aug12.022538.17077@agate.berkeley.edu> <10750@accuvax.nwu.edu>
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Organization: Stanford University, Scool of Enginereing
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In article <10750@accuvax.nwu.edu> jln@acns.nwu.edu (John Norstad) writes:
>Many people mentioned that SAM Intercept can be configured to 
>automatically scan floppies when they are inserted, and they mentioned 
>this as an "advantage."  I don't see this as an advantage at all - I hate 
>that feature!  I find it obtrusive, ineffecient, and incredibly annoying!  
>The main purpose of a virus protection INIT is to block attempts by 
>viruses to spread, and to inform the user when such an attempt is made.  
>My INIT does this at the initial point of attack by the virus.  There's no 
>need to waste time scanning each floppy as it's inserted to accomplish 
>this basic goal.  I refuse to use any INIT or feature of an INIT which 
>significantly slows down my Mac!

Hear, hear!  And for anyone who has a "my Mac" this is a wonderful
feature of Disinfectant.  However, as administrator of two small
clusters, I've seen too many more naive users who need their stuff
("and I need it NOW") and either don't know what the incessant beeping
is or choose to ignore it.  The cost of that few seconds for a forced
scan is a small price for me to exact in exchange for pretty secure
protection and near-guarantee that you won't leave the cluster with
unwanted stuff you didn't come with.

In addition, in order to cut down on the number of infected disks
travelling around in general, forcing users to clean their disk or
have it spit out (we provide both SAM and Disinfectant, the latter for
the human interface) seems worthwhile.

>I like the Disinfectant human interface better than that of any of my 
>competitors.  I tried to keep it clean and simple.   

And did a beautiful job.  I keep a copy of Disinfectant on each
machine, and encourage people to take it for their own use.

	== Daniel ==

---------------------------
D. Daniel Sternbergh  
ddaniel@lindy.stanford.edu