Google To Support Windows XP Longer Than Microsoft 154
An anonymous reader writes in that Google plans to support XP longer than Microsoft. "Microsoft will officially retire its Windows XP operating system early next year, but Google on Wednesday announced it will continue to support its Chrome browser for the platform through at least early 2015. The Mountain View, Calif., Web giant announced it will keep sending out updates and security patches to the Windows XP version of Google Chrome 'until at least April 2015.'"
Google WTF are you doing? (Score:2, Insightful)
Just let XP finally die...
Re:Google WTF are you doing? (Score:5, Insightful)
Just let XP finally die...
Why? My retired parents have a Gateway PC that runs perfectly fine and runs XP perfectly fine. Doesn't crash, doesn't blue screen, they just turn it on and it works. If it ain't broke don't fix it.
Comment removed (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Google WTF are you doing? (Score:5, Funny)
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If I hadn't already commented, I'd give you +1 Funny for using the future tense when describe when the system is going to get owned.
And I'd mod the whole thread ironic, considering the number of zero-day exploits that have come up for Windows 7 and 8.
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And I'd mod the whole thread ironic, considering the number of zero-day exploits that have come up for Windows 7 and 8.
Except flaws in 7 & 8 will be fixed. Flaws in XP won't be. In fact, many of the vulnerabilities that affect 7 will also plague XP and due to XP's inferior security model, they'll probably be worse. When security notices for 7 go out, hackers will know to try those flaws out on XP.
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Both will be largely unsupported by MS in the near future; but while XP has the fundamentally more broken security model, Vista is much closer to 7 and 8 architecturally, and so probably has (inferior
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I hope he has a disaster plan for when the basement floods...
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Re:Google WTF are you doing? (Score:4, Interesting)
Not really. The OS does not protect you against the internet, because it has only minimal contact with it. Most attacks will not come through the router, and client based attacks should be prevented by the browser. Using XP with Chrome throughout 2014 may not be a dangerous as some people fear, as long as Google includes workaround for relevant flaws of the OS such as font handling.
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Most attacks will not come through the router
Erm, explain?
Attacks that aren't coming from the router could only be on the local network by implication, so that possibly means locking down wi-fi and making sure any devices on the local network are locked down with secure passwords on all accounts.
But the above would apply to computers running *ANY* OS, not just XP...
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Most attacks will not come through the router
Erm, explain?
Attacks that aren't coming from the router could only be on the local network by implication
They could also be between keyboard and chair.
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Re:Google WTF are you doing? (Score:5, Insightful)
Rubbish!
For any PC to get owned that is tucked behind a NAT router, it's the user that has to do something stupid first.
If all you ever do is use a web browser to go to well-known sites and you know how to read and interpret a URL, then unless one of those sites has been hacked and some malware has been injected into it, nothing will happen to you. In my experience in computer and Internet security, it's going to dodgy sites for pr0n or warez that opens the doors to something nasty.
Likewise for email - don't use a client like Outlook that has deep hooks into the OS, use a lighter client and always delete emails that are from sources you don't trust.
Security has very little to do with what's built into the OS, it is far more about educating users to understand what the likely attack vectors are and to moderate their own behaviours to mitigate their risk of being exposed to those vectors.
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Your experience is wrong.
Cross-site scripting has allowed ads on very normal sites (MSN.com, CNN.com, etc) to infect XP computers that are fully patched.
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That's becasue its a server/browser issue, not an OS issue.
Has there been a successful XSS attack on a fully patched XP in the last 2 years?
Basic Home systems used casually where people don't click on pop up ads, go to trusted site are pretty safe. The risk analysis show pretty clearly that a patched XP behind a NAT is pretty safe, and certainly not worth the cost of upgrading.
IF they poster has set them up with auto back-up, then there is no reason for them to change.
IF we are talking about 100's of machin
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Except for the whole "XP lacks separation of privileges" thing, which makes every minor attack on a webpage capable of rooting your machine, together with the lack of any sort of OS hardening other than DEP, sure.
XP is as old as Linux 2.4 (which was EOL'd 3 years ago). Would you ever run Linux 2.4 as your desktop OS?
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I don't claim to be as much an expert on Windows 7 as I am on Linux and perhaps XP, but the only additional security that I understand Windows 7 has but XP doesn't is the UAC stuff - and that's primarily there to stop idiots who are logged in with administrator privileges not allowing everything to run that asks to run.
If you are the average clueless user that used to use XP that has migrated to Windows 7, are you suddenly going to start paying attention to UAC prompts asking you questions?
And please define
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I don't claim to be as much an expert on Windows 7 as I am on Linux and perhaps XP, but the only additional security that I understand Windows 7 has but XP doesn't is the UAC stuff - and that's primarily there to stop idiots who are logged in with administrator privileges not allowing everything to run that asks to run.
TO some degree, thats right, but it does a lot more than "stopping idiots". I tried running as non-admin, and I tried setting it up for many users, but the reality was that many programs simply would not work without admin privileges, and it was a nightmare to configure and work with. Runas only worked some of the time, some programs inexplicably refused to run if they failed the admin check, there was no real capability of modifying protected files while logged in as a normal user (as you cannot easily /
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The difference is that in practical terms the most popular accounting software on the planet will not run in XP if you are not the administrator. It is not the only software that does this.
You can get away with non-admin on XP, but its a gigantic pain in the butt, and UAC is honestly the best thing about windows 7.
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That's becasue its a server/browser issue, not an OS issue.
When the default browser is tied to the OS, and the OS will not permit running the latest version of that browser, it is an OS issue to me.
Has there been a successful XSS attack on a fully patched XP in the last 2 years?
No. If I were someone writing these, though, I would wait until April 2014 to release anything I had since Microsoft will not post fixes after this date.
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For any PC to get owned that is tucked behind a NAT router, it's the user that has to do something stupid first.
If all you ever do is use a web browser to go to well-known sites and you know how to read and interpret a URL, then unless one of those sites has been hacked and some malware has been injected into it,
Yea! Except thats the MOST COMMON ATTACK VECTOR out there. Most viruses are coming from "legitimate" websites which either have ads or have been hacked and are serving up infected PDF, Java, or flash objects.
Plus, the whole idea of "just go to well-known sites" is the stupidest advice ever to come from redmond. This isnt 1995; it is neither uncommon nor particularly far-fetched to use google to look up some bit of information, and find your answer on a site youve never been to before. Should the user no
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Yea! Except thats the MOST COMMON ATTACK VECTOR out there. Most viruses are coming from "legitimate" websites which either have ads or have been hacked and are serving up infected PDF, Java, or flash objects.
With all respect, much of that still comes down to common sense of the user. Why would someone like me, with years of experience in IT and IT security, blindly open every PDF, Flash Object or Java app that is fired at me? And much of this comes down to keeping the appropriate executables updated - it's
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> With all respect, much of that still comes down to common sense of the user.
If you are still depending on the "common sense of the user" in 2013 then you are an idiot. This is an approach that has been proven wrong time and time again. It's a fundementally broken approach to system design. This is not news. This isn't even old news.
It borders on computer archeology.
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You wouldnt open them, but your browser would unless you (unlike 90% of users) changed the default setting and used an extension or browser which makes those objects click-to-play.
You can argue the point but it is statistically the most common vector, and my experience is that users who are infected are usually not "doing something wrong", other than failing to update their plugins.
it can happen that malware is served up within those - but again, highly unlikely in legitimate sites and mostly mitigated with a good ad-blocker.
You call it unlikely, I call it statistically common. It has historically happened a LOT.
I've no idea what "confirmation bias" means, I've never come across that term before.
It means that you have a hypothesis,
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Case-in-point. I have a user who would get infected monthly, just from doing research on the web using Internet Explorer on WinXP. Not visiting dodgy sites, but doing regular business research on companies / products / etc.
Finally got tired of cleaning/wiping the machine monthly so we installed Firef
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Not really. Keep it behind safe firewall and OS itself is unlikely to become a vector.
At which point other vectors become important. One of them being web browser. Which google is going to keep up to date.
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You are implying that:
1) there is no firewall
2) that the firewalls won't be updated
3) they are stupid
4) they don't have a computer(s) before the XP machine that has cutting-edge hardware and software that is all up to date and is cleaning up anything before it even reaches the XP machines.
I've never had a single virus since early 90s when I started using computers. I started when I was basically 15-ish.
Most viruses are a user problem (even ones that use very easily seen exploits). The rest actually are ste
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I hate when people say "If it ain't broke don't fix it" as that has so many bad applications.
1. Windows would still use IE6 (it still renders webpages, so it clearly ain't broken - hell, we could go back to mosaic with this)
2. We wouldn't have spoked wheels (it's not like the original design of the wheel was broken)
3. Fiber internet connections wouldn't exist (did dial-up ever actually break?)
Even if you were to counter something like "things move on" or "improvements don't mean it was broken" well couldn't
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You're seriously going to use IE6 as a bastion of standards?!?!
The concept of the wheel has been around for *thousands* of years. The *implementation* is what has been modified and improved upon.
Re:Google WTF are you doing? (Score:5, Insightful)
1. Windows would still use IE6 (it still renders webpages, so it clearly ain't broken - hell, we could go back to mosaic with this)
Are you nuts? IE6 was utterly broken since the very beginning!!!
2. We wouldn't have spoked wheels (it's not like the original design of the wheel was broken)
The original wheel design was broken for the use the guy that invented the spoked wheels had in mind. He needed a big but lightweighted wheel, and solid wheels couldn't be properly used that way - so, it was broken! =P
3. Fiber internet connections wouldn't exist (did dial-up ever actually break?)
Are you kidding? I jumped out dial up in the very instant I could afford broadband! :-)
Constant "no carrier" breakouts, slow speed, busy lines... Dial up was used just because it was what we could afford in the time.
On the other hand...
I still have an old Athlon XP box here at my side for some retro-gaming, and guess what? It's running Windows XP. WIth all the security measures I implemented here to protect my inner network, the fact is that my XP box is secure as never it was before.
I simply don't have the slightest incentive to throw it away and waste more money on a "newer" box, as the current one is fullfilling perfectly the computational niche it plays now.
Of course I use another box to day to day computing (a Mac Mini), but why bother setting up a virtual machines if I can play my games perfectly on a 3GHz Athlon XP with a Soundblaster Audigy and an ATI Radeon 4670 with 1GB?
Until this machine is dead, I don't have a single unique reason to buy another (it handles the games I play, and that's all).
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Or fvwm95 on Linux kernel 2.0.
I do wish people would remove from their minds the notion that "newer always is better".
There is absolutely NO reason to not be running a Linux kernel 2.0 with fvwm95 if it delivers what is required on the system on which it is running - why would you upgrade a system which is perfectly happy running this set up?
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Are you nuts? At the time it was released, IE 6 was the best browser around. There was seriously not a better option in 2001.
I beg your pardon, but I'm nuts^w^w I don't agree with you. :-)
IE6 was a terrible nightmare for security - I can't even start to count how many exploits IE6 users were vulnerable. I just can't understand why IN HELL Microsoft thought it could be a good idea to expose inner OS mechanisms (COM objects, by God's sake!) to Joe HoTMeTaL .
The only people I know that thinks IE6 was good was people that develops IE6 only webpages to be visualized in Intranets were the user just can't access, openly, the Internet.
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Re:Google WTF are you doing? (Score:5, Funny)
If it ain't broke...
If it weren't broke, they wouldn't be getting new fixes every second Tuesday.
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And sometimes fourth Tuesday of the month. Once in a while, out of bound!
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That same PC might also run a fully modern (more secure) lightweight Linux distro.
On the other hand, parents...
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I agree with the sentiment, but XP is a bit dangerous and will get worse.
My advice... back up the important files and install Xubuntu.
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Doesn't crash, doesn't blue screen
How does such blatent trolling get a +5 Insightful?
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How does such blatent [sic] trolling get a +5 Insightful?
Because it's the truth. (c) 2005 Gateway hardware running a patched XP, Chrome, Thunderbird & Office 2000. No crashes.
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If it ain't broke, then why does MS still keep pushing out patches for XP? Because there are exploitable holes, that's why.
The whole thing falls apart after April 2014 when MS stops pushing out any patches for XP. Zero-day exploits will undoubtedly appear shortly thereafter, and now black hat hackers will have a huge incentive to target XP machines because they know that once they are in, a patch is not coming to close the hole. Think about that for a moment...
The only way to keep an XP machine safe from at
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"The only way to keep an XP machine safe from attacks after April 2014 is to unplug it from the internet completely."
SO when MS stops support, their going to also turn of my firewall and AV programs? No? STFU.
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Just let XP finally die...
Why? My retired parents have a Gateway PC that runs perfectly fine and runs XP perfectly fine. Doesn't crash, doesn't blue screen, they just turn it on and it works. If it ain't broke don't fix it.
I see that you're typing these slashdot posts on your abacus then?
for most retired people, up-to-date Chrome (no IE) (Score:5, Insightful)
These retired parents probably aren't playing massive online games, so approximately all of their online activity will be through the browser.
As long as the browser is a) up-to-date and b) not tightly coupled with the system shell, that's almost an up-to-date system as far as the internet is concerned. What I mean regarding coupling is that if Explorer gets exploited, the system is owned because Explorer the browser ~ Explorer the desktop ~ Explorer the file manager. If Chrome gets exploited, the worst that can happen is that web pages get messed with, not the system.
Re:for most retired people, up-to-date Chrome (no (Score:5, Insightful)
Hell, if that's use the case, install GNU/Linux. Did that for lots of old folks at the community center who were in the same boat. Few, if any complaints. Wine can run most old programs -- Even re-united a guy with a few of his old DOS games via DOSBox. Most folks are surprised the system can actually run faster in most cases, and that it's free... So are the updates. "Why would anyone pay for Windows if this is free?" I just shrug. Beats the hell outta me. Going from XP to XFCE or Mint/Cinnamon is far less of a shock than Windows8 or Unity. Chrome and Firefox work the same.
Throw in a spare RAM sim from my junk cache to top it up and you're good to go for as long as the hard drive holds out -- Laying down a new format track gives 'em a bit more life, and in most cases I can leave the XP partition there for dual booting into if they really need to run windows for some odd reason afterwards.
Also, sure Chrome may be updated, but it talks to the OS and its that OS interface that'll get exploited through chrome whether the browser is up to date or not. Just ditch the OS, and learn your lesson: Don't use an OS you don't have the source for or be prepared for planned obsolescence.
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Going from XP to XFCE or Mint/Cinnamon is far less of a shock than Windows8 or Unity.
That's the benchmark. Even next to Windows 8, Unity is shocking.
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Puppy Linux BTW works very well for many old machines because it's so easy to configure and install. Boot a live CD or USB key, and you can install to hard disk or make more USB keys or live CDs, or remaster with included tools. Runs fine from USB and doesn't require a hard disk. It's available in Chrome and Firefox flavors, and Slacko is based on Slackware so what's not to like?
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Only a Linux hater would reply so stupidly also...
Someone who is still running XP probably isn't that interested in modern games or modern leading-edge applications. Maybe they still run XP because they don't like paying for software upgrades that they consider pointless for their own use. Maybe they even run a hacked copy of Microsoft Office, for example.
Very few people actually need the majority of features in big heavy applications like Microsoft Office or Photoshop, for most of them it's just a case of
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The GIMP
You don't get used to Gimp. You get beaten by it until you submit.
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That's your opinion and you are entitled to it.
But I would argue that given that I personally don't do professional-level graphics editing, I cannot justify the expense of a fully licensed copy of Photoshop. Therefore I have a choice of either using a free alternative like GIMP (which is what I do in reality) or downloading a free warez-d copy of Photoshop.
Given that warez-d copy would be extremely likely to contain malware which will, at some point, do some damage to my PC that I would inevitably have to i
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Someone who is still running XP probably isn't that interested in modern games or modern leading-edge applications. Maybe they still run XP because they don't like paying for software upgrades that they consider pointless for their own use. Maybe they even run a hacked copy of Microsoft Office, for example.
It's not just about modern games, you lose all the old ones too. Linux is fine if you want to run a couple select games, Windows allows you to have a hundred arbitrary ones installed or otherwise present on disk, all working.
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An OS is neither the UI nor the applications.
The decision about what OS to use can be influenced by the Apps and interface.
Anyways, he is talking abut a community center. So it's likely all they need to do can be done through Linux. And he also said some machines are set to dual boot.
You need to put the caffeine down for the rest of the day and relax. He didn't say all windows can be replaced with Linux.
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An operating system is more than just the UI - it's the applications, it's always the applications. Going from XP to Windows 8 might take some learning how the new interface works, but at least the extreme majority of your programs you know and love will continue to work just fine. Unless you're using predominantly open-source or cross-platform programs to being with, moving from one OS to another is always going to be more of a shock than going from one version of the OS line to another.
Unless, like most people these days, you spend 95% of your time in the browser.
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> How did this bullshit get modded Insightful?
Why? Because the users in question aren't trying to pretend that they are graphic artists that work for some Hollywood movie studio. The requirements for these people are rather limited and quite well understood.
That is why they are using XP to begin with.
> moving from one OS to another is always going to be more of a shock than going from one version of the OS line to another.
Vista and Win8 both contradict this assertion quite definitively.
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How do you get people used to the change?
This is exactly the question Microsoft is asking since they released Windows 8. The majority of computer users looking to upgrade are now faced with this dilemma (tri-lemma?).
Whatever they choose the user will bear the cost of learning a new interface. How many will choose Linux and decide to, at least, save a few dollars as well? Microsoft still has
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Please, don't trivialize things.
Sure, you can only use browser to access the internet. Secure browser will not compromise your system. But it will give the hacker your IP address.
Using the IP address the hacker can do a number of things. He can exploit vunerability on some service, that is not protected by the firewall. Or exploit a problem in the firewall software itself. These vunerabilities are not so common, but it is naive to think, that if you only use the browser, only thing that needs to be secure
Re:for most retired people, up-to-date Chrome (no (Score:4, Insightful)
Sorry, you do not know what you are talking about.
In the *MAJORITY* of home installations, people access the Internet via a NAT router that "translates" the internal *NON-ROUTABLE* IP address of the user's PC to the *ROUTABLE* IP address of the router's Internet interface, as assigned by the user's ISP. Note that the router's IP address is not usually a static one and will change as a result of DHCP on a reasonably regular basis anyway.
A hacker will therefore only ever see the IP address of the router, not the IP address of the user's PC. Yes, the hacker *COULD* attack the router and *IF* the router has a security hole he/she could exploit then an attack is possible. However, unless the router has crappy firmware, has an administration interface with a crackable password exposed to the Internet, and/or an open incoming port that routes into the internal network, then any attack is extremely unlikely.
If you get a piece of malware on your computer then, yes, it can have the ability to open a connection to a hacker and allow him/her to do what he/she wants. But in a home environment, that malware will exist because the user has done something stupid - either gone to a dodgy web site and dowloaded it or installed it as part of some warez the user has got hold of.
Hackers are not particularly interested in wasting their time on "small fry" home users. They prefer to attack bigger targets like corporations and usually leave it to bots and scripts to find ways of owning user PCs that can then be used as owned machines in mass attacks on those bigger targets.
There are millions and millions of devices on the Internet, scripts and bots have limited intelligence and therefore if you know some of the basics about Internet security (essentially not opening unnecessary ports on your router, turning off Internet-exposed router admin interfaces, not installing dodgy software, not visiting dodgy sites, not opening dodgy emails) then you are reasonably secure no matter what OS you run.
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I don't think that there's any consumer gear, running original firmware (like they all do), older than 3 years that's not completely remotely ownable from the WAN side, via more than one exploit to boot.
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Agreed. But unless you've got someone there ready to do a man-in-the-middle attack at that moment in time, it's extremely unlikely.
Again, it comes down to how important and big a target you are for hackers - the vast majority of home user machines are owned through automated scripts and bots in drive-by attacks, not because some seasoned hacker is sat there physically waiting for you to do something that he/she can exploit.
XP they are same binary, still share. Win updat (Score:2)
True they are no longer two views of the same binary like they used to be. Of course we're talking about XP. On XP, they are the same COM object. As Microsoft explained in US vs. Microsoft, you couldn't remove IE from the Windows system because IE WAS the system.
More recently, there has been some separation, but go to the Windows update site in Firefox or Chrome. You won't get very far . Only IE can replace system files with stuff it downloads from a web site.
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XP is fine for an OS you toss in a virtual machine to run for Web browsing
If XP is fine for browsing in a VM, then XP on a physical machine should be just as fine for browsing if you simply put a hardware firewall between it and the Internet. Since ISPs tend to deny inbound connections on consumer-grade plans, chances are the ISP's firewall is sufficient already.
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Since ISPs tend to deny inbound connections on consumer-grade plans, chances are the ISP's firewall is sufficient already.
Really? I've been receiving incoming connections on my consumer-grade plan for a decade or more. I've seen plenty of others do the same. In fact, I've never heard of a consumer plan having inbound connections blocked.
I've heard of carrier grade NAT, but only in theory. Never seen it actually implemented. What ISPs actually do this?
Wikipedia Blocks Qatar (January 2007) (Score:2)
I've heard of carrier grade NAT, but only in theory. Never seen it actually implemented. What ISPs actually do this?
Mostly mobile ISPs and ISPs in less-industrialized countries. See what happened a few years ago when Wikipedia blocked the proxy that the whole country of Qatar was behind [slashdot.org].
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The firewall is not an antivirus proxy. People normally get owned because they pull malware from the network. Said malware may be as "simple" as a PDF or JPEG file that exploits a vulnerability. Firewall doesn't help here.
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You cannot be sure that it is an energy hog. It might have a lower performance per watt, but its overall power usage is not necessarily higher than a modern PC which is what actually matter when we are talking about a lightly used single personal system.
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Which one works fully? When I tried Classic Shell, I still got the tablet UI in some situations, e.g. when I needed to get to the Control Panel.
Using Windows 8 + Classic Shell. I have configured Classic Shell in such a way that it never shows the tablet UI. And it's nothing more than checking some boxes in the configuration, easy as pie.
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I'm going with "I must be stupid", because I don't see anything wrong with continuing to use something that's perfectly functional and doesn't have any issues. I'm waiting until it *actually* breaks. Windows XP has been updated ever since 2001. Is it old and creaky? Yes. But it's been maintained. Does it have all the neat new OS security features? No. That probably does make it more vulnerable overall, and I certainly wouldn't recommend it in a business or shared environment where security issues ar
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Just let XP finally die...
Probably betting that they can score some IE6 marketshare that might otherwise turn into IE9/10 marketshare by telling risk-averse microsoftie corporate admins that, while they aren't Microsoft, they are your best chance if you still want to cling to XP after MS hangs you out to dry. I'm assuming that the job will not be a plum assignment on the Chrome team; but it isn't necessarily an illogical strategy.
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I have a machine running XP. It runs my music software beatifully. The associated, expensive, not optional to replace hardware has no drivers for 7 and above. Additionally Windows 8 is a total pile of shit.
XP is staying on this machine.
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You realize why Google's doing it right? Google knows a good chunk of their ad viewing population consists of users on Windows XP. They also know that XP browser support ends at IE8, with Firefox keeping current for maybe another year beyond that. They need to keep Chrome too because as long as there's a good chunk of people on the XP teat, there's a good chunk of ad-viewing population they make money off of.
What, you expect Google to give up what probably amounts to 40-50% of thei
The headline should be (Score:5, Funny)
Google To Support Windows XP Longer than Its Own Fucking Products
Really, who cares about this kind of marketing Gotcha stunt. It's for the likes of eweek and cnet to analyze.
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Yeah, by the headline you'd think Google is providing support for Windows XP itself. You know, if you take any headline coming from this site without a grain of salt.
Priorities (Score:2, Insightful)
Nice one Google. I really appreciate how you are keeping support for XP when there will soon have been four new releases and 13 years since XP was released, and yet you dropped support for the latest version of RHEL.
yeah, but we can still ./install_chrome.sh (Score:3)
I hear you. On the other hand, Red Hat and Centos users can still install the latest Chrome:
# wget http://chrome.richardlloyd.org.uk/install_chrome.sh [richardlloyd.org.uk] ./install_chrome.sh
# chmod u+x install_chrome.sh
#
That's about 10 times too complex for most XP users.
Re: yeah, but we can still ./install_chrome.sh (Score:3)
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You download a script from the internet and run it as root? WTF.
I don't see "su -" or "sudo ./install_chome.sh" as any of the three steps...
Wine or ReactOS Opportunity (Score:5, Interesting)
It would be hugely amusing if one of these projects announced (even in jest) that they were would continue to issue patches for XP after EOL.
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how hard would it be to harden an XP install?
It's easy. You setup a headless linux system with VirtualBox and script it to load an XP Virtual machine on boot. Take a regular backup of the virtual machine, if it gets owned .. roll back.
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You can't get rid of Outlook. This was a source of monopoly abuse lawsuits with Microsoft, it's woven into the OS too deeply to gracefully remove and replace completely. You can't keep Java updated for it. Hardening the remainder is infeasible if you have other computers inside the same home network or if the host is exposed to the Internet, because another host that is infected even temporarily inside your local network can spread worms and viruses to such an old host quite easily.
I've worked with people t
how long will EOL last? (Score:1)
Wouldn't it be hilarious, if by June or July of 2014, Microsoft resumes pushing out the Malicious Software Removal Tool and patches for Windows Firewall again, after all the world's XP machines get malware at the same time?
Why is this even news? (Score:1)
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that fills every conceivable need of mine.
FTFY. Some people's computing needs may be fulfillable with DOS. People are different from each other.
Sudo Chrome-OS (Score:1)
I wonder if they will try and turn XP into a form of Chrome-OS, push the brand forward with their windowed apps from Chrome as they are doing on Windows 8, then start advertising to the users about Chrome books. Then when their poor old XP machines fail, the users will already be familiar with the Chrome ecosystem, look at the cost of a Chromebook and think "why do I need a full blown desktop".
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You are the only person here who gets it. Check out my other comment for details.
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I wonder if they will try and turn XP into a form of Chrome-OS, push the brand forward with their windowed apps from Chrome as they are doing on Windows 8, then start advertising to the users about Chrome books. Then when their poor old XP machines fail, the users will already be familiar with the Chrome ecosystem, look at the cost of a Chromebook and think "why do I need a full blown desktop".
It is indeed possible that they have thought about the upgrade path which you described.
Common Practice (Score:1)
All of you are missing the point... (Score:1)
Google is doing this to build a migration path for users XP to Chrome OS.
By 2015 Google will have a mature Chrome OS, and a huge number of XP users that have no migration path. This is a huge opportunity for Google to win these people over as users -- first as Chrome users, then as Chrome Apps start becoming plentiful through Chrome, XP users will have a way to use modern services while skipping over WIndows XP and the non-existent modern services that will be available for it.
The next step for Google is t
does firefox still support it? (Score:2)
wasted time and money (Score:2)
And yet they won't even support their own OS. WTF. (Score:2)
No chrome for Android 4.0, which is still nearly 40% of the current Androids in use.
What to do when XP EOLs? (Score:2)
But you do not want.. (Score:2)
If you are Google you do not want Chrome to be the part that
busts open XP.
XP with no applications but one XP might be as secure
as Win8 and a full treasure trove of applications by who
knows what is on them.
MS has got to get Mom&Pop companies off it ASAP.
Other than a disconnected system that prints reports
for the book keeper XP is a blunder.
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Yeah, but, "The Mountain View, Calif., Web giant announced..." according to an "anonymous reader".
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IE 8 is the base version in Windows 7 and used by a lot of corporate installs of that.
Don't expect it to go away anytime soon, unfortunately.