United States Leads Global Malware Infections

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PudgyChicken

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This has to be one of the worst written articles I've ever seen in a long time. Allow me to point out some errors in your last paragraph.

The infection rate per PC shifts this story as Turkey showed especially infections per 1000 computers scanned.

That one is pretty self-explanatory.

According to Microsoft 36.8 of 1000 PCs in Turkey were affected by malware in 2010.

You should say "of every 1000 PCs," the way you have it makes it seem like Turkey only has 1000 PCs...

Other countries with high infection rates were Spain with 36.1.

I feel like this is pretty self explanatory as well, though I'm compelled to explain a little. Spain is one country. If you're making a list you need to include the other countries in the same sentence.

Countries with low infection rates were Mongolia (1.3), Bangladesh (1.4), Belarus (1.6), Philippines (3.1), Austria (3.4), India (3.8) and Japan (4.4)

You must always be consistent when you're writing lists. If you start out just writing the number after the country (without parentheses), then you should stick to that method throughout your article.

Also try to remember to use a period at the end of your last sentence. That's just embarrassing.

Tom's needs to hire some editors, or if they already have editors, they need to fire them and hire new ones. This is just sad.
 

jrharbort

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This doesn't come as a surprise considering the level of tech knowledge your average American PC user possesses. I'm American myself, but I'm even admitting that I agree these figures seem accurate. People these days just aren't educated about using safe browsing habits.

I've been using no anti-virus at all for over 5 years now, and zero infections to date. Even if I did get one, it's a lot of fun figuring out what makes it tick and removing it manually.
 

PudgyChicken

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I'm compelled to continue pointing out errors.

No other country in the world does not even come close in terms of the absolute number of infections.

This is called a "double negative." The way this segment is written actually means every country.

This number is based on Windows systems as well as computers that run Microsoft's security software as well, but the distance to the second place is considerable: Brazil had just about 2.0 to 2.9 million infections per quarter in 2010, followed by China with 1.9 to 2.2 million.

You used "as well" twice. Something tells me you don't even proofread your own articles.

The use of the word "but" is unprecedented. It would be better to present the following fact as its own sentence.
 

eddieroolz

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I think the most important numbers are the rate, not just the raw numbers. In terms of infection rate, it looks like the US isn't doing too bad.
 
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Grammar police aside, I can see why: Microsoft has been unable to provide Microsoft Security Essentials on the installation media, and not everyone goes and gets AVG or another anti virus software, so that means the thousands of people who buy crap Dell and HP and other comps with Norton on them after the trial is up, they don't use anything. Combined with the fact they believe everything they read in emails....

So in a way, it is Symantec's, McAfee's, AVG's, and Kapersky's fault, and especially the stupid EU's fault, that Microsoft is unable to provide a preinstalled antimalware product that would prevent 99% of these infections.

Maybe that's what this article is trying to do.
 

Anomalyx

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Nothing surprising to see here, people. Unless you want to laugh at poor writing.

This article has the grammar level equivalent of an email from the Prince of Nigeria.
The US has a rate of 11.6 per 1000 infected PCs (they seemed to omit this in the article), which isn't bad compared to Turkey's 36.8. Still not good, but the article twisted the numbers with words to make it sound like it's a bigger deal than it is. Kinda like with those Foxconn suicides a while back. If I recall correctly, the suicide rate of Foxconn factory workers was lower than the national average, yet Foxconn was taking all sorts of flak that it was so high.
 

alidan

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[citation][nom]Zebrass[/nom]Grammar police aside, I can see why: Microsoft has been unable to provide Microsoft Security Essentials on the installation media, and not everyone goes and gets AVG or another anti virus software, so that means the thousands of people who buy crap Dell and HP and other comps with Norton on them after the trial is up, they don't use anything. Combined with the fact they believe everything they read in emails....So in a way, it is Symantec's, McAfee's, AVG's, and Kapersky's fault, and especially the stupid EU's fault, that Microsoft is unable to provide a preinstalled antimalware product that would prevent 99% of these infections.Maybe that's what this article is trying to do.[/citation]

elaborate.

personaly we have 3 computers up and running here.

2 are quad core over kill machines, one is 3 core laptop.

personally if i dont see a noticeable performance drop, i don't care whats on the computer. if you want to talk about pc quality, my old p2 333mhz, just 1 thing wrong on it and it would crawl to a hault. one time on this quad core, i have found 300+ infections and still had no preformance hit.

also, what would they call mallware? a real virus? or a cookie that look funny?
i havent had a real virus in years.
 

everygamer

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Hmmmm 11 - 12 million in the US, 2 million in Brazil. Why are articles written like this with no context. Could someone tell me how many total PC's are in the US and how many total PC's are in Brazil. Its all about percentages.

http://www.gartner.com/it/page.jsp?id=703807
This article says there are more than 1 billion PC's in use worldwide and the US/Japan/Western Europe make up 58% of that. Since Western Europe has an approx population of 450 million, the US 320 million and Japan 120 million that means 580 million PCs are being used by 900+ million people. That's close to 1 PC for every 2 people. With that said we would expect that there are 160 million PC's in the US. There are approx 200 million people in brazil so there are almost as many PC's in the US as there are people in Brazil. Also, one would expect that Brazil does not have the level of adoption of PC's as the US or other tech driven markets so I would expect a 1 to 3 or 1 to 4 ratio in Brazil. So .... 12 million infected in the US and 2 million in Brazil doesn't seem so far off.

I would make a fairly educated guess that the % of infected machines in the US and Brazil are close within +/- 5% margin of error.
 
G

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I agree that this is the most horribly written article that I have seen in quite a while.

Use of the "grammar police" cliche has some merit when used in defending a hastily written forum post; this, however, is supposed to be a proper article presented by a supposedly professional media outlet. The severity and sheer abundance of grammatical errors in this article degrades the entire product.

Run-on sentences aside, the post containing references to "grammar police" is ironically more skillfully written than the article itself.
 

alidan

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[citation][nom]Inner Universe[/nom]I agree that this is the most horribly written article that I have seen in quite a while.Use of the "grammar police" cliche has some merit when used in defending a hastily written forum post; this, however, is supposed to be a proper article presented by a supposedly professional media outlet. The severity and sheer abundance of grammatical errors in this article degrades the entire product.Run-on sentences aside, the post containing references to "grammar police" is ironically more skillfully written than the article itself.[/citation]

grammar can lick my sack. this isnt so horribly written you dont know what it means. i tend to write allot, and every time what i say and my point i make gets disregarded because i didnt use a ' or god forbid, i wrote a sentance with mispellings, or, didnt know a word wasnt spelled like that (spelled, pronounced spelt, and thats how i wrote it)

usualy i will go back through what i wrote, but not now, im makeing a point. does it degrade what i wrote because the grammar or spelling is bad? do you not understand what you just read?

exactlly my point, you understand it, so WHY POINT OUT FLAWS. must make you proud that you got good grades in english...
 

okibrian

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I've NEVER pointed out how bad an article was written, but this is just bad. I really don't care about a screw up here and there but come on. I had to reread this thing like 3 times to try and get what the hell you were trying to say.
 

okibrian

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[citation][nom]alidan[/nom]grammar can lick my sack. this isnt so horribly written you dont know what it means. i tend to write allot, and every time what i say and my point i make gets disregarded because i didnt use a ' or god forbid, i wrote a sentance with mispellings, or, didnt know a word wasnt spelled like that (spelled, pronounced spelt, and thats how i wrote it)usualy i will go back through what i wrote, but not now, im makeing a point. does it degrade what i wrote because the grammar or spelling is bad? do you not understand what you just read?exactlly my point, you understand it, so WHY POINT OUT FLAWS. must make you proud that you got good grades in english...[/citation]
Why do people care how bad this was written? Ah, because IT"S HIS JOB to get it right! I don't care if he makes mistakes, but if I have to read it a few times to understand it then it is written bad.
 

txsouthpaw

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The Masked Lapwing (Vanellus miles), previously known as the Masked Plover and often called the Spur-winged Plover in its native range, is a large, common and conspicuous bird native to Australia, particularly the northern and eastern parts of the continent. It spends most of its time on the ground searching for food such as insects and worms and has several distinctive calls.
 

alidan

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[citation][nom]okibrian[/nom]Why do people care how bad this was written? Ah, because IT"S HIS JOB to get it right! I don't care if he makes mistakes, but if I have to read it a few times to understand it then it is written bad.[/citation]

realy? i got it the first time through, than again my reading comprehension is getter than most, its my writing thats crap.

if i remember right newspapers pay out 1-5 cents a word
in here there are 209 words 1204 characters
so he got between 2-10$ for writing that.

its not like he made so much money from that that he is rolling in cash laughing about how badly the work is. in fact for what he probably got payed, its better than i would ever hope for.
 

sozwold

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Sorry, but I must agree with the majority of the comments here. The article was written extremely poorly - it truly stands out, unfortunately for all the wrong reasons. Simply awful.
 
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