Posted on 12/23/2001 6:55:43 AM PST by TaRaRaBoomDeAyGoreLostToday!
I mean, the way that Clintonistas can't admit the simplest, most obvious lawbreaking by Bill Clinton!
Sorry, 4th glass of port is getting to me . . .
Y'know, at work I've got all my servers on Windows OS's. I just bought Mandrake and installed it, and am hoping to migrate to it in a month or three after I'm familiar enough with it to make it fly.
It's a little wierd at first, but I'm starting to get use to it.
I agree completely -- they should *ask* if you want an update.
I don't trust any company to just access my machine without permission.
I got my update through the auto update feature when it was released. I am always connected over cable and never had any problems with hackers. I got a hardware firewall and usually move some standard ports to another port for my own personal use. So those stupid port trolling apps those hackers use miss me all together. Flame me if you want but MS puts out some good stuff. ASP is my favorite of their inventions.
If you need pointers / have questions, ping rdb3 or myself... we'll be glad to help. Mdk is basically re-packaged RedHat.
I am sorry if/when I sometimes get too into 'baiting' the other side.
I do that to get responses sometimes. And (honesty time) because it's fun. And because I can't say these things when it's my co-workers . . .
They've known for 5 weeks, according to the press story. A security company found the defect 5 weeks ago, and informed MS.
MS at that point should have informed it's customers to turn the feature off. But they did not, because they didn't want to admit that XP had a defect.
For sales reasons, of course.
Thank you, I will.
I checked the box requesting that service. It's a choice each consumer makes. As I remember, there were several options given, including one that has no communication at all from MS.
As I pointed out earlier, RealPlayer (as an example) does not give that kind of option when you download from them, they just come in and 'take-over'. Yet I've never heard a single complaint about their tactics.
MS gave me several options, I chose the one that makes my life easier and simpler. I'm doing so without compromising my security.
You probably would choose a different way/time to be notified of updates. Thats your choice.
Depends on what the software's publisher claims about it. Microsoft specifically claimed that XP was a secure operating system. They did not in any way retract that claim in the five weeks following their discovery that it was false.
This isn't about XP having bugs.
It's about Microsoft specifically hiding their knowledge of a serious prodcut defect until after the Christmas selling season.
The issue isn't that XP *had* a bug, but that MS *knew* there was a bug and MS *hid* that knowledge from customers on purpose.
One of theses times, people will get hacked under this 'policy'.
That is pure and simple a violation of consumer protection laws. If a company knows about a defect, they must reveal that information to customers.
They *have* to. Legally. And morally, I should say.
Make sure you fit in a couple of courses in English before you graduate.
Or perhaps you're just using the wrong operating system.
Why not take a look at an OS which has gone for four years without an exploitable flaw in the default install?
Theo and Company started out by wanting to remove bugs and poor programming techniques. The by-product is a very secure operating system.
As a security engineer, when I brief programmers on proper programming techniques, I tell them this:
Software code should do exactly what it needs to do to function properly, and no more.
It's the second part that most programmers screw up on. Generally it's not intentional. They've just worked really hard to make it do what they want, who wants to go back and make sure it doesn't do anything else?
That's what Theo did. And the result is the most secure PC operating system available today. Four years is a long time for an OS. Even longer when you crank out a new version every 6 months.
Knitebane
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