New Google Security Reward Program Announcement 32
jones_supa writes Since 2010, Security Reward Programs have been one cornerstone of Google's relationship with the security research community. In 2014, the company rewarded 200 different researchers with a total amount of $1.5 million. Google wants to celebrate the participants' contributions to the company, and in turn, their contributions back to the researchers. For 2015, two additions to the programs are being announced. It has been noted that researchers' efforts through these programs, combined with Google's internal security work, have made it increasingly difficult to find bugs. Of course, that's good news, but it can also be discouraging when researchers invest their time and struggle to find issues. With this in mind, today Google is rolling out a new, experimental program: Vulnerability Research Grants. These are up-front awards that will be provided to researchers before they even submit a bug. To learn more about the current grants, and review your eligibility, have a look at the rules page. Second, also starting today, all mobile applications officially developed by Google on Google Play and iTunes will now be within the scope of the Vulnerability Reward Program.
Google AV... baked in with every product. (Score:2)
Google's got something ahead of the antivirus vendors... they're paying to prevent the hole from being open rather than setting up to block what comes in the hole. Chrome's main problem has been "feature not implemented" rather than takeovers that were seen in the early days of Internet Explorer. ChromeOS products are looking to be cheap user machines, and there's yet to be a need for antivirus there.
Factor the price of an antivirus subscription into every Windows machine you're running, and maybe non-progr
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Just because they're sold doesn't mean they actually get used.
A lot of those sales are probably accidental purchases. For example, suppose somebody who isn't all that technical (which is still most people) wants to buy a low-end Windows laptop. They go to Amazon, and see some laptops on there for $200. They like that price, but they don't realize that ChromeOS isn't Windows. Even if they know or notice that there's a difference, they probably don't realize just how crippled ChromeOS is. They buy the laptop, and it arrives several days later. They start using it, find that it can't run their Windows programs, and it's otherwise useless. Not wanting to go through the hassle of returning it, or perhaps out of embarrassment for a bad purchase, they just stick the Chromebook in a drawer and forget about it. Or perhaps the Chromebook was given as a gift, and the recipient can't return it even if they wanted to.
Some of the purchases are probably by more technical people who end up installing a real Linux distro on these Chromebooks, so they can use them as cheap, throw-away laptops. I know one fellow who bought one before he did some traveling, because he didn't want to risk damaging or losing his normal laptop. He wouldn't care so much if his $200 Chromebook got damaged or lost. He would care if his $2800 rMBP got damaged or lost, though. As soon as he was done traveling, he went right back to his MacBook, and his Chromebook sits unused.
And I know there are a token number of Google fanatics who actually try to use their Chromebooks with ChromeOS. They'll rail on about how "great" ChromeOS is, even though they end up using their Windows laptop most of the time for anything aside from web browsing.
Don't be deceived by what you see on Amazon. It very well may not be the real picture.
and you are ?
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Can ghostery/adblock do 17 things hosts do for speed, security, & reliability:
Yep, sure can.
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Err Windows contain a very good antivirus by default. Its actually better than anything you can buy.
Not only that - but using Google-only products drives you to an ecosystem that is going to be worse than Windows ever was.
Arguably, Windows, will all of its shortcomings was and still is pretty damn open.
Not in code, but in APIs, tools, etc. That's actually how it won so much marketshare in the 90's. (its now also getting more and more open in code, tho).
ChromeOS on the other end, is pretty closed. You want a
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No it isn't, the reports are heavily biased as they test for areas that MSE isn't designed to address, as an AV product it is excellent however you should combine MSE (anti virus) with an antimalware product (like malwarebytes) depending on what you are using your machine for.
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If your business is so simple that you can operate in a browser then you can just as easily lock down a windows machine to only let the browser run, hell you don't even need to use ie or AV software then if you do it correctly.
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If you're browser-only... why do you need Windows? Linux/Chromium seems able to handle that.