Not least because they have a very good support forum. Pattern updates are very timely too and its impact on the performance of the boxes I've put it on is minimal.
You insensitive clod, not all people want NT 4 SP2 on their win 98 boxes.
Seriously though, the first thing which goes on is the latest McAfee Stinger. When that's wiped out most of the viruses, I uninstall their out-of-date Norton - so many people don't realise that the major antivirus vendors are on a rental model and just buy the product and expect it to last forever. Then Avast! Personal Edition goes on, and the PC is fully scanned. After that comes Spybot and Ad-Aware. I use both because each product has its stregths and weaknesses. All of this is done form a CD burnt with the latest patterns so no internet connectivity happens until their PC has been cleaned. And then Sygate Personal Firewall completes the mix of security products.
After that comes Thunderbird and Firefox, The GIMP and Audacity (if they are into that sort of thing. And of course we musn't forget IrfanView.
A few months back I designed a simple web site using CSS and XHTML. It was a no-brainer (for I have no brain when it comes to HTML). Internet Explorer failed to render it correctly (ignoring "position:fixed", not showing background colours correctly). Opera was better but it didn't size one of my backgrounds correctly. Mozilla and Firefox did exactly as I expected.
Read the label on the box of "Sims 2" - users must have admin privileges to run the game. Sheesh! (Same's true of "The Sims"). I've blogged about this here.
And Office Update tells you you're OK. When you're not. And the silly detection tool is too lazy to tell you what files it has found. The ISC has released a tool which will scan and report on what it has found.
Hmm, Nero 6.3.25's toolkit has an obsolete version of GDIPlus.dll. Yes, that's right, Nero 6.3.25 has just been released, without the updated GDIPlus. Yay!
And something has kindly installed "C:\Program Files\Common Files\Microsoft Shared\Office10\MSO.DLL" on my system. Vulnerable, yup. Office Update finds it? Nope.
What we need is a "Seek and Replace" tool to fix all occurences. Microsoft Installer's inane way of (not) handling patches is another nightmare, too (which is why updating Office will be so problematic for MANY people).
After installing SP2, defragment your hard drive - so many core files are replaced that the system's performance will be even more sub-optimal than usual until you do this.
Shells for IE (including AOL's monstrous dumbing down exercise) all suffer from the one common flaw. They ALL suffer from the security holes in the MSIE backend. It's just another exercise in (in)security through obscurity.
Yeah, right, automagically update without telling the user and you're wide open to a nice little DNS poisoning attack. Then you're suddenly downloading a trojan instead of a Mozilla/Firefox update.
Apart from the security holes in IE, that's my major gripe about it. XHTML / CSS support in IE sucks. Even my beginner's XHTML/CSS-based homepage wouldn't render properly in IE, even though it did in Mozilla/Firefox and almost did in Opera. Try position:fixed sometime and see how IE handles it (errm, it doesn't).
That isn't the point, surely? It would have been so easy to produce an executable which would have worked on 9x/ME too to set the registry key, and make it available to everybody via WindowsUpdate.
At the risk of repeating myself, Microsoft STILL hasn't got it.
In my experience, well over 95% of the mail which trickles through on the old IP address is spam. Which was odd, because spam accounted for around 5% of all incoming emails at the time I observed this.
Slashdot Mirror
Not least because they have a very good support forum. Pattern updates are very timely too and its impact on the performance of the boxes I've put it on is minimal.
You insensitive clod, not all people want NT 4 SP2 on their win 98 boxes.
Seriously though, the first thing which goes on is the latest McAfee Stinger. When that's wiped out most of the viruses, I uninstall their out-of-date Norton - so many people don't realise that the major antivirus vendors are on a rental model and just buy the product and expect it to last forever. Then Avast! Personal Edition goes on, and the PC is fully scanned. After that comes Spybot and Ad-Aware. I use both because each product has its stregths and weaknesses. All of this is done form a CD burnt with the latest patterns so no internet connectivity happens until their PC has been cleaned. And then Sygate Personal Firewall completes the mix of security products.
After that comes Thunderbird and Firefox, The GIMP and Audacity (if they are into that sort of thing. And of course we musn't forget IrfanView.
It's fixed on the trunk, so will work properly with Firefox 1.1 when it comes out.
That was covered on Radio 4's File on Four last week.
A few months back I designed a simple web site using CSS and XHTML. It was a no-brainer (for I have no brain when it comes to HTML). Internet Explorer failed to render it correctly (ignoring "position:fixed", not showing background colours correctly). Opera was better but it didn't size one of my backgrounds correctly. Mozilla and Firefox did exactly as I expected.
Read the label on the box of "Sims 2" - users must have admin privileges to run the game. Sheesh! (Same's true of "The Sims"). I've blogged about this here.
And Office Update tells you you're OK. When you're not. And the silly detection tool is too lazy to tell you what files it has found. The ISC has released a tool which will scan and report on what it has found.
Hmm, Nero 6.3.25's toolkit has an obsolete version of GDIPlus.dll. Yes, that's right, Nero 6.3.25 has just been released, without the updated GDIPlus. Yay!
And something has kindly installed "C:\Program Files\Common Files\Microsoft Shared\Office10\MSO.DLL" on my system. Vulnerable, yup. Office Update finds it? Nope.
What we need is a "Seek and Replace" tool to fix all occurences. Microsoft Installer's inane way of (not) handling patches is another nightmare, too (which is why updating Office will be so problematic for MANY people).
Hey, you've swallowed the marketing hype!
After installing SP2, defragment your hard drive - so many core files are replaced that the system's performance will be even more sub-optimal than usual until you do this.
mozilla.org really needs to include a link to their Security Centre on their front page.
It's a rebranded Mozilla 1.7.2, as the version string makes clear, so it's hardly the aeons behind that you imply.
We'll find out soon enough. Any bets on there being any post-SP2 patches in the August Security updates which will be released later today?
Shells for IE (including AOL's monstrous dumbing down exercise) all suffer from the one common flaw. They ALL suffer from the security holes in the MSIE backend. It's just another exercise in (in)security through obscurity.
Yeah, right, automagically update without telling the user and you're wide open to a nice little DNS poisoning attack. Then you're suddenly downloading a trojan instead of a Mozilla/Firefox update.
With Windows NT 4, it was SP4 before it was anywhere near stable.
Similarly, you should be able to right click on a page and say "block this fecking page it is a popup/advertising/pr0n"
Apart from the security holes in IE, that's my major gripe about it. XHTML / CSS support in IE sucks. Even my beginner's XHTML/CSS-based homepage wouldn't render properly in IE, even though it did in Mozilla/Firefox and almost did in Opera. Try position:fixed sometime and see how IE handles it (errm, it doesn't).
A one line patch to a default option and the Mozilla Foundation releases complete new builds of its products. That's the right way to go.
I'm still waiting for MDAC 2.8 SP1 incorporating the MS04-003 security patch.
And a Directx 9.0c incorporating MS04-016.
They only list "currently supported" products, so yes, they don't give a damn.
That isn't the point, surely? It would have been so easy to produce an executable which would have worked on 9x/ME too to set the registry key, and make it available to everybody via WindowsUpdate.
At the risk of repeating myself, Microsoft STILL hasn't got it.
According to SecuritiyFocus. Windows 95, 98 and ME users are also vulnerable. So why is this patch only for Windows NT, 2000, XP, and 2003?
It does NOT run on Windows 98.
Oh, I remember, Microsoft only produces patches for "supported" (if that's what you can call it) products.
What can I say about the Fortean Times? It's erudite, witty, quirky, and in all a very stimulating read.
"I don't use Internet Explorer, I use AOL". Which just happens to use IE as its backend. Explain that to your typical AOL user.
In my experience, well over 95% of the mail which trickles through on the old IP address is spam. Which was odd, because spam accounted for around 5% of all incoming emails at the time I observed this.