Microsoft pushes temporary security fix to IE laggards Microsoft has released automated workarounds designed to immunize users against a critical vulnerability in earlier versions of Internet Explorer, which criminals are already exploiting online. The "Fix It" updates were released over the weekend for people who still use IE versions 6 and 7. The fixes are by no means foolproof. …
With many council sites still stuck with a large inventory of W2k machines and no funds to change them ... then it's no use shouting at people to upgrade! Many of these sites are STILL working through all the problems upgrading to IE7 where they can, but already all of that expencive work is scrap, and they need to start again using IE8 :(
> All the fuss about this vulnerability airs one of the industry's sadder facts:
> Much of it remains unwilling or unable to upgrade to the latest version of IE.
Isn't the really sad fact that this constant upgrade schedule is necessary at all. Most of the 6,000 odd users I support couldn't give a flying **** what operating system or browser or anything else they run. They just want the b*****y computer to work reliably and quickly and do the same thing tomorrow that it did yesterday so they can get on with the job... Constant patches and changes from IT are at best just a troublesome annoyance.
Well if you can pop down to your local international crime syndicate and ask them everso nicely not to steal peoples credit card or banking details, then we won't need to upgade.
Oh and while your at it, can you ask those nasty designers to stop meddling, we're happy with VGA, Serial and Parrallel ports, PS2 mouse, AT keyboards, 5 1/4 floppy drive, IPX/SPX, 16/4 Token Ring networks.
You can keep your internet and electronic-mail thing, it'll never catch on, If i need to contact someone urgently, I'll send a facsimile, otherwise, 1st class Royal Mail is the way to go.
It's always amusing when someone writes "outdated" as if we should need to update software, or the whole machine, just to do the same tasks as it did in the first place.
I have to blame software bloat. People come along and so quickly point out that all software has flaws, but the truth is no, all software doesn't have flaws. The flawed software is that which developers kept piling on features without proper levels of testing, sloppy code pumped out as quickly as possible.
If a feature isn't certainly secure, I don't want the feature! We need a grass roots movement to get back to the fundamentals of security instead of the push it out patch it later mentality... particularly when it comes to basic functionality like surfing or email.
Just how many years are we supposed to have to wait before we can have 100% assurance that merely clicking an internet link won't potentially cause a system breech?
My rant isn't against MS specifically but I do not see the constant upgrade cycle as the solution because they don't just fix the flaws they introduce new ones.
I have great sympathy for this argument, I also get tired when the Fedora release cycle means I should reinstall about once a year.
But I'm not totally convinced. I for one am glad that new applications are developed. It took me some time to get used to FF3, but now it actually increases my productivity compared to FF2. On a more extreme scale, modern spreadsheet software (like OO Calc 3) gives vast benifits compared to e.g. an early Lotus 1-2-3.
IMHO the real problem with having people abandon the likes of IE6 is that it was so terribly incompatible with everything. Websites "optimised" for IE6 often don't work on IE8, let alone Firefox.
When I worked for then-Burroughs (now Unisys) eons ago, the guys who maintained the Large Systems OS, the famous and elegant MCP, had a policy of alternating releases between new functionality and greater efficiency. New features always had a cost in efificiency, but it was surprising how often the next release reclaimed most, or even all, of the lost ground.
I wish the Linux movement would adopt the same idea. Windows and OS/X I don't care about.
Then there would be a lot less problems. Many systems that were written for IE6 will not work on IE7 and 8 and given the current economic circumstances how many organisations are going to pay a lot of money to rewrite applications that work just to upgrade there browsers. Maybe MS should make an IE8 patch that makes it completly backwards compatable with IE6? Then many more organisations can upgrade.
The whole problem is that Microsoft have ALWAYS ensured that you have to keep paying them with out any real improvement in the product. Saying W2k will no longer be supported does not provide councils with the hundreds of millions of pounds it would cost them to replace machines which are only unusable because they can't run W7.
Now if the IT departments pay was directed to using open source software then the problem would be solved. ALL of those machines will run Linux and a safe modern browser quite happily - that is if the IT departments had not designed the softwate to work with IE6 in the first place ;)
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