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ping Mike and Noel
I daresay you know about this, but I only just saw it (on El Reg) - the IE9
preview? Not XP compatible! Anyway I just downloaded it. I'll boot Win7 shortly and try it. After all I don't use IE8 there. Shane Mike M wrote: 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, 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. |
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