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Knife, I'd love it if you could show us case studies that backed up your position. In a perfect world, sure, and we wouldn't need operating systems. We'd all run nothing but purpose-written code that operated on systems without the waste of noops, disc latency, or wait states, and any instruction set would auto-correct viruses to solve pi to a few extra digits per infection. That's peachy in a population of stoned CS lab junkies, but it wouldn't stand a chance in the larger population. Recall many users can't find the control panel. They're just trying to accomplish a bit of emailing, shopping, or porn surfing. Explain caution and technique all day and watch the fireworks begin. Anti-ware acts as surfing policy for those who can't or won't differentiate between friend and foe, or who have differing opinions of those classifications. As always, there are good and bad solutions. Sometimes the cure is worse than the disease, but arguing to categorically banish those tools in the name of eliminating bad or poorly applied tools is an academic position that does not work without daily re-imaging of systems. Been there, done that.
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There are a vast number of people who are uninformed and heavily propagandized, but fundamentally decent. The propaganda that inundates them is effective when unchallenged, but much of it goes only skin deep. If they can be brought to raise questions and apply their decent instincts and basic intelligence, many people quickly escape the confines of the doctrinal system and are willing to do something to help others who are really suffering and oppressed." -Manufacturing Consent: Noam Chomsky and the Media, p. 195
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