Okay CharleyO. I see what you mean. I thought perhaps that each member map might correspond to the posts on the particular page that is being viewed. Which is a bit too much to ask really, isn't it. Wishful thinking on my part, all part of being on the web on a regular basis and seeing what I deem to be interesting things unfolding at an steady rate.
And in all honesty, I'm just being light-hearted about the forum members and their countries of origin, with the forum very much being a global forum like you say, and quite remarkably so, and I'm also having a slight dig at my own country, where being adept with computer on the web is not exactly held in high regard in many circles, where reading the local newspaper in hard copy is often considered to be the height of civil behavior, despite that the print media here like everywhere else on the globe have basically succumbed to their digital counterparts on the internet. (For myself, I have read the local newspaper or digital equivalent - a la carte, of my own choosing - long before most of the people in this country have woken up).
The zoom into the members map certainly accentuates the point about the web being media channel that is everywhere for everyone at all the same time, not perfectly so, but certainly like never before, every individual interest, every available democracy, every available history, every available opportunity, all catered for in a single accessible pursuit, as much as can be made possible, and granted that the channel will never be brought about perfectly so.
And yet, we have this week the release of Microsoft Security Essentials, a software suite designed to protect computers that are located 'in the wild', for users outside the secure shells of the established institutional zones, long the target domains of expensive software suites, the likes of which were at one time the primary and often only consideration of the Microsoft corporate strategy. It would seem that the tide is now changing, and that MS itself is ready to play ball with the fair traders of the computer security world like Alwil Software, who for many years now, I can say personally, have helped me keep my customers satisfactorily protected at a reasonable cost from the perpetrators of malware. These customers being children, students, old people, solo mums, and the like, people who by necessity must run their software in the wild. I can only hope that the years to come can be as amenable to the software systems I encounter as have avast antivirus made the years that have recently passed. The establishment of MS Technet Security and Malware Protection Center over the last year certainly point to that likelihood. I think we can surely live with the renewed energy of a fresh wave of security software, not only for those who sit safely within the secure seams of institutional establishments, but also for us individual users who work in the wild and must make our own proactive steps in software acumen and aptitude, if we are to traverse the same perils as those that confront the large organisations. When I posted my own just in time location within the global domain that is avast members forum, I thought possibly there might be others who likewise could post individual locations to show truly just how global is the space we occupy at avast, and how growing are the remedial solutions that manifest just in time to help us protect the personal technology that we use. We do this already, of course, every time we post to the forum. Its just that I havent seen an internet forum quite so spontaneously global (for a long time), while at the same time being roundly focused on solving people's problems. I think it has certainly got a lot to do with the quality of the avast product.
