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Set Your Watches For the End of Windows XP
An anonymous reader writes "In one year today exactly, Microsoft will shut down support for Windows XP. The deadline will prove a challenge for many of Australia's largest users of IT, all struggling to migrate to new Microsoft environments." Net Applications' chart of current OS market share figures shows XP only slightly behind Windows 7, even now.
XP will no longer be "supported" but it will certainly still be used by 10's of millions of computers a year from now (and two, and three, and more). It's also a certainty that a stationary "unsupported" target will get a lot of attention by exploits and black hats.
XP -> 7 is entirely worth it. I'm no IT professional and don't know the logistics of it all but when I upgraded it was like day and night. I really don't understand the slow uptake to 7. Laziness? XP to Vista I understand, Vista was a pile of poopy fart poops. But 7 is a breeze and if I may boldly say in my experience even more reliable than XP. Of course, I could be letting the odd obscure legacy program go over my head but still... 7. 7 7 7 7 7. Did I mention 7?
You can dance if you want to.
It's not going to work when it gets riddled with malware because of unpatched remote exploits.
[Fuck Beta]
o0t!
> It's not going to work when it gets riddled with malware because of unpatched remote exploits.
Take a look at whatever latest OS you are currently running. Is it bug and exploit free? If you think it is, then come back in a year and there likely will be a long list of vulnerabilities found during that time. And they didn't just magically appear, most of these vulnerabilities are in your OS RIGHT NOW and there is a good chance the bad guys have known about them for quite a while too.
Even a brand new Windows 7/8/Blue or Mac or Linux shouldn't just be thrown on the net without some extra precautions.
With good practices, and and extra precautions, even Windows 95 can be "secure". Many people will choose to take this path, manage security themselves, and continue to happily run Windows XP.
Now imagine that non-technical user on a different OS. Probably would get the same results....it's a user problem, not an OS problem. They are the ones that click on the African prince email links.
Now imagine that non-technical user on a different OS. Probably would get the same results....it's a user problem, not an OS problem.
While that's true to an extent, most of them aren't installing 'Nigerian Kitty Screen Savers', they're just browsing the web and ending up infected through some remote Windows exploit.
^^this.
If you're still running 16bit DOS, your machines are highly malware resistant today. I know of no virus or malware circulating currently that will infect your machine.
Actually, outside of a couple of incidents and a parade of trojans (most of which require astounding stupidity to install, give admin password, then run)?
So yeah - I'd say OSX has a better record over its 12-year lifespan than Windows has had over that exact same lifespan.
OTOH, Linux beats 'em both.
Quo usque tandem abutere, Nimbus, patientia nostra?
Maybe, just maybe, the MS user base (at around 94%) is a bit more appealing to malware/virus writers than OS X (at around 5%) or Linux (at 1%)...
Ken
No they're not. They might claim "oh i didn't do anything!" when bringing you their PC for repair, but more often than not they've been attempting to get "free shit" which isn't "free".
I run: Windows, OS X, Linux, FreeBSD. Just because you have a hammer, doesn't mean everything is a nail.
Except Windows 95 has no open ports by default. Hell, TCP/IP isn't even installed by default.
I run: Windows, OS X, Linux, FreeBSD. Just because you have a hammer, doesn't mean everything is a nail.
And how does she get updates to Flash, Java and other programs that have their own updater program that require intervention by a user with and Administrator login?
I'm sorry, but no. Running as a non-administrator only works if you have someone else who keeps the system updated.
The real "Libtards" are the Libertarians!
Do you know any non-technical Linux users?
You're wrong. For the last five years my wife is a happy CentOS user. And as non technical as you can get it.
Yes she needs help with her PC, but roughly the same as when she used Windows before that. And for me it's less support work because of the reduced amount of bloatware and exploits targeting Linux.
When she moved from IE to FireFox and Outlook Express to Thunderbird the only thing I had to explain was what multi-tab browsing is. For the rest it was to her "all the same thing".
The main reason that non-technical users don't use Linux is that you can't buy preconfigured Linux systems in the big-box stores.
But this starts to become a moot point, because non-technical users just use a phone instead of a desktop or laptop.
Browsers shouldn't have a back button!! It's all about going forward...
Oh, that's right--weren't they too busy trying to create and hype up their own proprietary "Internet" at the time or something? The Microsoft Network? That damn passing fad... it just won't go away!
Once so configured, the update process runs in the background on its own, with no interaction required by the user.
You can also assign rights to use the update program without giving full root access.
http://spamdecoy.net - free throwaway anonymous email - avoid spam!
You discredit with a false assumption. Android can't be compared to windows as they are different platforms with different qualities for malware.
Sensitive files, large bandwidth for DDoS attacks, processing power for bitcoin mining etc is a desirable trait for malware writers exclusive to the PC. Android may be bloody popular for the end users but it still is lacking in the same way as OSX is to the malware writers, namely it's not as profitable.
The main issue with sandboxing in the style of Android is that it doesn't actually work. Any application that needs to be able to modify documents has the 'access SD card' permission, and that gives it access to all other documents. There is an inherent problem with this approach, in that you either give such coarse-grained permissions that they leak like a sieve, or you have such fine-grained ones that 99% of users don't understand them.
Currently, the most common way of deploying Android malware is to find a fairly popular app in the Market (sorry, Play Store), download it, add the trojan, reupload it with a different name and a price of zero, download it a few dozen times and rate it 5 stars, and then wait for users to install it. You can usually even keep the same permissions as the original, as it is pretty much the norm for applications to ask for far more permissions than they actually need.
If you did this on Windows, you'd have screensavers saying that they needed full access to C: to run, and users would just click 'yes, show me the kittens'.
I am TheRaven on Soylent News
The NT family was designed from day one for multi user access and security.
If that is true (and it may well be) I wonder why so many applications require administrator rights to run, not just to install. I suspect that is because historically applications always did have administrator access, and so developers expected this to always be the case. That is why I think Windows (even the modern, multi-user aware versions derived from NT) is still hobbled by its single-user history.
Oh, that's right--weren't they too busy trying to create and hype up their own proprietary "Internet" at the time or something? The Microsoft Network? That damn passing fad... it just won't go away!
Hindsight is always 20/20 isn't it? At the time, the Compuserve and AOL models of the internet were the dominant ones, i.e. walled gardens where you didn't really ever venture out into the wild internet. It would have been natural for Microsoft to think they could provide an alternative version of this, and it would have been a real money spinner (imagine if every Windows user had to pay MS $20 a month or whatever).
To have a right to do a thing is not at all the same as to be right in doing it