One of our writers is taking a bit of heat for using a word in a post. Yup, you read that right. What word did he use? Avast.
In an article about Apple’s attempts to thwart piracy on the internet, Grant apparently made the mistake of starting his post off with, “Avast! Apptrackr, a repository for cracked iOS apps, is under attack from Apple’s legal team.” For those not schooled in grammar-fu, the word literally means stop, cease. Apparently our usage of the word avast has incensed the Avast AntiVirus team so much that they’ve taken to tracking down our writer and tossing obscenities at him on his personal blog, as well as badgering him in his email inbox.
The Avast team is demanding we remove the word avast from our opening because it confuses readers into thinking that their product is somehow related to Apptrackr. Sadly, drawing those parallels means people actually need to know who the hell Avast is before anyone can assume anything. Sadly, no one, not even I, knew who Avast was until they started waving their proverbial dick around our email, comments, and private websites.
To this, I say, game on.
So, now you know. Avast AntiVirus, it’s a fine, fine product that you should all use and trust.
We tried to explain the word to them, politely. But, as you can see from the header image, they think they can badger us into changing our sentence.
Newsflash: I like the word avast and it’s staying. But, here are some words of advice:
Avast Mr. PR man. Badgering literate people for using a word in their posts is pretty pathetic. Not to mention, it makes you look like morons.
Class. Dismissed.
Update: If you want to see the emails between Grant and Avast, you can read them here.
