Microsoft Releases Changelist for Upcoming XP SP2 524
kylef writes "As we know from independent sources, Microsoft is busy readying Service Pack 2 for Windows XP. They have published on their website a changelist document (link goes to TechNet download page) detailing the nature of the security-related fixes and updates. The document is targeted towards XP admins and covers some interesting things such as the new Internet Explorer Pop-up Manager and various security policy changes. Some other juicy tidbits from the document: Internet Connection Firewall will be enabled by default, and there will be new support for something called "Execution Protection" which allows developers to make use of the NX (no execute) page guard flag on Intel's Itanium and newer AMD processors. An interesting read."
Quick, call the cops! (Score:5, Funny)
DMCA violation.
Re:Quick, call the cops! (Score:5, Funny)
It's there in the ROT13ed addendum that reads 'Spend six weeks locking out cracks, only to have some hax0r still in baby booties crack it in three minutes.' Not the best use of MS's time or money.
Re:Quick, call the cops! (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Quick, call the cops! (Score:3, Insightful)
"to 'circumvent a technological measure' means to descramble a scrambled work, to decrypt an encrypted work, or otherwise to avoid, bypass, remove, deactivate, or impair a technological measure, without the authority of the copyright owner"
As the copyright holder of the DLL is Microsoft, anything they do to the DLL (however stupid) will be "with the authority of the copyright holder". Hence nothing they do will be caught by the circumvention restriction.
Smart. (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Smart. (Score:3, Informative)
Why is this change important? What threats does it mitigate?
Pop-ups have been misused in many ways. By blocking pop-ups, the Web is safer for our end users, and the customer has more control over their browsing experience.
The document is filled with explanation of security related fixes.
Re:Smart. (Score:4, Funny)
lol...crashes allready (Score:2, Funny)
Guess what ? WinXPpro SP1 is very sorry for the inconvenience but decides to throw up on me (an exception that is) and bail out !
Re:lol...crashes allready (Score:3, Funny)
Re:lol...crashes allready (Score:2)
- I don't expect it to crash. Give me an arror "can't read doc" or sumtin
- They shouldn't advertise Wordpad as a MSWord compatible text-editor
- They shouldn't let WordPad give
Re:lol...crashes allready (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:lol...crashes allready (Score:4, Interesting)
Oh dear. My original post was supposed to be "tongue in cheek humour"
I've written thousands of pages of documentation in Word for my job...
If by that you mean ten or so documents of ~100 pages or so with a few pictures then yes, you will probably be ok. (Despite using a style sheet, you will probably end up with structural problems but that's another issue)
If on the other hand, you had written a "thousand page document", including a couple of hundred graphs, tables few hundred bibliographic entries, equations and cross refereces all with a rigourously inforced style (otherwise known as a large book) then I would sit up and take notice.
The basic issue appears to be memory limitation. On a 256MB machine once you get beyond about 200 pages with ~100 equations or so you will start getting "issues" with Word (based on a friends thesis).
Can't comment on the XP version but this is on Word 2000. In a similar manner to the original parent post (regarding Wordpad crashing) memory "issues" should result in a nice friendly error message telling you to "buy more memory" [*] rather than a resulting cataclismic failure.
These days, 99% of people dumping Word for Latex are either doing it for political reasons...
Is this the result of a long process of statistical testing; or like 80% of all statistics did you just make it up on the spot? [*]
And no, I don't have to write mathematical formuals very often, so Word suffices.
Good for you. If you did have to write equations often (several hundred or so) then you would see what I mean.
------
[*] Yes this is supposed to be moderate cheesy humour.
Re:lol...crashes allready (Score:3, Interesting)
LaTex is much more structured; and to be hones
Program Error (Score:5, Funny)
You need to restart the program.
An error log is being created."
nice.
Re:Program Error (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Program Error (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Program Error (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Program Error (Score:4, Insightful)
A program should fail gracefully, especially one that is to be used to open text documents of arbitrary size. After all, what's one to use to open such documents when one doesn't *have* a full-fledged word processor installed? For me, I have two basic choices: Notepad or WordPad. We all know Notepad's not an option for a document of serious length, but at least it usually fails gracefully by throwing up an error stating that the document is too large.
Also, WordPad's not so old. It's been updated with Unicode support lately, and supports the latest Word documents for opening. Why doesn't it fail gracefully instead of letting Windows terminate it?
Re:Program Error (Score:2, Insightful)
I just hope (Score:5, Interesting)
With WinXP I got into some serious trouble with my computer and trying to play games. At first everything worked as it should then after a weekend not a single game would play, black screen on launching a game.
After A LOT of work the conclusion was that quickfix 'SP2 Q328310', which had been auto download from MS, did something which stopped a lot of games which need 3D support from working.
Now I always gets a message when I start windows, about 'new updates available': -Yeah sure! It's still buggering me to download the patch.
This really helps MS too, I'm so much more willing to download updates/patches when I know that a quickfix to lets say notepad, might break something totally unrelated; like the ability to shut down WinXP >:(
Re:I just hope (Score:4, Funny)
Windows is doing you from behind?
On reflection, could be accurate after all
Re:I just hope (Score:5, Funny)
Well, I'm pretty sure that isn't going to work..
Re:I just hope (Score:3, Informative)
Installing that patch breaks BattleField 1942 (black screen), Asheron's Call (a really curious bug here) + a few more games I don't remember right now, removing it makes the games run like normal.
Sure thing. The patch might not do anything which directly
*POOOF* (Score:5, Funny)
Re:*POOOF* (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:*POOOF* (Score:5, Insightful)
Yep, just like the web browser market.
Bad-dum-bump.
Thank you! Thank you! I'll be here all night!
Re:*POOOF* (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:*POOOF* (Score:5, Insightful)
Not unless they up the feature set - when I looked into XP's firewall, it only blocked incoming connections, not outgoing. I use outgoing blocks as a matter of course to catch spyware, etc, and to prevent Outlook Express/MSNIM from fetching images/ads from web servers, etc. I was looking at the XP firewall for my laptop, because Kerio made my laptop's suspend/sleep functions stop working (grrr) so had to find an alternative. As it turned out, I tried Norton Personal Firewall, which was actually quite good, and not nearly as bad as I had feared. None of them are particularly great at config UI though. Norton especially requires a lot of clicks to set rules up.
It's just occurred to me that maybe MS don't want to implement an outgoing firewall, given that the number of Windows components that randomly connect to MS servers is quite high, and it would highlight this fact if they did outgoing connection blocking. Hmm.
Re:*POOOF* (Score:5, Informative)
I expect they will supply default behaviours that allow their own programs to phone home. But hopefully it is properly configurable so you can decide if you want that or not.
I don't know if it is feature comparable to the third party offerings, but it is significantly improved on the version that shipped with WindowsXP
Re:*POOOF* (Score:5, Insightful)
They are definitly intruding the personal fw market: Look into "Appendix B: Netsh Command Syntax for the Netsh Firewall Ipv4 Context" for the "add allowedprogram" command - finally, they realized that there is something like trojans...
They're still far away from other packetfilters like netfilter/pf/..:
There's still a lot of work waiting for the ms devel team ...
Re:*POOOF* (Score:3, Informative)
It's unlikely in the extreme that MS would ever ship a comparable firewall as part of the OS, simply because that's not what the vast majority of their target userbase needs or wants.
Re:*POOOF* (Score:5, Insightful)
To take an objective perspective, firewalls seem best if they are part of the operating system, not wedged in, but I'm surprised they aren't taking the licensing path that they chose with CD burning and disk defragmenting (both are not written by Microsoft and licensed). The XP firewall, however, does lack outgoing connection control, which shouldn't be enabled by default but should be an option (how hard is it to use the same engine for outgoing connections too?).
Re:*POOOF* (Score:5, Funny)
In any case, the defragger is no longer outsourced code
Re:*POOOF* (Score:5, Interesting)
- Outgoing connection filtering
- Application checksumming (with MD5)
- Protocol level mail attachment scanning
- *Really* detailed logging
- Pop-up ad blocking (OK, this is going to be in IE but is off by default)
- Banner ad blocking (not in SP2 IE at all as far as I can see)
- Cookie control
- Policies for pop-ups, scripting, ActiveX and so on handled on a per-site basis
And the list goes on... This is not the first time this kind of thing has happened; Microsoft used to bundle an Anti-virus product with DOS and Windows, and that didn't kill the market. It still does bundle a disk defragmenter, yet Diskeeper [diskeeper.com] seems to be be doing just fine.Re:*POOOF* (Score:5, Interesting)
The rest ist not packetfiltering:
ps: Don't get the impression that i like the SP2 packetfilter - it's really inferior to professional packetfilters.
Re:*POOOF* (Score:5, Interesting)
Pop-up ad blocking, Banner ad blocking, Cookie control, Policies for pop-ups, scripting, ActiveX and so on handled on a per-site basis - content-filtering transparent http proxy (hint: use a more secure browser instead)
Ran into this one when a friend tried to check out my online photo gallery while using Norton "Firewall". Norton happily disabled all Javascript on the page because it apparently didn't like my DHTML.
In my opinion, a "Firewall" has no business interpreting HTML and Javascript. Norton should be taken to task for this, else we risk creating defacto standards.
Re:*POOOF* (Score:4, Interesting)
I have "Norton Internet Security" installed on this machine. It is impossible to unintstall. If you unintstall it, your internet connection will be irrepairably harmed, especially when it comes to secure pages. However, with Internet Security enabled, the internet is freeking useless.
The only solution is to load internet security and then disable it after it's running. That, or clean install the operating system.
You might think that this is an isolated problem. It's not. We routinely get support requests on our secure ecommerce sites saying "when I click on (secure link), i get a page error". Our #1 response to this is "have you recently unintstalled norton internet security?" Answer: "yes, by coiincidence i just did that this morning!"
This '12 year technology strategy consultant' wants to know what you think of her view of e-mail list buying. why don't you tell her what you think? [typepad.com]
Re:*POOOF* (Score:3, Insightful)
Lastly, I don't believe this SP shuts off activeX by default, which is the biggest problem facing windows users as its a gateway to a semilegal spyware trojans.
There really should be a "shut off ActiveX day." 15th of the month anyone? I'm getting sick of doing it on every computer I come across after someone tells me "I have no idea how gator
Just another angry Linux zealot post... (Score:5, Insightful)
Why not put such documents in a more Portable Document Format? Even assuming I have Word Reader or Openoffice, why on earth would you dissemante information via a word processor document format?
Re:Just another angry Linux zealot post... (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Just another angry Linux zealot post... (Score:2, Interesting)
Until they design their own proprietary closed-source format I think we'll have to live with DOC.
Meta info? (Score:5, Interesting)
Since it's in MS Office format, has anyone found any intering meta info in it yet? :-)
zUndocumented Security fixes? (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Undocumented Security fixes? (Score:2)
Processor support for NX flag, performance impact? (Score:5, Interesting)
The 32-bit version of Windows currently leverages the "no-execute page protections" processor feature as defined by Advanced Micro Devices (AMD). This processor feature requires that the processor run in Physical Address Extension (PAE) mode.
Although the only processor families with Windows-compatible hardware support for execution protection that are currently shipping are the AMD K8 and the Intel Itanium processor families, it is expected that future 32-bit and 64-bit processors will provide execution protection.
This sounds nifty, too bad x86 CPUs don't support it (barring AMD's x86-64 offerings). However, doesn't PAE mode result in significant I/O performance degradation?
Re:Processor support for NX flag (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:Processor support for NX flag (Score:3, Informative)
That's how it works now, and the CPU won't execute from instructions in areas marked nonexecutable. Problem is, the stack is executable, and that's whe
Re:Processor support for NX flag, performance impa (Score:3, Interesting)
doesn't PAE mode result in significant I/O performance degradation?
No, or at least on older processors it wouldn't, I don't know much about newer processor design. This is done in hardware, and it can be done in parallel with the usual work of the processor. That means it will make the processor an insignificant bit larger, but not slower.
OpenBSD has it on i386 (W^X) (Score:3, Informative)
From http://www.openbsd.org/34.html#new :
It's a bit of
I could not resist... (Score:5, Funny)
Old man Saddam could use feature that right about now.
Re:I could not resist... (Score:5, Funny)
Old man Saddam could use feature that right about now.
Why? In case Harry Potter tries to kill him?
How Microsoft thinks about security, in a nutshell (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:How Microsoft thinks about security, in a nutsh (Score:5, Insightful)
Alternately:
-- They knew about it, and management wouldn't let them do shit about it.
-- They knew about it, but addressing it would take significant time and effort, so they opted to defer that to a later release. After all, a million people running a mediocre firewall is better than a million people running no firewall at all.
-- They didn't actually realize it until later on. Are you psychic, or do you just happen to have a buddy who was on the ICF dev team?
But I suppose those angles would just mess up a good troll.
Re:How Microsoft thinks about security, in a nutsh (Score:4, Interesting)
Also, keep in mind that having a running firewall is going to break a lot of apps and cause a lot of pain. I predict the number of calls to MS phone support (and to XYZ company's phone support) will explode after this service pack rolls out.
Suddenly gamers won't be able to host multiplayer games, for one. People's distributed file sharing clients won't let them share anything. etc...
I suspect that this anticipated user pain is the reason the ICF was not on by default at XP ship time.
Wow. (Score:5, Informative)
They also seem to have made a lot of changes to the firewalling stuff - firewalling is on by default, too. They also made it so that the File Sharing and Networking ports only work in the local subnet -this means people won't be able to hit you with Windows Messenger spams from the 'net anymore, or access your RPC ports... good stuff.
Maybe, just maybe, MS will eventually get security right. This Service Pack appears to be a sizable step in the right direction.
Re:Wow. (Score:5, Insightful)
Biggest pain for me (as a non-IE user anyway) is that they *STILL* haven't added proper PNG transparancy support! Every other browser on the planet handles it fine, even IE on the Mac.
It's not like it's a big secret everyone's hiding from MS
Meh (Score:2, Insightful)
Rant over.
Fortre [homeunix.org]
Re:Meh (Score:4, Interesting)
I work at a custom shop and we don't patch anything either - DUR - we install XP SP1 OEM. I'm sure we'll be using XP SP2 OEM discs before too long.
...where is tabbed browsing? (Score:4, Insightful)
Now, that's marketing.
As an aside, when is Windows going to include multiple desktops in their shell? I've used a number of third party pagers, but each has its drawbacks and flaws, probably because it's not written with the privilage of truly understanding the Windows code.
Re:...where is tabbed browsing? (Score:5, Informative)
Not the same thing (Score:3, Insightful)
With the dreaded grouping, everything is hidden from you until you click below. While I enjoy having things wrapped for me at christmas, I would find it exceedingly annoying to have everything wrapped for me all year long, the actual contents hidden until I unwrapped them.
The grouping was the first thing I turned off in XP and the single most requested feature to help other people disable once they found it it was possible.
who cares about ie blocking popups, still insecure (Score:3, Insightful)
Ie is just too insecure. Look at all the spyware that utterly rapes it. With Mozilla as mature and stable as it is, there is just zero excuse to use ie for daily surfing. Sure there are the rare occasional times you need it for crappy sites that refuse to run on standard compliant browsers, but 99% of your surfing time should be in Moz (or opera or anything else).
Re:who cares about ie blocking popups, still insec (Score:5, Interesting)
I've switched to Firebird, finally. I got sick of finding that my HOSTS file, favourites, and start page were being rewritten by malicious web pages.
On the other hand, Firebird doesn't use the MS JVM, it uses the Sun JVM, which occasionally decideds to use 99% of my system resources. It behaved the same way when I tried to use it for IE as well.
On the other, other hand (what, three hands???) I love tabbed browsing, though I haven't yet adjusted - I keep dragging the cursor towards the taskbar looking to switch processes before redirecting to the tabs.
On the fourth hand (this is getting weird) I now see the effects of all the tiny errors in my hand-coded HTML that IE was running - and a proper browser is refusing to display. I actually like that, since forcing compliant coding on me makes my work accessible to more browsers than just IE... of course since they're just vanity pages for me and the wife, it was never critical which is why the errors were never checked for before.
I'm out of hands, now.
Re:who cares about ie blocking popups, still insec (Score:5, Interesting)
The whole "IE is inferior because it can't block popups" charade existed only _because_ the dominant browser didn't block those. Most people were content to make their pop-ups IE only.
Now that IE has changed, let's think like one of those dishonest marketers. So you were making money serving on-load pop-ups. They no longer work. What next?
How about looking at a little detail: IE, just like Mozilla and Opera, will not block stuff resulting from a user click.
Does it give you ideas yet?
If still not: Want to bet how long until you'll see sites where all links are done with JavaScript that also opens a pop-up window? Where every single drop-down and button and link is accessible only through JavaScript, which incidentally also opens a pop-up or three?
But wait, surely people will start blocking pop-ups completely, right?
Again, let's think like a slimeball some more. Remember, the goal of this exercise is to think not like the user annoyed by those pop-ups, but like the slimeball who pushes them onto you.
He doesn't care if you're annoyed, nor how annoyed. He just wants to make a buck. That's all that matters. He's really got the same moral standards as the spammer filling your inbox with V14GR4 ads.
So in that state of mind: Hmm... what to do against those users still blocking your valuable pop-ups, even when they're triggered by a click?
Well, blimey, make the whole site unusable or crippled without pop-ups. E.g., if you have to log in or fill a form, stuff it in a pop-up window. E.g., all the links to other sites are surely best opened in a separate window, via JavaScript. (All in the name of convenience for the user, of course;) E.g., the site-map, search, articles, etc, surely are best viewed in a separate window opened through JavaScript.
So there you go. Now the whole site is unusable unless the user disables pop-up protection.
Fat lot of good did that pop-up blocking do, eh?
Re:who cares about ie blocking popups, still insec (Score:4, Insightful)
A site that broken, run by someone with that little regard for his users, is a site I have zero interest in visiting anyway. So what's the problem?
No CSS improvement for IE? (Score:5, Informative)
pop up blocker (Score:5, Informative)
ustomers will still see pop-ups launched in the following cases:
The pop-up is opened by a link which the user clicked.
The pop-up is opened by software that is running on the computer.
The pop-up is opened by ActiveX controls that are instantiated from a Web site.
The pop-up is opened from the Trusted Sites or Local Intranet zones.
I sense an increased use of ActiveX by ad-ridden websites in the future. What this is really, is not a way for MS to help out the user by eliminating annoyance. It is a strategy to get everyone who wants pop up ads on their site to use ActiveX. And hopefully when they're using ActiveX they'll make important parts of their site with it. Like say, the navigation bar. I'll stick to Firebird tyvm.
Strategy to get people to use ActiveX? (Score:4, Informative)
I can't remember the last time I read an article on MSDN or any other MS developer website where it was suggested you should use a client side ActiveX component to provide a rich interface.
They have already recognized its major shortcomings (notably "all or nothing" trust of components) and are now pushing new alternatives to a rich web experience (.NET smart clients, Avalon XAML apps in Longhorn, etc).
The reason they can't block ActiveX controls is that an ActiveX control can do whatever it wants if the browser allows it to execute. There is no fine grained control over what it is allowed to do.
No conspiracy here.
Some thoughts on this stuff (Score:5, Interesting)
Especially things like "by default, only local machines can talk to the windows network messenger (a.k.a. winpopup), windows file sharing and etc ports".
But, its still not a good substitute for a server-based firewall solution (e.g. a linux box with ipchains/iptables) or for a firewall box like the "firewall+DSL modem+router+switch/hub+nat+etc boxes" that are popular with home broadband networks.
Execution Protection is a good feature, I am surprised that intel didnt add support for marking pages as "execuatble" or "not execuatble" way back when with the 386,486, pentium or whatever.
Given the number of Internet Explorer addons in the lists of Spyware programs like Ad-Aware and Spybot Search & Destroy, the Add-on Manager is something thats long overdue. This should at least prevent those who are clued up enough to check it once in awhile from being hit with Spyware addons.
As for the Java stuff, I think the best thing would be for MS to modify all future operating systems and service packs to completly remove the MSJVM if it is present and to install the sun Java VM instead (I expect that as long as they were shipping it unmodified and shipping as recent a version as possible, sun would just love this)
The MSJVM is a piece of garbage that should disappear for good, along with any lame-braned sites/content/software designed to work with it and only with it.
Now, the MIME type handling stuff.
IMO, the best solution is for IE to completly ignore the file extention and contents if it has a MIME type.
Basicly, if it gets a MIME type, it uses that and ignore both the extention and the content. If it doesnt have a MIME type (e.g. local disk file or FTP server, it should use the extention only and ignore the content).
If the MIME type it has is for something like text/plain or image/png or text/html or something else that IE can handle, it should handle it.
If the MIME type is one for which a system program has regisered itself (for example, ms word could register itself for application/x-msword-document), it gets handed off to that.
Otherwise, windows will display a dialog box asking the user to select from:
1.open with the application registered to handle the extention passed in (for example, if its a
2.open with an application of the users choice.
or 3.save to disk
With an option to save this as the default action for this file extention (and the case of no mime type) and a way to remove that "save as default" and re-specify later on, this would be the ideal solution. Plus, unlike what the MS proposal says, it would actually force web-servers to do away with the "send text/plain as default for anything we dont understand" features and configuractions. The right response (IMO, I havent read the RFCs or anything) is to send no MIME type at all for files that you dont have a specific MIME type for.
As for pop-up manager, here is what MS should do:
1.turn off any features in HTML that allows the changing of the "z-order" of windows (e.g. to make a window move to the back like with a pop-under)
and 2.turn the pop-up blocker on by default
But personally, I think the fault lies with the idiot that invented window.open() in the first place. What legitimate use is there for being able to open a new browser window in this maner?
Many web-sites use links that use the TARGET attribute of the tag to create a new window with content in it and thats pefectly fine.
The only uses for window.open() that I know of are:
1.popups, popunders
PNG support (Score:5, Informative)
Argh.
Execution Protection vs PROT_EXEC on noexec mounts (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:Execution Protection vs PROT_EXEC on noexec mou (Score:3, Informative)
Drepper is talking about being able to mount disks with the noexec flag, which prevents programs on that partition from being executed. This is most often used on filesystems that could possibly be written by public users, like
Execution Protection is probably referring to making the code pages of a program non-writeable. The goal is to prevent
Re:Execution Protection vs PROT_EXEC on noexec mou (Score:3, Informative)
The "Execution Protection" is a feature of the CPU, which operating systems can add support for. If it isn't already in Linux I'd expect to see it soon.
The Linux stuff is about marking entire *disks* (mountpoints, really) as containing only data, and not programs you want to run. That prevents s
MS: starting to shape up! (Score:3, Interesting)
Perhaps there is some remote code that manipulates pixels on your screen to subliminally flash messages to you thus making you relinquish your spiritual ownership and connection to your soul. You are now one of them.
Broken firewall? (Score:5, Insightful)
About damned time. I just hope that DHCP works through it by default, because right now it doesn't, and if it blocks DHCP, all of those broadband users who connect the PC right to the cable/dsl "modem" will deactivate the firewall to get online.
Of course, what we really need is for ISPs to include a user-manageable firewall in the damned devices in the first place.
Re:All this work (Score:3, Informative)
IE has a popup manager in SP2
Re:All this work (Score:4, Insightful)
Possibly. Who cares? I don't agree with such limitations - you put a site on the web for people to read, free of restrictions. I've yet to agree to anything on my computer other than EULAs. Reading a website does not signify I consent to anything.
Re:All this work (Score:2)
From the article on news.com:
Among the security improvements in Service Pack 2 are a beefed-up version of Windows Firewall, previously called Internet Connection Firewall, and software designed to block pop-up ads and prevent the unintended downloading and installation of software.
And perhaps you should read this [com.com] article as well, titled Internet Explorer to stomp pop-ups.
Re:All this work (Score:5, Informative)
Internet Explorer Pop-up Manager
Q. What does Pop-up Manager do?
A. Pop-up Manager blocks most unwanted pop-up windows from appearing. Pop-up windows that are launched when the end user clicks a link will not be blocked.
End users and IT administrators can let specific domains launch programmatic pop-up windows. Developers will be able to use or extend the pop-up functionality in Internet Explorer for applications hosting Internet Explorer.
Q. Who does this feature apply to?
A. For end users, browsing the Web will be less annoying, because unwanted pop-up windows will not automatically appear.
For Web developers, Pop-up Manager affects the behavior of windows opened by Web sites, for example, by using the window.open() and showHelp() methods
For application developers, there is a new user interface: InewWindowManager.
Applications that use the rendering engine in Internet Explorer to display HTML can choose to use or extend the Pop-up Manager functionality.
Re:All this work (Score:5, Funny)
You must be new here.
Comment removed (Score:5, Informative)
Re:All this work (Score:3, Informative)
remember, you can embed VBScript in an HTML page and set it to run on the user's end.
And then, there's my favorite hack for getting PNGs to display transparent in IE (breaks links if you're using the transparent PNG as a background, if the link is on top of the PNG...but it still looks pretty).
filter:progid:DXImageTransform.Microsoft.AlphaI m ag eLoader(src='/img/text.png', sizingMet
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:All this work (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Prevent popups, ads, banners etc... (Score:4, Informative)
Re:Prevent popups, ads, banners etc... (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Wordpad crashed (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:Wordpad crashed (Score:3, Funny)
Um, no (Score:5, Insightful)
This feature is a great idea, it means that if, for example, Acrobat Reader is causing IE to crash then at least I know who is to blame and can uninstall or upgrade it.
Re:Internet Explorer Add-on Crash Detection (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Internet Explorer Add-on Crash Detection (Score:5, Insightful)
What this new feature does (and it IS rather nifty) is detects which piece of spyware loaded up with IE is causing crashes, and lets the user disable said spyware.
Nice actually. ^_^
Re:Internet Explorer Add-on Crash Detection (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Internet Explorer Add-on Crash Detection (Score:3, Insightful)
> they have apparently given up on that,
You've completely misunderstood. The entire point of the Crash Detection system is so that Microsoft ARE aware of when crashes are happening and CAN fix them. If this system wasn't there - they wouldn't even know your browser had ever crashed. Users rarely report bugs (and especially don't bother to give you detailed information) so this system is an excellent idea.
Additionally, this new system
Re:MSFW / MSFWE / MSFF - Request (Score:5, Funny)
I'm sure an enterprising geek could write a script to do that for them. You could even cron job it to give MS free days/weeks.
Too many of us are affected by their software. (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:I did RTFDoc (Score:5, Interesting)
I wish they would fess up and tell the truth... they are making outlook safer to use.
My unix email clients never have opened and executed a virus, as it is still stupid to allow someone to execute an attachment without forcing them to save it ti a location first.
also, have they disabled the stupid "feature" to hide file extensions? this one thing is one of the worst securtiy holes in existance.
Re:No Execute on Linux (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Will it run on... (Score:3, Funny)
Will it even run on a P3 1.33?
Re:TCPA? (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Confused by this part? (Score:3, Insightful)
PAE is for 32bit processors that want to be able to access more than 4Gb of memory.
Usually you would not enable PAE unless you needed that much memory, such as on a database server.
Because the AMD64 must be running in PAE mode for the NX bit to function desktop user will need to use PAE even though they don't have over 4Gb.
Most drivers for consumer equipment are not written to operate in PAE mode, so the HAL is emulating standard 32bit mode in order to ensure compatibility.