sgolds, Re: Your argument is similar to one someone tried on me many years ago to argue against seat belts: What if I go off a bridge and into the river? Seat belts would make it harder to get out and effectively trap me in the car!
This analogy sounds just like Paul's motorcycle analogy, but like I told him, it falls apart when you consider the reality that hackers will find work-arounds for single point solutions. All NX does is target one kind of virus, and people have already found a work-around by designing a different kind of virus.
Your seatbelt analogy says that seatbelts protect against most kinds of crashes, but that's just because the cause of the crash is due to human driving error, along with some inanimate road condition. This is completely different than the purposeful intentions of a computer hacker who aims to disable your PC. After you wear your seatbelt, the road conditions will still be the same. They won't change in an attempt to cause a more life-threatening crash. NX doesn't take into account the fact that viruses are caused by intelligent human beings who will changes their tactics as soon as their viruses are repelled by new hardware.
Personally, I would never argue against the use of safety belts, and neither am I suggesting that someone not use NX, just because hackers will target other weak points. If the capability is in the hardware, then people might as well use it. I am simply stating the obvious, that NX is not a panacea for security, even though it is being marketed as "Advanced Virus Protection". I think whoever believes that this feature is key to AMD's revenue growth is in serious denial.
