I personally find GRC and their contributions to be positive and up front.If you read GRC's site it is also evident that what you call "harping" stems from a revelation that the defender folks did something >computer speak< that circumvented the grc test and actually gave concerned Black-ice users a false sense of security.
He only pointed this out ,which is a rather bad practice when you sell security software.
Buyer beware,I did not do my own research >broke my own rule< bought black-ice (they got their money) followed all procedures and my system never came back up.total pain, with much effort beyond the normal won't boot sequence,got pc limping along ,with "defender " removed,and now have yet to get my norton systemworks to actually work as it did prior to the "icing" I got.I know all software comes with the possibility of a system crash,but this was my worse experience,bad,bad, bad!!
I went to defenders help pages and it's obvious that I do not have the one and only system that their product has played havoc with.After all the reading ,I decided it was not worth the chance of another crash.
I also learned the hardway concerning Systemworks by Norton.It seems that earlier versions users had discovered that by uninstalling the product and reinstalling allowed users to get virus updates year after year without paying.Well I have a licensed ,registered copy ,August 2002, and by the black-ice got thru with my pc ,I had registry keys screwed up,so nortons lost functioning.So I learn that norton's has made it almost insane to remove the program and make a clean install,even though most all of the disfunction says do a clean install.They even have special utilities to clean up after itself,I've used them all and still can not make a clean install.It looks like doing a major registry edit is my only hope to get systemworks 2002 back to its normal no hassle operation.
I still like systemworks just alot less than previously,it was perfect before ice-ice baby.
as far as Gibson research ,evrything that I've studied and used from their sight has been very beneficial and useful.
bubbaco