Read a very bad article on the BBC website about free security software. Very bad because it suggests that people using free security software, may be using software which doesn't do the job, failing to stop many attacks or even importing trojans.

All, of course, entirely true, but providing the entirely false impression that software you paid for is going to do any better. Security software is like insurance — you don't know if it's any good, until you get in trouble. Actually, it's even worse with than insurance; when you crash your car, they might actually pay up. With security software, by the time you find that it's rubbish your machine has been trashed. However are you to purchase wisely, when you have no ability to judge, and where all the "experts" have a stake — they guy slagging off free products works for McAfee.

Been having an interesting discussion on the relative merits of mailing lists as opposed to web forums. Personally, I hate having to read things in web forums, because I am always find the interface terrible, particularly for writing notes as you are largely limited to a rubbish text box. Part of the reason why I hate web forums so much, though, is because I am a Gnus user; it was originally a usenet, news group reader and it's user interface it designed for reading high traffic, where most of what you want you get, you don't want to read. When I was had to use Outlook earlier this academic year, I was in real troubles, because it's user interface could just not cope with large amounts of traffic — click, click, point, read, click, click, right click, mark, read — read by date or by thread, but not both.

However, during the discussion I realised that there was a display that Gnus doesn't do; it would be really nice if the summary display — a threaded, indented set of subject lines — could also display the first four of five lines of text underneath. Currently, subjects and contents are heavily mixed.