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Windows XP SP2 Beta Reviewed
worm eater writes "Ars Technica has a characteristically thorough review of Windows XP Service Pack 2 Beta, with plenty of screen shots. In a nutshell, it's all about security fixes, including a seriously beefed up firewall. The final release is expected this summer." The review concludes: "Overall, Microsoft has made a step in the right direction with this service pack. The increased focus on security will be good not only for the average user who does not spend much time thinking about security her system, but also for 'power users' and those who work supporting end users."
I'd tolerate all the exploits if this thing would make me toast and coffee in the morning.. meh.
http://www.babysmasher.com
http://www.openingbands.com
A review of a service pack? What's next, A screenshot of RTPatch? I can see it now...
"Here we see the patch process at 37% complete. Note that the progress bar is roughly one third filled in with a nice blue color."
Please!!
popup blocker in IE. Finally!
:D
It ASKS YOU before installing random crap in the background and at least notes that "Some software could be harmful"
Good. Step in the right direction.
You can download the service pack here
'power users', 'Windows'... in the same sentance.. what are you smoking? :P
moo
No; from what I know it's available to MSDN Universal subscribers and BetaPlace members.
the "never install software from..." button.
Microsoft must be trying to bankrupt Gator / GAIN / THAT COMPANY THAT MAKES a product remarkably simliar to SPYWARE. They'll be filing for name changes once a week now.
There are some people that if they don't know, you can't tell 'em.
I've been running 2003 as a desktop for a couple of weeks now. Haven't found one thing that ran on XP that couldn't be made to run on 2003. Everything is locked down until expressly opened. All the eye candy and useless dross from XP is turned off or MIA. Seems much peppier as a desktop and webserver than XP or even 2000. IIS 6 almost (almost) makes you forget all the crap MS released in the past.
IE has been updated with some good things, but does anyone know if they have fixed the numerous issues that standards oriented web developers have to work around? The png issues, box model issues, absolute positioning issues, etc?
Microsoft is holding back many websites from doing some amazing designs because of their lack of standard compatibility.
"BEHOLD, CORN!!" - Dr. Weird, ATHF
Found this article from Microsoft, might be of interest to some, "This document contains preliminary information about the security technologies in Windows XP SP2."
Windows XP Service Pack 2: A Developer's View
IE now has a popup blocker.. thereby making Telnet the last (by my count) internet-related application that does NOT have a built-in popup blocker. Are companies still paying for that shit? I can't imagine them getting anything approaching a good return on investment for popup ads these days. Unless they can get them free in specially-marked boxes of cereal, or something. On an unrelated note, why are they giving XP users a firewall? Any XP user that needs a firewall should be on 2000, if not Linux/Unix. XP is for media and third-graders. :(
Sure it is about time that IE gets a popup blocker, but one thing I'd like to see improved about IE would be its horridly aged quirky, standards-violating rendering engine. It is the "Netscape 4" of today.
But of course at about 95% of the global browser market share Microsoft see no need to improve that vital component of the browser.
Internet Explorer's browser monopoly is hurting the progress badly by locking the majority to legacy HTML that we should have left behind in the 90's already.
while true; do eject; eject -t; done
Just shows MS can't win. If iTunes defaults unblocked, security users will say that an unnecessary port was left unblocked. If default is blocked Apple zealots will claim it's a conspiracy to take away Apple marketshare.
They need to invent Schrodinger's Port.
So it's large because most of the binaries have been recompiled, even ones where the code hasn't changed.
However, the main thing that drew my attention was this, which Ars Technica only briefly mentioned:(lots more detail on the MSDN link)
I almost get the sense that some folks don't want Microsoft to "take a step in the right direction" on security.
After all, if their operating systems are actually just as or more secure, proponents of alternative operating systems can no longer use that as ammunition, can they?
Is it worth it that systems be broken into as a demonstration of Microsoft's insecurity, so the masses and companies "wake up" (as they were supposedly already doing), just so people migrate to Linux? Necessary evil? No. No data loss is a necessary evil.
The coolest voice ever.
Speaking as a phone tech support drone for a large university, many of these changes will be most welcome. The "Blaster" incident cost our university thousands of dollars in overtime and set back all of the activities that were going on at the beginning of the school year.
However, i'm not so sure that the fancier firewall will be such a good thing unless it is implemented properly. Ever since the newer version of AIM that came out in August or September 2003, we have been flooded with calls of it blinking on and off. These problems have been traced to ZoneAlarm - another free firewall that many people use because the one in XP was insufficient. If the new firewall has trouble with an application that is as popular as AIM is among our college students, it could create more problems then its worth for IT departments everywhere.
It may sound as if i'm overreacting for such a simple thing, but try working in IT for a few weeks and receiving over 150 phone calls a day from disgruntled students cussing you out because they can't chat with their friends.
Overall, its long past due that Microsoft focus on security instead of whizz-bang features that serve to slow down the O/S and cause it to be more unstable. XP Professional was a step in the right direction as far as stability, but the security issues are most definitely a large concern, especially to those of us with a phone to our ear.
"To strive, to seek, to find, and not to yield." - Tennyson
The one problem with developing useful 3rd party apps under MS is that its just a matter of time.. Of course this is something that Microsoft had to do eventually, especially now that people are getting infected before they get a chance to download security updates. 3rd Party Windows software companies of basic utility sw can now only protect their investments by (ab)using patent law... (eg The One Click Firewall, One-Click Unzip etc...) or having a better support infrastructure (not easy)
That was the point.. it's called sarcasm.
;-)
I'm a windows user (but not zealot.. if *nix did what I wanted easily on a day to day basis, I'd prefer it)... I was just poking tongue-in-cheek fun at the immediate onslaught of "IT STEEL SUX0RZ"
http://www.babysmasher.com
http://www.openingbands.com
Oh dear gawd. Wait a minute...people complain because they include a free web-browser and it goes to court.
Now they add more bundled software, and a highly modded user pipes up "should have been there from the begining"? Jesus. Which is it then?
I wonder if this will raise any new "monopoly" charges though with everyone from Norton Internet Security to Pop-up blocker companies' business going down the drain - virtually overnight.
My point exactly. They just can't win, can they?
Sweeping generalizations like this are bad. You shouldn't say "Never update your windows system," you should say "Only update it when the problem affects you," or "Only update after you've thoroughly tested the patch." Both of these use common sense. Never patching is not.
SP2 is probably going to break a lot of software. Especially the kind that is built with bad assumptions (pinging hosts, expected levels of access etc). Am I going to deploy it day 1? No. Am I going to what a month and see what everyone else says, then install it on a small test group? Yes.
-- DrZaius - Minister of Sciences and Protector of the Faith
You of course realize that pop-up blocking becoming mainstream will just push sites and advertisers into another, equally or more annoying method of pushing unwanted crap in your face before you can get to the content you want.
I can just see it, you must view the ad for 15 seconds before you can load the next page and there's no getting around it, unless you want to spend your life picking apart javascript or whatever for code to load the next page.
What you got today is an annoyance, what you might have tomorrow is a headache. Time to get back to lynx.
A feeling of having made the same mistake before: Deja Foobar
There are a lot of posters in here who claim to have had so many problems with XP. Obviously then it is a lack of knowledge and experience on your part. Just because you can't get it going well doesn't mean it is a problem with the OS. Lots of Joe Home Users are very happy with it. I am a very happy XP user, and have absolutely none of the problems that are bleated on about here. Turn into real users.
Windows XP is marketed to the average Joe, who will not fit your definition of "real users". When these average Joes connect to the internet with XP's out of the box settings, they get worms, viruses, spyware, etc.
XP can be hardened, but not with the knowledge of the users which it is marketed for.
I agree with one of the other posters, when he says the Joe average users who are happy with XP are actually oblivious to the reality that their PC is actually on a rampage infecting other peoples computers, sending SPAM and their credit card information. So many times I have visited client sites, only to find they have spyware, etc. And don't blame me for these problems, my introduction to these people is usually due to them having security problems in the first place.
I come home to my mostly OpenBSD network (plus some hardened Wintel) and relax. But then, I'm not your Joe average XP user.
I do hope XP SP2 helps and XP/Win2k are certainly leaps and bounds ahead of the Win9x abominations. But please don't try to claim that XP is great and the ignorant users are to blame. Microsoft claims to provide a stable, secure product for the World at large? Then this is a lie.
Apple's Mac OSX is much closer to delivering that claim.
BTW, relying on automatic updates is a dangerous game. Does XP use crypto and authentication by default for automatic updates? I would hope so. Sometimes patches are retracted, because they cause more grief than they solve. I call that a lottery. I prefer to firewall then wait before deploying patches, where ever possible.
PS, I'll leave you with this... do you run a firewall? Do you ever watch the logs? I'm running an OpenBSD pf firewall for my home network and I tell you, watching the attempts at typical Microsoft ports coming thick and fast is scary. If you don't, I suggest you do and then come back here and tell us that "most [XP users] have no trouble with Blaster or random spywares, or indeed security hacks".
War crimes, torture, lies, illegal spying... Would someone give Bush a blowjob, already, so he can be impeached?
I work as an independent computer support consultant servicing mostly Windows users, and I can assure you that a large portion of "regular joe" users have huge problems with viruses, spyware, and trojan horses. Most of them don't even know it- they just complain about having a lot of popup windows (spyware) or having trouble with their Internet connection (Blaster). Many of them continue to struggle to use their computer for months with these problems.
And it's not just my clients (who obviously are limited to the set of folks who have problems bad enough to call a professional)... the percentage is high in my social network as well.
Now yes- I agree an expert can avoid these things. I didn't even have virus protection on my primary machine for years, and yet I never got an infection. But that was because I never got attachments from untrusted sources. And I never downloaded "risky" software. But average users and even "experts" who are unfamiliar with this particular OS are vulnerable, and it's ludicrous to suggest that these huge problems are an issue of user skill.
Frankly, from a purely financial perspective, what MS is doing is bad for my business... I really should send a nice thank you note to the turd that wrote Blaster. But something tells me I'm not going to be running out of work anytime soon...
-R