The Finch Formerly Known As Gold

2 February 2006

This is no way to make friends

Especially on the day before a heinous worm is supposed to crap all over us:

You may experience problems with updating your [antivirus] program. The error message you will receive is "Fatal Error 3". We are aware of the problem and are working to post a fix shortly. Please try the update again later. Please do not open a technical support issue related to this problem.

Not that I'm worried — if I'm reading this right, I already have a signature file to detect this little POS — but I know an awful lot of people who don't.

(Macintosh partisans: go ahead and gloat, but be sure to identify yourself as such. Not that it's hard to tell. Besides, it's not like Chairman Bill is looking out for us.)

(Update, 4:15 pm: Fixed.)

Posted at 2:22 PM to PEBKAC


http://www.apple.com

:)

Posted by: Luke at 2:31 PM on 2 February 2006

No worms crapping here.

signed, a linux devotee

Posted by: Thomas Pfau at 5:31 PM on 2 February 2006

My scan starts in six minutes.

It was originally scheduled for tomorrow night...

Posted by: McGehee at 6:53 PM on 2 February 2006

Yeah - company PC finally came around ... only to come home and discover that the home PC has lost the ability to do real time and email scanning. And firing off a manual scan triggers a "failure to initialise engine" error.

Right now, all it can do is update the virus sig file.

At least they're all British proper about it.

Posted by: Mel at 7:49 PM on 2 February 2006

I accept your gracious invitation and am gloating even as I type. Thank you.

Posted by: Brett at 9:52 PM on 2 February 2006

It seems that my PC got a half-a$$ed engine update. I was forwarded to an FAQ page that needed Netscape 4.7 or IE 5.0 fer cryin' out loud.

Posted by: Mel at 11:24 PM on 2 February 2006

You could do like a large school district in the metro and just leave the computer off when you're not using it.

Oh, did I mention the computer they turn off at night is the mail server? I have to admit, it IS secure.

I'm not going to gloat. Anyone who actually cares about the tired Mac/Windows debate has already taken precautions.

People who haven't may get hit. Then a small but nonzero percentage of them will go into the Apple store and say "Hey, I heard that the iPod computer doesn't get viruses. Does it have a cupholder?" Wash, rinse, repeat, at LEAST until Vista comes out, then perhaps longer.

So everything works out in the end. Here's hoping Vista is a bit more secure.

I personally don't care what computer you use, as long as you don't call me to fix it.

Posted by: Dan at 11:57 PM on 2 February 2006

Gloating is unseemly. Of course, if seemly gloating were possible, I'd be right there with it.

Posted by: Mister Snitch! at 1:09 AM on 3 February 2006