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Old March 16th 10, 02:25 PM posted to microsoft.public.windowsme.general
Mike M
External Usenet User
 
Posts: 2,047
Default ping Mike and Noel

I am a
little (albeit very little) surprised that you appear to be running
Vista/Win7 still, Mike.


I don't use Vista, in truth I loath it, although I do have it installed as
an option on a laptop and two PCs (everything here multi-boots) and probably
gets booted once a month or even bi-monthly and then primarily only to
patch. Win 7 is something different again, it works and there are a number
of features that I like so it is the os of choice on one of my PCs (XPP
being the os of choice on this PC). Whilst I have both 64 and 32 bit
installed I stick with 32 bit as I have some hardware for which only 32 bit
drivers are available (video capture used for digitizing VCR tapes, and my
flat bed and film scanners). I think that probably the biggest downside for
me (or rather my elder daughter) is the limited support for scsi, she has an
older Nikon film scanner that connects via scsi. This means that she has to
use her laptop (which runs XPP) to access the scanner as she fortunately got
a pcmcia/scsi connector with the scanner when she bought it,

You mention memory, I've got Win 7 HP running here on a five year old Tosh
laptop I recently bought on eBay and it runs sweetly on 1.25GB of RAM. The
big bugbear is that there appear to be no WDDM Win 7 drivers for the Intel
855 graphics chip so am having to use XP drivers (installed via a small
hack) the downside of which is that you can't change screen brightness
whilst the os is running although you can change it then reboot for the
change to take effect - as if I'm going to be doing that.
--
Mike


Shane wrote:

Mike,

Been a while!

As to locking down IE other than for WU, IE fortunately isn't
required for updates when running Vista or Win 7 so on those OSs if
wanted IE can
be locked down/crippled so as to be inoperable.


Yes. That's good. Though I rarely run either now they're final
releases. I wasn't when you posted this, but have put Win7 back now
out of the same kind of curiosity that leads me to install a Linux
distro from time to time (though I think I have really learnt my
lesson this time around and never will again!). I won't be running
Win7 until I get a new PC (correction: *build* a new PC) as I don't
think it is worth splashing out on more RAM, especially as I already
replaced the mobo, and that I expect to go multicore next time too.
As for so very, very many of those M$ (I do, these days, think they
are about money and nothing but - except for the guy at the top who
also likes a rant) want to upgrade to Vista/Win7, it means a lot more
here than just shelling out for the exorbitantly-priced OS. I am a
little (albeit very little) surprised that you appear to be running
Vista/Win7 still, Mike.
As for running Opera
due to the current Firefox potential vulnerability, no way. I have
a low opinion of those running Opera and wouldn't give them the
satisfaction of further promoting their product by using it.


No, I don't like Opera. The Opera fanbois seem like the Ubuntu
fanbois, blind to a multitude of dysfunctionalities. Oh well, I could
launch into my analysis of the implications of their Apple-like
blinkered, philistine pig-ignorance and enjoy myself greatly in doing
so, but I'm all corruscated out of late. Opera seems to be safe,
probably because no-one can be bothered to compromise it, so I keep
it available as a last-ditch stand-by (and uninstall it when I trust
FF again). However, the main source of the implications of unfixed FF
vulnerability seems to be Secunia - and having been running the PSI
on various installations for quite some time now can confirm that it
regularly gives false positives (just on my preferred software) and
continues to flag vulnerable earlier versions even after they have
been updated, to the extent that I don't trust Secunia as much as I
did. And if memory serves, like Opera, Secunia is Finnish, so perhaps
there's an unconscious bias there.
Interestingly, to myself at
least, I don't think I've ever suffered as a result of a browser
vulnerability
but that could be because of the limited number of sites I visit and
that I block lots of the adserving sites with my hosts file since
many exploits tend to use poisoned ads.


Indeed. And that is part of why I dislike Opera: using that, suddenly
I see ads I haven't seen in many years (and to digress a little - the
colour scheme options are a trifle limited! I don't know why they
bother including them. You'd think it was meant for Windows 95 in
that respect!).

As to a third party firewall being able to prevent spyware sending
out your info to a third party my view is that once the spyware is
on your PC
all is lost until the system is either flattened and restored from a
backup
or rebuilt. For most users removing spyware that has somehow got
installed doesn't guarantee a 100% clean system unless one knows it
very well. So no, I see little benefit in adding to the firewall in
the OS since those
who are most likely to need it are the very same that will probably
grant access or egress to all requests from the firewall.


Hopefully I'd be aware of
the presence of spyware on my systems before it got a chance to call
up its friends, send them invites to come and play and send its
masters copies of my back details.


In many ways I agree with you Mike. But I'll trot out my trusty ol'
anecdote of how I found out about spyware, back in 2000. I installed
ZoneAlarm and PKZip on a recommendation, then I got a request to let
tsadbot access the net. I denied it and googled tsadbot. On further
research I found Ad-aware, bought it (with the lifetime of updates
they eventually reneged on) and recommended it far and wide. Maybe
only 1 in 100, or 1 in 1000 (or - probably - worse!) would be like
me, but still that's much better than nothing. True, today the rogues
are likely to have opened a backdoor or installed a rootkit. What I'd
suggest the benefit would be is the promotion of security awareness
that would reduce the likelihood of the compromise happening at all.

I remember back in Crediton when I was working on the Bonnie in my
workshop, open to passers by on a sunny day. I didn't think kids had
any appreciation of old Brit bikes any more, but one group came
nosing around, most behaving like they tend to, finding there was
nothing there they cared about and wandering off after a minute or
two looking for something to smash. But one kid was interested and
knowledgable and it was really encouraging. There are still *some*
out there. Probably always will be.
Anyway, there remain plenty of modules in trusted apps for phoning
home that are not necessary and better blocked than not, but that
users won't likely find out about without the 3rd party firewall.
There are enough of them in Windows alone!

It is probably getting off topic a little to suggest that in this
increasingly intrusive, CCTV-saturated, database state, people should
be encouraged to look at what supposedly benign software is sending
details about their sessions back to some company in it for the
money. It is far more realistic than to ask them to read the EULAs
anyway.