No IE7 For 2k, Now In Extended Service 469
Yankovic writes "Looks like MS will not support IE7 on Windows 2000. 'It should be no surprise that we do not plan on releasing IE7 for Windows 2000... [S]ome of the security work in IE7 relies on operating system functionality in XPSP2 that is non-trivial to port back to Windows 2000.' While security fixes will still be available until 2010, I guess that means the only browsers with tabs for W2k will be Opera and Firefox." All the details about an MS product's fall into senility available at the lifecycle page.
One More Reason to Keep Win2K (Score:5, Insightful)
Hah! I'll keep Win2K and Firefox, thanks.
Terrible Sunday News (Score:5, Insightful)
This raises an interesting question - Why/How can Firefox, which runs happily on W2K and others, offer better security, while IE cannot do the same on an OS developed by MS itself?
I'm sure Firefox will be laughed at if it said it could not develop a browser for Windows because some of the security work in Firefox relies on operating system functionality in Linux that is non-trivial to port to Windows.
bad move on Microsoft's part (Score:5, Insightful)
The M$ resopnse... (Score:4, Insightful)
Dramatized for your enjoyment.
The cost of Internet Explorer (Score:5, Insightful)
Well thats going to be a big boost for firefox (Score:5, Insightful)
I suppose they have to release something new in Longhorn, they could make the window borders even bigger and more ugly and cripple the performance a bit more but with all the things they've dropped from longhorn they need some killer feature like copying firefox tabs to justify forcing another pointless upgrade on the corporate world.
Re:I... can't tell (Score:5, Insightful)
Like someone mentioned on slashdot before (paraphrased):
"I'd rather browse the net with a browser, not an operating system."
Re:One More Reason to Keep Win2K (Score:3, Insightful)
Yeah, I'll second that emotion... Although my primary machine is a PowerMac G5, my secondary runs Win2k for games, and stuff that "only happens on Windows" (which ain't too much anymore.)
If I'm completely crazy, somebody slap me, but wasn't Microsoft convicted of anti-trust violations relating to their monopoly on the browser? Wasn't a serious issue of their case the "need" to integrate Internet Explorer with the OS? Now it is MORE integrated--to the point that they CAN'T possibly make a Windows 2000 version?
If this isn't more blatant abuse of their monopoly on the desktop, what exactly would it take for DoJ to take action? (Besides a new president?) Would Gates have to go on tv wearing a cape and a "PHantom of the Opera" mask and say "Muhuhahahaha! Fools! My dominance of your desktop is complete!" before the saps at DoJ think something is wrotten in Redmond?
Just another forced upgrade (Score:2, Insightful)
Oh, BS. This is just another way to justify getting us to pay for a new version of Windows.
Re:Wait a minute... (Score:5, Insightful)
"Crap" like pop-up blocking for IE6, a better wireless manager, NX support, firewall on by default, etc? It blows my mind that all these windows users hate the system they use and complain when they get a bunch of needed features. Of course, there are issues with the update, but thats true of any modern OS.
If you're using windows XP you should have migrated to SP2 long ago if you cared about security and stability. Then again this is slashdot, enjoy your ill-informed karma whore points.
And Standards Compliant (Score:3, Insightful)
And the only browsers that will be standards compliant for Windows 2k will be the aforementioned Opera and Firefox.
Re:One More Reason to Keep Win2K (Score:3, Insightful)
Winning Combination (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Terrible Sunday News (Score:3, Insightful)
That one's easy.
It's a strategic decision of Microsoft's to provide poor security on older products, since their business model is extremely focused on getting recurring revenue from people upgrading to newer versions. Since businesses are running fine on the old versions, Microsoft needs to create problems with the old stuff to force them to upgrade.
Fortunatelly the solution comes naturally with Microsoft's development process. Can you believe these guys go for months checking in software to their source control system without any peer review of users&customers like Linux gets [groklaw.net].
Re:Wait a minute... (Score:3, Insightful)
Yeah yeah, "switch to linux." I don't even want to start that thread here. Linux is definitely my choice for a server operating system. Nothing beats it hands down (well, maybe FreeBSD for some implementations, but shhhhh don't start a flamewar). When I use my home desktop machine, I want it to get the work done that I want to get done and that's it. I don't want to worry about GLIBC incompatibilities, dependencies, or whatever. I have used Linux as a desktop OS on and off for the past 6 years or so and while I'm extremely impressed by its progress, it still doesn't come close to the speed and ease of Windows XP for getting things done.
Mac OS X on the other hand... Damn, if only I could afford the hardware.
</rant>
--
NoVA Underground: Northern Virginia message boards and chat, with Fairfax County public ticket/arrest search [novaunderground.com]
"Can't be backported" (Score:3, Insightful)
"Yeah, the latest version of Windows Media Player can't be stripped from Windows because it's part of the OS." Only to be proved dead wrong.
I mean, we're talking about "user interface" changes and catching up withthe W3C times such as truly supporting the latest CSS standards.
Why on earth can't Windows 2000 do this?
MS should just tell it as it is, we hope you upgrade to take more money from, albeit in more euphemistic way OR simply state another valid reason. We'd rather not have to do regression testing on an older platform. Again, find a euphemism.
-M
Re:Sounds like (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Wait a minute... (Score:1, Insightful)
GLIBC incompatibilities? This never happens if you have the source code to your software. If you're forced to used proprietary software, you should either ask for a statically linked executable or install the versions of libc that you need.
The same thing happens on Microsoft Windows as the vendor supplied MSCRT.DLL is quite incomplete wrt the posix standard. This is why some programs require various flavors of newlib (in the form of cygwin.dll or whatever) or other implementations of libc.
Dependencies? Your package management system should take care of this. Granted, there are corner cases when things can break horribly (often when proprietary software is being installed/removed) but the situation is generally no worse than on Microsoft Windows.
As an aside, the unreadable "human checker" image has convinced me that I'm really a script.
Re:One More Reason to Keep Win2K (Score:5, Insightful)
Maybe because ~60% of their corporate userbase is still Win2k? Or how about the fact that they haven't released an enhancement to Win2k in over two years? C'mon folks, Win2k is only 12 months older than XP. The question real question is why wouldn't MS give Win2k users some love considering that the browser wars are starting to heat up again?
So let's sum up the past two years of "Mainline Support" from MS for Win2k users: no Service Pack 5, none of IE6 security enhancements in XP will make it to Win2k and no IE7 for Win2k users.
MS is really giving Windows 2000 users the middle finger. MS is partly responsible for the security mess that is Windows 2000 and they should do *something* to help fix the situation. It isn't my fault as a user that MS hasn't released an operating sysytem for going on four years now. Why would I now pay for an OS that is over 3.5 years old?
It is really starting to feel that, at least part of the reason MS is going on an on about security is just another ploy to try to get customers to upgrade to the next greatest version of their product more quickly.
If this story is accurate, then this is a huge misstep by MS. MS is really opening the door for Firefox to further accelerate its adoption.
Re:Interesting... (Score:1, Insightful)
Troll.
I hate being anonymous, no one ever gets to see how right i am.
Re:One More Reason to Keep Win2K (Score:3, Insightful)
Personally, if you need to sacrifice compatibility, I would rather have it than hold back any possible forward progress. Several problems exist today solely because of design problems made years earlier.
Re:Lazy FUDer (Score:4, Insightful)
Funnily enough, one of the things most people love about Mozilla/Firefox is that they don't use the IE rendering engine - they use one that can cope with ancient 1990s technology like XHTML and transparent PNGs and CSS layout instead.
And, not to rain on your parade, a glance at the MyIE page shows that the wonderful features you're expecting me to be impressed by are... tabbed browsing and mouse gestures. Sorry, but as far as I'm concerned those are basic minimal features required for a browser to qualify as usable. I couldn't find anything there about a MyIE equivalent of Greasemonkey. Or Flashblock. Or EditCSS.
Seriously, you should give Firefox a try (or another try, as appropriate). It's got all the features people get gushy about in MyIE, and many more, and - as an added bonus - it doesn't use the IE rendering engine.
Re:It is about forcing people to buy XP (Score:3, Insightful)
Yes - Win2k is *old*. It's going into extended support (== only security updates) in a couple of months. Does RedHat actively support RH from 5-6 years ago? Does *anyone* support back-porting new features to versions of their products that are that old?
their network people, many of whom are microsoft weanies, do not want to put their networks in harms way by using XP for their servers.
Two things:
1) "microsoft weenies" - very mature of you
2) of course they don't want to use XP on their servers, no-one in their right minds would; XP is a *desktop* OS. For a Windows server, use a Windows Server - ie a flavour of 2k Server or 2003 Server.
MS will stop supporting 2000 completely.
Yes, sometime in 2010 [microsoft.com]
Re:Terrible Sunday News (Score:5, Insightful)
According to Microsoft, IE is integrated into the operating system itself -- it is no longer a standalone application [microsoft.com]. Ostensibly they did this to allow greater desktop-to-Internet integration, but given the inherent insecurity of ActiveX, the tendency for the forces of evil to use it maliciously, and the inability of users to lock it down, it's not exactly a hot selling point these days [answers.com].
Firefox, on the other hand, stands to benefit immensely from all this. It offers a free, lightweight, standalone browser whose programming environment makes it easy for developers to extend its functionality [roachfiend.com] without coopting its security (so far). It does this without any hooks into the operating system, and offers a variety of ways to combat malware, popups and generally obnoxious behavior (Flash movies [mozdev.org], rampant advertising [mozdev.org], etc).
Microsoft might claim that they won't be releasing any further security patches or functional upgrades to Windows 2000 or IE6. But as of September 2004, ~49% of Windows users still use Windows 2000 or lower (98, 95, NT, etc) [zdnet.com]. Trying to scare users into upgrading their OS, so they can take advantage of a marginally improved, questionably more secure Windows, doesn't seem to be working anymore [freerepublic.com]. And I'm by no means a Linux zealot -- I'm an ASP/SQL programmer, have been using Windows since v3.1, and am a huge fan of Microsoft's development tools / languages.
Besides landing my most recent job, discovering Firefox was the best tech-related thing that's come along in recent memory. It's inspired me to start learning more about client-side development again, after seeing what's possible with AJAX (Asynchronous Javascript And XML) [wikipedia.org], standards-compliant CSS and XHTML. Once Dean Edwards' CSS-based IE7 stylesheet [edwards.name] matures a bit more, developers will be able to instantly upgrade the set of standards-compliant available to IE 5/6 users. At that point, who will need IE 7? The days of developing wonderful new HTML and CSS tags that are only supported by one browser are in decline...... Firefox's market share has risen to just under 10% in the past year, while Microsoft's market share has dropped to under 90% for the first time since Netscape was still relevant. IE7 won't become ubiquitous for a long, long time, especially if Microsoft doesn't plan on making it available to users of its older operating systems. Why would developers of any web applications besides IE-only Intranets/Extranets create products that utilized features only available to a very small set of the installed user base?
So whatever, Microsoft. Dig your own grave, if you insist upon doing so. I'll continue to use your server-side tools, provided something better and easier-to-use doesn't come along, but at this point, you've lost me as a client-side developer of IE. Not that you should care, of course..... but if you can lose a devoted developer like me, I have to wonder how many others you've push away. It appears it's not all about "Developers, Developers, Developers!", as Steve Ballmer & Co. would have us believe.
Re:What is this obsession with tabs? (Score:3, Insightful)
Microsoft doesn't have to branch out to other platforms to enforce that kind of marketshare. They just have to make sure that users of Windows can't remove IE from their machines, and make it as difficult as possible to use something else. With increasing dependence on Windows Update, it's freaking impossible to get rid of IE. And how many stupid apps use the IE engine internally, or forcefully open IE even when it's not your default browser?
Jasin NataelRe:One More Reason to Keep Win2K (Score:5, Insightful)
Most corporations running W2K were early adopters for Microsoft, companies who either moved quickly onto 2K or upgraded from NT4. WinXP was sold as a consumer upgrade that provided almost no additional features for the corp user, so they passed. Now they (we) are being punished for the fact that Longhorn is years behind schedule. W2K might be old, but it's users are very entrenched customers.
Note, normally I wouldnt stand for people bitching about a 5-6 year old OS, but in this case Microsoft has not delievered an upgrade and should extend the support window until they do.
Re:One More Reason to Keep Win2K (Score:1, Insightful)
Re:Terrible Sunday News (Score:2, Insightful)
It's really ironic that this paid-for software is the only one that finds it too burdonsome to provide security for their customers.
Re:One More Reason to Keep Win2K (Score:1, Insightful)
Re:One More Reason to Keep Win2K (Score:1, Insightful)
A company that intentionally breaks compatibility (i.e. MS) deserves a lot more complaints about supporting their older products than most companies.
Unfortunatly the only chance at a solution we could create would be for programmers to refuse to support newer versions of windows until MS gets it's act together, but I don't see that happening anytime soon either.
Re:One More Reason to Keep Win2K (Score:3, Insightful)
Just change your settings to get rid of all the XP GUI crap and change back to classical everything on the interface and you can't even tell you're using XP - except that more things work with less trouble than on 2000. And the crashes have been no more frequent than they were on 2000.
Microsoft's backwards compatibility policy (Score:2, Insightful)
Excuse me, but WTF?
Re:OS Platform Stats (Score:2, Insightful)
If this is what the world looks like to a web developer, I don't think Microsoft has much to fear in the mass consumer market, where the browser wars translate into serious money and power, W2K was never a factor, and where Win XP has been the default OEM install since August of '01.
That's a little short sighted... The real danger to MS is that the site you quoted shows Firefox with 25% of the browser market. Now that statistic is undoubtably skewed a fair bit since that is a "computer techie" site but every good tech knows Firefox adoption is on the upswing.
The real danger to MS lies in the fact that the web browser is finally becoming a viable development platform for feature rich applications (gmail and google maps anyone?). If web browsers become a major platform which houses many of users favorite applications then Windows becomes marginalized and mostly irrelevant. Once you knock down MS' OS monopoly you have removed the cornerstone on which MS is built.
Microsoft can't allow any other application development platforms to flourish and they know it.
Wrong type of "compatibility" (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:One More Reason to Keep Win2K (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:OS Platform Stats (Score:3, Insightful)
The stats I quoted from W3Schools were for the last two years. w3School's OS stats for March 2003:
The one unmistakable lesson to be drawn here is that Windows users stay within the Windows family, they do not migrate in significant numbers to alterative operating systems.
W2K.......42%
Win XP...29%
Win 98....15%
Win NT.... 7%
Linux........2%
Mac..........2%
Win 95......1%
Others......0%
What? Ford won't allow me to upgrade my Pinto? (Score:1, Insightful)
I used W2K too.....back in frickin 2K!
Most of the complainers about this issue are still grasping on the old argument of why doesn't the "rich man" just gimme some stuff free??
Get with the times, and trade in your pinto for the new Ford so that you can USE the new features you so greatly want.
And don't give me the tired old crap about you or your company "not being able to afford it". Remeber them buying all those W2K liscences?
Oh... wait.... they didn't BUY them?
But I thought your company was MAKING money?
Tough shit then I guess.
Stop bitchin and moanin and upgrade your sorry butts, and get back to work:)
Re:One More Reason to Keep Win2K (Score:3, Insightful)
Bollocks. There are numerous examples of "applications" on every platform that are tied to certain versions of the system libararies, tools and kernel.
Safari+WebCore on OS X, to name just one directly comparable example.
Re:One More Reason to Keep Win2K (Score:3, Insightful)
Also don't forget webmasters (Score:3, Insightful)
In addition to this, imagine that in about 2 years we have a majority of PNG-capable browsers (IE7, Mozilla, Opera, Konqueror; pretty much everybody except IE5+6) and you want to use transparent PNGs.
Will you write:
If you run WinXP Service Pack 2, download IE7, if you run WinXP with an earlier version download Firefox, if you run Win2K or Win98, download Firefox and if you run MacOSX or Linux download Firefox.
or will you just write:
Download Firefox
Firefox works everywhere.
MS and legacy support (Score:4, Insightful)
That being said, MS DOES put a great deal of effort into backwards compatibility--to the point of including a DOS emulator in NT4/2K/XP (WoWExec) that is so seamless most people would never think that the aforementioned OSes are no more compatible with DOS than Linux is (it just happens to have really good emulation). There is a blog by a microsoftie called something like "the old new thing" that explains the lengths MS goes to to maintain compatibility with popular legacy apps.
There are two problems with the efforts MS has put into legacy support: Firstly, it has done a lot to make their codebase cryptic, nearly unmanageable and sub-optimal. This is a problem the likes of IBM and my employer have to contend with as well, except that DOS and NT were not engineered with then intention of being the core of a product for decades. As a result, you get a massive blocks of code,
The second problem with MS Legacy support is that it tends to be rather selective. In the past, when there was a very popular 3rd party app that sold a lot of copies of Windows (certain desktop publishing packages come to mind) legacy support was done without question. when MS Office sales are slumping...well it looks like time to add a few more features that 0.001% of users asked for and use them as an exuse to break file format compatibilities. The thing about IE7 beig "too advanced" for anything older than XPsp2 is another one of those cop-outs. A little company and a non-profit foundation managed to make more secure browsers with innovative features that runs on multiple platforms and MS can't use their billions to engineer something that works with multiple versions of a SINGLE PLATFORM? Bullshit. They are trying to accelerate the elimination of Win2k because it is limiting their revenue potential.
I understand that legacy support is expensive and that MS is beter than a lot of SW companies like Red Hat (not that that is totally Red Hat's fault--they just don't have the resources). The difference is that Free software often continues to work on anything it'll compile on, and if you do have to upgrade you don't often have to pay through the nose for a highly disruptive upgrade. The IE7 compatibility issue is artificial--MS could EASILY make it run on win2K with its resources and say "there is no official support--use at your own risk". They just made design decisions to deliberately create critical dependencies on XPsp2. Even more than concerns about support costs, MS wants to boost stagnant OS sales.
Problem is, that makes IE7 an expensive browser for someone like me, whose only MS OS is win2K. Firefox is free in all senses of the word, so IE7 makes for a pretty weak justification for an OS upgrade when Firefox is much more convenient to get and I don't need to re-install my OS.
Never watched "Pimp my ride" TV show ? (Score:2, Insightful)
There's some Car shop who will put inside your old 60's 70's 80's 90's car, all this stuff and what not.
Oh, but the fact is with cars you can mess with the metal, oil, motor, breaks and blue prints...
The problem with software is that "old software"
that are EOL (End of lifecycle/not supported)
are not released into public domain or sold to
3rd party company WHO WILL SUPPORT YOU.
That's the current problem with software.
Customer: "The breaks on my Ford 98, doesn't work... can you fix it!"
Ford: "Nope, we don't repair Ford 98 anymore... it's a too old model. But you can buy our new Ford 2000!"
Customer: "But with Ford 2000, the car has more probability of falling apart into pieces if I run it on the freeway."
Ford: "Well, buy yourself some Car Insurance!"
Ford: "Don't worry this will be fixed with the new Ford 2003 model!"
Customer: "But you're 2003 model still have the problem."
Ford: "But... it comes with a DVD player and a brand new PS2!!!"
Customer: "Can you just build a car that works!"
Ford: "Well, that's what we do! We put a lot of money and effort on security features!"
Customer: "Why don't you give me the blueprints for my Ford 98, so I can repair the breaks myself."
Ford: "If you ever try to fix it, we will sue you and put you in jail for 3 years for attempting to reverse engineer under the DMCA."
If car industry would be like that...
lots of congressman would do something about it.
Guess what software industry is like that
and nobody does anything about it.
Does the fact that I try to retrofit GM brakes
on my Ford 98, because that's what I want...
should be breaking any DMCA, patriot act, software patents or whatever idiocies?!
No! So, why software should be different!?
Think about it!