Aw bloody hell...

[coyoteden.livejournal.com]

SP2 is pretty much swiss cheese:

Read it and weep

Apparently an unpatched hole in IE can let a site modify the WMI repository. The article translates this as spoofing the Security Center status, but while you're at it, why not just turn off the firewall and make it look like it's still on? Both SC and Firewall are controlled by WMI.

Check out this screenshot. No, it's not faked, but it sure is funny.

Yet another hole lets an .exe be placed on the hard drive with no warning. I love how Microsoft states the user "must be running as an administrator" to be vulnerable. WHAT XP HOME USER ISN'T???

Firefox anyone?

Oh yeah, and apparently you can get a virus from a Winamp skin. Shocking.

Comments

[omicron32.livejournal.com]

Ah well, MS did it again and messed up.

They won't learn until they realise that sometimes ease-of-use must be sacrified for security.

They make their OS so even your grandma can just about use it, and this is where the problems start - sacrificing security for convience.

You should switch to Linux. Just do it, and cope. When more and more people switch, developers will start taking notice, writing drivers, making things easier to use. Plus, you'll hardly ever have to worry about viruses or spyware until it reaches a better market share.

Apologies for coming off like a zealot. I administer a few Windows-based sites and I'm sick of having to clean up after people, even with the machines pretty secure. (Can't switch them over to Linux, sadly.)

Hardware support, or lack thereof.

[coyoteden.livejournal.com]

If it weren't for the fact that my video card's TV-tuner and remote would be useless and my Audigy would be next-to-useless.

When working ATI AIW 9600 / RW 2 drivers and Audigy drivers show up, i'll switch.

As it is, I use no MS Apps. Firefox, Thunderbird, and Winamp all the way. The OS is fine, it's the browser that's the problem.

[omicron32.livejournal.com]

There are official Linux drivers (http://www.ati.com/products/catalyst/linux.html) for ATI cards (but I'm not sure about TV-tuner support to be honest. TV-Out is supported. You should check over at the Video4Linux website for information on your card).

Audigy soundcards work fine. I've got one and I've never had any trouble with it under Linux. Yeah, you don't get all your fancy environments you can change into, but I've never noticed a difference even with my 4.1 Creative speakers.

[oddball42.livejournal.com]

the onely two problems i see with this is no mention of 3d rendering wich last i looked was barely supported in 7000 series cards and a couple of the 8000 series. and that vid capture is not supported. also its binraies only. sorry but most any version of linux i fiddle with i want to be able to choose some compile optimizations or even compile video into me kernel...

i guess this is partly why i am a nvidia snob...

[omicron32.livejournal.com]

Oh no, don't get me wrong! I would never touch an ATI card, I was just stating there are Linux drivers.

Nvidia forever!

[oddball42.livejournal.com]

heheh i just wish i could get suse to play nice with my nforce2 chipset

[dmsalem00.livejournal.com]

Nvidia forever! or at least up until 61.76/77 forceware drivers, which are responsible for millions of bluescreens across both versions of windows..

[omicron32.livejournal.com]

I don't use Windows.

Nvidia are good because of their Linux support.

You'll find there are more than two versions of Windows too. ;P

nitpick...

[coyoteden.livejournal.com]

There's Win9x and WinNT. There are different versions of each, but when it comes to device drivers, that's where the big difference in the kernels, and therefore the driver models is.

True, you won't get a 2k/XP video or sound driver to load on NT4/3.51, but you probably won't get a 98/Me driver to load on 95 (or 98 first edition) either. Other things like printer drivers those damn security dongles are pretty much the same within the family, and sometimes the only way to get some arcane hardware to run on a new XP box is to use the NT4 driver.

The exception to this is WDM devices and some network cards. They actually use a NT driver in 9x, courtesy of the Windows NT microkernel provided by NTKERN.VXD.

Oh yeah, and there's windows 3.x, but that's technically DOS, not windows.

[dmsalem00.livejournal.com]

No there aren't. There's 9x and NT. the rest are are like "lime and chartruese" instead of GREEN.

There used to be a 3rd, but no one seems to use 3.11 anymore.

I've done my research...

[coyoteden.livejournal.com]

Believe me, there are times I've wanted to flee windows and ATI's somewhat horrendous drivers/software.

Full 2D/3D support for my AIW 9600 is available with ATI's proprietary binaries.

GATOS supports older AIW cards the RT200 decoder on the 9xxx series is not. It will be someday, as ATI is actively supporting the linux community. That chip is extremely versatile. NTSC decoding is barely utilizing it, it can digitize component video at HD resolutions. It's also extremely complex, so drivers are taking a while.

Also, ATI just released their HDTV Wonder and the driver gurus are concentrating more on getting that working in Linux 'cause it's a damn good ATSC/NTSC decoder.

As for the Audigy, it's an Audigy2, and a lot of the nifty features aren't supported by the emu10k1 module, where as under WinXP I have it soft-modded to have all the features of an Audigy 2 ZS.

Don't get me started on how Creative has the balls to re-release the SAME DAMN CARD with newer drivers that only install on the "new" version of the card. Of course, there are ways around that, and even if you have a lowly old SB Live you can install cracked Audigy 2 ZS drivers and get 90% of the new features.

No!!! Not winamp!!!

[theobon.livejournal.com]

Winamp exploit! (http://secunia.com/advisories/12381/)

The greatest joy of running linux is writing your own drivers :)

Re: No!!! Not winamp!!!

[coyoteden.livejournal.com]

Patched already!

Get Winamp 5.05

[jacobine.livejournal.com]

One of my friends always reads these things then rants in annoyance. He's a mac fan, which is essentially unix anyway. Of course, his current belief is that someone needs to file a class action suiot against MS.

Myself, I just shake my head. Then I shake my head again that people are getting caught by all these bugs. But then, I run a pretty clean system. Is it really that bizarre that I've never had a virus even with over 10 years online (8 of those with a PC?)

[dmsalem00.livejournal.com]

I'd like to take this opportunity to remind whoever'll listen that I've had a grand total of 2 viruses in my copy of Windows ME.

A trojan porn dialer(i have no dialup modem..woops)
and SDDROP.C which has has done precisely jack since the earliest days of p2p file sharing.

Sad...sad...I thought XP was supposed to be the safe one to use..

[taiirei.livejournal.com]

Trawling through virus software maker sites, viruses [by their definitions] mostly target the Win2k and XP OS.
It's too bad then, that ME sucks arse. I know, I use both at home ~_~

[codedigital.livejournal.com]

Windows XP Service Pack 2 = My Windows install went bye-bye.

Yeah, it tends to do that.

[coyoteden.livejournal.com]

I watched my workstation at the shop melt down after installing SP2 RTM.

Oh well, it was time to rebuilt it. I test all kinds of hardware in it and it only had about two hundred device drivers loading :P

Of course, the very next day the PFY messed with it and afterwards it couldn't find ntoskrnl.exe.

[loosechanj.livejournal.com]

Is this really news? All software sucks. If you don't know that, you haven't been doing this job long enough.

[dmsalem00.livejournal.com]

Bow before the flawless piece of software that is called.....Solitaire.

Funny you say that...

[coyoteden.livejournal.com]

I just worked on a machien the other day.
Primary complaint: Solitaire would corrupt the display.
Turns out it was a bad video card.

Re: Funny you say that...

[dmsalem00.livejournal.com]

HAHA SEE??? NOT SOLITARE'S FAULT!!

[oddball42.livejournal.com]

hehe i use opera almost exclusively, sometimes ill drop to firefox, and once in a while ill use IE for trusted work related sites.