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Windows Live OneCare Can Eat Your Email
FutureDomain writes in to point us to a blog sponsored by PC Magazine, reporting about another problem with Windows Live OneCare. Apparently, it sometimes deletes the entire Outlook or Outlook Express .PST mailbox when it finds a virus in one of the messages. The only solution is to tell OneCare to exclude the entire Outlook mailbox. This is the software that came in last in antivirus tests. The trail of tears is ongoing over on the Microsoft forums.
isnt the term 'trail of tears' a bit extreme for some lost email?
but if it were compared to a nail, I'd ask "just how many nails does it take to seal the lid of a coffin?"
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And just remember, this is the same development house that the whole world seems to have no problem with the thought of giving root acces to their machines so they can keep them 'safe.'
If those idiots don't screw the world up by their own incompetence first they are going to get Windows Update 0wn3d and allow someone malevolent to wreak even worse havok on the world.
Seriously, I can't understand how any Microsoft product is permitted to be used in any role where failure isn't an option. Finance, military, medical, etc should have imposed a ban a decade ago, forbidding the stuff from even being connected to a network port inside the secure inner firewall. Instead we are installing the stuff into the engine room on our warships, giving it sole control of the propulsion system.
This is insanity on a global scale. A lot of people even seem to understand the danger yet are too afraid to speak up loudly enough to be heard.
Democrat delenda est
You hear the complaint both ways, of course. Commercial software gets professional testing, which means that engineers are paid to test un-fun corner cases, apply heuristic analysis, and other stuff like that. FOSS software gets more intense testing, because there are more people testing, although it's somewhat less organized.
Well, here's an example of how it can go wrong, no matter who you are. Of course, we're never surprised when Microsoft has a bug. It's really funny to me, actually. Huge company--can never get their shit together.
Have they not heard of a quarantine?
Is this really true in a general sense? Obviously the "darling" FOSS projects do, but that's a very small percentage of the whole.
If you want news from today, you have to come back tomorrow.
Don't just sit there feeling smug! Every now and again, when you have a free moment, delete your mbox file, or the directory where the mail client of your preference stores its data. That'll go a long way towards helping Windows users to stop seeing us as arrogant and aloof and let them know we share their pain.
(And if you're really feeling altruistic, knock up a shell script which turns your machine into a spam-spewing zombie).
Nuke the mailbox from orbit, it's the only way to be sure.
Some people become attached to their collections--no matter what the collection is. It is psychologically difficult for some people to face the reality that some things are simply not worth saving.
I advocate a training program for those people: once each year they should practice archiving everything they might ever want to save to one CD. Just one typical data CD. Not a DVD. One single CD. Anything which doesn't make it to the CD is random number filled.
the NPG electrode was replaced with carbon blac
"FEED ME"
The original generic sig.
Maybe it wasn't such a good idea to put all mail, including not only INBOX but also all extra folders, in a single file?
At least other MUAs usually have a separate file for each folder.
Hmm, now's the time to send your Windows 'friends' who are using onecare a nice virus attachment surprise. :-P
Ad Majorem Dei Gloriam
Interested in AI? MACR
Then, get a good AV package - or better yet, just exercise some fucking common sense and don't open that "Re: Malaca Superfund Stranded" email from "Roberta Plantagenet~=%" that has a "postcard.exe" attachment.
i was using it on my windows box and it deleted my entire email. great, Microsoft. well done. i think now i understand why everyone switches to Linux. as of today i am making my Linux box my primary machine. period.
Ahh, nice a inbox ya got dere, it'd be a shame if somethin was to happen to it!
I lost my sig...
That theme seems to be "The cure is worse than the disease"
Example 1:
Problem- Malware has carte blanche in XP to do damn near anything if it's run from an account with admin privileges.
Solution- UAC in Vista. ("You are moving your mouse cursor. Cancel or allow?")
Solution Sucks Because- UAC is so friggin' annoying with the popups that people will either shut it off or get in the habit of blindly clicking "OK," which means they are likely to give malware carte blanche to do damn near anything.
Example 2:
Problem- Viruses.
Solution- Windows OneCare Antivirus.
Solution Sucks Because- One infected email can cause your whole inbox to go bye-bye.
Great job, guys! The five years it took you to get this stuff perfect was really worth it!
has much to be modest about.
I worked in an office where the recently hired tech guy managed to destroy the VP of marketing's Email 3 separate times. All in the first 3 months of his contract. That was the end of him. It's not such a big deal to lose personal email, but for people who have integrated the use of email into their business it's ugly. I would like to think that people are backing up their 1.2 gig PST files, but I know that there are many smart successful people out there with big PST's that have no backup. This kind of behaviour by a Windows Live OneCare is just asking for disaster.
The rock, the vulture, and the chain
Good Lord! How can the parent be modded "interesting"? The guy doesn't know what a shift key is, are he's just parroting the "DUDE! Micro$loth SUXORS!!!!" line anyway. What exactly is "interesting" about it?
This is exactly why I don't keep my .pst file on a work server. I use a laptop from work, and by keeping that huge .pst file on my local drive, I can choose to back it up when and where I like. No matter how good the guys in corporate IT might be, I just don't trust them. With most of my backup processes, it would take 2 disastrous events to happen at the same (or near enough) time to cause total loss of data. It would only take one careless IT person, or software update to cause complete loss if I trusted them.
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Yes, this is off-topic. Yes, OneCare sucks if it deleted someones email.
If you don't backup your data you will lose it someday. It's not a question of "if" it is "when". Your hard drive will eventually crash!
I feel so sorry for people that encounter this. My business provides remote backup via the web & we try to help people prevent events like this, but it doesn't matter. I think all of our remote backup customers have previously experienced data loss.
I've had Norton Anti-Virus delete my Thunderbird Inbox when it detected an incoming virus. This was the main thing that made me get rid of Norton on all my computers.
Life is like a web application. Sometime you need cookies just to get by.
Microsoft policy is "Do not open e-mail attachments from persons you do not know" or an EXE, .js or any virus type of file. Also their solution for Internet Explorer bugs is to turn off scripting and active-x and do not goto websites that you don't trust. So in general it isn't Microsoft's fault they put the inbox into quarantine, it is the user's fault for getting the virus or going to a website that gives them the virus. Of course that is from a MS point of view.
While most of the IT community is trying to fight viruses, fraud and all the evil things out there, MS seems to put the blame on the consumer. MS is proving this as they try harder to tell the end-user that they are doing everything they can but it is the users responisbility to protect themselves. In all if you use Microsoft products that is equvilant of buying a car, but you have to install or replace any safety features - brakes, seatbealt, airbag - yourself!
The term "Defective by Design" was specifically invented to describe products containing DRM, where the usability of the product is intentionally compromised in order to protect the profits of a third party.
Yes, Microsoft has a lot of DRMed software, with Vista being the granddaddy of them all, but not everything Microsoft makes is defective by design. And in this particular case, the defect appears to be a bug rather than intentional anyway. So, please, save the "defectivebydesign" tag for situations where it's really warranted. Sure, it may be an amusing term, but when you use it where it doesn't apply, it waters down its meaning for the situation it was intended to be applied to: DRM.
A virus scanner found an infected file and put it somewhere safe. It is in the logs so you can find out what happened.
Yes it is not very userfriendly but it sounds to me a bit like you complain that the fireman who got you out of burning building bumped you against the doorframe and now you got a sore toe. Cry me a river.
Should infected files NOT be moved just because they belong to a certain program?
I could understand the upset if it had moved a critical system file and brought the whole machine crashing down but that is now what happened.
Would it be as bad if a virusscanner moved a document because it was infected?
Truly this to me sounds like the conflict that arises between making software actually do anything and some users who expect computers to work by magic. Sorry, they do not.
Maybe MS virusscanner should know about special files, especially those belonging to its own products, maybe it should be capable of handling these files securely without having to move them. Perhaps.
It is not like the email disappeared. The file was moved. Move it back, and voila, all is restored. (I am guessing here, this is how it works on unix mailboxes anyway.)
Yes, perhaps the virus scanner did NOT report it clearly what it had done (more likely, the user in question simply did not read the log) and perhaps a proper virusscanner by MS should be able to handle the insides of a MS file and clean it on the spot, not have to move the entire file. BUT if this happened on a unix I would find it perfectly acceptable. Then again, I read logs.
MMO Quests are like orgasms:
You may solo them, I prefer them in a group.
Bah, let God sort them out.
Sheesh, evil *and* a jerk. -- Jade
use Thunderbird instead....
Indeed, only a few weeks ago a friend of mine was in hospital for a serious operation. During the prodecdure the doctors had to wait for 5 minutes while the computer rebooted. Seriously, I'm not making this shit up, but it sounds like comedy material doesn't it. Microsoft products are more than just a few tears spilled over lost emails, they are a debasement of computer science and a threat to human life and security. I agree with you very strongly that they should be banned from any safety critical system, in fact I will be writing to my representatives and forming an actin group with precisely that agenda.
> Quick! Someone post some linux evangelism there!
Yes Linux has a better record. But then so does everyone else. Go ahead, name the operating system with a security record equal or inferior to Windows over the last decade.
*BSD? Nope, even if you exempt OpenBSD *BSD has a far better record than anything Microsoft has released in the past decade. And OpenBSD wears the crown when it comes to security. Usability, scalability and such are legitimate counter concerns though and explain why OpenBSD hasn't conquered the world.
Linux? Regardless of the distribution, if it is a large enough operation to keep up with the torrent of errata teh universe of OpenSource/Free Software generates they have all done better then Microsoft when it comes to timely updates. And with the bonus of the existence of "Enterprise" distributions for a good part of the decade that focus on errata updates that won't have unrelated breakage.
Apple? Their record with OS 8 and OS 9 beat Microsoft and OS X just upped their game.
Sun? HP? IBM? Please.
I'm not saying anyone should be proud of their security history and methodology, all software currently sucks ass. But since we have to use something NOW the question is why is the worst vendor on 90% of the world's machines?
What I'd like to see is a major concerted effort to raise software quality over adding new features. Engage the CS departments in teh universities to have all students audit some code. After all, most operating systems these days allow access to the source. And auditing real code would be a good experience for em. They would see first hand how wretched much of the code actually in use is firsthand. And if legends are writing that stuff they just might listen a bit more when when the prof is badgering about not hotdogging in the belief they are too leet to make those 'idiot' mistakes.
And for the Linux world I'd like to see the major distros come together to take every package not currently at 1.0 and finish em or dump em. Then stabilise the codebase, audit the crap out of it and then freeze them, only accepting bug fixes. And a nice side effect is they would all have the SAME version. The original project can still release new versions but it won't get integrated into a major stable distro until they announce a new feature complete and AUDITED version. Seriously, is there anything else that needs to go into glibc? So why not stabilize it, sudit it and then freeze it? We need a trusted core that we don't have to update several times per year. As computers become central to our civilization we need them to work a lot more than we need shiny new features.
Democrat delenda est
> Seriously, I can't understand how any Microsoft product is permitted to be used in any role where failure isn't an option.
I can't understand why software is permitted to be used in any role where failure isn't an option.
But I get your point.
Sheesh, evil *and* a jerk. -- Jade
There are higher motivations for promoting a society in which people recognize the value of (as opposed to assigning arbitrary value to) the things they choose to accumulate. The overly fanatical attachment to mere collections, without any sense of real worth, is detrimental to self-improvement. I don't mind living in a society which has some social groups of packrats--but I wouldn't want to live in a society composed entirely (or even primarily) of packrats. Packrats, like everyone, have a few customary idiosyncracies in the way they see the world. I do not share them all.
the NPG electrode was replaced with carbon blac
The term "Defective by Design" was specifically invented to describe products containing DRM, where the usability of the product is intentionally compromised in order to protect the profits of a third party. ...and to apply to the security policy that's intentionally insecure to accomodate user issues and program writers.
Most of the things that we see this appear in are because we see an exploit. Such exploits in a better written file system wouldn't be an issue at all. So the defect is the design more than the actual flaw.
This case is a similar matter. The virus scanner is scanning a file, finding a virus in it, and quarantining it. The bug isn't with the AV, its in the fact that an entire user's mailbox is stored in a single file, which is a defect in the design of Microsoft's mail system. This wouldn't happen if Microsoft was using a better mechanism for storing mail.
So I say we let the "defectivebydesign" tags keep coming. We can stop when we stop seeing the obvious design defects.
Mod me down and I will become more powerful than you can possibly imagine!
I agree that it's inappropriate to use in the conext of an unintentional bug, but I can see legitimate uses outside the issue of DRM... for instance, consumer electronics designed to break after about 1 year of regular use (Sony used to do this constantly with the Discman) in order to drive consumers into buying new ones regularly, or Lexmark's (old? haven't used their stuff in ages) practice of selling ink cartridges with very small reservoirs at higher prices in order to subsidize cheap yet very high quality printers.
Point is, "defective by design" describes DRM, but also accurately describes many other shady business practices intended to increase sales through incompatibility and early obsolescence. The fact that it wasn't coined until the advent of DRM doesn't mean we should horde it for that sole use.
Try not to take me more seriously than I take myself.
I've never lost mail read with pine. :)
the NPG electrode was replaced with carbon blac
One message gets a virus, so they delete EVERYTHING. This is not suprising, coming from the creator of Microsoft Bob 2......... I mean Vista.
No, you are talking about "defective due to bad programming and poor choices" whereas defectivebydesign should be used to refer to "defective because it was deliberately and maliciously designed to cripple the computer's function". See the difference?
OneCare - from the same onomatopoeic geniuses that thought up the "Wang Cares" campaign?
But I feel it is different. The bug reported would be akin to AVG deleting my whole my folder because there is a virus in it. Or an anti virus on linux deleting your folder. Or a firewall deleting your word document (all of 'em) because one has a macro virus. In the bug list is there anyhting like that ?
C. Sagan : A demon haunted world:
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0345409469/
visit randi.org
Come on, how can you guys argue against the OP when he's completely right? Maybe you can say that it is "defective because they're stupid" or "defective because of a bad design". I would simply call it "defective", period. The same thing happened to MS Promotion Site Flagged By MS Anti-Phishing.
AVG free move the concerned attchment to a quarantine directory and leave me a note telling me why in the email. My whole mailbox is file left untouched. So why is microsoft unable to do that ?
C. Sagan : A demon haunted world:
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0345409469/
visit randi.org
Actually, the idea of storing all email in a huge single file is beyond stupidity.
I think it all stems from the same old problem of people wanting to use software that they know. And really, people generally know Windows more then anything else. It's not an excuse, and I think it's the epitome of laziness, but I believe that's the main cause.
I mean, I work for state government and the majority of the people running the systems just don't know computers very well. It sucks. So, their comfort zone is Windows, because it APPEARS easier to manage. (Of course, it's not, it's just as complicated as anything else when you look past the pretty start button.)
- It's not the Macs I hate. It's Digg users. -
In all the companies I've worked for the testing of software has been inferior to that I've observed in most Open Source projects. It's the first thing to be cut from the schedule.
I'm just slightly shock no one's tagged it "onecarewilleatyoursoul" yet.
Come on, the guys at Microsoft are obviously Aphex Twin fans. :D
You can hold down the "B" button for continuous firing.
...and the fact that I mistyped "shocked" is shocking indeed.
You can hold down the "B" button for continuous firing.
This reminds me of the professor, whose .pst was deleted by some old version of F-secure years ago. The software knew the .pst format well enough to tell exactly in which email the virus was and give the subject and sender info of it. Would have expected it to be able to only delete the offending email.
Begging for modpoints since '03
From the forum posts, it seems that MS don't want to scan incoming or outgoing emails and they also now don't want to scan the .pst file. They are happy for dormant viruses to exist on your machine because these are supposedly detected when being executed. Going by their current track record, I wouldn't be confident of any kind of protection from Microsoft 'Once Cared'.
Perahaps Microsoft should consider renaming their OneCare product to Microsoft WhoCares, I'm sure many of the affected users would find that a more appropriate name.
God is REAL! Unless explicitly declared INTEGER
I use Thunderbird and Symantec AntiVirus.
I did a deep scan one day and Symantec found a virus in my inbox. It quarantined the whole thing. When I looked at my in box, which usually has hundreds of emails going back for the past year or so, it was empty.
I simply restored it from quarantine, and went thru the emails, deleting everything I didn't need, but especially some old spam messages that I had never opened. Scanned again, and no more virus.
Now I keep the amount of mail stored in the inbox to a minimum, and back it up from time to time. WinXP Thunderbird users will find their inbox and other mail folders at...
C:\Documents and Settings\[user name]\Application Data\Thunderbird\Profiles\[*].default\Mail\Local Folders\
Mail is stored in files named after the folder.
Better yet, back up your entire profile folder. C:\Documents and Settings\[user name]\Application Data\Thunderbird\Profiles You can lose this sometimes when updating Thunderbird - at least - that has happened to me in the past.
heh,
:D
Putting all email into ONE file is a defective design.
So this 'article' is tagged as it should be
Don't feel too bad. Someone used to tag every single Microsoft related article "itsatrap" too.
"defective design" != "defective by design"
just like "broken hand" != "broken by hand".
Someone already pointed out that Norton quarentines the whole inbox, and older CAVs do too.
The behaviour is "essentially" correct, because pst and mbx's are single files, but the
bigger problem is pst's are binary format, whereas mbx's are text/UUE and text editor
"recovery" is possible.
Newer AV scanners can "snip" out the infected UUE portion, but you have to set the behaviour
yourself as is the case with CAV, and even then it works on IMAP folders, but blasts local ones
on occasion.
(snort)
Thankfully, in my case, the last local folder to get bitten was the junk mail folder that I
use to train future filters. Now, Tbird needs good mail to balance out the junk mail, so
the one saving grace is the filters are usually quick enough to shove the messages where
they belong before the AV ax falls on the infected file and folder.
Yeah, "Oh, noes my junk folder got deleted" vs "Oh, noes my entire inbox is gone".
Bit of a difference.
Have you read the moderator guidelines? Well, have you, PUNK? (and I want a Karma: Gnarly option)
It constantly amazes me that a company as old as MS can continue to produce software that isn't compatible with other parts of its "suite". Yeah yeah, I know that programming is a very complex business, but after 20+ years, surely they must have learned something. Perhaps it's the very close integration of all the parts that is the problem? Hey wait, I think I've heard other people say that.
you do realize that most all mail clients use one large file to store most mail in, not just MS, but FOSS projects too... Thunderbird.... pine.... etc... all have one large file for all mail and folders, or sevral large files for mail in individual folders, if any one of them happens to redeve a virus laden email, than that whole folder, or whole mailbox all togeather gets hosed... Also, im by no means a MS fanboy, but the NTFS filesystem isnt half bad, and this defect has NOTHING to do with how the filesystem works, more how the AV handles the detection of viruses in certin "special" places, such as inboxes... It would seem more of a bug, and one that alot of AV's share, as there doesnt seem to be a good way to tell what file is a mail folder, and what isnt just by looking at it, it would need to be pre-programmed into it, and updated accordingly for each new mail client, and each time a existing mail client changes the way it stores its mail...
Noone writes jokes in base 13!
I disagree with both assertions.
First, because there are more people testing, does not mean it gets more "intense" testing. The FOSS mentality is, "I will code up this patch, test it, then submit it." How many of those developers do you really think are rigorous in their testing? Does someone say, developer X tested these situations, I think I will add a test for this? Do they even tell each other what was tested, or does everyone re-invent the wheel? Did they test all of the boundary / corner tests? Every degenerate case? Every mind0numbingly boring condition? Or did they just test the easy stuff over and over again? Did their tests just consist of "Works For Me"?
Second, are there actually more people testing? Do you think that there are people with watches on the code tree just salivating for a chance to write test cases for other people's code? If they test other's work at all, it's going to be because they found a fault caused by someone else being sloppy, and that fault led to a failure while they were using the program... the exact same sequence that causes a user to submit a bug report to a closed source product.
Microsoft said "All your emails are belong to us"
"Defective by Design" doesn't mean that something has a design that happens to be defective. It refers to products that are, from the ground up, designed to be defective, intentionally and specifically. Sucking at software design is completely different from writing your software correctly and putting in DRM to make it less functional.
Well, I would presume his company has a method of backing up their mailstore, right? So they can just restore the individual mailbox from a snapshot and he can log back in? That's pretty much the standard method. If they didn't have some sort of archival and backup system, then the guy probably should have just been fired in the first place.
As for Windows Live OneCare that this article talks about. This is the first I've ever even heard of it. It sounds like some sort of tech support phone service thing. *shrug*
After all, isn't Outlook a virus posing as an MUA?
Does anyone remember Rav antivirus?
It was a very good antivirus program developed by Gecad, a romanian company. It had support for Linux, BSDs, Solaris and it was highly appreciated in its days. It's so sad that Microsoft killed this fine product, removing support for rival platforms and turning it into this lame thing called Onecare.
We often refuse to accept an idea merely because the tone of voice in which it has been expressed is unsympathetic to us
The tags system is nothing but an extra way to add snarky comments mirroring the slashdot groupthink to the front page. If anything, it's the one that's defectivebydesign.
How can we continue to believe in a just universe and freedom to eat crackers if we have no ale?
More people use open-source software than propriety software? I'm not sure what you mean by "FOSS software gets more intense testing."
Would you kindly mod me +1 insightful?
'Nuff said!
Oh, hell, I'll say some more just to piss off the Windows shills!
Microsoft crapware comes through again!
Just when you thought Bill's crew couldn't get ANY dumber than they are, they manage to "shock and awe" again!
Just so the OSS people don't feel left out, this is not QUITE on a par with a recent Thunderbird's ability to delete ALL email by incorrectly marking it as spam to deleted on the next compaction.
That was fixed easily in a few days and the workaround was trivial: do a search and replace with a text editor of the incorrect code in all your email.
This OneCare bug won't be if the argument has been going on since JANUARY!
Way to go, Bill, you DICKWEED!
Richard Steven Hack - This sig is TOO GODDAMN SHORT TO DO ANYTHING USEFUL WITH! MORONS!
"And just remember, this is the same development house that the whole world seems to have no problem with the thought of giving root acces to their machines so they can keep them 'safe.'"
For a single user desktop machine, there is no reason not to. If you're account ever is compromised, someone can just wrap your shell with something that uploads everything you enter, and the next time you su to root, you're toast. How many unix users do you know who switch to the login screen everytime they need to do something as root?
--
WHO ATE MY BREAKFAST PANTS?
I understand what you're trying to say by "FOSS software gets more intense testing." You mean, basically, that FOSS software gets looked at by a lot of developers and thus errors tend to be spotted.
But that isn't "intense testing".
In fact, one of my pet peeves with most of the Linux distros these days is the pathetic quality of their testing. I mean, they are letting really STUPID bugs slip through that should have been caught with even a minimal amount of testing.
As an example, Kubuntu shipped their install CDs with an installer that wouldn't let you exit the screen used for changing the mountpoints. I mean, how stupid was that? That CLEARLY showed that the install process was NOT tested AT ALL!
Novell shipped 10.1 with a bug in the update system that completely prevented updates from working. How stupid was that?
It IS true, however, as others here have commented, that COMMERCIAL testing sucks rocks, too. Look at the problems plaguing recent releases of QuickBooks 2006 AND QuickBooks 2007, Adobe Premiere, and other high-ticket, highly used commercial software.
The fact of the matter is that, industry-wide, OSS and commercial, software quality simply sucks.
It's systemic and it isn't being addressed by anybody, open source or commercial.
As Woody Allen summed up the human condition, which applies to the IT industry in spades, "Nothing works and nobody cares."
Richard Steven Hack - This sig is TOO GODDAMN SHORT TO DO ANYTHING USEFUL WITH! MORONS!
How typical... just stuff a single file with "everything" so that a single fault can wipe everything. How smart! (windows registry, mail file, etc). I use PINE for e-mail, each month the files are moved to a block file for that month "sent-Mar-2007" and "received-Mar-2007". The files are simple text (meaning: you can recover information from them easily). If a catastrophe happens, then you only loose 1 month of data. Simple, yet most commercial e-mail programs ignore this simple rule...
Windows Live OneCare Can Eat Your Email
thats funny because i have been telling Microshaft to eat my shorts for years
Microsoft invites you to join us in our party! You bring the malware, we'll bring the payload and the licensing fees!
http://wstewart.php0h.com - the sugarbuzz project blog
Are they really this dumb or is it deliberate? I honestly can't decide any more, either they are incompetent or malicious. The question is, how incompetent can a 40 billion a year company be?
Deleted
Known issue. Most of them in recent versions do a little smarter handling, but virtually every one hit this at some point
I'm not saying anyone should be proud of their security history and methodology, all software currently sucks ass. But since we have to use something NOW the question is why is the worst vendor on 90% of the world's machines?
Because users say they want security, but in reality want convienience. People want to be able to just click a program and run it, and expects the computer to figure out if this is safe or not, and whether this trojan was something they actually wanted to run, or if they were just tricked into it. It's surprising how many I've seen with the firewall off because they couldn't figure shit out, then just turned off the whole damn thing or they click yes to anything. Microsoft has always been last in class because they've been busy getting not just Joe Average, but his cousin Billy-Bob Moron on computers too. By catering to the lowest common denominator, they grew as the market grew while OSs that fought over the expert users all lost.
Live today, because you never know what tomorrow brings
And really, people generally know Windows more then anything else.
So, their comfort zone is Windows, because it APPEARS easier to manage. (Of course, it's not, it's just as complicated as anything else when you look past the pretty start button.)
I need to disappoint you:
- My experience with my students shows, that they know Windows less than anything else (they only think they know it, because of the colourful start button and stuff).
- My experience as sysadmin (in both worlds) shows, that Windows gets more complicated past the pre-fabbed administration features (which are usually eeasier achieved in Windows).
so effectively this means, that one care is everything but enterprise ready...
/troll
or can you imagine a serious company (serious companies don't give admin access to their workers) to send a technician to EVERY WORKER who just RECEIVES an email with a virus infected file to recover his inbox from quaranaine?
hey, why not piss off vista using companies by sending emails with attatched virusses (or was the plural virii?) to all their workers? man, if every worker loses all his emails multiple times or technicians have to be sent to every worker over and over again........ this might get LOTS of comanies REALLY mad and they might ditch vista and give linux a try - or at least other companies that stick with XP so far might hear of this and back off from a switch to vista...
The MAFIAA is a bunch of mindless jerks who will be the first up against the wall when the revolution comes
It's creepy.
not a problem ;-)r us/article.html
OneCare doesn't ever find virusses anyways - so this is just a theoretical danger
http://www.pcworld.com/article/id,129521-c,antivi
The MAFIAA is a bunch of mindless jerks who will be the first up against the wall when the revolution comes
gmail has a better record, plus google offered to recover whatever they possibly could for the (few) users who lost email.
you do realize that most all mail clients use...
Yes, all of the mail clients you listed give you the option of using the mbox format to store the mail. This is, however, not the only option for any of the ones you listed and hasn't been for more than half a decade.
this defect has NOTHING to do with how the filesystem works
I misspoke. I was talking about the mail filesystem - i.e. the internal mechanism whereby it stores its folders. The fact that NTFS has to be defragmented shows its low quality, but that's not the point. This has to do with the mail's internal structure.
how the AV handles the detection of viruses in certin "special" places, such as inboxes
Why should an AV program have to handle mail differently than everything else? That's the bug. If the structure of a mail system is the same as the structure of a filesystem, why aren't the filesystem related details relegated to the filesystem so that other programs, like antiviruses, can plug into them?
Mod me down and I will become more powerful than you can possibly imagine!
it also punches babies and stomps on puppies!
Wait - how would I be disappointed?
Plus, I don't see how you proved me incorrect in any way - people know Windows more then, say, UNIX. As a general rule. They use it at home, they can install software, they can add devices and device drivers. That's certainly *more* then any other operating system, right?
You actually agree with me for the most part. Like I said, it's not less complicated then other systems once you get past the start button, which insinuates "past pre-fab admin tasks" without as many words.
- It's not the Macs I hate. It's Digg users. -
The email is Quarantined - meaning you can get it back unharmed - not Deleted.
This is being misreported all across the Web even though the linked article in every case makes it clear.
It's a serious flaw certainly and still more bad press for Vista, but this one is not nearly as severe as issues like DRM and Certificate-only drivers in Vista - it doesn't deserve the same level of press.
I have a very low threshold of tolerance for malware. My usual reaction to an infestation is "nuke form orbit and re-install from scratch". :-) and, given the pain of a reinstall, I might change my mind if it got infected regularly).
:-)
.PST files, however, are just a bunch of emails; self-contained blobs of binary data. It _should_ be possibly to identify the infected one and remove it.
(yes, that's my reaction to having other people's infected PCs. My PCs have been clean (to the best of my knowledge
It's hard enough getting benign software to cleanly un-install. Malware does not come with uninstallers, and it's designed to be as difficult as possible to get rid of. Hence, I don't trust malware removal tools (other than fdisk
Think of it as removing a bad entry in a database table, no need to nuke the whole thing just to get rid of one entry!
That assumes, of course, that the computer itself wasn't infected. In that case, it's back "nuke form orbit...."
So in one way, getting rid of the whole file is (IMHO) the _right_ _thing_ (though I wouldn't stop at the file, I'd do the whole system), but on the other hand a more subtle approach should be adequate.
"But since we have to use something NOW the question is why is the worst vendor on 90% of the world's machines?"
Usually I'd say that it is because if you have 90% of the machines, you need not to bother with being good, but Microsoft never was.
"And for the Linux world I'd like to see the major distros come together to take every package not currently at 1.0 and finish them or dump em."
If you are so superficial, they probably would "finish" them in your eyes when they just tag on a "1.0". There is a lot of software which is already completed but still has a version number lesser than 1.0.
Those numbers do not correspond to anything. Maybe a build with a higher number tends to come after the build with a lower number, but there never ever is any connection to the features at all.
Wait - how would I be disappointed?
/.-user.
You wouldn't. Maybe a problem of language. I tried to rhetorically endorse what you said. Probably I should take an extra course in writing.
Though I need to bow before you as the slightly - if only a few hours - more senior
Try saying "OneCare" in a silly French accent.
(Think Inspector Clouseau...)
No sig today...
Delete entire inbox, Cancel or Allow?
~Cancel~
Delete entire inbox, Cancel or Allow?
~Cancel!~
Delete entire inbox, Cancel or Allow?
~Cancel!~
~Cancel Failed, deleting inbox~
So how to set the setting to use POP in this lan? or cant use it?
I know this " http://oe.msn.msnmail.hotmail.com/cgi-bin/hmdata " can be use hotmail in this lan.
How about others mailbox? such as yahoo????
Thank you
It did that a couple of times for me, but luckily all my email is on IMAP (all 8GB of it plus an anal retentive collection of spam so I can re-teach the checker :) so.. I just got a slow INBOX every now and again.
The fix was really simple in the end, a combination of switching to Thunderbird and installing a virus checker on the server. Actually that should be something virus checkers do - I never understood why your email application has to do all the junk detection and virus checking AFTER it's been pulled into your INBOX. On my IMAP box, okay, this is pretty much how it works (it hits my inbox regardless of the email app being open after all) but if you're using POP3 or HTTP mail clients, why not have your virus checker and spam checker hook into the mail app at the network protocol level - download a mail into the virus checker and then have the virus checker proxy it to the mail app?
After all, what I get if I use POP3 with a virus checker now is, email app downloads a mail, it is indexed and put in the inbox, flagged as unread and sets off a notification that I got mail delivered, then the junk mail and virus checker runs over the inbox (sometimes flagging off a "do you want this application to access your mail box?" warning dialog), the disk churns again over this. Why does it have to hit the email application first, then be checked, then be deleted, leaving a hidden deleted message to my inbox, and another spam mail in my Junk folder or discarded completely if it threw up a virus exception?
Don't the commercial virus checkers (Sophos?) handle this properly?
I'm not saying anyone should be proud of their security history and methodology, all software currently sucks ass. I know a lot of very intelligent people who categorically can't understand this. It doesn't just apply to security, either. Just because something's the most popular doesn't make it the best, and being the best doesn't make it perfect... or ideal... or even good.
If you haven't used it in a year then, with 95% probability, it can be thrown away. That other 5% is for items which are prohibitively expensive to replace. Decorative objects are not subject to this rule.
Computer archives are the same way: if you haven't used it in the last year then, with 95% probability, you'll never need it again. That other 5% is reserved for archives of your own personal projects which you may be emotionally attached to.
E-mail communication invariably falls within the 95% segment. If my employer wants to archive my e-mail that's their business. With respect to any e-mail client which I have personal control over, though, very little has a lifespan longer than 30 days. I keep one e-mail from each contact (I'm paranoid of address book scrapers) and I archive e-mails which have important bookmarks. Everything else gets tossed.
It is important to face reality: you will forget more information than you will ever know. Stop fighting it needlessly. Do not become attached to collections for the mere sake of collecting. Sure, everyone has a collection of something somewhere but when their life becomes a clutter of collections then it becomes a problem--a sign of a deeper cranial issue (such as the inability to face reality).
Please spare me the troll responses which list special case arguments such as "but what about..." or "I have a collection of..."
the NPG electrode was replaced with carbon blac
I agree with parent on this one.
If MS wanted to use a database concept, then they should have used a database engine with all the various integrity checking, backup, security etc overhead that such middleware requires.
IBM succeeded in making a database machine - the AS/400 filesystem was entirely DB/2 based. Earlier the venerable Pick stuff was implemented as a database machine too.
MS however, wanted some of the advantages of a database concept without the overheads IOW they put user data at risk by their shortcuts. That's a bad implementation for which they should be castigated and it should be used as an illustration of bad technique - no more.
I still use a MUA from OS/2 - PMMail/2 (about to be released in a new version) which lets the underlying OS handle the file stuff - folders and sub-folders are created by the OS not the MUA. Messages are individual files, can be searched and managed by OS tools if you wish, and the MUA simply re-indexes when it opens.
So back to the original angst of Outlook users, any anti-virus program (rarely necessary for OS/2 of course) need isolate/quarantine/delete only a file at a time.
You won't receive the note -> because your mail has been quarantined...
[agent Smith voice]
So Mr. Anderson, what are you with your mail if you cannot access it anymore?
[/agent Smith voice]
--- I am known for the ones who want to find me on the net. Is that a privacy risk or a privilege? One might wonder..
Microsoft issued the OneCare patch on March 11. End of all FUD
I think any OS can appears easy to manage if the user know the OS well enough.
As for me, I'm still a Linux newbie that makes Linux appear a bit hard for me.
It would takes time for me to be able to manage Linux easily.
For Microsoft matters.. it seems like they have a series of unfortunate events since like.. forever.
IT074931
I might only be a few hours before you, but I have like 1600 more posts then you =)
- It's not the Macs I hate. It's Digg users. -