nikos wrote:...+ common sense == safe
I do, as ever, try my best to live in a world without common-sense (White-Bread Middle-Class Secular Humanism). There is no freedom where there is "common sense" - no essense of exploration, no risk, no real sense of accomplishment. There is only "the task you are doing". How drab. There is a reason the French Expressionists did what they did: they had to.
That said, 99% of the time I completely forget the AV is even there... until once in a blue moon it jumps up and down screaming bloody murder - on something shown not to be a false-positive. That's not scaremongering. I'm actually rather disappointed it doesn't happen more often.
I could care less about tracking-cookies, ads, and banners, those are meaningless - even most "spyware" is de-facto harmless, merely intrusive. The freedom to download content (this is, after all, a consumer medium) is inherent to using the 'net. If one doesn't do anything more exciting than shop on Amazon, buy music from iTunes, and waste one's eyes on Facebook, then sure, go commando, no one will bother you.
There is, shall we say, a significant difference between the red-light districts of Amsterdam (white-bread), and those of the Closer-and-Far-East (Hemingway).
To paraphrase The Proclaimers, I can taste the difference between Margarine and Butter.
And besides, does
anyone actually care what Microsoft thinks we
must do to protect their humility?
Common-sense works both ways: if you intentionally hamstring yourself with "tread carefully" you won't get anywhere quickly - but show me a man in a hurry and I'll show you someone hastening to their death.
So against Evidence I submit Theories!
** On second thought, we need more posts in support of Scottish Nationalism. Whatever happened to the Proclaimers anyway?