How many viruses in the NOD database?

If you double your number the answer would be more realistic
And very close to scream bingo...

 

For comparison on that basis then IMO neither method is itself better but the AV that is more efficient is definately better.

 

It’s very much implied. E.g. an AV that bases itself on signatures alone, but only has 3 signatures is rather useless isn’t it? Also, while I did quote you, it was aimed at the ideas of AH presented in other posts.

I agree to an extent on the signatures point (it’s dependent on the signature, the AV’s abilities, the virus and so on) but stating the ability to clean a virus via a signature is not a straw man argument as nothing was misrepresented, nothing was set up in a manner to be easily disprovable, and it certainly doesn’t sidestep or mischaracterize your post so as to make your thoughts appear weak or ridiculous.

To clarify things as to what a straw man argument is, it is an argument that would be along the lines of: NOD’s AH are worthless! Why? Because it didn’t even protect me from the IM-Worm.Win32.Kelvir.a., therefore NOD should get rid of AH all together. (This was an IM virus that NOD’s AH did actually miss, and did not have signatures for) I guess word of the day T.P is only good for one thing

Hypothetical comparisons are off topic to the original post of how many signatures does NOD contain. It’s a post that asks for a simple quantification, not to hypothesize as to the quality of various AV’s.

Neil

 

Gauthreau, can you tell me a serious reason why a program feature should be removed because it did miss excactly this worm?

Nobody claims that NOD32's heuristic will detect every thing --- this is technically speaking impossible, there is always a way to avoid detection from every antivirus program --- no matter which brand.

That said: Very sorry that we didn't detect this worm beside of dirty pampers which could be detected because they smell, but we are looking forward to statisfy your requirements as well.

Cheers,
Happy Bytes

 

Happy, I don't believe that we should remove the AH feature from NOD because it missed a virus, I was using the removal of AH to demonstrate an example of a straw man argument and what a straw man argument is. The AH are a great addition and another line of defense in any AV.

Neil

 

There are many versions of straw man arguments. Here's one:

"Present a misrepresentation of the opponent's position, refute it, and pretend that the opponent's actual position has been refuted."

My argument:

(bold text added)

Your argument:

(bold text added)

Looks like a "straw man" to me.

 

Not by me, it wasn't.

Sez you!! I wasn't replying to Mike, but regardless: No they aren't, because that's not quite what he asked.

The OP asked:

The bolded area is a purely hypothetical question! I addressed the highlighted section directly, in my reply to webyourbusiness. Mike then goes on to ask:

My reply was conjecture, certainly, but it did address the highlighted portion above directly. As he provided the word "or" in his post, I didn't (and can't) answer the second portion of his sentence.

No it doesn't. Further, my post doesn't hypothesize as to the quality of an AV at all. It speaks to the perceived "importance" of having a huge db of signatures, and how that thinking can be distorted based on how AV's define and count "signatures"--doesn't matter what AV it is.