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Complete List of Bugs Fixed in SP2

callipygian-showsyst writes "Microsoft has published the complete list of bugs fixed in Service Pack 2. They range from the obscure like: 'File Appears to Be Deleted Although You Do Not Have Permissions on the OS/2 Warp4-Based Server' to the serious-sounding: ' Stop error message on a blue screen when you transfer data to a USB device in Windows XP'"

26 of 531 comments (clear)

  1. Microsoft and Windows Topics Icons by USAPatriot · · Score: 5, Insightful
    Of the list of slashdot topics, only Microsoft and the Windows icons are of a derogatory and belittling nature.

    Why is it so hard that the editors can't use the appropriate icons for them?

    It's time this site starts to grow up.

    --

    Slashdot Moderation: From positive to terrible in 2 "insightful" posts.

    1. Re:Microsoft and Windows Topics Icons by aelbric · · Score: 3, Insightful

      Copyright issues?

      --
      nos laetus epulor qui would domito nos
    2. Re:Microsoft and Windows Topics Icons by mahdi13 · · Score: 4, Insightful

      No, Slashdot can't use Microsoft's logos...MS would sue Slashdot if they did for copyright/trademark infringement!

      It's not a geek thing, it's a lawyer thing

      --
      "Some things have to be believed to be seen." - Ralph Hodgson
    3. Re:Microsoft and Windows Topics Icons by dave420 · · Score: 5, Insightful
      And that means you get away with being immature how, exactly? Or, is this just another really, really good example of the double-standards this site has with Microsoft?

      Whatever MS does, good or bad, is branded bad and accepted. Whatever linux does, good or bad, is branded good and anyone who says otherwise is a troll.

    4. Re:Microsoft and Windows Topics Icons by 10Ghz · · Score: 4, Insightful

      And if you go to Redhat.com, they don't call Microsoft "Micro$oft" or something like that. But I bet you can find some pro-Windows fansites/blogs and the like in the net where they use childish phrases to describe Linux and Linux-users.

      And besides, Microsoft has called Linux "a toy", "anti-american" and GPL "a virus". Why is that "professional" whereas Slashdots images are not?

      --
      Lesbian Nazi Hookers Abducted by UFOs and Forced Into Weight Loss Programs - -all next week on Town Talk.
    5. Re:Microsoft and Windows Topics Icons by BenjyD · · Score: 4, Insightful

      This is Slashdot, generally a F/OSS advocacy site. Microsoft is about as opposite in beliefs from the general audience of /. as it is possible to get - they've referred to OSS as a "cancer" and actively try to limit its growth.
      Why shouldn't the icons represent the distrust and dislike of MS this has created amongst the /, readership? It's a tongue-in-cheek thing anyway.

    6. Re:Microsoft and Windows Topics Icons by 10Ghz · · Score: 3, Insightful
      And that means you get away with being immature how, exactly?


      Microsoft calls Linux "a toy". Why isn't that immature?
      --
      Lesbian Nazi Hookers Abducted by UFOs and Forced Into Weight Loss Programs - -all next week on Town Talk.
    7. Re:Microsoft and Windows Topics Icons by Mysticalfruit · · Score: 4, Insightful

      Basically, your correct.

      Last time I checked we're on the "IN-TER-NET". You know that place that is practially a blackhole of all things immature.

      If you were to map the internet like a galaxy, Slashdot would be tucked over in the corner next to the obscene jokes and well stuff involving well hung midgets and horny lonely housewives.

      Microsoft could release a patch that just by installing would cure world hunger and shrink maligant tumors and the headline on Slashdot would be "Microsoft distrupts food distribution and healthcare systems worldwide!"

      So, in short, if your looking for unbiased punctunal and definitative coverage of the every evolving internet, this is not the place.

      If however, your looking for the diatribes of cynical, world weary geeks, who know the whole world is basically built on match sticks and is gleefully waiting for the day the whole place comes tumbling down, you've found it.

      --
      Yes Francis, the world has gone crazy.
    8. Re:Microsoft and Windows Topics Icons by Paul+Crowley · · Score: 5, Insightful

      Because we fucking hate the bastards! Slashdot is not a corporate news portal - it's still fundamentally a fan-run advocacy site. It's ludicrous to imagine that Slashdot should pretend to be neutral, or mature, about these things

    9. Re:Microsoft and Windows Topics Icons by FireFury03 · · Score: 4, Insightful

      If you go on microsoft.com, they don't call linux "linsux" and have pictures of tux fucking a hooker.

      microsoft.com is a corporate website, slashdot is an unofficial messageboard for geeks...

      Besides, if slashdot used the real MS logo they're probably get sued into the ground for infringing the trademark every time someone made a bad comment about MS.

  2. Makes you wonder by suso · · Score: 4, Insightful

    if we're close to the time when the majority of slashdot readers don't know what OS/2 Warp4 is?

  3. But... by FunWithHeadlines · · Score: 4, Insightful
    It's time this site starts to grow up.

    But, but, but...then it wouldn't be slashdot any more!

  4. Individual vs Cumulative fixes by Gentoo+Fan · · Score: 4, Insightful

    There are a lot of instances of the word "cumulative" in this list ("Cumulative patch for Internet Explorer..."). I wonder how many true bugs are fixed with this, not just support article entries.

  5. Re:What I want to see... by slashrogue · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Score:5, Insightful? If this were a Linux distro getting an update, this would be marked as a Troll or Flamebait. At the very least, Funny would be more appropriate.

  6. Re:How many months did it take? by Scoria · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Okay, tell meonce again how many months it took to root out those errors? Some where known for a long time. And I expected a longer list... waaaaay longer!

    Modifying a large operating system while attempting not to "break" any end-user configurations is nothing short of a prodigious task.

    The modifications were probably developed and committed to the Windows source tree in a relatively short period of time. However, Windows must accommodate a diverse array of configurations, including many that are very "fragile" and obscure. Because of this, the modified build likely endured an extensive testing process, hence the multiple delays.

    --
    Do you like German cars?
  7. There was a story on slashdot about this already by Raistlin99 · · Score: 4, Insightful

    And you have to be in administrator mode. Oh no, you mean if I log in as administrator the programs can do bad things.

    If I logged on to linux as root and ran a program it could cause the same sort of problems

    --
    I/O, I/O, its off to disk I go, with a read and a write, and a bit and a byte, I/O, I/O, I/O, I/O
  8. Re:Jeeze, it's BIG by Mant · · Score: 4, Insightful

    I beleive a lot of files have been re-compiled to prevent buffer overflows and take advanateg of the NX flag on processors that support them. Many of these programs don't have a 'bug' as such, but are being made more secure.

    It is a bit scary watching the install and seeing all these things being replaced.

    Also the ~250MB is the admin version, that has every update. The version for home users will only have the necessary ones they need, and should be quite a bit smaller if the machine is reasonably up to date.

    Probably still the biggest SP for windows ever though.

  9. Re:How about this bug in the firewall by mslinux · · Score: 4, Insightful

    I'm not complaining. The fact of the matter is that 90% of WinXP users run as administrators. By allowing *any* software to tamper with the firewall, MS has made a mistake. All a virus will have to do is trick a user into clicking a link on a web page or something and the fw will go down. This isn't possible with zone alram or sygate firewalls... nor should it be.

  10. Re:Very long list by westlake · · Score: 4, Insightful
    "A flaw in Internet Explorer may allow an attacker to control your computer."

    This is all most people need or want to know about an update.
    Care to try your hand at a plain English explanation of a "buffer overflow?"

  11. Wrong time, OS/2 users left know to blame MS by SmallFurryCreature · · Score: 3, Insightful

    You can only pull this kinda crap (that MS has been proven and even admitted to of having done) when your sure it is the other guy that is blamed. Kinda like when IE fails to load a page it is the websites fault but when Mozilla fails to load a page it is Mozilla's fault.

    OS/2 has been killed but it is still being used. Those customers are smart enough to know that any problems are not OS/2 fault but MS. Since MS wants them at one time or another to switch it is probably not to wise to alienate them by showing them how buggy MS software is. Once they switched and are totally locked in THEN you spring the bugs on them. It helps sell the next version. Just explain to me exactly why I should have upgraded from Win95? What exactly has been added that is so helpfull? Stability? Stabilty is a bug, it should have been fixed in a patch.

    --

    MMO Quests are like orgasms:

    You may solo them, I prefer them in a group.

  12. Read what I wrote... by rarose · · Score: 3, Insightful

    They *can* hack in an easter egg while *USING SOURCE CODE CONTROL*. And in the management reports it will show up as "fixed a misspelling".

    I've done it, I know bunches of other people that have done it, and I've been directed by my manager at one company to do it.

    The cutoff date for features is *way* earlier than the cutoff date for defect fixes, and on occasion we'd (i.e. my first level department) discover a feature that we needed to have in the product, but which higher level management would never agree to due to the schedule. Our first line boss would give us the OK to slime it in. It's the old "It's easier to beg forgiveness than to ask permission".

    Would somebody lose their job? I guess it all depends on whether your first line manager goes to bat for you or not... but that being said I've *never* heard of a programmer losing their job due to slime.

    --
    --Rob
  13. Re:How about this bug in the firewall by argent · · Score: 4, Insightful

    It's a bit of a design flaw in the Windows security model.

    I agree 100%. The Windows security model is broken. As I just commented in another discussion: "I hope Microsoft decides to join the 21st century and changes the default configuration so ordinary users do not run with excessive privileges, and instead requires an explicit action (as in the UNIX 'su' command, or Apple's authentication dialog) to grant installers and configuration tools temporary rights when they need it."

    I honestly can not comprehend the selective blindness that Microsoft seems to suffer from when it comes to understanding freshman-level computer security.

    However.

    Going back to my original point: this is not a security flaw in Windows Firewall, and other firewalls like Zone Alarm are not inherently any safer... they are simply depending on security by obscurity. Unless they lose market share to the point where they don't matter to malware authors there will undoubtedly be software that disables them.

    Look at antivirus software. They don't have a "Disable" API, but there are still viruses that disable them... and the code to do it as available to anyone with a copy of the world's premier virus distribution tool (Outlook).

  14. Re:Very long list by spacefrog · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Because if the temperatures reach those thresholds, then your 'properly designed heat solution' obviously isn't.

    If you have a 'properly designed heat solution' then you should never get throttled or should only be throttled very very little.

    This is a case of the OS responding to a condition *prior* to the computer locking up. The Linux kernel has a similar feature.

  15. Re:Very long list by LnxAddct · · Score: 5, Insightful

    You have no idea what you are talking about. Most apps use some kind of lib or something to access their configs, that keeps the config to a standard, at least internally to the app. If you have another application that needs to access that config, its usually fairly easy to do so. What your saying is, its good to make it easy for any application to access any other application's configuration. How often do you just randomly pick a registry entry and decide to use it for something? When you write your program you know what you'll need and you predefine the config files or in your case the registry. As long as you know what your accessing and how to access it, nothing else matters. The worse thing about the registry is how easily it becomes corrupted. Also, as far as I know there is no tool bundled with Windows to allow you to edit the registry from the command line. So what do you do when your registry is hosed and you can't boot to a gui? I may be wrong, but I don't beleive there is a way to edit it easily from DOS, and booting into Linux is useless because the registry isn't editable with a text editor or something simple like it should be. The registry is a great idea in theory, but horrible in practice.
    Regards,
    Steve

  16. Re:Very long list by nuggetman · · Score: 3, Insightful

    This is why $diety invented the home directory. It's there, I don't understand why app developers refuse to use it. Especially on nix based systems like Linux and OS X, where you just put a .appname folder and put the config files in there and the user doesn't see it unless they want to.

    Life would be much easier (especially in the way windows installs programs. On the mac you can juts copy your apps folder over to a new install and they'll all work, try doing that with Program Files)

    --
    ...and that's all there is to it.
  17. Re:This is news? by Stevyn · · Score: 5, Insightful

    I agree. After I switched to linux I noticed how many people make it seem they're running linux (because of their pro linux comments and being modded up for praising linux), but run windows. Look how many people comment on big microsoft stories. Sometimes it's over a thousand.

    I want to see slashdot's webserver statistics showing what people are really running. I wouldn't be surprised if it's only 10-15% of people running linux.

    I think in addition to our karma, we should have a linux-o-meter linked to our ID name. That would expose that asshole who shouts out "winblowz," "Micro$oft" and all that other childish crap who's really running windows xp in his mother's basement. There's nothing wrong with people using windows. Hell, I use it at work. It's just when the slashdot "politics" skew the reality of the situation that it starts to get aggrivating.

    And by the way, yes I did switch to linux to seem cooler on slashdot because that is all that matters in life.