“Being the richest man in the cemetery doesn’t matter to me … Going to bed at night saying we’ve done something wonderful… that’s what matters to me.”

We at AVAST Software offer our condolences to the family and friends of a true Innovator. May we all be inspired by his life, and go on to do “something wonderful.”

The prime reason for participating at a VB Security Conference is, of course, seeing the presentations about what’s new in the security sector, what are the newest attack tactics from the bad guys, and naturally, what the security companies are doing to stop them. But, the next best thing about this Security Conference is to meet the people and socialize. Which is exactly what we did yesterday evening! Read more…

Greetings from Barcelona. The conference is in the middle and here are few pictures from the first day. Everyone seems to be satisfied with the conference, and especially with the free beer offered by AVAST!

Virus Bulletin, a leading publication on computer security, is organizing this week’s 21st annual Virus Bulletin International Conference in Barcelona, Spain. And AVAST is a proud platinum sponsor. So if you are in Barcelona these days and you have couple of minutes to spare, visit the Hesperia Tower Hotel where the event is held. You will get a chance to meet many of the security enthusiasts who have dedicated their lives to fighting viruses and malware. Read more…

Building a scalable platform for more than 100,000 requests a second

It’s hard to count on popularity. WebRep, the avast! browser plugin that gives users a reputation rating for visited websites, faced scalability issues soon after its launch in early 2011. The number of users shot past the original expectations and the incoming opinions were overwhelming the system.

We started WebRep with the ability to process 10,000 user responses a second, but the system was getting overwhelmed as the number of responses jumped to the 100,000 level. Read more…

Yesterday’s post about how difficult it is to get a building permit for even a neon sign sparked some interesting Facebook discussions. Clearly getting any sort of building permit is not an easy task in the Czech Republic. Our own experience at AVAST shows that getting a permit for a small sign can easily take 3 months. But, we should not be unthankful. At least at AVAST, we did GET the permit.

I mentioned AVG in my blog yesterday as the other well-known antivirus brand from the Czech Republic. In case you don’t remember, some time ago AVG was actually called Grisoft after its founder Mr. Jan Gritzbach – GRItzbach SOFTware. And the Grisoft company was located here: 49°12’9.262″N, 16°36’23.723″E  (view the satellite image).

Since then, the company has changed its name. They have even moved their offices. But the GRISOFT logo is still there, laying flat on the roof. I wonder if it was ever mounted and visible or if it is still waiting for the official building permit.  ;)

In case you didn’t know, almost half (!) of all home computers in the world are protected by antivirus products coming from the Czech Republic. That’s because both AVAST antivirus and AVG have been and are still developed here. This does make me wonder why: Why here? The Czech Republic is a small country and even though its borders are surrounded by mountain ranges we are hardly a valley – at least to say – of silicon. As far as I can tell, there is no obvious reason for this. Speaking of technology, the only other thing we gave to world is the word “robot” (invented by Czech novel & play writer Karel Capek who used it in his play R.U.R. in 1921).

So why antivirus? I really don’t know but I do know why we are no longer famous for construction and buildings. It is all thanks to our system of building permits. But it wasn’t always like that. Read more…