Big security risk:
Microsoft (NSDQ: MSFT) is planning to release an out-of-band patch for Internet Explorer on Wednesday to address a critical security vulnerability that’s being actively exploited.
The company on Saturday warned that 1 in 500 Internet Explorer users worldwide may have been exposed to malware hosted at both legitimate Web sites and porn sites that exploit an unpatched vulnerability.
Yet another reason to use Firefox or Safari or Opera.
Zifnab
Fix’d.
TheFountainHead
Reason #345,647 I use a Mac.
mapaghimagsik
Yup, saw that. I use Firefox religously. The roomies, not so much, and now I’m recovering a hard drive.
I realize that Microsoft is the most hacked on software on the intertubes but really!
On and reason 6 billion and 2 to use Linux to download your porn, you naughty people, you.
Joe D.
Chrome…out of beta & the best browser out there.
demimondian
@TheFountainHead: Have you looked at the security issue list for Safari? Yeah, not so good.
Here’s an odd fact: IE7 has the best security record of all the major browsers. Chrome will be better once it’s a major browser, but compared to FF2, FF3, or Safari — or even a major-minor like Opera — IE7 is the best choice.
AhabTRuler, V
Is that what Macs cost these days?
demimondian
@demimondian: BTW — posted from Chrome, of course.
But John, the edit box doesn’t work from Chrome. I get "you can’t edit this comment" on this browser only.
Xenos
@Zifnab:
Roughly half the population suffers from testosterone-induced brain damage. Be reasonable in your expectations.
Smith
I had IE and I had nothing but problems – ever since Firefox, no viruses, no problems.
demimondian
@Zifnab:
Fix’t for males on Windows.
p.a.
Use FireFox personally, but my company, a former baby bell, won’t allow us to use anything but IE at work. Said company downloads so much security programming onto our computers- Cisco Clean Access, Marimba, etc. that they connect at dialup speed over our LAN’s. But gotta use IE. Did you know the Dilbert writer used to work for a baby bell? Pacific Telesis. He wrote even while he worked there. He said the bosses there were so dim they didn’t realize his characters and situations were based on his work.
Eunoia
FWIW, Opera issued an update this morning (Yurp time). I wonder what that was fixing ? :evil grin:
No seriously, I like Opera a lot.
cleek
yeah me too. nonetheless, i picked up a virus last month via a web page with a PDF exploit on it.
gotta be careful no matter which browser you use.
Cameron
I’m offended by the implication that some of
my favoritethese sites aren’t legitimate.Fwiffo
If IE IE7 has the best security record it’s because been in use for the shortest period of time.
Save a web designer’s hair: stop using IE for the love of Christ.
ninerdave
Or Camino for the Mac.
cleek
IE 7 was released in 10/2006. as was FF 2.0.
FF 3.0 was released just a couple of months ago.
p.a.
Have a friend who never uses the word ‘computer’. Calls ’em
‘porn box’.
Keith
It’s based on their (pointless, IMO) XML Island feature, where you can embed XML in an app. I interviewed for a job once where I was asked about them, and expressed my lack of knowledge about the feature. When it was explained to me and that the company’s entire app depended on them, I asked "why aren’t you just using ViewState?" and promptly turned down the job. (for reference, ViewState is ASP.Net’s way to store your current window’s various values between server calls. Unlike islands, ViewState can be encrypted with a simple flag and is validated on the server to avoid crap like this)
It rarely surprises me to find an MS security hole is the result of one of their half-baked attempts at making something convenient for a subset of their customers rather than take the time to engineer a proper, secure solution. Scary thing about this one is that it even affects IE7 on Vista, which is supposed to be sandboxed to prevent these vulnerabilities from being exploited.
WereBear
I have found that Seamonkey, a free suite that comprises a browser, email client, HTML editor, and something else I don’t use & don’t remember, is a very good, no-frills, speedy browser. Some sites I can only comment on with Seamonkey, even though I love Firefox.
It’s based on the Mozilla engine, as well.
This is on a Mac, too.
TheFountainHead
Actually, I’m familiar with this list, and while there are certainly things that ALL browsers could be doing better, the main issue is that Safari’s security issues are all ones that require the user to be incredibly stupid in order for a hostile entity to do anything worth doing. This exploit in IE, and several before it, were all exploits that allowed hostile entities root access or allowed them to execute code without the user’s knowledge. That’s a bigger problem. Macs have security issues, but most of them are annoying, as opposed to catastrophic.
TheFountainHead
Amen.
Comrade Stuck
IE 7 is a bucket of bolts. Firefox is not full proof when it comes to malware, but light years better than IE. Safari for PC’s is pretty good but could use more add ons.
Tim Fuller
No, that’s the number of man hours I have spent reinstalling Windows and waiting for the multiple reboots over the last several years before I got smart and bought myself a Mac.
Enjoy.
The Moar You Know
@cleek: Got that one too, via Opera. That’s a nasty little bastard.
WMass
Two and a half years of exclusively using a MacBook, way too much of that time looking at porn, not running any antivirus, antispyware, or anti-anything.
Viruses – 0
Malware – 0
Spyware – 0
And guess what? The next version of Windows is using the same guts as Vista, in fact it looks more like a very big service pack than a new OS. In other words, users will have the same security problems for the indefinite future. Until Windows gets a complete rewrite nothing much will change.
Rick Taylor
I wish there was a way to remove Internet Explorer from my machine. And before people chime in, yes I use a mac for serious work. I still have a pc at home for games.
Brian J
Most of the technical stuff being discussed here is way far out of my league, but perhaps those in the know can tell me, are the number of problems associated with viruses being spreading by people who use IE influenced at all by the fact that most people seem to use it and other Windows products?
TheFountainHead
@Brian J: Short answer, yes. The size of the IE/Windows market makes it the more profitable target for would-be virus writers, and makes it easier for them to spread quickly.
demimondian
@TheFountainHead: If you believe that, then you aren’t actually familiar with the list.
Update: it’s kind of like "the math". You’re entitled to your opinions, but if you believe that Safari hasn’t had zero-day exploits, then that’s because you don’t read the right sources.
Conservatively Liberal
IE is blocked on any PC I own or sell. My customers use the SeaMonkey (Mozilla) suite and love it. IE is a target of hackers because of the wide installation base and usage it has. If the other kids on the block were as popular you can bet the hackers would be targeting them instead.
Size matters. ;)
So far this week I have had five new customers come in, all with viruses, worms and trojans and all IE users. One lady who came in had 78 processes running in the background on her XP system, 29 of them were infections of various types and nine were for various auto-updaters. It was using almost 600 megs of RAM at idle (with 256 installed) and the cpu was idling around at 50-60% usage. The poor thing was straining under the load, and that was not taking into account her drive had never been defragged (in almost five years), the pagefile was horribly fragmented and there was tons of junk left over in the various temp folders.
She took it home with 40 processes using just over 220 megs of RAM and the cpu idling at 1-2%. The RAM was replaced with 1 gig and is now running in dual channel mode, and the drive was cleaned up and defragged. I set it to dump the pagefile at shutdown to prevent any future fragmentation. She called me back later to thank me for the good work, saying that it never ran that fast new.
No wonder, with only 256 megs of RAM in single channel mode on a 3.2 Prescott, that’s like having a one barrel carb off of some six-popper mounted on a 427…lol!
I take the time to teach all of my customers good surfing and email habits. Never open unsolicited emails, delete them immediately no matter how curious you are. Never set your email to view attachments ‘inline’ (talk about laying out a welcome mat). Save and then scan every single email attachment before opening it. Don’t be a ‘link whore’ while surfing, clicking on everything in sight, know where you are going. Hover the mouse over a link to check its true destination,or if all else fails then bookmark it and check the properties of the link. Never talk to their bank/PayPal or the like via email, and making sure they are using an encrypted connection before entering a password at the bank’s web site. Using online banking passwords which are always a long-assed alphanumeric string and not storing them in a master password list.
One customer’s bank was having their customers enter their passwords before encryption was enabled. Unluckily for them they are a small local bank and the customers I told this to raised hell and the bank corrected it. I now do work for that bank too…lol!
Some other really good tips are teaching them how to update their virus definitions before every surfing/email session (no auto updates), installing a top notch software firewall and if on broadband, installing a properly configured NAT router.
And one final one: If your browser pops up a message offering a devils choice to install the latest spyware app (or whatever app), open the Task Manager and kill the browser process. Do not click on YES or NO, just kill the damn thing.
Reverend Dennis
XP and Vista are pretty much service packs and GUI updates for Win2K. I saved myself the time, trouble, overhead and money by staying with 2K.
TheFountainHead
@demimondian: I can’t think of any existing exploits of that nature in Safari at the moment. Linky please?
WMass
@Brian J:
Influenced, yes, but that doesn’t explain it all. Macs have something like a 12% market share, so one might reasonably guess that Macs would have roughly 12% of the viruses and malware that Windows has. Unfortunately (for Windows) Macs only have a miniscule fraction of that, so small it’s hard to measure.
WereBear
Well, Macs do hold their resale value. If you only know PC’s, I understand how that is a new concept :)
sparky
@ninerdave: as a guy who doesn’t do this for a living the technical stuff is beyond my ken, but that will not stop me from sayin’:
as a mac user (friggin #$%##! Leopard) i like camino but don’t use it because it renders every third page incorrectly (i know, not their fault but that doesn’t help me)
i use safari only for limited things (like apple’s website)
default is FF (though 3.0.4 or the add ons seem buggy to me). with noscript and flashblock it’s pretty safe. a pain in that i must enable every script but pretty damn safe, imo. not to mention no annoying craptastic junque.
Krista
I’ve been slowly making the transition from IE to Chrome and/or Firefox, and I think that this little episode was the last nail in the IE coffin for me.
Conservatively Liberal
Macs (and ‘nix based systems) are safer but the 12%/12% argument is not really valid. If all of the kiddies had to hack against was ‘nix systems (no Windoze at all), you can bet there would be problems. Windoze is easy for an idiot to run (and hack), and what are the best targets to nail? Idiots. If everyone was on one platform, it would still be the same story. Maybe to a lesser degree, but there would still be problems/exploits.
It is all about what is the easier target, and Windoze is a huge, slow moving one.
Smith
Great post Conservatively Liberal.
I know Firefox, Safari, Opera, etc. aren’t hack-proof, but everyone I know who has had bad problems with viruses/trojans/malware on their computer was using IE at the time.
Once they switched over to another browser, the viruses and other nonsense cut down considerably. No browser is perfect (recently Firefox had to add a security patch), but your odds of getting a virus are cut down considerably if you don’t use IE.
Of course if you’re a "stupid" user – clicking on any link you see, opening up questionable e-mails, etc., having either none or inefficient anti-virus/firewall protection – it doesn’t matter what browser you use. No browser in the world can save you from your stupidity.
sparky
incidentally lest i be taken for a part of the apple borg–imo their quality control seems to be in trouble. the last two laptops i bought from apple have cost apple more than what i paid for them in repairs. and, naturally, the resale value = 0. NEVER buy anything you care about from them without applecare.
JGabriel
John Cole @ Top:
And Linux. Right now I’m using Opera on Ubuntu 8.10.
.
passerby
Rick Taylor @ 27:
Alas Rick, looks like we’re stuck with it unless we want to be tediously tweaking other operations ad nauseum.
I use Firefox w/ No Script (no Malkin pics for me, thank you).
The main thing that trips me up is that I have a hotmail email address that I cannot access from FF. And when I launch IE to read email, I have to set aside 5 minutes just for waiting while IE loads, then waiting at least 10 – 15 seconds every time I click on something.
Also, Netflix View Instantly demands the use of IE. : (
oh, and ps: IE SUCKS.
demimondian
@Conservatively Liberal: Three words: The Morris Worm.
Doonhamer
I’m curious what the techies here think of the argument made here at the AumHa website (scroll down till you reach the SpywareBlaster section):
Before stumbling across AumHa, I used Firefox or Opera; after reading that, I switched to IE exclusively for a while, after installing SpywareBlaster and keeping it updated. I now switch back and forth among all three browsers depending on circumstance.
demimondian
@TheFountainHead: Here’s a link which includes pointers to three *publicized* zero-days for Safari on Mac OS X. There have been many, many others which never got publicized.
Tim Fuller
The problem with Windows is that it’s too damn difficult to maintain EVEN IF you are an experienced user.
Most of us don’t want to get board-level with our computers, having no desire to delve into registration keys, page files, etc. Not that any of that matters anyway, since plenty of folks I know that are even more tech inclined than me (I built my last PC from scratch) have thrown in the towel on Windoze.
Bring up the subject of Mac and the knee-jerk reaction: THEY COST TOO MUCH is gonna pop up before you can refresh your browser. I suppose that is a valid response for cash strapped youth with nothing but free time on their hands. For folks who actually want to use their machines, not so much.
There is something in economics called opportunity costs. If I remember correctly, you need to factor in all the lost productivity of a Windoze machine to properly account for the total cost of ownership. Factor in the TIME wasted on Windoze maintenance and the Mac pricing isn’t as outrageous as many assume.
Enjoy.
WMass
@Conservatively Liberal:
"Windoze is easy for an idiot to run (and hack)"
Exactly. Nobody is saying that OSX is perfect, or that it is impossible to fuck with. But keep in mind that there are a lot of serious PC nerds who absolutely despise Macs, and would like nothing better than to prove that Macs suck (from their point of view). But there is not a single virus that has been found to infect OSX. There have been some proof-of-concept exploits and attacks, but as far as I know not a single virus out in the real world. The fact that Windows is a bigger target just doesn’t explain that.
Conservatively Liberal
@demimondian:
Gawd do I ever remember that one! Among us geeks at the time, this was huge news and there was all kinds of talk about the implications.
IMO, hogwash. SeaMonkey (Mozilla) has numerous cookie settings that allow customizing the rules and you can set it to purge cookies every time you shut down the browser.
Pb
Demi,
When you have to go back twenty years to find an example… :)
P.S. I remember when the Goodtimes Virus was just a hilarious joke; somehow Microsoft managed to build a platform that let it be a sad reality for far too many people. Cheers.
demimondian
@Pb: Heh. Wanna look at the last security update for Hardy Heron? :)
Then again, given how miserable that particular example made my life that day, it has a particularly large place in my mind. It and Nimda are the only trojans or viruses which have ever directly affected me.
Karen
I have to use IE to get to my bank information as their site doesn’t work on Opera. Neither does MapQuest. I have been told there’s a way to make Opera read these things, but being as technolologically challenged as I am, it went straight over my head. I’m stuck with IE & its issues.
jake 4 that 1
Thanks for the comments about Seamonkey. I took the laptop in for repair a few months ago and the CompuGuru stuck it on there. Meanwhile, the home PC is suffering a mild attack of the pop-ups. We only use Mozilla so I’ve randomly assigned blame to a recent houseguest. That way I have someone to curse while I fix it.
demimondian
@Conservatively Liberal: No joke. The day the Worm hit was not a good one for me.
And, yeah, the SpywareBlaster claims are nonsense. It’s true that IE’s zones design is easier to manage, but there are plenty of ways to blacklist or greylist sites in Firefox and its equivalents.
demimondian
@Karen: Don’t use MapQuest — use maps.google.com. Works better, is more thorough — and doesn’t require IE.
passerby
@passerby:
Then, once I launch and leave IE and return to FF, my computer slows down forcing me to have to reboot to get back to speed. Same happens when I launch WMP–reboot or endure slower page loadings.
[yes, I’m talking to myself]
Reverend Dennis
Actually it might. A lot of the really bad stuff out there is being written to make money by slaving machines or grabbing information. Why write something for 12% of the installed base if you can write it for 88%?
demimondian
@passerby: That doesn’t sound like IE to me; IE loads as a part of the system image, and usually starts very quickly.
Which version of FF have you been using? FF2 or FF3?
Conservatively Liberal
I have used every single version of Windows since its inception. NT v.35 is the root of the NT/Win2K/XP/Vista line, and I cut my teeth on it. Just like the ‘nix systems, if you spent time at the bottom in the early days, working your way up through the product line, then you have no problems understanding how it functions. It is actually easy to service if you understand how it works; just like any Rube Goldberg-type of operating system would. ;)
Naah, it is pretty easy to work on and repair. I rarely ever have to reload a system, no matter how buggered up they are when I get them. When you know what is under the hood then it is pretty easy to fix.
You just don’t tell the customer that. ;)
IMO, it does. People operate like electricity, taking the path of least resistance. People also operate like herd animals, e.g. Windoze. Necessity is the mother of invention, and if ‘nix was all there was then ‘nix would be 100% infection and attack prone. Kiddie haxxors don’t have the patience to understand ‘nix systems, which is pretty funny since the concept of a ‘nix system is simple.
Everything is a file. End of story.
Conservatively Liberal
I use Mapquest with SeaMonkey and never have a problem with it, it is one of my favorite map sites.
Zifnab
@WereBear:
Liar.
Maude
I manage 20 machines, as a volunteer tech. We have Tiger MAC mini, Windows XP , Pro 2000 and Ubuntu 8.10.
By far, the Ubuntu machines are the easiest to manage.
The default browser is FF an We’ve had no trouble for almost a year.
There is public access security on the windows machines.
I used to help people with their windows machines. They didn’t want to do any maintenance on them.
Now, I’d tell them to get Ubuntu.
IE is bundled into Windows. If you remove it, the operating system will cascade to a crash.
Bush didn’t make Microsoft undo the browser bundle when MS lost their case.
If Obama would make MS do that, it would be a lot better for users.
Reverend Dennis
Then you doubtless had the pleasure of installing Trumpet Winsock on Win3.1. Ahh, the good ol’ days.
Tonal Crow
1. Avoid connecting computers containing sensitive information to the internet;
2. If you must connect such a computer to the internet, use both a hardware and a software firewall, and make sure they’re properly configured;
3. Use IE only for Windows Update;
4. Don’t ever run a browser in a privileged (administrator, root, super-user, etc.) account. Run it in an account that has minimal privileges, and deny that account access to everything that it shouldn’t be accessing;
5. If you access both sensitive sites (e.g., banking, erotica) and non-sensitive sites (e.g., news), create a separate non-privileged account for each kind of site, and run a separate browser under each account;
6. Regularly update Windows and your virus scanner;
7. Friends don’t let friends vote GOP.
Joey Maloney
Apropos of absolutely nothing:
Go here – http://www.carrabbas.com/menu/pdf/49PF-18PW.pdf – and look at the last item on the dessert ("Dolci") section.
Keith
Actually, there are a few browsers (Safari and Chrome come to mind) that are built on top of WebKit, so it’s quite a large target itself. The good part of WebKit is that it’s open-source such that if a vulnerability hits, Google doesn’t have to wait on a fix; they can go in and fix it themselves. However, it’s still got a large user base (more than many people realize)
Conservatively Liberal
A lot of people don’t know that with broadband, just opening the Windows Explorer (file manager) without a software firewall (a real one, not the POS that is bundled with XP/Vista) will connect it to the WAN without you even knowing it.
Nice feature Mr. Bill.
ThymeZoneThePlumber
How many suicides do we think were caused by Windows for Workgroups?
TheFountainHead
@demimondian: The 0day exploit you linked to was a bad one, but that hole got closed a long time ago, as I understand it. I’ve never made the claim that Safari doesn’t have holes. It does. My only point is that the holes it has are harder to get to (ie: require stupid user input, or in this case, the user to browse to a website designed with malicious intent) and/or let the hostile entity achieve less. Being able to bomb someone’s desktop with resource file images is annoying, but it doesn’t give the hostile root or let them sniff passwords.
Conservatively Liberal
Yup, and I still have the files for it on floppy. How about early gaming and Win32g? ;) I used Netscape with Win v3.1 (and WFWG v3.11). Heck, I still have my Microsoft/IBM MSDOS v1.1 package…lol! Real museum stuff.
Edit:
Actually, I liked WFWG, especially 32 bit mode. That really made those 16 bit systems rip! ;) Naah, WFWG was actually pretty good, but it did have people pulling their hair out at first. New stuff can do that to you, but once you beat it up enough then it was fine.
Memory management under DOS was interesting to do. I used Quemm and others, but properly configured DOS gave great performance. I could free up over 600kb of base on decked out systems.
LOADHIGH bitches!
ThymeZoneThePlumber
I grabbed Chrome last night and as I said when they released the Beta, for look and feel and speed, it’s the most pleasant browser I have ever used.
Don’t tell demi. I want him to think I hate all software.
TheFountainHead
Not as many as by WindowsME.
Reverend Dennis
Early gaming was what caused me to buy Quarterdeck’s QEMM.
Conservatively Liberal
Truly teh suk. ME was a total POS, pure excrement. I saw an ‘ad’ long ago that someone created saying Microsoft was releasing a new operating system that combined all of the best features of Windows CE, Windows ME and Windows NT.
Windows CEMENT: Thick as a brick and twice as dumb!
TheFountainHead
I was really shocked that Google didn’t have the OS X beta ready at the same time. Even more shocked that we’re still waiting for it.
Conservatively Liberal
Same here, I still had problems on some games though. I had to have a multi-boot autoexec.bat and config.sys startup files that allowed me to choose XMS, EMS, XMS/EMS and various QEMM profiles. What was real fun was that the high memory area (and UMBs) would load differently based on sequencing of driver loading. That made testing of every single possible boot configuration necessary with some games.
I must have run the mem command several million times, at the very least…lol
Punchy
Question — would this vicious malware be stopped/detected by my Norton anti-virus?
Please, please, please, please say yes.
demimondian
@TheFountainHead: Have you heard about the new version? It combines the best parts of Windows CE, Windows ME, and Windows NT — their acronyms.
I bring you Windows CEMENT — rock solid and easily reinforced. Put it on your hard drive and sink it in the ocean — absolutely the best way to make your computer truly secure!
Observer
"Someone on the internet is WRONG!"
We apologize for the brief interruption and return you now to the religious argument in process.
"No it isn’t."
"Yes it is!"
Reverend Dennis
Oh yeah. IIRC, you could do that natively in DOS 6, I had a utility, selected from Direct Access 5.1 (Natch) that would allow selecting from around ten pairs of autoexec.bat and config.sys and then a reboot to which ones you selected.
Tweaking DOS was like the early days of hotrodding VW’s: practically anything you did would make it run better.
Conservatively Liberal
Possibly, but Norton is best at catching it on the way in. If it is already infected it may be possible for Norton to miss it. Timing is the important thing. Some AV stuff is proactive, but most is reactive and this applies to all AV products. Someone has to get infected (usually) for a problem to be found, and that is why I tell people that if they download something (executable-wise) then set it aside and scan it with updated software after a few days or a week.
Don’t be the one who discovers the latest virus! ;)
demimondian
@Conservatively Liberal: This one’s a little nastier, in that it was a zero-day in the browser. Punchy, I’d be careful about going to unsavory sites for a few days, until Norton updates their signatures.
Oh, and get the IE patch. NOW.
Conservatively Liberal
I just programmed mine into the config and autoexec files using MSDOS CHOICE and ‘:config’ blocks so I only had one of each file, but they were damned long! I also used Norton Commander (and I still do for DOS stuff) and their profile menu for launching games.
That old Norton Commander was a great DOS file manager.
The Moar You Know
@Punchy: No. It’s not a virus, it’s an exploit – a flaw in IE.
Conservatively Liberal
@demimondian:
Yup, that’s a real bad one them. Follow the advice Punchy. For the tech inclined, find a copy of Sysinternals Process Explorer and Rootkit
FinderRevealer, both are great apps, especially Process Explorer. You can set a lag time in it so you can see processes that start and stop fast, and the program path is right there for you to trace. I have caught some sneaky stuff using it.Good stuff if you are a tinkerer.
Conservatively Liberal
Oh well, time to go make some more money fixing computers…lol! Keep hacking you haxxors, I ain’t rich yet!
passerby
@demimondian:
FF2, default browser. I’m blaming IE/Windows because my speed is fine until I have to use one of those. After that, things are kinda boogered up. Reboot makes things run better, hence, I blame IE and WMP.
or
After visiting John Amato’s revamped C & L site, things kinda slow down. An impish Flash or other kind of script (I get a box warning that some script stopped responding but, it doesn’t specify.
???
Punchy
Gahd dammit. Ok, will the patch retroactively fix it? I use IE almost exclusively, and now I’m scared shitless. Reading this thread requires a fud in computer engineering, so all I want to know is how to fix this issue. Besides just using FF.
Alan
Are we stuck in a time warp? Why are we rehashing old stories? :)
Reverend Dennis
Well, tell us some new ones. ; )
TheFountainHead
Since this has devolved into a geek-thread, I’ll pose this question here. I’m going to be building a gaming box for my gf’s younger brother. Anyone have experience with the new Intel i7 architecture, and is it really so much better as to be worth the significantly higher cost? I don’t want to convince him to go with the more expensive cpu unless it’s really THAT much better of an investment.
Stimpy
@WMass:
This is true, mostly. Although viruses and spyware for the Mac exists, I don’t think there are any exploits in the wild that can infect OSX without a users cooperation or physical access to the machine. Viruses such as trojans and spyware exist on the mac, but much less than on windows.
This latest IE exploit serves as a good example of what makes OSX so different from Windows. A common approach that a virus writer uses is to use a flaw in some application (typically a browser) "inject" code and start executing the virus code instead of the application code.
OSX applications aren’t immune to this attack, buffer overruns and other techniques are effective on the mac as much as on windows. The difference is that a user running a windows box runs as "root" (or "administrator" in windows-speak). That means the virus runs as "root" too and has access to the system folders and system registry.
OSX on the other hand is Unix and shares the robust security model used by Unix systems. Thus, even if a virus does inject itself and execute, it only executes at the permissions level of the user. Even and "administer" on OSX does not have absolute access to critical system directories and configuration files without the user giving permission.
/mac user since 1984
Keith
I noticed that here when the new look & feel first went up. I never bothered to attach a debugger to it, but it felt a lot like an AJAX issue rather than Flash, as it froze the entire browser rather than slowed it down (AJAX, at least MS’ implementation, parses the entire HTML DOM that’s being submitted to check for security issues – safer than .innerHTML = x – and the Javascript implementation in IE7 and earlier is brutally slow)
Joshua Norton
This can only be viewed as a stain on the Obama administration.
/snark
Justin
I just built myself a new gaming rig with it, and performance has been fantastic so far. Was it worth the extra $600 for chip/mobo/DDR3 RAM? Hard to say. I think of it as investing in futureproofing and convenience. I probably could have saved that cash with a dual core 8400 for comparable performance, but I’d have been tweaking and possibly overclocking to get there.
All the benchmarks I’ve seen show that the i7 architecture performs as well or better than the best dual core chip with only a few exceptions. Overall reception has been pretty positive, so unless the cash is that important to you, go ahead.
Krista
Downloading the patch now. I still will probably avoid IE when possible, however. Frigging computers…I wonder how we ever managed without them, but by the same token, knowing how much we rely on them is rather depressing.
TheFountainHead
@Joshua Norton: How so? Clearly, Obama’s OS X and McCain/Bush are Windoze.
The Moar You Know
@Punchy: Retroactively fix? No, if you’ve been exploited you’ve been exploited, although you’d probably know it as your computer would likely be "acting funny". Just get the patch.
As to getting Firefox/Chrome/Safari/Opera (I use Opera exclusively and love it) they can help resist infection with various scripts and viruses, although they do not guarantee that they will not happen (refer to my comment to cleek above). The real core of the problem is that IE is, simply put, part of the Windows OS. You can’t turn it off or disable it without disabling Windows. That’s what makes this particular issue such a serious one, in that (in theory) the exploit (and it is a pretty serious one) could be exploited regardless of the browser you’re using.
You shouldn’t be scared of this stuff. If the computer is an integral part of your life, or part of how you make your living (as it is for me, ConservativelyLiberal, and some others on this thread) it behooves you to learn more about how your machine and the OS and software that power it work. Knowledge conquers fear.
TheFountainHead
@Justin: Thanks for the input. I think I’ll tell him to skip it for now. In my opinion, he’s not going to notice the difference, and Moore’s Law says it won’t matter in two years anyway.
The Other Steve
Ok, as a long time hold out of IE I have pretty much switched to Firefox full time.
Not because of security, though. Firefox and Safari’s security record is far worse than that of IE.
I’ve switched to Firefox because more and more I’ve been encountering websites which are badly designed and don’t work well with IE. Balloon-juice is just one of them.
It’s fucking ridiculous. we’re back in 1998 with the "Netscape Only" logos everywhere!
Screamin' Demon
I paid $1,399 for a G4 iMac in 2003. I still use it every day, and have never had a problem with it. I added an external hard drive and maxed out the memory, and it suits my needs perfectly. My brother has bought three PCs in the same time period, everyone of them a goddamned Dell.
PC folks — you do the math.
I learned long ago that "PC" stands for "Piece of Crap."
The Other Steve
So you’re saying because you don’t run as administrator, a virus can’t infect your system and wipe out all of your data files?
Nice to live in a fantasy world, I guess.
r€nato
a fucking men
demimondian
@Stimpy: This is true if you still use a privileged account to browse the Web.
Oh, you didn’t realize that Windows has non-privileged accounts? And that XP and Vista default to user accounts being non-privileged?
Wow. Your MSTM at work, only with Windows in the place of Democrats.
The Other Steve
My parents still use a Celeron 333 I bought for them in 1999.
Go fuck yourself.
r€nato
Oh John Cole, look what you started with your innocent IE post!
Even browser posts inevitably devolve into PC-Mac platform wars.
@ The Other Steve:
I don’t view this site in IE but if there are issues with it then I am disappointed in John’s web goddess. Design for Firefox, then view in IE (versions 5.5, 6, 7 and soon 8) and fix the shit which can break in any one of those versions because over 80% of browsers in use are IE, sadly.
Firefox and Safari are less secure than IE? That’s news to me.
TheFountainHead
That’s…too bad.
r€nato
see what I mean?
Rick Taylor
@sparky
You could consider using Omniweb. It’s huge and costs money, but it has wonderful configuration options; you can enable and disable scripts and such on a per-site basis.
The Other Steve
It’s never worth buying at the extreme end. In a year the price of that stuff will drop in half. So if you buy the sweet spot today, and next year when that stuff is the sweet spot upgrade if you need it.
there’s a point where better performance becomes logarithmic compared to the price. Never go there. It ain’t worth it.
r€nato
IE sucks because 1) it’s a huge open door to all kinds of nasty shit invading your computer, since in its lust to fend off DoJ’s anti-trust lawsuit which threatened to force MS to unbundle IE, MS integrated it into the OS so that it could ‘legitimately’ argue that it was not possible to separate the browser from the OS. This combined, of course, with Windows’ inherent insecurity; and 2) it is a non-web-standards-compliant POS, riddled with all sorts of bugs and non-standard rendering which makes a web designer’s life hell.
And just to make things even more complicated, in order to allow web designers to deal effectively with IE’s non-standards-compliant behavior, MS came up with ‘conditional comments’. Which, you know, is nice and all but it’s adding a kludge on top of a badly-designed browser.
IE8, I hear, has finally gotten religion and may make a webmonkey’s life easier and give us reason to quit bashing MS… in two to three years when most folks stop using IE7 and everything earlier.
r€nato
I have noticed that I am no longer getting ‘slow script’ alerts here.
Congrats to the web goddess for fixing that issue.
The Other Steve
Why not just use web standards? Why design for a specific browser?
Why this fixation on "Netscape Only" web design? Got tired of that shit back in 1998.
You think they’re just pushing out new releases for fun?
Maybe you ought to start reading the release notes.
http://www.mozilla.org/security/known-vulnerabilities/firefox30.html#firefox3.0.4
The Other Steve
It’s slow, but it shows the longevity of the PC line. With the Mac you would have been forced to upgrade every time they switched hardware platforms. What? Probably three times since 1999, I suspect.
Then there is the Apple Tax you have to pay every year to get critical updates for the OS. Whereas they were using Win98, then upgraded to Windows 2000 and updates have been free ever since.
Bey
And for the non-tinkerers out there? I’ve got a challenge for you all. What would you consider a good all-round PC Windows-based protection package that is appropriate for people who want to treat their computer as they do their car – gas, oil, regular checkups and done? Doesn’t necessarily need to be a single-vendor package, but the products should be geared for normal users vs geeks, resonably priced, and easy to update.
Think of something you’d design for your grandma.
r€nato
IIRC Google’s hand was forced and they had to release Chrome earlier than they would have liked due to that ‘comic book’ press release thingy going public early.
IIRC.
Joshua Norton
Sorry, but you’d be pretty much unemployed at my office. Many specialty applications only run on PC’s. No access, no job.
And no, we’re not going to replace 1,000 PC’s with Macs that have to be tweaked to bejesus just to see the network.
demimondian
@Screamin’ Demon: I still use the same machine I built..umm..six years ago. Haven’t bought a Windows license for it since then.
And, oh, yes — I spent about $500 for it. And it is much, much faster than the MacBookPro I’m typing this on.
r€nato
…every time I get out, they suck me back in!!!
not sure what you mean by this. I have a 10 year old Mac, still runs OS 9 which is a rough analog to whatever OS is running on that 1999 Celery CPU. (Win 95, I’m guessing?)
I have a 2000 vintage G4 tower and a 2001 iBook which run Tiger, the previous version of OS X. I could probably run Leopard on at least one of them but have not tried to do so yet.
Most all OS X major releases should run on any PowerPC Mac except the very first, beige G3 boxes.
No, not true at all. Only the last couple generations of Intel Macs will not run in Mac OS Classic (OS 9, aka the Fisher-Price OS) mode. I still do not have an Intel Mac (until next week!) and I can run a lot of apps just fine except for the really high end stuff like Aperture or the latest version of Final Cut Pro.
Apple has given plenty of support to Mac users who can’t or don’t upgrade to the PowerPC or Intel CPUs. For such a drastic change, Apple has pulled off both of these transitions marvelously. Something nobody in their right mind would ever expect from Microsoft had they been trying to do the same thing.
TheFountainHead
Not to restart this war but WTF are you talking about. Apple has changed hardware platforms once, from the Motorola Power PC to the Intel, and has made every OS update backwards compatible. On top of that, this "Apple Tax" doesn’t exist. You pay a hundred bucks to get the new OS when it’s released, or you don’t. Security and other critical updates are still pushed to the older OS. Compare that to the cost of upgrading to Vista (the outrageous cost of the software plus the RAM and vid-card upgrade you have to do to get it to run smoothly) and you’re just completely talking out of your ass.
r€nato
um, because as I stated above, IE7 and earlier flagrantly disregarded web standards while pretty much every other browser was/is more or less standards-compliant.
So you design your site (yes, in a standards-compliant way) so that it works in Firefox, for various reasons it is the best browser to use to test a site and so you assume that how your site looks in Firefox is how it will look in all other browsers but IE. Once everything works there, then you go look at your site in IE and fix all the shit which IE breaks, usually using a combination of CSS hacks and conditional comments. Sometimes javascript.
And of course that is a whole other kettle of fish among webmonkeys, some of them will flame you for using CSS hacks and other ‘non-pure’ approaches to dealing with IE.
The Moar You Know
@Screamin’ Demon: That surprises me. I run a network currently comprising about 40 users, about 90-plus machines. Probably have dealt with about 200-plus machines in my time here. The machines that consistently give me trouble have been Toshiba laptops – every single one I’ve ever gotten (usually for one of the execs) has died.
In contrast, our dev team uses exclusively Dells (as does most of the office, save for some diehard IBM/Lenovo users) and in the five years I’ve been doing this, I have had a total of one – just one – go bad in a big way. Power supply failure.
I fucking love Dell. Buy the gold support with ’em and no more calling Bangladesh for help if something goes wrong – you’re getting a guy in the US who actually knows what he is doing.
1 bad in 200 (with no data loss, BTW) is fantastic. I know damn well Apple doesn’t have better numbers – hell, in my family all the hardware failure has been with my Mac-using brother, he’s had two Powerbooks eat shit and die.
r€nato
this is so spectacularly wrong. It is nearly the exact opposite of the truth.
About once a year, Apple issues a major update to OS X. These are the ones which go by a cat’s name, like "Leopard" or "Tiger". Yes, you will pay for these. No, you do not HAVE to do so. All your apps will work fine, though if you have a REALLY old version of OS X like 10.2 or earlier, SOME stuff may not work. This is usually not the case though.
All minor updates to a specific major update, are free.
Seldom are these updates ‘critical’, unlike Windows where often the updates are critical for security reasons or because Microsoft sold you betaware as a gold master and has to issue a Service Pack to fix all the shit that should have been done right in the first place before sending the OS into the wild.
I could go on and on but I won’t because I’m not trying to get into a flame war over this. Bottom line, you’re really wrong about this.
(oh, and Apple doesn’t treat you like a thief when you buy and attempt to install the OS, unlike Microsoft)
Joshua Norton
What he said. Totally agree.
TheFountainHead
Boot Camp, Parallels, Fusion, Crossover…I could go on…
Joshua Norton
Don’t bother. Been there done that. Throw Citrix into the mix and you just asking for a phone call at 3am when some dumb ass can’t log on from a hotel room in West Cupcake Idaho.
TheFountainHead
To add to that point, Apple doesn’t release 18 different versions at 18 different price points with varying software support and options in an attempt to screw both the corporate and commercial consumer simultaneously.
TheFountainHead
User Fail is cross platform.
ChrisA
Quick update. . . if it’s not already been posted.
The IE fix is now available from Microsoft. Just run windows update.
r€nato
he may have been referring to the switch from the 680X0 CPUs, which occurred in 1994.
So Apple has had three different CPU flavors in 14 years. Hardly earth-shaking and there have been few complaints with regards to the PowerPC-Intel transition, which is really remarkable considering the potential pitfalls.
If you’re dying to run some obscure OS 9 app (I do have a couple which are OS 9 only), there are plenty of vintage Macs which can be had cheaply and PowerPC Macs can run them just fine in OS Classic mode.
r€nato
yeah, well, I was going to mention that but like I said, i decided not to pile on ;-)
my stepdad recently switched to a Mac and he is thrilled. He picked up how to work on a Mac very quickly, and he’s not a geek like us.
TheFountainHead
Anecdote only, but I don’t know of anyone who has switched who has ever switched back.
The Moar You Know
@Bey: That’s a damned good question. I deal with a lot of usability issue-type stuff on the dev end, and IMHO, there is no such thing as a all-around Windows-protection package that grandma could use. Hell, for that matter, Windows itself is a little too cryptic for most users these days. I got all kinds of panicky calls from noob users back when Vista came out – the UAC messages and all the moved settings stuff really freaked people out.
In all honesty, having just endorsed Dell a few posts back, if you’re buying for someone who really isn’t computer savvy, you might be better off with a Mac. The interface is by and large pretty simple, and the OS is relatively secure. They are not cheap. Adding to the cost is the sad fact that most people need MS Office and there is one for the Mac, but you’re going to pay for it.
An alternative for those who are proficient; I got my mother one of the little Linux-based eeePc machines, and after configuring it for her, I haven’t heard from her, at least about that machine, since. She uses it a lot on travel and OpenOffice can handle any Office-based stuff to a somewhat acceptable degree. OpenOffice isn’t going to be replacing MS Office anytime soon – the compatibility is just not there – but for limited use like a travel machine, working with simple Office docs, it works most of the time.
cleek
this sucks.
Rick Warren?
WTF, Obama?
demimondian
@r€nato:
O RLY?
NO WAI!!
(Oh, and by the by .. those are both links. You might want to chase them.)
demimondian
@TheFountainHead: I did.
Stimpy
@demimondian:
Good luck getting anything done as a non-administrator on a windows box.
If you are educated enough to run non-privileged then you probably don’t run into viruses anyway.
Kirk
@Conservatively Liberal:
I still have my Kaypro II. 64K, 5.25 disks, tiny screen and all. I fire it up once a year just to remember how far we’ve progressed.
r€nato
about the only downside to working on a Mac, now that ‘a lot of programs are PC only!’ is not an excuse, is that out of the gate they ARE more expensive than PCs. If you are a student on a budget, this can be a dealbreaker.
However, the PC is going to bleed you slowly. I have known quite a few users who’ve had to take their PC to the computer geek every few months, $100 a pop, because their computer became incredibly slow for no discernible reason or got infected. I can’t say that I know whether their browsing habits played a role in this, however this shit never happens with my Macs.
I can troubleshoot Macs on my own and have never had to take them into the shop. Ever. I taught my stepdad all the troubleshooting he’ll need to know with his new Mac and like I said he’s not a computer geek by any stretch Compare with Windows, if something goes wrong it takes an engineer just to understand the cryptic error messages.
Then there’s the risk of those blue screens of death… and don’t get me going on that Registry crap.
Shoot. I said I wasn’t going to pile on! Sorry.
The Other Steve
I had two points…
#1. In the Windows world we call these Service Packs and they are free.
#2. I wanted to show I could pull arguments out of my ass just as well as a Mac fan boy.
TheFountainHead
@cleek: It certainly doesn’t make me all warm and fuzzy, but who else was he going to pick? Most of the other religious figures with any name recognition endorsed McCain and/or are far more rabidly right wing. Warren has some fucked up views, as most of his ilk do, but Warren at least has more often than not come out with the "Let he who has no sin cast the first stone." approach. This was a no win pick for Obama in any case, so he might as well pander with it a little if it’s going to hurt anyway.
bago
You know where you want to play if you want to exploit? Adobe Flash. That shit has the worst Code Access Security I have ever seen. You can invoke a function outside of the CAS policy by using indexer syntax. Another great vector for exploits is apple’s quicktime plugin. They only do buffer length checks on about 20% of their arrays. Hello overflow.
Stimpy
@The Other Steve:
No, not really.
But, I am saying that it is easier for a virus to install root-kits or do other nasty things on windows than OSX.
Most viruses these days are used to zombie a PC to join a bot-net. When is the last time you heard about a large scale malicious virus, for any platform?
The Other Steve
Try to install Mac OS-X on a Dell.
The Moar You Know
I haven’t "switched back" as such, but I use both. The workplace requires Windows, so that’s what I mostly use. I also have a Linux box that I use for network monitoring and as a mail server – that caused some problems as we are really not supposed to use non-Windows stuff, but as it doesn’t perform mission functions, it was eventually deemed acceptable.
I’ve got a Mac Mini at home. I house the music collection on it and that’s about all I use it for. It’s a good consumer machine and it has been very reliable. It is not the "ne plus ultra" that everyone says it is, but it’s a good machine and a good OS. When you get right down to it, it is just another computer.
I still run a machine with BeOS. Goddamned shame what happened to that company. The OS is wonderful (still the fastest and snappiest of any machine I have), but there’s no modern software for it. I should just format the thing but I can’t bring myself to do it.
TheFountainHead
@demimondian: Really? you’re going to use Apple’s suit against Psystar (a company actively attempting to make a profit with software they aren’t licensed to sell) as a comparison to Microsoft’s assumption that every single end user is stealing the software?
Michael D.
Isn’t saying “IE Explorer” like saying “CSS style sheets” or “DOT Transportation?” :-)
On another note, from The Onion:
Perry Como
Safari on Windows gets a script timeout error on Apple’s home page. Feh.
Stimpy
@The Other Steve:
Not to hard to figure out:
Apple is a hardware company that adds value with software. Microsoft is a software company that adds value with hardware.
Though you can debate the relative "value’ the companies offer I guess…
TheFountainHead
I wouldn’t. Which is why Apple doesn’t sell it to be installed on Dell’s. How is that treating the consumer as a thief? I can’t put Ford parts in my Volkswagen Jetta, does that mean Ford is treating me like a thief?
bago
Oh, and to whoever was bitching about vista and claiming a need for a re-write? Vista is the first gen re-write. New TCP stack, new security model, new driver model. Was sposed to have a new File System, but that got cut. Might come out as a feature in SQL. If you want to see what the new core looks like without all of the user-friendly crap tacked onto the shell, run win 2k8. That will show you the guts of the OS.
The Moar You Know
@cleek: Sucks? I think this is most awesome win. A fully-accredited Dominionist wingtard giving Obama’s invocation? I look forward to the explosions of the heads of evangelicals all over our fine nation, followed by mass burnings of "The Purpose-Driven Life".
I think our President-elect has more than a little bit of troll in him.
Michael D.
Let me be one to say that I actually ENJOY Vista. I have NEVER had an issue. The ONLY thing I don’t like is the confirmation dialogs that come up.
I would be willing to bet that, aside from a few of you who are power users and actually use enough of the features to be able to identify problems (aside from the confirmation dialogs), most of you complain about Vista because it’s fashionable.
Just sayin’. Not to be all confrontational. ;-)
r€nato
demimondian, come on. Apples (heh) and oranges.
Apple does not force you to phone home in order to install the OS.
While the OS X EULA prohibits installation of each copy of OS X on more than one single computer unless you’ve bought a multi-seat license, in practice they do not exercise any control over that and it’s pretty common practice to buy one copy and install it on all of one’s Macs or share among friends. It’s not legal, but Apple doesn’t make you jump through a zillion hoops to prevent this either… unlike MS.
When you buy a Mac, you get the OS disk. Usually not true with PCs as far as I know, unless you pay for that. If you need to re-install your Mac OS for some reason, you’re good to go. If your Windows pre-installed PC takes a dump… well, I am not sure what you do to re-install it without going out and buying a physical copy of Windows.
The Psystar case is a very specific exception to Apple’s lenient treatment of its users wrt the EULA. I am not a lawyer so I will not deign to offer a certain, ‘you are wrong and I am right’ opinion on the merits of Apple’s suit.
I am willing to opine in a non-certain manner, however, that there is some question whether Apple can prevail in a ‘fair’ case to enforce their EULA and stop Psystar from selling Mac clones with OS X pre-installed, so long as Psystar paid for each copy of the OS it’s selling on each computer. I think Apple is hoping to avoid a close examinaton of the question by swamping Psystar with legal fees.
It’s pretty clear however that Psystar is likely infringing on Apple trademarks.
demimondian
@Stimpy: Dude, my whole family runs on their Windows boxes as non-admin.
Hey, 1998 called, it wants its lies back.
@r€nato: Apple requires me to BUY A COMPUTER from them in order to install their operating system. How is that not phoning home?
Sorry, dude. It’s not apples and oranges, but rather Apples and Oranges.
r€nato
A Service Pack is analogous to a Mac minor update (which is free), not a major update. I can tell you do not work on a Mac or you would know these things.
*sigh* not gonna say it. Not gonna. Nope. I’ll be civil no matter how much you provoke me.
demimondian
@bago: I don’t think that WinFS will ever see the light of day except as a technology demo. It’s had the stink of death on it since the day it first appeared.
demimondian
@r€nato: You haven’t looked at many Windows service packs, have you? Here are some "service packs": OSR2. XPSP2. 2K3SP1…
There was a hell of a lot more in any of those than there was in Leopard, much less than there will be in ‘SnowLeopard’.
TheFountainHead
Cause it’s not?
You have to buy a computer to install any OS, in theory. In Apple’s case, you buy it from Apple. In Microsoft’s case, you buy it from a licensed retailer or build it from parts and buy it from Microsoft. Phoning home means registration online to Microsoft’s license database. Apple does not require such registration.
r€nato
uh, speaking of apples and oranges, try to install Vista on a PC older than 2 years? Quite often, you DO have to ‘phone home’ by buying a new PC. Which is not really what most people mean by ‘phoning home’, unless they are straining to avoid budging even one millimeter when they are clearly wrong.
when I bought Tiger for my 2001 G4 (IIRC in 2001 the then-current version of OS X was 10.1 and Tiger is 10.4), I was not required to buy a new computer. I put the CD in the cup holder and installed it. End of story.
The computer did not attempt to phone home to an Apple server, I did not even need a serial number.
sean
this thread might as well be in Chinese, for all i’ve understood ;)
TheFountainHead
Funny you should mention Chinese, because that and computer-speak are the two languages everyone should learn.
The Moar You Know
@Michael D.: Agree. I’m running Vista right here. I did have an issue WRT my soundcard driver post-install (it didn’t work), but that was easily fixed. Otherwise, no problems at all. The UAC is pretty fucking annoying (the "confirmation dialogs") and utterly useless as a security measure (anyone who can write a virus can easily add a "click yes" function for the UAC dialog), but fortunately it is very easy to turn off.
But yeah, I like Vista. Just went all out and bought the Ultimate version, no sense in buying anything that’s crippled in any way. If there’s one thing to bitch about WRT Vista, it’s the idiotic versions. They did it right back with Win2k (one and only one version) and I’d like to see a return to that with Windows 7, although I’ll admit it is not likely. Fucking marketing people.
Keith
I’ll see your Kaypro II and raise you a Timex Sinclair 2068. I wanted one of those so bad when I had a C64 (it’s about the size of a subnotebook without the monitor), and I finally grabbed on from eBay years back to go in my home computer museum. One of these days, I’ll have a C16 & a Plus4 as well. Would get another C64 (my favorite computer of all time), but the emulator is just fine for me.
Perry Como
You misspelled ReiserFS.
/me ducks
r€nato
god damn you John Cole! I know it’s your blog to do with as you please, but I beseech you: please don’t ever blog on browsers or PC vs. Mac again!
Can’t we go back to flaming Republicans and Red State and Bush instead of each other? Jesus. The Democratic circular firing squad has nothing on this thread.
Perry Como
@TheFountainHead:
HAI
CAN HAS STDIO?
VISIBLE "HAI WORLD!"
KTHXBYE
Michael D.
@TheFountainHead:
Heh. If Microsoft REQUIRED you to buy a PC manufactured by Microsoft, it’d give you a whole other topic to bitch about, and you’d be singing a different tune than you are now!
Ohhhhh, Yes you would!! :-)
r€nato
OH YEAH?
I use Unix and if you can’t deal with a command-line prompt then you should not be allowed anywhere near a computer. GUIs are for FAGS!
Unix beats the shit out of your toy OS! FUCK YOU!
There. I’m done with this thread :-)
Michael D.
W.o.w.
Tim Fuller
The Internet is broken. I tried to surf to Balloon Juice and somehow I got redirected to Slashdot (snark off). How much did I save by not having to buy a sixty dollar copy of Norton System Works every year just to pretend I was doing something (besides bringing the entire system to a freaking crawl) to maintain my system?
The ONLY program I miss from Windoze is Picassa.
The only thing I miss about Windows. Nothing.
Enjoy.
Perry Como
Try this:
:(){ :|:& };:
TheFountainHead
Why? I’d still be using a Mac!
If Microsoft (or anyone else, really) started manufacturing high quality computers that didn’t look like plastic pieces of horse-shit and sold them with a solid OS with plenty of power under the hood bot no excess frills on the surface, I’d buy it in a heartbeat. So far, Apple’s the only company in the business that meets those requirements.
Joshua Norton
Well not fags, but definitely for wuss’s. Anyone who can’t type their own batch file or do simple DOS commands isn’t a playah!
xcopy *.* /s
Comrade Stuck
@sean:
Nothing like a BJ Geek flame war. I keep my copy of Computers for Dummies nearby, just in case.
The Moar You Know
@demimondian: Me either. The one guy who really knew how to do journaling file systems right, Dominic Giampaolo, got hired by Apple after Be’s demise and recreated/updated that system for Apple.
So he’s at Apple. No one at Microsoft seems to know what they are doing – they can’t get this to work and don’t even seem smart enough to steal what does.
bago
Not true. UAC suspends all threads and hijacks the UI so that cannot happen. It was built so that you could not pipe commands into the input stream, which is why it is annoying.
The Moar You Know
@TheFountainHead: They do, it’s called the xBox 360.
In seriousness, if MS made a computer I’d probably buy it; their hardware has always been very high quality, something that we have not always been able to say about their software.
demimondian
@The Moar You Know: Actually, it’s not the journaling part that’s interesting; NTFS has been journaled since 1989, in prerelease. It’s the metadata storage part that’s hard, and the reason it hasn’t even shipped on any platform except Be (and, to a lesser extent, Linux, as…erm…ReiserFS. Speaking of the stink of death…) is that it’s not terribly interesting. Just like universal sync doesn’t make a lot of sense, because when you actually provide enough metadata to differentiate between the different expectations of sync users, the writers need to write their own providers anyway, so universal metadata in general doesn’t make much sense.
SELECT * WHERE type=’picture’ AND CONTENTS INCLUDES ‘jacqui’
means something quite different from
SELECT * WHERE type=’email’ and CONTENTS INCLUDES ‘jacqui’
yet they look identical to the computer.
demimondian
@bago: Which building did you say you worked in? :-P
bago
I’ve been in redwest E, 10, 1, 16, 27, 28, 41, 42, and 116.
I’ve been around.
bago
Oh yeah, I worked on IE a few years back, so add 109 to that list.
The Other Steve
I would argue that Apple is a software/content company that locks you in by forcing you to buy their hardware.
If I could use something besides iTunes to manage my iPod I might be happy with Apple. As it is, they are evil incarnate. A throwback to the computer environment of the 1980s.
The Other Steve
If you have any interest, I have a VIC-20 sitting in my closet along with a substantial amount of hardware addons. I have at least 30-40 games, memory expanders, machine language compiler, enhanced BASIC cartridges, etc.
I’ve decided it’s time to give it up. Might put it on ebay, but I would gladly give it to someone who had a passion.
email me at theothersteve256 at the gmail dot com.
Or if anybody else is interested, just let me know.
demimondian
@demimondian: 27, 41, and 42, eh? Yeah, that would explain you knowing the ins and outs of UAC. My wife worked in 27 (and then over in RedWest) for a while, and I worked in 3, 6, 9, 25, 32, 34, and 117. But I left the company a couple years ago…
Michael D.
@The Other Steve:
Not an argument Steve. A fact.
If anyone’s trying to lock you into something, it’s Apple.
kilo
@Reverend Dennis:
Ugh, thanks for that. I just threw up a little in my mouth.
I had completely suppressed the memory of two days spent constantly rebooting, shuffling floppies into the PC, and wondering why the (^%*&^% TSR wouldn’t work.
When a vendor considers adding a networking stack to their OS as an "innovation", that tells you all you need to know about said vendor.
sparky
@Rick Taylor:thanks!
@r€nato: advice from a non-geek: don’t run Leopard. seriously. there’s some problem in the airport architecture that really screws up many macs that were produced before Leopard was released. it’s a nightmare for some of us. and you know, it’s a myth that you don’t have to do maintenance with a mac, ‘cuz you do.
[email protected]TheFountainHead: am considering switching back due to repeated hardware failures and Leopard screwups. well, maybe not real seriously. but sometimes, sure. usually after i have managed to restrain myself from heaving the macbook out the window due to the above-mentioned airport failure.
and thanks to all of you who took the time to enlighten the teeming mass of the unenlightened such as yours truly.
bago
@demimondian: Yeah, I’m slingin code at Expedia in downtown Bellevue now. Much better lunch options.
demimondian
@bago: No joke. I went to work for a Large Competitor in the Search Business with an office in Kirkland…much, much better lunches.
comrade rawshark
Where can I learn what running processes are good and which aren’t? Where do I do that paging file set up?
I have an XP Pro Dell box that’s been running for two years with nothing but a ZoneAlarm firewall. No virus’ or trojans so far and I go anywhere and everywhere. I have to use Firefox because last year I downloaded a IE7 beta, this year I tried to upgrade to the full IE7 but it couldn’t uninstall the beta and now I have no IE at all. Just opens and closes right back up. Weird.
DFH no.6
So, I have this friend who’s kind of an older dude and he uses his computer (at home, not at work) to view what he claims is a fairly standard amount of pron. Unfortunately, that sometimes leads to infections that slow down performance (the PC, not my friend). Also unfortunately, he wouldn’t understand but a small fraction of this geekfest of a thread. Only enough to know he uses IE cuz that’s the default on his PC, and IE appears to be most susceptible to infection, more’s the pity.
So, my question is, what’s the problem if he has to have his PC worked on every 12-18 months or so by a Conservatevely Liberal type who does that sort of thing for a living, getting out all the crap that’s been inserted into his porn box since the last time? You know, for $200-$250 or so a pop (that’s what he tells me the bills have been)?
That doesn’t seem (to my friend) to be much different from having JiffyLube change the oil on his car, instead of doing that himself, or having a qualified mechanic work on the brakes, since that’s not my friend’s forte, either.
What’s wrong with treating a computer like a car, wherein the vast majority of users are neither trained nor inclined to be able to fix the thing when it has a problem?
And despite what FountainHead said, my friend is just as unlikely to learn Chinese as he is to become computer savvy. Though he is (errrr… will be ) intrigued by this Chrome OS and will probably like to learn more.
Josh E.
I came to the comments to find out more about porn and all I got was a bunch of nerds arguing about computers.
Conservatively Liberal
@Kirk:
Our garage is a museum to old computers and their software. I have every full release of DOS (v1.1 to 6.22), manuals and all. Same with every release of Windows. I did sell off my IBM/PCjr (that was overclocked and had a Hercules 256 color 64k graphics card!) a couple of years ago but I still have some ‘good’ stuff on hand. I have a Commodore Vic 20, a C-64, a C-64 Plus, a C-128 (and the requisite Zilog Z-80 cartridges), a hacked up Amiga 1000, one of the first ‘portable’ IBM 086 computers (if by portable you mean as big as a sewing machine) and tons of other hardware.
As much as computers and operating systems have progressed, I still have a soft spot for the early stuff.
Some good XP quicktunes:
In XP, your pagefile can be set to flush on shutdown by going to: Control Panel/Administrative Tools/Local Security Settings, branch out the Local Policies section in the left pane and select Security Options, scroll to the bottom of the page and select:
Shutdown: Clear virtual memory pagefile
and set it to Enabled. When you reboot/shut down, you will notice that it takes a bit longer due to the pagefile flush. Now that you set the pagefile to flush at shutdown, go to: Control Panel/System (use ‘Classic View’, it’s easier!), select the System Restore tab and disable System Restore. Why? When you defrag, you will most likely trash the restore points. Try it some time. ;)
If you are using Hibernation (or it is enabled), turn it off to free up the non-movable hibernation file space during defrag. Now right click on your Start button (taskbar button), select Open and in the window that opens, click on the folder up icon to move up one folder. If your file system is is set at the defaults, (in the same window) go to Tools, select Folder Options and then select the View tab. Check the first seven items, then at the ‘Hidden files and folders’ select ‘Show hidden files and folders’. Uncheck ‘Hide extensions for known file types’ and ‘Hide protected operating system files’ and then click on OK.
Now open the Local Settings folder (in the window you opened using right-click Start/Open) and then open and delete the contents of the following folders:
History
Temp
Temporary Internet Files
Some files may not delete if they are in use but normally they are not. If there are files in use, find out what they are used for. Don’t just ignore them, but you would want to ask for help playing Dick Tracy with stuff like that. Now use the folder up icon to go to the root of your operating system drive (usually C:), open the Windows folder and then open the Temp folder. Delete the files in this folder, and the same thing applies for any stubborn ‘in use’ files, find out what is using them.
Now that you have deleted most of the junk files on your system and cleared out the restore points, dump the recycle bin and defrag the drive (or OS partition/drive). If it is an NTFS drive/partition, defrag it repeatedly until there is no change from the previous defrag. Reboot the system to wipe and create a new pagefile and then defrag the drive again. Once it is defragged as far as it can get then you are done with the cleanup.
Go to Power Management and turn hibernation back on (if used), then turn System Restore back on and create a new restore point.
Enjoy!
If you are suspicious of a process on your system, do a search for the process online and get several opinions, asking questions if necessary. Look for little tricks in the process names like ‘scvhost’ instead of ‘svchost’. The former is an illicit process and the latter is a valid Windows process. Pay attention to CPU utilization, RAM usage, pagefile consumption and number of processes via the Task Manager (or better yet, Sysinternals Process Explorer available free from Microsoft). This is a quick way to spot problems as they happen rather than well after they do. Know how many processes your computer runs (when properly cleaned and configured) at an idle, and watch for illicit processes starting up when you surf or run other net apps.