Thursday, February 9, 2012
Security
Error 404--Not Found |
From RFC 2068 Hypertext Transfer Protocol -- HTTP/1.1:10.4.5 404 Not FoundThe server has not found anything matching the Request-URI. No indication is given of whether the condition is temporary or permanent. If the server does not wish to make this information available to the client, the status code 403 (Forbidden) can be used instead. The 410 (Gone) status code SHOULD be used if the server knows, through some internally configurable mechanism, that an old resource is permanently unavailable and has no forwarding address. |
Symantec vs. Hotbar: Who won?
An escalating dispute last year between Symantec and Hotbar.com, which makes ad-suppported software that Symantec's anti-spyware software can detect and delete, came to a head in a lawsuit filed last June by Symantec. In that lawsuit, Symantec fought against Hotbar for the right to eradicate the Hotbar software, which displays advertising on the user's Windows-based desktop. This week, the two opponents settled the lawsuit with the understanding that Symantec will consider Hotbar as "low risk." According to Symantec, low risk means "something we generally recommend that users can ignore." Hotbar 's CEO Oren Dobronsky explains why he's happy with the lawsuit's settlement.
"I am extremely happy with the outcome," says Dobronsky, head of the New York City-based firm, which does its software development in Israel.
Under the settlement, Symantec wll not automatically detect and delete Hotbar as had been the case before, but will let the Hotbar user decide to make that choice. "Originally, Symantec was eradicating it by default," said Dobronsky.
"We didn't like being called adware. We don't think we're adware," said Dobronsky. "We think we're ad-supported software."
Dobronsky said the only way to install the Hotbar software, which allows access to electronic greeting cards, graphics and other services while serving up ads, is to go directly to the Hotbar site.
An unexpected repercussion from the closely watched lawsuit, however, is that Hotbar suddenly got a huge amount of attention from Microsoft, which is also getting into the spyware/adware-eradication game.
Microsoft's AntiSpyware software, now called Defender, which went into its second beta last month, hadn't been detecting and eradicating Hotbar by default, according to Dobronsky.
"But Microsoft changed it to detect us as 'high risk' once we were in a dispute with Symantec," he said. Dobronsky said Hotbar is now negotiating with Microsoft to get the Redmond giant to lower the designated Hotbar rating to "medium risk."
The dispute with Symantec "made us detected" by other vendors as well, including McAfee, Dobronsky said.
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