WinXP SP2 Sacrifices Compatibility for Security 773
goldragon writes "TechRepublic is reporting that "Microsoft is pulling out all the stops to improve security. So much so, in fact, that it will cause many problems because SP2 will de-emphasize backward compatibility with legacy systems and code for the sake of security." One small step forward for Microsoft, one giant leap backwards for mankind?"
Compatibility Woes? (Score:5, Insightful)
Let's face it, you can't remain compatible with old software forever. It causes, well, Windows XP. XP is trying so hard to be everything to everyone, that it can't even pop up a delete confirmation fast enough to not make me wait for it (On an Athlon XP 2700+ with 1GB of DDR333, fresh from boot).
Compatibility is an important issue, but at some point shouldn't the ten-year-old programs run in a virtual environment separate from the OS?
Re:Compatibility Woes? (Score:3, Insightful)
turning on the firewall by default?
too bad it would be so ms like to add another program into the bunch when the problem is having too much of them already(you wouldn't _need_ a firewall by default if it didn't start any services by default, no? ).
Re:Compatibility Woes? (Score:5, Insightful)
Try launching Linux with NOTHING RUNNING and see how productive you are. No cron, no logs, no fucking getty or login. Some services are necessary. Some of Microsoft's need to be fixed. Very few truly need to be disabled.
Re:Compatibility Woes? (Score:4, Insightful)
Very few truly need to be services.
Re:Compatibility Woes? (Score:5, Informative)
WinXP by default starts 36 services. I doubt any one user needs more than 10 of those.
http://www.winnetmag.com/Windows/Article/Article ID/40722/Windows_40722.html
Re:Compatibility Woes? (Score:3, Insightful)
The only one it doesn't start by default is the firewall
Re:Compatibility Woes? (Score:4, Informative)
Re:Compatibility Woes? (Score:5, Insightful)
P.S: I know I'm feeding the Troll, but I just want to calm any worrried n00bs before they fall for this kind of FUD.
Re:Compatibility Woes? (Score:4, Funny)
Let's get drunk and delete production data!
Hey, I did that once! Was on vacation, had way too much to drink, and got the bright idea to ssh into work to do a few things. Accidentally did an rm -f * on what I thought was a local temp directory. But I was still connected to the remote server (and was not in a temp directory). Oops.
Bottom line, secure netork requires remote access to include a breathalyzer.
Bottomer line, I did the above trick on linux boxes, but never did any such thing on a Windows machine, therefore Windows is more secure than linux
<|:0
Firewall (Score:5, Insightful)
Other things that I find good include port management that both handle the opening and closing of ports, but also allows some applications to run as a regular user instead of administrator.
There first complaint with SP2 was the NX command - which isn't available on most current processors. The second sounds like a benefit, not a complaint:
Then they go on to complain about not offering to pirated copies, but forget to mention it's only the ten most pirated product keys. It's still a large number, I imagine, but not the whole picture.Re:Compatibility Woes? (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Compatibility Woes? (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Compatibility Woes? (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:Compatibility Woes? (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Compatibility Woes? (Score:5, Insightful)
I'm not a big fan of MS, but some of the criticism they receive is unfair -- damned if they do, damned if they don't. I'd rather have SP2 with some pain and be more stable and secure, vs running indefinitely under SP1.
Comment removed (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Compatibility Woes? (Score:5, Insightful)
If someone submitted this story as "Microsoft toughens up Win XP with SP2" and wrote thoughtful, balanced comments to go along with it, it would be rejected in favour of the current one because it would not generate as many responses/page views/ad views.
So if you want to get a story accepted, write a flaimbait/troll comment with it. It rewarded when it's part of a story submission, just not when part of the discussion.
And besides.. it wouldn't be as much fun without the flaimbait/troll articles.
Re:Compatibility Woes? (Score:3, Interesting)
Well, when you try to be everything for everybody these things happen. Heck, if you try to be anything to anybody these things happen. It's just human nature methinks.
That said, M$ did walk right into this situation. In their effort to force everyone to buy new software every other year, they yanked (or tried to yank) support for older versions of the OS. There are many folks out there running specialized apps that were written for the older versions. To be able to
OS X did it with Classic mode - works great (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:OS X did it with Classic mode - works great (Score:5, Insightful)
Classic is fine for what it is (us old OS/2 users used to call the VM the "Penalty Box"), but lets not pretend it's the compatibility solution for the ages. Frankly it's slow and the redraw is buggy and one only uses it when there is abosolutely no other choice.
Besides, the article is about MS breaking modern Win32 applications, not legacy apps running inside a VM.
Re:OS X did it with Classic mode - works great (Score:3, Informative)
Re:OS X did it with Classic mode - works great (Score:5, Insightful)
It's not an OS transition. The "compatibility" problems will come from the enabling of no-execute memory regions on the few processors that support that feature. This will cause problems for the rare old program which contains self-modifying code. I imagine it will also require Sun and others to modify their JIT compilers to declare runtime-compiled code as executable.
In any case, there isn't really an analogy to OS9/OSX differences.
Re:OS X did it with Classic mode - works great (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:OS X did it with Classic mode - works great (Score:3, Insightful)
-Lucas
Re:Compatibility Woes? (Score:4, Insightful)
I was amazed to see the first comment say excatly what I thought.
XP is a pretty giant leap forward in Desktop computing, as a Linux enthusiast grudgingly decided that was true a couple years ago. Now M$ is trying to go back and fix some of the things we have been telling them is messed up with their OS. I see nothing wrong with that at all.
Re:Compatibility Woes? (Score:3, Informative)
Really? In what way? I have been using XP here at work for the last 6 months, and didn't see any real leaps forward. It just looked different, and took me a little while to get it looking like I wanted it (i.e. like Win2K). I was forced to upgrade, because that is the "corporate standard". As a desktop OS, I haven't seen anything better than Win2K.
And at home I use Linu
The difference (Score:3, Insightful)
They are two seperate product lines. If you'll compare XP to the previous iterations of the desktop line - 95, 98, ME - then you'll see that it is indeed a "a pretty giant leap forward in desktop computing".
Re:The difference (Score:3, Informative)
Sure they are. They weren't intended to be "game engines" for home, but they were definitely targeted at the office desktop, otherwise NT 4.0 would have been significantly different: there's absolutely no reason to put GDI in the kernel on a server.
Have you been following any of the recent virus and spyware debacles at all?
Well, yes, I banned Internet Explorer, Outlook, and all products derived from them at work almost a decade ag
Re:Compatibility Woes? (Score:5, Informative)
XP's "faster boot time" is an illusion. It takes XP a long time to complete booting... it just brings up the login dialog and lets you start logging in before it's finished booting. This can cause problems when you need services that don't get started until later from the users' login script... we always tell our users to wait for it to stop beating on the disk before logging in.
Re:Compatibility Woes? (Score:5, Informative)
Especially spyware.
I've found, that if you go into IE's securty preferences (TOOLS > INTERNET OPTIONS > SECURITY > CUSTOM LEVEL) and set all of the options that are set on "prompt" to "disable" keeps a PC from contracting spyware (that propagates through web browsing).
I've found that this is a better solution than telling my father-in-law to use the power button when he encounters a web page that LOCKS a user into picking YES when prompted with that ActiveX security warning garbage.
What will the slashdot community do when Microsoft fixes all of their problems? If they execute the antivirus and spyware solutions properly, It'll be a while until I look back.
Re:Compatibility Woes? (Score:3, Informative)
Better yet, you can set up the less technically-inclined with Mozilla and sidestep the spyware problem altogether. My parents and grandparents have been running it for a while now, and I've heard no complaints...machines that had been clogged with
Re:Compatibility Woes? (Score:5, Interesting)
Now, would you be happy that to get a secure computing platform you have to spend hundreds of dollars/whatever per seat upgrading to the latest version of your commonly used apps? To get a properly working version of Windows XP should you be forced to abandon those applications that work for you?
Microsoft has used incompatibility problems to its own advantage time and time again. Indeed, breaking the compatibility of competitors' applications was one of the company's standard operating procedure for many years. WordPerfect, Lotus 1-2-3, DR-DOS, etc all were victims at one time or another. There was even a little saying that went round Microsoft during the time that one major version of DOS was being developed: "DOS isn't done until Lotus won't run".
When you look at this new story in that context it's hard not to be suspicious of Microsoft's motives and difficult to give them the benefit of the doubt.
Damned if you do, damned if you don't (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Damned if you do, damned if you don't (Score:4, Interesting)
The Sims, and Mavis Beacon Teaches Typing require Admin. There is NO F*CKING REASON that either of these should require it, except for sloppy/lazy coding on Broderbund's part (I suspect that they either write to HKLM or to the program directory). Maybe that would cause them to be fixed.
OT: I've read somewhere that MS is (finally!) discouraging putting all user settings into the Registry, but is recommending config files (human readability optonal) in C:\Documents and Settings\\Application Data. Once again, it's about time.
Re:Damned if you do, damned if you don't (Score:4, Informative)
It points out that most registry access by software is not necessary and can be avoided.
They are also finally catching up to the idea of Least-Privelege users in Longhorn. It's about time.
Re: Is that quote accurate? (Score:3, Interesting)
I have a feeling this one may just be another urban legend, like the "640K should be enough for anyone" quote.
In any case, I think you're *always* going to see a little bit of favoritism when a company builds both an OS and supplies commercial applications made to run on that OS. They may not want to out-and-out break the competitor's app, but they'd at least be willing to make tweaks to their O
One small step for M$? (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:One small step for M$? (Score:5, Funny)
Can we save the MS Bashing... (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Can we save the MS Bashing... (Score:3, Insightful)
Surprise Surprise (Score:3, Interesting)
Finally M$ catches on to what Telephony vendors and various other technology developers have been doing for years.
Had they started with a secure product, then being backwards compatible would not be that much of a problem. Hopefully the M$ code monkeys will not make more problems than they fix.
Re:Surprise Surprise (Score:5, Insightful)
Might this encourage (Score:5, Insightful)
This might just make things less secure overall because nobody is going to want to bork their software. Will it be possible to roll back the patch quickly if someone finds they cannot run program X anymore?
But then again, who knows, it might "accidentally" break Office 97 so people think they need to upgrade to Office 2003.
Re:Might this encourage (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Might this encourage (Score:5, Insightful)
Then there are the home users who will hear "SP2 breaks 'Product X'" from the mass media and will be afraid to install it. We already have a hard enough time getting them to install normal patches that are supposed to be "safe". Image how eager people will be to isntall it when they hear it might break their favorite software!
Comment removed (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:Might this encourage (Score:3, Interesting)
Quite frankly, most software home user X is going to use will not have any problem whatsoever with SP2; it's only the same dodgy software that writes to its own directory instead of %appdata% or HKEY_CURRENT_USER (not restricted yet, unfortunately, but I'm hoping they'll do that for Longhorn), and/or uses all sorts of godawful hardware tricks that shouldn't have worked in the first place, and/or uses ActiveX on
What? (Score:5, Insightful)
Hopefully, there'll be more breaking for the sake of security.
TheMadRedHatter
Re:What? (Score:3, Interesting)
True that at some point you have to obsolete it, but it should go through a phase out process. The security process would hopefully fix the underlying code of existing API's as well as documentation encouraging users to abandon the older versions over time. I haven't done enough research to say that MS has/hasn't done this so I appologize if I have MS wrong on this.
XP SP2 can be a great leap forward if enough of the vendors have verified their products
Sacrifice? Windows Users are used to it (Score:5, Interesting)
I'm sure Microsoft will be releasing an update full of application compatibility fixes shortly after the SP2 release. Even in vanilla XP, you can run applications in Win95/98 compatibility mode. I don't see any reason to change it now.
I figured it out! (Score:4, Funny)
Seems deceptive (Score:5, Interesting)
And that the only other major change will be to Finally honor the NX(Non-executable) memory designation, IOW if you want self-modifying code, you can still have it, but you can't place a call to an area that has been marked as Data-only or NX.
Seems to be all good to me...
Re:Seems deceptive (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Seems deceptive (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Seems deceptive (Score:3, Informative)
OpenBSD has has NX for about a year now, and Solaris on Sparc has had if for much longer than that.
Re:Seems deceptive (Score:3, Informative)
set noexec_user_stack=1
set noexec_user_stack_log=1
into
Part of the design... (Score:5, Insightful)
In the past, Windows shipped with many unlikely-to-be-useful services such as the NetBIOS Messenger service turned on by default installations, meaning that a user who wanted to use the service just needs to start using it and it'll already be there ready to work. Of course, we all know how this has been exploited by spammers.
Now, such non-essential services will default to the "off" position, and the user will have to take a step to affirmatively activate the services they want to use. This makes plug-and-play operation a little harder to accomplish, but Microsoft has finally decided that the security gained is worth more than the ease lost.
Compatibility is Overrated. (Score:5, Interesting)
It was overrated when Apple told its users, "deal with it." And it's overrated now. If you want backwards compatibility, use a Win2k emulator.
backward? (Score:5, Interesting)
i'd say this is the brightest idea microsoft had in the last decade (if they deliver that is)
interesting (Score:3, Funny)
How innovative, I've never seen that before!
Hotmail? (Score:3, Interesting)
'Generic Host Process for Win32 Services' from your computer wants to connect to law15-f93.law15.hotmail.com [64.4.23.93], port 80
Oh no, Microsoft isn't trying to integrate everything...they're not a monopoly...weirdos.
Re:Hotmail? (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:Hotmail? (Score:5, Informative)
>You have absolutely no evidence to support your claim that SP2 is causing your machine to access hotmail.com.
You are correct, I have no evidence. I only know that it "happened" to occur as I was running Windows Update and that Windows Update "happened" to stall until I permitted the connection. I agree this is circumstantial at best, but interesting nonetheless.
>In fact, it was probably a virus your machine got earlier that is making it act as an email relay. You're just aware of it now.
First off, AVG scans daily and Adaware gets run once/week. Second, the "hotmail" machine in question isn't an MX server and won't accept connections on port 25 (SMTP). The connection attempt was on port 80 anyway.
Third, and most important, http://law15-f93.law15.hotmail.com:80/ [hotmail.com] redirects to http://windowsupdate.microsoft.com/ [microsoft.com].
To Be Fair (Score:5, Insightful)
Hey, given the choice between the two, I think MS is right to choose security. You're often forced to lean toward security at the expense of some convenience, or vica-versa. And in this case, given the recent (past 10 years) track record, security is more important right now.
Interesting/Important blurb (Score:3, Interesting)
There's one item to highlight this week. Silicon.com and other sources are reporting that Apple's recent patch to fix a major threat in Mac OS X wasn't completely successful, and that a highly dangerous problem still exists in the operating system. The threat is especially noteworthy because it is the first important vulnerability discovered in the Mac OS X operating system that was not due to a flaw in the underlying FreeBSD UNIX on which Apple based OS X. This problem lies in the part of the code created by Apple, and it appears that it is quite difficult to repair. This is the first real challenge to Apple, and it will be interesting to see how the company responds to this critical threat. Previous patches were simply carried over from the Linux/UNIX community. Apple is on its own this time.
Check the dates-- both articles are old news. (Score:5, Informative)
It was on June 7, the same day, that Apple released a second Security Update that fixed the remaining vulnerabilities.
~Philly
SP2 Install Instructions (Score:4, Funny)
2. Prepare sacrificial animal in accordance with the EULA.
3. Open CD tray.
4. Allow some blood to drain into computer and close tray.
5. Smear remaining blood on monitor frame.
6. When install completes, reboot and enjoy the ritually clean goodness!
Progman (Score:4, Interesting)
Don't believe me, or just feeling nostalgic for windows 3.1, go to run, or a comand promt and execute progman.
So what? (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:So what? (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:So what? (Score:4, Interesting)
There is as always another side: There are real faults in the system, which can't be fixed, because the fix is equivalent to breaking an application, which was working around the fault in a murky way. There were design mistakes you can't fix, because there are applications which expect exactly this misdesigned behaviour. There were books out there talking about some "hidden features", which were never to be exposed to the developpers, but the developpers found out and some started coding with those "hidden features". Now you can't remove them anymore, even though they made only sense for a special environment present at the moment of their design, and they should have been hidden forever behind the official API.
There is only one way to get out of this mess: Start anew. Screw those people who were trying to be clever. Define a stable subset of used API routines you know are quite bug free, useful and abstract enough to live along some architectural changes. Tell everyone that outside this API nothing is supported. It may be time for Windows developpers to learn how to write portable code.
The world of the 8086 based PC as defined by IBM and evolved from there was always about being "more or less compatible". I remember the articles in the computer mags of the Mid-80ies being full of compatibility tests for the IBM clones and awarding points for supporting even obscure utilities and games.
It was always a balance between keeping to the official interfaces and produce slow, kludgy software, which was assured to run on the next generation of PCs too, and to use nonofficial but common features, which made the life easier, saved on processor cycles, allowed for elegant code, but broke with a slight change in the underlying architecture. Most programmers were even able to write kludgy, slow applications by using nonofficial features, and maybe it's time to have a more Darwinian rule around: Adapt or die. The environment is changing.
I know there are lots of people out there, who have invested huge sums of money or time or sweat in software, that is now about to break with the installation of SP2. I know that those people will be pissed of. But they can run their legacy application on their current system, and they are not forced to change it. They just have to make sure it has a welldefined and controlled interface to the world out there, maybe transferring data only via CD-ROM or having the access to the systems heavily guarded by firewalls or whatever. It's basicly the same that happens to the old database applications running on old S/370 somewhere.
But there are more people pissed of by the security lapses aboundant, by strange and illogical designs in the API, and by the loss of money if something breaks because of the faults. So who do you want to please? The people with the legacy applications, who can't or won't upgrade, or the people dealing everyday with the problems arising from old legacy bugs and holes, which can't be fixed?
Funny how that works (Score:5, Insightful)
Its kinda sad how things are around here for Microsoft, Damned of they do, Damned of they dont. Somebody shows progress and they get pounced.
"...one giant leap backwards for mankind?"...And recreating an OS from the 70's isnt? Thats pretty narrow thinking.
Re:Funny how that works (Score:4, Interesting)
that's a fair statement, but you also need to think that the majority of programs for windows are not open source. chances are i would still have (or could get) the source for that 1994 linux binary and compile it on my newest bleeding edge linux box and it should compile (of course after i go through dependency hell to get all the extra libraries it needs). for the most part, i should (with some work) be able to get all the source i need to build and run the old linux binary. however, i'd bet that the old win16 app was closed source and the company probably doesn't even exist anymore. with stuff like that backwards compatability is much more important, because you have no other way to run the code.
Re:Funny how that works (Score:3, Insightful)
And you are complaining WHY? (Score:5, Insightful)
Yeah yeah yeah... (Score:3, Insightful)
All such posts on
So much for compatibility
Believe it or not... (Score:3, Insightful)
Compared to this relatively minor loss, the potential security gains are enormous. It remains to be seen how well it all works though...
Games... (Score:5, Insightful)
Good in the long run, but... (Score:5, Informative)
I've been looking at XP SP2's release canadidate for a couple days now, and it's pretty obvious that it will cause nightmares for Windows admins for quite a while. However, it looks like they're making steps towards better security, which will be better in the long run.
Anyone who works in Windows shops knows the proliferation of COM-based software that was thrown together in Visual Basic, and this software often performs critical functions. It will take lots of testing/planning to make sure SP2 doesn't break these extremely fragile apps. There are many, many in-house applications that are still chugging along, even in compatibility mode, because they simply can't be replaced easily. Unfortunately, Microsoft can't test these in-house apps.
We'll see what happens...
Typical /. hypocracy (Score:5, Insightful)
I can't understand how microsoft gets bashed for having the security holes and then again for trying to fix them. Besides, how many people on here still use windows? I'm always under the impressions that everyone on
Quote - (Score:4, Insightful)
Here goes my karma, but how true will this statement be here at slashdot?
Hmmm (Score:5, Insightful)
Spoken like a true zealot. I'm an OOS advocate, but I disagree with this type of statement. It's a damned if you do/damned if you don't situation when someone makes comments like this. Hey, security is important here, and I'm sure Microsoft gauged this responce carefully before making these changes. Sure it's going to break some systems, but sometimes something has to give to move forward. I don't know about you, but security is very important to me. If the patch breaks your system, don't install it untill you're ready for the change. No one is forcing the service pack down your throat.
Re:Hmmm (Score:5, Informative)
I don't care if comments like that are posted, but they should be kept off the front page in my opinion. If your trying to be a semi-serious news site, then do it, which means keeping crap like that out of the headlines. If you just want to be a community of Microsft haters, that's fine, but get rid of your grandiose tagline because it doesn't apply.
About the news itself... Geez people, hate Microsoft all you want, there's plenty of good reason. But even they deserve SOME level of fairness applied, and as the parent here posted, they are damned if they do, damned it they don't, in the eyes of this community anyway. That's unfair, and even THEY deserve some degree of fairness.
This Just In (Score:4, Funny)
Lameness filters to be adjusted accordingly.
applishicious (Score:3, Insightful)
After RTFM... (Score:3, Insightful)
It seems that these changes won't break any well-designed applications, with the exception of viruses and worms.
Granted, MS is taking a "giant leap backward" in compatibility - with viruses! Apparently, the author misses having Blaster auto-install itself upon reboot, and still longs for the days when he had to close 5 or 10 popups to view the web page he really wanted.
How could Microsoft do this? After having spent so much time and effort to guarantee that viruses would run on their platforms, now they pull the plug!? The NERVE!
Quite frankly, this is what they should have done a long time ago. If there's any fault to be found, it's that they didn't do this sooner. Any app which breaks because of these changes wasn't well designed in the first place, and deserves to break. As far as I can tell, none of the Windows apps I've written will be affected by this. The only reason MS estimates that 1 in 10 will be affected is because Microsoft considers viruses to be an application for marketing purposes. This way, they can legitimately claim that there are "50,000 applications written for Windows..." True, 45,000 are viruses, but that hardly matters now, doesn't it....
And for once, they're doing the right thing - they're telling users beforehand that this patch is going to break things, rather than letting the user find out unexpectedly... This is an improvement for them.
Good Stuff (Score:4, Interesting)
But I think that it will only be implemented by corporate users and tech-savy Windows users. I see a new generation of TweakUI-like applications on the horizion that will allow inexperienced users to defeat the controls that MS is building into this service pack.
Consider what will happen when someone wants to install an application that is not set up to override the port restrictions that are default in this SP. I can see a whole bunch of folks googling for hack-packs that will disable all of the port protection so that the app will run.
Keep in mind that not all software vendors are responsible corporations who have an image to protect. The smaller niche vendors may worry about their reputation, but they are more interested in making their product work despite what MS has done to the OS to provide better security.
As has been pointed out several times
No offense intended, but when you make an OS so simple that a five-year-old can operate it, you should expect five-year-old reasoning from the system administrator.
Too many apps require Administrator (Score:4, Informative)
Microsoft needs to close this hole and improve the application install/uninstall process. Many of the other fixes in XP sp2 are just window dressing without these necessary loopholes being closed.
Hmm (Score:3, Interesting)
Now, if SP2 breaks compatibility with so much legacy software, then surely this spoils one of the arguments against switching to an alternative operating system that also would break compatibility with legacy software?
On a slightly different topic, why is anti-virus and spyware removal software closed source? If I cannot view the source code of an anti-virus programme then how do I know it is not simply going to infect my system with a virus every so often just so it looks like it has done some good? How do I know it is not going to infect other people's systems with viruses just so they will buy their own copies of anti-virus software? How do I know it is not installing its own spyware? If the software is not a Trojan horse then why will the makers not just show me the source code?
Six in one hand, half dozen in the other. (Score:3, Insightful)
Backwards? (Score:5, Insightful)
Over 4 years ago slashdot was full of posts about how it would take the OOS community a couple weeks, months at most, to match Apple's nifty new compositing window system. Well, today 99% of us are still using X, and it really hasn't changed significantly. Even the extensions being worked on at FreeDesktop aren't in wide use, and it doesn't look like they will be soon.
We're still stuck with an ancient standard directory hierarcy, and multiple search paths meant to find the same thing (what? I still have to have a huge autoconf macro in order to find both the LDFLAGS and CFLAGS necessary to include library foo?). This obviously isn't the best it could be, and yet no one even considers trying to change, because 'that's the way it was always done'. Again, look towards OS X. Headers, libraries, resources, documentation, XML files with library metadata, everything associated with libfoo is contained in a single directory 'foo.framework', not scattered in
A lot of lessons have been learned since these systems have been designed. If you insist on supporting everything ever made, you're never going to get anywhere.
They're Too Early (Score:5, Insightful)
This isn't a damned if you do, damned if you don't situation in reality, it just needs to be managed properly. By jumping the gun on this, they'll likely piss off users, but if it were longhorn or some interim release then some breakages are simply to be expected.
That said, since I don't run Windows on my own machines, I get to be one of those that benefits by not having as much email or log spam due to 0wn3d winboxes (less spam please indeed!) so I can't complain. This is a distinct advantage of the Free software model, since Mozilla, OpenOffice, etc can be updated for no cost if this release happens to break them.
Melancholy (Score:3, Insightful)
I mean, who cares about empty promises from a morally bankrupt company that is known for predatory business practices and open hostility toward their customer base?
Apple broke a lot of backward compatibility and it did hurt, but at least the new software at the end of the tunnel didn't blow goats.
MSDN Magazine Camp 1, Raymond Chen Camp 0 (Score:3, Informative)
One of his major points is how MS is breaking with it's past, from when backwards compatibility was a
-Bill
Re:Thank you, Microsoft!! (Score:4, Insightful)
Just another reason for folks to migrate away from their closed systems with forced expensive updates and security holes.
You mean a free service pack that improves security somehow translates into expensive updates with security holes? I'm sorry I fail to get your bizarro logic.
Re:Pah. (Score:5, Insightful)
Comment removed (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Just introduces more dangerous issues (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:Bleh (Score:5, Insightful)
This isn't fuel to bash Microsoft, this is good news for those of us who use their operating system, whether by choice or necessity.
Re:Have you seen the list? (Score:4, Informative)
to open ports IN ICF[Internet Connection Firewall]. (Emphasis mine.)
No, you don't need to be an admin to open a socket. But you do need to be an admin (rightly so) to blow open holes in your firewall.
Or, under the new system, you can tell the system, as a non-admin, to let the program open the port, but to take care of closing and what not, rather than trusting the app to do the right thing.