You might have noticed a lack of evening and night blogging. Well, unless you’re in Austria or Japan, guess it might seem different there.
Anyway, it’s all a part of how crazily complicated our technical lives are getting. I had to get a new home computer recently, which came with 2 free months of Norton Security. I waited until the last moment to renew, but forgot I already had a Norton account using my work email address. So I did it through that.
Next problem: can’t access my work account from home without my physical “SecurID” token, plus the necessary passwords and incantations and the secret footshake, which throws off the “secret handshake” crowd. (And the non-flexible, of course.)
So naturally I keep forgetting to bring the token home.
Thus, currently my computer has no immune system. And it’s terrifying. I’m not even turning it on until I can go straight to my work account and Norton.
(But maybe “Luddite” isn’t the right word for someone who stops using a computer in favor of playing his PS3 on a 65-inch television. “Luckite” is probably better. This is the rare moment when I’m grateful for middle-class wealth exceeding the dreams of ancient kings and emperors.)
If I manage to keep screwing up the update, I guess I could still blog from home. But I’d better stay on the well-beaten digital paths, right? You guys will have to find your own tentacle pron for a few days.
World's Only Rational Man 
I’ve been running ZoneAlarm as firewall and Avira as anti-virus for a while now. And I’m very satisfied. Commodo and Online Armor are two excellent firewalls. Avira and Kaspersky are two excellent avs. I’m personally not a fan of Norton. I don’t like their firewall at all.
When all else fails…
http://www.microsoft.com/en-us/security_essentials/default.aspx
Honestly though, it seems like it works fine, but doesn’t buff the FW.
And RSA…twitch…
The MS stuff is usually sufficient, especially the 7 FW is actually decent, compared to the XP counterpart. But I prefer using software from companies who are specialists in their respective areas. I wish MS would realize that and stop trying to do everything with Windows.
Not a big Norton fan. Switched to Vipre a few years back. One network of 900 machines and we seldom have an issue that isn’t user related.
Avast! or AVG or MS Security Essentials can tide you over though.
AVG generally gives me the creeps. That one update they did a few years back. Oh dear. That was just awful.
It also helps when, if running Firefox, you use addons like Adblock Plus and, very good, NoScript. NoScript is essentially Firefoxe’s condom and you can chose which server is allowed to run which scripts on the website you’re looking at.
This should be an interesting article for you, W.O.R.M.:
http://blogs.the-american-interest.com/berger/2011/09/07/is-god-above-the-constitution/
Good article, thanks! I do believe the Constitution is the greatest secular document in history.