I'm co administrator on a not so small clinic facility. They have over one hundred of clients and four servers. Many of the clients didn't have even the XP Sp3 until some months ago, the whole internal network (except few machines in the offices) is separated from internet, the bioses are locked, the USB ports are locked as well, the user's rights are limited/tailored with the policies and so on. So such facility works perfectly today as worked in 2001, and even before, with few or no modification to the vast majority of the connected machines. Even the main server OS which was an SBS 2003 was updated just because the licensing didn't cope with the company growth (read another artificial limitation). And the above isn't surely an isolated case. The world is plenty of companies who don't mind to use internet more than the usual email traffic and little more. The world is plenty of companies that don't trust the cloud services, that don't want to have the internal email managed by google or whatever and so on. For companies in such situation a forced upgrade because the HW or the SW is just a pointless wast of human and financial resources, with nothing in change, or more likely, money spent to have back a worse service than before. Just to mention a small thing, adding a w8/w10 machine to the network mentioned above, would mean 5 minutes wasted pointlessly each time one of the 300 users would log on that machine for the first time. Because on w8/10 the each new user has to wait not just for the profile creation but also for the installation of the pointless metro apps. That's not evolution, that's not an improvement. That's only the result of the desperate need to ape google and apple to make more money, to have more control. Carl Marx understood the mechanism over a century ago. Capitalism, on a saturated market, needs to destroy the goods already built to stay afloat. No need to be a Socialist or Communist to understand he was right on that. It worked with traditional products. It's way more evident with the immaterial, IT related, ones.
Yeah well, that's a discussion that's not going to lead anywhere. You'll always have flaws in software projects regardless of whether the code is public or not. Neither is inherently more secure than the other. How should ASLR help if users can be tricked into launching malicious executables such as CryptoLocker? How would Linux kernel be able to protect against that? Or a hardware firewall? Or a Linux software firewall, which by default isn't going to filter outgoing traffic either? That doesn't make any sense. You think NT kernel isn't written in "native C"? What do you think "the MSDN" is? I know they do, but you'll always have vendors not playing by the rules. And when they eventually do publish their sources after having been threatened with legal action you're back to the question of how you are going to verify their binaries were in fact compiled from the available sources. Chances are you'll just have to trust them on their claim just as you'll have to trust closed-source software vendors. Well I do build Android from source. And that's not because of paranoia but because of the freedom it gives me with regards to what I want to do with my hardware. I don't care for Windows on the smartphone platform. For me, desktop Windows just hasn't (yet?) reached that level of restrictiveness. Sorry to disappoint you, but I'm not the closed-source shill you're taking me for. Rest assured that I have no intention of discrediting open source. I've worked on porting Android kernel to unsupported hardware. I've debugged my fair share of segfaults in Android HAL that come along with that. I've had the pleasure of working with the crudely hacked together atrocity that is the CyanogenMod build system, seeing what bad management can do to open source. I'm well aware of C3 talks because I've been attending the congress in person. I just tend to have a bit more of a differentiated opinion not fueled by paranoia and fear of a global conspiracy, and recognize the relevance of closed-source software in real world usage. Sure, in a controlled environment that can work. But running XP on machines connecting to an untrusted network or which are used by people to browse the Internet would be an irresponsible thing to do, don't you think? I fully agree. But it's still you who decides which cloud services you're using, is it not?
Well. even if not endorsed by MS, XP can be easily updated until 2019. But assume isn't the case and XP support really ended in 2014. The threats in windows are 95% related to IE, not the underlying OS. The real major OS weakness are usually related to stupid default settings/policies that can be prevented with sane settings (something boring for a single machine, but well worth to be pushed to a whole network by the server). Then there are the real flaws, the ones that allowed some widespread viruses that reached even the first page of the general newspapers. When XP was released it had a number of them, but after 14 years of service packs and patches, hardly a really worrying flaw is still there. Surely each month a number of flaws are discovered even on W7 or W10, but usually are relatively minor things, that requires a number of conditions to be really dangerous. Many of them are just proof of concepts, never materialized in a real threat. Back to the main source of problems, IE. Just never use it and the problem is solved. So the use of a not updated OS can be debatable, but not irresponsible if you know what are you doing. Correct. But, if you think to the worst scenario while talking about proper threats, you should do so also with services. Happen that companies are continuously merged or bought. Isn't said that a company that today is not evil, "tomorrow will be the same". Speaking about being not evil, did you notice how much Google changed since Page and Brin swapped their positions inside the company?
Yeah sure, it ultimately depends on the environment. And if an admin decides to take that risk, fine. It's their choice. However, there have been cases of vulnerabilities that explicitly did not receive fixes for 2000, XP, and 2003 even when they were still in support, when in fact more recent OSs did (which is why the claim about Microsoft now "starting" to not release compatibility-breaking updates to Windows 7 systems in the near future isn't true either). You're just not going to get all the security updates, no matter how hard you try to keep XP alive (well, unless you spend a crapload of money on custom support). So if a corporate network is running outdated OSs like XP and 2003 on their machines... what are the chances their operations in some way depend on some ancient corporate browser app that won't run in anything but IE? Agreed. But the majority of people are always going to choose convenience over privacy and probably won't apply that sort of critical thinking to how they use those services. Not sure what you mean specifically, but regarding privacy I think it's obvious that Google is a lot worse than Microsoft or Apple. After all 90% of their revenue still comes from ad sales, targeted based on users' data. And then there's the following quote from Eric Schmidt, which I think says a lot about what kind of value they put on privacy:
Obviously isn't a rule, but often I see old, web based, custom applications that do require IE6 but don't rely on the external web, or newer web based apps that works with any browser. So the problem isn't such big as you describe. But, as I said, it depends on the specific case.
Not being a specialist, I have a question regarding this.... I never use IE, and am stuck (but not impressed) with Ff because sadly enough there is nothing better. All alternatives are a lot worse. I use ccleaner after every session and each and every time I find that there is always stuff to clean on IE..... Why is that? Can it be prevented? Does it make sense to think about that? What might could it cause? Does it make any difference which version is installed and updated? Thanks
Come on! Try Vivaldi a light year better than anything else, except the real presto based Opera (which isn't updated since two years but still has something to say to the competition), although it hasn't reached even the V1. Try the current, chromium based, Opera (Opium for friends). Not as good as it's ancestor, but still better than any other browser except Vivaldi. Try Otter and Qupzilla, both nice, light and feature packed browsers... Sorry but i'm not an user of either programs. I open IE just to update XP, on newer windows I don't even have it installed.
Tried it.... uninstalled again. I use 10 add-ons with Ff, which I use daily and several of those do not work on Vivaldi. Vivaldi without the ten add-ons is significantly slower than Ff with 10 add-ons. There is no information to found about tracking... I tried it, because IO prefer knowing for myself... but was afraid that someone who recómmends a Google product, for which there are alternatives, lives on another planet than I do. Still... no harm done, thanks for the tip. Maybe Vivaldi will grow and be better usable...
now wait a minute, 100.. i do not like this post of yours. with all due respect i deplore it! what are you trying to do, may i enquire? shoot a post of of a member i may assume you respect full of holes?? are you asking for him to elaborate how is m$ responsible for that? it is quite simple.intel dropped usb2.how it works? just plug in a standard usb2 keyboard and mouse into your usb2port. it does not work.tjah.. you need usb3 dridradriverzzz, but they are not to be had..or a ps2 connection. to plug in an old keyboard and mouse... just trolling? passing by? please go away! and do not come back in a hurry.
People that have a vested interest in a product do and say things as they're being controlled by special interests, irregardless if what they're saying is true or not. Ignore the "noise" and move on, with better, more interesting topics/projects.
Well yes. Because I don't think it is appropriate to present a claim like that as a fact if you can't back it up with anything. Just looks like another conspiracy theory to me. Thanks. You are the only one to have mentioned something like this. I'll have to look into that. Does that relate in any way to Windows 7 supposedly not being supported on AMD platforms in the near future?