Norton Go Home! We don't want you!

[Thaddeus P. Floryan]

In article <457 at bria> uunet!bria!mike writes:
>>>It depends.  Since Norton attaches itself, virus-like, to my kernel, and
>>>[...]
>>
>...like" behaviour.  Regardless, there _is_ something wrong when a foreign
>entity (ie: NU) attaches itself to my kernel, and induces it to lie about
>the number of free blocks on my system.  'Nuff said.

Far be it for me to defend ANYTHING from the MS-DOS world (esp. when my
opening line at many users' group meetings (Amiga, UNIX, etc.) here in the
SF Bay Area is "MS-DOS vadanya" :-) or from Peter Norton and his minions,
but from the descriptions of how NU insinuates itself into a kernel so as
to be even able to handle, for example, an unlink() syscall, how does this
approach differ from ((dynamically) loadable) device drivers?

Conceptually, detecting file deletions in the kernel (or a "module" thereof)
seems the correct approach and does not require that everyone's $PATH include
the directory where a rm-replacement program or shell script resides.

The kernel-insinuation approach has also been used on other systems to provide
bug-fixes and enhancements to kernel-vendor software.  On some systems this
approach is ALSO the preferred method of inflicting viral action; such is life.

It seems to me, as a casual observer (of this discussion thread), most of
the comments arise from an innate hatred of Norton, MS-DOS, and their ilk.

I'm getting the impression the current arguments are stemming from:

1. you don't have the source to the NU, and

2. you didn't of this approach yourself first!  :-)


Thad Floryan [ thad at btr.com (OR) {decwrl, mips, fernwood}!btr!thad ]