The commenters in arstechnica also mentioned search engine hijacking too. Maleare if you ask me?
This and advertisers circumventing adblock which was mentioned yesterday shows a war.
Is IE the only defense? Firefox has a lot more powerful API for extensions and add ons so I wonder if that is unsafe as well? However Mozilla has a greater track record in protecting freedom and privacy as an organization. Taco was an infamous extension that did what ghostery does for Firefox but a spammer bought it and ruined it.
Rush and others will use these isolated incidents to feed those who use their gut instincts on how silly those liberal socialist geeks who are educated are and to ignore what else they have to say about light bulbs because they have been so wrong etc
Firefox is usable again and uses the least amount of ram. IE starting with 9 started acting compliant and normal. I couldn't believe it in 2011. IE 11 has an issue at work because it is so standards compliant that it no longer supports legacy jscript code that launches IE specific flash. It runs like it should. This of course angers the MBAs and the luddities and slashdotters still think it must be the same as IE 6 and wont touch it!
IE is actually good and if banks stopped feeding it broken IE code from last decade it would work. Firefox still is missing some things but I really like that it has true adblock. Google is so limited that adblock plus only stops it from appearing on the screen. The ads still run and track you and install malware. You just do not see it etc.
FYI adblock plus now works with IE as well!
Times are changing and I feel it is safe to say MS wont ever do an IE 6 again and can't. I do feel Chrome could become that role in the next couple of years if businesses give up after Windows 7 and go all tablet in 5 years. With Citrix that is a possibility if Windows 9 blows.
The fact that people have to worry about their karma and being modded down for speaking the truth about the state of the Linux desktop and things that fans really don't want to hear (but must), speaks volumes about why old problems still exist with Linux and polish isn't a priority.
Yep reading how the guy whined about X sucking got -1 and those bashing Wayland got +5 insightful 2 weeks ago brought it home! Many slashdottters are conservative and do not like change in their Linux environments and some using XP are die hards and anti technology which I never dreamed slashdot would ever become!
Apparently Xeyes over the network was more important than creating a non sucky GUI that can compete agaisnt Android, MacOSX, and Windows. Things the way they are are features and they do not get why no one would want to think like them.
It is not bloat but a bug. Your CPU goes 100% and the fans spin like mad and there is no way out of it. It started from SVChost.exe trying to do a Windows update and quiting after an overlfow of +1000 patches.
Many were gleaming hoping this would force the holdouts finally to get with the times.
You are aware Commodo Dragon still loads the ads but only not displays them due to the limits on the Chrome api? Just something I figured you would want to know.
I switched back to Firefox for this reason with adblock. I heard Comodo has a secure version of Firefox still for your customers if you are interested?
Good luck with this as Google and IE still load the malware. Just do not show you it.
Firefox is the only browser that will protect you with adblock sadly. Just figured slashdotters should know this as you get the performance of all the scripts loading and doing god knows what, you just do not see it.
Then why are you on Slashdot? It is not worth your time right? You said it yourself. Infact, name one website and I MEAN 1 website that has no javascript? Name one please?
Yeah lets get rid of text too while we are it! Lets make the web complete unpractical and useless for what people use it for? After all I am sure people would agree to give up gmail, facebook, google maps, and would love to have a boring set of text files that do not do anything all on your principal.
Seriously this is the age of Web 3.0 and going back to web 1.0 means you are not part of the web but more of a text viewer.... I can picture the replies right now saying YES THAT WHAT THE WEB WAS MEANT TO BE a Hypertext text viewer only! Keep bloat out yada yada.
But in 2014 we have email, Slashdot, and sites that process logic and require dynamic page generation and logic which javascript is used. It is not a simple hypertext viewer and you are clueless to say anything else otherwise as appear a luddite.
That's what you get for waiting until the last minute. Many corps won't see it as a 8 year old OS but a 3 year and will throw hissy fits like the XP ones are now
What I would like to see is a virtual machine. Yeah it will add bloat and waste cpu etc.
But a VM will increase security and any language can run inside it. So once can use python for example or make up his or her own language and have that JIT compile if it is not cached and run etc. Kind of like people usuing Java to run python with jython but more vm than sandbox like.
I see Google's native client and NACL and this as just that. They are making Chrome into a ChromeOS virtual machine where it is all a Google ecosystem. Maybe this would be a great idea for HTML 6 and CSS 4 standards. Have a VM that does x,y, and z.
There is also ASM.JS that Firefox is on the bandwagon with but of course it is against the interest of the 2 organizations to support the opposite as they want to dominate.
Even if MS supported one or both in future versions of IE both Chrome and Firefox still hold too much a grip before anyone could adopt. It is frustrating as I do not trust Dart as it is highly tied to the chrome native platform and may have patents and licensing issues.
Everyone here would be screaming bloody murder and all MS is trying to sabotage the web again?! But if Google does it then it is cool and innovative.
I am tired of chrome not implementing W3C standards without using the -webkit to get it to work properly. I am not the only once concerned it is the next IE 6 but thankfully there are only a few sites which only work well in Chrome.
Mozilla Firefox is catching up and has the fasted DOM according to tomshardware and ASM.JS looks to be rather interesting. Unfortunately it is agaisn't Google's interest to support it as they want a closed ecosystem similar to IE 6 and activeX before it.
I still use Chrome as Firefox is still behind in a few areas, but even IE is catching up and I find both IE and Firefox to use less ram than Chrome.
No-one cares when Microsoft started selling XP. They care about when Microsoft STOPPED selling XP, which was only a few years ago. There are a ton of XP machines only three or four years old that work fine and are deliberately being made obsolete just so Microsoft can make money.
Well, if they stopped selling XP back in 2007 and told everyone to STFU and switch to Vista we'd be screaming bloody murder about that so damned if you do and damned if you don't. All their support lifecycle clocks start running from when they release the N+1 product (and N+2 for extended support), now that Windows 8 is out the countdown towards Windows 7 EOL is ticking even though they still allow you to buy a Windows 7 machine. Mainstream support ends January 13, 2015 and extended support January 14, 2020. It's not like this is a bloody secret, the policy has been published and the dates set long ago. In short, if you bought XP after April 14, 2009 you know (or should have known anyway) that you were buying an OS already in the extended support phase. Why is ignorance an excuse in the tech world?
Excuse!
I can give you one. Windows 8 sucks and with Vista every corp had a right to not even look at Windows 7 until 2011 when SP1 came out. Now comes to all the intranet apps that required IE 6,7, and 8 some which are sold right now which wont work after IE 8. This is why it took until 2013 to get rid of XP. It would be more foolish to just go Win 7 full on in 2009 as nothing was certified for it. It was a hobbyist and home OS with future potential.
Yes we are going to have a fit in just 4 years if you expect us to throw that out.
More than likely if MS is not careful clouds, virtualization, and BYOD will make switching to tablets a better alternative. 5 years ago we still were talking about netbooks and look what happened in that time frame with tablets? In another 5 years we will have ARM processes as fast as our icore3s today detachable screens that go 34 inches with 4k support, Citrix and VMware apps that can remotely access your ancient windows 7 apps on a cloud somewhere.
MS will be done except for a few workstation users. I think Windows 7 could be the very last business OS and the end of an era and yes we would like extended support for it because MS screwed up. Not us. If IE was not proprietary and Vista was not so bad we would have jumped to Windows 7 back in 2010.
Laugh all you want but in a mere 4 years it will be time to hit the trendmill again to get rid of Windows 7. Can you believe that!!
So what to do?
Chromebooks and tablets with keyboards and mice can run your ancient win16 crap in a VM inside a browser or as a VMware app on your device. VIOLA! No more IT departments. No more headaches. My guess is within 5 years you will see cloud based active directory too. Just plug the device in with your outlook.com corporate email address and work. DONE.
Chromebooks come with Citrix if I recall to run your old apps. At least that is what Google is selling to corporate buyers.
In 5 years this will hit everyone and if Windows 9 and Windows 10 turn out to be cloud and metro based suckfests this might be a viable move.
Windows Vista introduced a proper security model. 7 was a substantial improvement, 8 was a bit cleaner and 2 steps backwards in usability, 8.1 is about on par with 7 really, with a start screen instead of a start menu.
Without getting into whether 8.1 is better than 7, anything from Vista onwards got the new security model, and THAT is a reason to upgrade.
But remember, security doesn't sell, and this thread just shows how deeply that goes. Because here on/. we spent over a DECADE mocking Windows XP and previous versions running as administrator (aka root), and the majority of users running as administor.
And then Microsoft finally fixed that, and today Windows security and reliability is a lot better as a result, but here we are on/. no less, listing to people tell us with a straight face that there is no reason for them to upgrade from XP.
Security just doesn't sell, not even here. That's sad.
If I had mod points I would give them.
XP is a hero to Slashdot due to the Vista effect. Before Vista it was reviled. It taught many of us to stay super conservative and hate change. Also the average slashdotter is in his late 30s now, where in 12 years ago when XP was new we were mostly young CS students who could adopt to change easier.
I do not mean that as an insult. But it is a fact by the time you hit 30 your brain gets used to things the creativity to try new ends. Many aged IT guys are the most anti METRO UI around. Not to say it is a good UI but it is just something they are not used too etc.
Regardless any IT professional who puts his organization in harms way because he is tooo lazy to keep up with the times deserves a different career. Sorry it is your job to be proactive and to warn management that is penny wise pound foolish to stay behind when speed and security issues can dampen productivity very fast.
It is becoming more of a hassle to support XP on modern infrastructures and platforms. Times move on and it's not all that bad.
Speaking of change I miss my 2006 Hyundai Elantra. Divorce and it being stuck in the Alaska in the dead of winter meant I couldn't keep it as the roads leaving were glacialized for the winter. I sold it.
I couldn't find a car for the same price that was a hatchback, wide as the old, and was reliable and cheap as the same price. They were better then. But times move on.
Change happens and this change is not all bad. Change happens too if you stay with XP. Hardware dies, vulnerabilies increase, modern software and html 5, and things happen where supporting old is as bad as just taking the plunge.
I am adamant because I have to deal with IE 8 and fixing things that I wouldn't have too if cost accountants would wake up
Nope and don't care. However they are not internet enabled. XP is negligent for a user as they open attachments and go on the web and have apps that winrot the registry. Virtualization is best for those use cases.
Poorly written XP apps change and rewrite reg entries each time they run. Since it is a database it makes copies of copies of copies etc. If you worked with a rdbms you know this is trouble and can bring the mightiest of 80 core servers to their needs.
So MS fixes it to help business out and they respond with nooo it work now!! XP was so much better as shitwareERP which slows down our systems by modding the reg works just fine etc.
Things like this drive software engineers through the roof. Its why old Java is still here as these apps use security exploits for com objects that security breaks. Corps do not see it this way and just will refuse to upgrade and then rant on Slashdot how it is so unfair that they have to do something after 5 years.
According to this article intrinsic support for XP will end this year. (And by intrinsic I mean OS updates that keep the OS secure from 0-day flaws-not just MSE). Even if they were being run for 2014-2001 = 13 years, the end is nigh. I agree with other commenters that a PC has a shorter life span than you imagine, with 3-4 years tending to be the norm and with 1:1 in sales for "Mac":"PC" they will eventually reach parity within that time. BTW my home has been Windows free since 2004 and Google requires a business case for any Windows PC.
That was a little gripe as I am fighting tooth and nail in another thread in Slashdot from +5 nodded authors who say they run XP with a smile and many reactionaries are here which never were before Vista.
4,000 employees waiting 10 minutes for their workstations to boot as XP lacks a registry defragger and runs apps which cause winrot, not to mention lack ahci command queing for data so your disks can only handle one thing at a time, plus an added batshit paging and swap algorithm will do just that.
Now add no work for 4 hours during your mccrappy virus scan and that is more money lost. Cryptolocker locking a share randsom due to security not up to par as Windows 7 and more $$$$.
Should I go on?
You also can keep that IE 6 shitwareERP by insecure ltd by using Citrix or VMware and run it in a browser. Even your IPad has access.
The licensing savings will pay for this due to not upgrading.
That is what a good IT professional does. He is proactive and not reactive who lets harm come in by being lazy.
Slashdot Mirror
What if I reimage my computer? Can I get my old extensions back?
The commenters in arstechnica also mentioned search engine hijacking too. Maleare if you ask me?
This and advertisers circumventing adblock which was mentioned yesterday shows a war.
Is IE the only defense? Firefox has a lot more powerful API for extensions and add ons so I wonder if that is unsafe as well? However Mozilla has a greater track record in protecting freedom and privacy as an organization. Taco was an infamous extension that did what ghostery does for Firefox but a spammer bought it and ruined it.
Man file has run and still continues to run on more computers than ever before and frankly refuses to die. It won't ever go away.
Rush and others will use these isolated incidents to feed those who use their gut instincts on how silly those liberal socialist geeks who are educated are and to ignore what else they have to say about light bulbs because they have been so wrong etc
Have you run the modern browsers on a recent OS?
Firefox is usable again and uses the least amount of ram. IE starting with 9 started acting compliant and normal. I couldn't believe it in 2011. IE 11 has an issue at work because it is so standards compliant that it no longer supports legacy jscript code that launches IE specific flash. It runs like it should. This of course angers the MBAs and the luddities and slashdotters still think it must be the same as IE 6 and wont touch it!
IE is actually good and if banks stopped feeding it broken IE code from last decade it would work. Firefox still is missing some things but I really like that it has true adblock. Google is so limited that adblock plus only stops it from appearing on the screen. The ads still run and track you and install malware. You just do not see it etc.
FYI adblock plus now works with IE as well!
Times are changing and I feel it is safe to say MS wont ever do an IE 6 again and can't. I do feel Chrome could become that role in the next couple of years if businesses give up after Windows 7 and go all tablet in 5 years. With Citrix that is a possibility if Windows 9 blows.
The fact that people have to worry about their karma and being modded down for speaking the truth about the state of the Linux desktop and things that fans really don't want to hear (but must), speaks volumes about why old problems still exist with Linux and polish isn't a priority.
Yep reading how the guy whined about X sucking got -1 and those bashing Wayland got +5 insightful 2 weeks ago brought it home! Many slashdottters are conservative and do not like change in their Linux environments and some using XP are die hards and anti technology which I never dreamed slashdot would ever become!
Apparently Xeyes over the network was more important than creating a non sucky GUI that can compete agaisnt Android, MacOSX, and Windows. Things the way they are are features and they do not get why no one would want to think like them.
Really. Kernel 2.2 is still being patched and so is Redhat 7.2?
This is the age of XP by the way.
No this is really annoying for VM users.
It is not bloat but a bug. Your CPU goes 100% and the fans spin like mad and there is no way out of it. It started from SVChost.exe trying to do a Windows update and quiting after an overlfow of +1000 patches.
Many were gleaming hoping this would force the holdouts finally to get with the times.
Hairy
You are aware Commodo Dragon still loads the ads but only not displays them due to the limits on the Chrome api? Just something I figured you would want to know.
I switched back to Firefox for this reason with adblock. I heard Comodo has a secure version of Firefox still for your customers if you are interested?
Good luck with this as Google and IE still load the malware. Just do not show you it.
Firefox is the only browser that will protect you with adblock sadly. Just figured slashdotters should know this as you get the performance of all the scripts loading and doing god knows what, you just do not see it.
Then it's a bad site not worth your time.
Then why are you on Slashdot? It is not worth your time right? You said it yourself. Infact, name one website and I MEAN 1 website that has no javascript? Name one please?
Yeah lets get rid of text too while we are it! Lets make the web complete unpractical and useless for what people use it for? After all I am sure people would agree to give up gmail, facebook, google maps, and would love to have a boring set of text files that do not do anything all on your principal.
Seriously this is the age of Web 3.0 and going back to web 1.0 means you are not part of the web but more of a text viewer. ... I can picture the replies right now saying YES THAT WHAT THE WEB WAS MEANT TO BE a Hypertext text viewer only! Keep bloat out yada yada.
But in 2014 we have email, Slashdot, and sites that process logic and require dynamic page generation and logic which javascript is used. It is not a simple hypertext viewer and you are clueless to say anything else otherwise as appear a luddite.
Easy.
Visual Basic 6 support for those all so awesome apps that can down an economy hired by Indians from Craigslist
Windows 7 EOL will start LOL.
That's what you get for waiting until the last minute. Many corps won't see it as a 8 year old OS but a 3 year and will throw hissy fits like the XP ones are now
What I would like to see is a virtual machine. Yeah it will add bloat and waste cpu etc.
But a VM will increase security and any language can run inside it. So once can use python for example or make up his or her own language and have that JIT compile if it is not cached and run etc. Kind of like people usuing Java to run python with jython but more vm than sandbox like.
I see Google's native client and NACL and this as just that. They are making Chrome into a ChromeOS virtual machine where it is all a Google ecosystem. Maybe this would be a great idea for HTML 6 and CSS 4 standards. Have a VM that does x,y, and z.
There is also ASM.JS that Firefox is on the bandwagon with but of course it is against the interest of the 2 organizations to support the opposite as they want to dominate.
Even if MS supported one or both in future versions of IE both Chrome and Firefox still hold too much a grip before anyone could adopt. It is frustrating as I do not trust Dart as it is highly tied to the chrome native platform and may have patents and licensing issues.
Everyone here would be screaming bloody murder and all MS is trying to sabotage the web again?! But if Google does it then it is cool and innovative.
I am tired of chrome not implementing W3C standards without using the -webkit to get it to work properly. I am not the only once concerned it is the next IE 6 but thankfully there are only a few sites which only work well in Chrome.
Mozilla Firefox is catching up and has the fasted DOM according to tomshardware and ASM.JS looks to be rather interesting. Unfortunately it is agaisn't Google's interest to support it as they want a closed ecosystem similar to IE 6 and activeX before it.
I still use Chrome as Firefox is still behind in a few areas, but even IE is catching up and I find both IE and Firefox to use less ram than Chrome.
No-one cares when Microsoft started selling XP. They care about when Microsoft STOPPED selling XP, which was only a few years ago. There are a ton of XP machines only three or four years old that work fine and are deliberately being made obsolete just so Microsoft can make money.
Well, if they stopped selling XP back in 2007 and told everyone to STFU and switch to Vista we'd be screaming bloody murder about that so damned if you do and damned if you don't. All their support lifecycle clocks start running from when they release the N+1 product (and N+2 for extended support), now that Windows 8 is out the countdown towards Windows 7 EOL is ticking even though they still allow you to buy a Windows 7 machine. Mainstream support ends January 13, 2015 and extended support January 14, 2020. It's not like this is a bloody secret, the policy has been published and the dates set long ago. In short, if you bought XP after April 14, 2009 you know (or should have known anyway) that you were buying an OS already in the extended support phase. Why is ignorance an excuse in the tech world?
Excuse!
I can give you one. Windows 8 sucks and with Vista every corp had a right to not even look at Windows 7 until 2011 when SP1 came out. Now comes to all the intranet apps that required IE 6,7, and 8 some which are sold right now which wont work after IE 8. This is why it took until 2013 to get rid of XP. It would be more foolish to just go Win 7 full on in 2009 as nothing was certified for it. It was a hobbyist and home OS with future potential.
Yes we are going to have a fit in just 4 years if you expect us to throw that out.
More than likely if MS is not careful clouds, virtualization, and BYOD will make switching to tablets a better alternative. 5 years ago we still were talking about netbooks and look what happened in that time frame with tablets? In another 5 years we will have ARM processes as fast as our icore3s today detachable screens that go 34 inches with 4k support, Citrix and VMware apps that can remotely access your ancient windows 7 apps on a cloud somewhere.
MS will be done except for a few workstation users. I think Windows 7 could be the very last business OS and the end of an era and yes we would like extended support for it because MS screwed up. Not us. If IE was not proprietary and Vista was not so bad we would have jumped to Windows 7 back in 2010.
Laugh all you want but in a mere 4 years it will be time to hit the trendmill again to get rid of Windows 7. Can you believe that!!
So what to do?
Chromebooks and tablets with keyboards and mice can run your ancient win16 crap in a VM inside a browser or as a VMware app on your device. VIOLA! No more IT departments. No more headaches. My guess is within 5 years you will see cloud based active directory too. Just plug the device in with your outlook.com corporate email address and work. DONE.
Chromebooks come with Citrix if I recall to run your old apps. At least that is what Google is selling to corporate buyers.
In 5 years this will hit everyone and if Windows 9 and Windows 10 turn out to be cloud and metro based suckfests this might be a viable move.
Windows Vista introduced a proper security model. 7 was a substantial improvement, 8 was a bit cleaner and 2 steps backwards in usability, 8.1 is about on par with 7 really, with a start screen instead of a start menu.
Without getting into whether 8.1 is better than 7, anything from Vista onwards got the new security model, and THAT is a reason to upgrade.
But remember, security doesn't sell, and this thread just shows how deeply that goes. Because here on /. we spent over a DECADE mocking Windows XP and previous versions running as administrator (aka root), and the majority of users running as administor.
And then Microsoft finally fixed that, and today Windows security and reliability is a lot better as a result, but here we are on /. no less, listing to people tell us with a straight face that there is no reason for them to upgrade from XP.
Security just doesn't sell, not even here. That's sad.
If I had mod points I would give them.
XP is a hero to Slashdot due to the Vista effect. Before Vista it was reviled. It taught many of us to stay super conservative and hate change. Also the average slashdotter is in his late 30s now, where in 12 years ago when XP was new we were mostly young CS students who could adopt to change easier.
I do not mean that as an insult. But it is a fact by the time you hit 30 your brain gets used to things the creativity to try new ends. Many aged IT guys are the most anti METRO UI around. Not to say it is a good UI but it is just something they are not used too etc.
Regardless any IT professional who puts his organization in harms way because he is tooo lazy to keep up with the times deserves a different career. Sorry it is your job to be proactive and to warn management that is penny wise pound foolish to stay behind when speed and security issues can dampen productivity very fast.
Listen wouldn't it just be easier to upgrade?
It is becoming more of a hassle to support XP on modern infrastructures and platforms. Times move on and it's not all that bad.
Speaking of change I miss my 2006 Hyundai Elantra. Divorce and it being stuck in the Alaska in the dead of winter meant I couldn't keep it as the roads leaving were glacialized for the winter. I sold it.
I couldn't find a car for the same price that was a hatchback, wide as the old, and was reliable and cheap as the same price. They were better then. But times move on.
Change happens and this change is not all bad. Change happens too if you stay with XP. Hardware dies, vulnerabilies increase, modern software and html 5, and things happen where supporting old is as bad as just taking the plunge.
I am adamant because I have to deal with IE 8 and fixing things that I wouldn't have too if cost accountants would wake up
Nope and don't care. However they are not internet enabled. XP is negligent for a user as they open attachments and go on the web and have apps that winrot the registry. Virtualization is best for those use cases.
Poorly written XP apps change and rewrite reg entries each time they run. Since it is a database it makes copies of copies of copies etc. If you worked with a rdbms you know this is trouble and can bring the mightiest of 80 core servers to their needs.
So MS fixes it to help business out and they respond with nooo it work now!! XP was so much better as shitwareERP which slows down our systems by modding the reg works just fine etc.
Things like this drive software engineers through the roof. Its why old Java is still here as these apps use security exploits for com objects that security breaks. Corps do not see it this way and just will refuse to upgrade and then rant on Slashdot how it is so unfair that they have to do something after 5 years.
According to this article intrinsic support for XP will end this year. (And by intrinsic I mean OS updates that keep the OS secure from 0-day flaws-not just MSE). Even if they were being run for 2014-2001 = 13 years, the end is nigh. I agree with other commenters that a PC has a shorter life span than you imagine, with 3-4 years tending to be the norm and with 1:1 in sales for "Mac":"PC" they will eventually reach parity within that time. BTW my home has been Windows free since 2004 and Google requires a business case for any Windows PC.
That was a little gripe as I am fighting tooth and nail in another thread in Slashdot from +5 nodded authors who say they run XP with a smile and many reactionaries are here which never were before Vista.
But they do rn XP and still outnumber ipads
4,000 employees waiting 10 minutes for their workstations to boot as XP lacks a registry defragger and runs apps which cause winrot, not to mention lack ahci command queing for data so your disks can only handle one thing at a time, plus an added batshit paging and swap algorithm will do just that.
Now add no work for 4 hours during your mccrappy virus scan and that is more money lost. Cryptolocker locking a share randsom due to security not up to par as Windows 7 and more $$$$.
Should I go on?
You also can keep that IE 6 shitwareERP by insecure ltd by using Citrix or VMware and run it in a browser. Even your IPad has access.
The licensing savings will pay for this due to not upgrading.
That is what a good IT professional does. He is proactive and not reactive who lets harm come in by being lazy.
There are tons of PC's in any corporation and home.
The difference is they run XP still and are 8 years old and are therefore not counted. I do not believe there is an IPAD for every corporate employee.