No Patch On Tuesday For Internet Explorer Hole 63
An anonymous reader writes "Right on schedule, Microsoft on Thursday announced its usual advance notification for the upcoming Patch Tuesday. While the company is planning to release seven bulletins (two Critical and five Important) which address 12 vulnerabilities, there is one that is notably missing: a bulletin for the new IE vulnerability discovered on Saturday. For those who didn't see the news on the weekend, criminals started using a new IE security hole to attack Windows computers in targeted attacks. While IE9 and IE10 are not affected, versions IE6, IE7, and IE8 are."
There is a fix (Score:4, Insightful)
Upgrade from XP and install IE9/10. What other manufacturer provides quick fixes for a decade old OS that is now three versions out of date?
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Actually there's no need to upgrade, just install Firefox. Of course older hardware may actually not be able to upgrade to windows 7 and would benefit from a linux install. Just because you're lame doesn't mean everyone is.
XP Limit (Score:2)
Actually there's no need to upgrade, just install Firefox. Of course older hardware may actually not be able to upgrade to windows 7 and would benefit from a linux install. Just because you're lame doesn't mean everyone is.
The fact that Microsoft are so incompetent that they cannot support their own OS is he point. Using Firefox is work around.
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The fact that the OS happens to be over a decade old and 3 major versions behind is the point. Nobody else supports software that ancient.
Nobody else supports software that ancient (Score:2)
...That is right are either low or zero cost to upgrade, with smaller hardware requirements. If the same was true of Windows this wouldn't be the problem it is.
Penguinland (Score:2)
With Linux's only 2% desktop share, everyday's a 'slow day' in Penguinland!
After being disappointed Penguinland was not a real place discovered that Girls Games 1 has a "Penguin Land" It did not work but I got blinded by pink...F**cking love pink.
Anyway...this shit is why Linux is 75% of mobile devices and Microsoft is on 2% (Not the penguin thing) People don't buy Microsoft Phone/Surface because they want software than just works...and well that is Android. If Microsoft put more effort into creating a great experience maybe things would be different now.
Typical Windows Phone User (Score:2)
Haha, I actually bought a windows phone because I wanted a phone that just worked and the shitdroid I had didn't. Have fun managing which apps are on your SD card like it's 1996.
I am going to bookmark your post and point to it every time someone makes reference to Windows Phone.
Microsoft wthout the monopoly (Score:4, Informative)
Even if you take into account every single device running Linux, it's still nothing compared to the number of devices running Windows.
Windows PC is hovering around 1.25 Billion...and shrinking a little bit, Android had hit only 625Million End of last quarter with activations hitting 1.3million daily...the number people are quoting now is 1.5miillion(ignoring the Christmas spikes). Android is expected to pass Windows this year.
Its kind of sad really. At least with Secure boot they can establish a few more years of lock-in, Go out like you came in I say.
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The difference is, most other companies don't charge you several hundred dollars for an operating system upgrade just to patch important software vulnerabilities. In fact, most other operating system distributors don't even charge a penny for such a basic service.
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The difference is, most other companies don't charge you several hundred dollars for an operating system upgrade just to patch important software vulnerabilities. In fact, most other operating system distributors don't even charge a penny for such a basic service.
Which operating system distributors would that be? Not Apple; they haven't supported System 9 for years. Not Red Hat; they don't support any of their 2.0 kernel based releases either.
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Which operating system distributors would that be?
Canonical?
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FreeBSD. OpenBSD. NetBSD.
Slackware, Debian, Arch, Gentoo, KNOPPIX, CRUX, FINNIX...
FreeDOS, Haiku... and those are just a few that have specifically been around at least about a decade at no cost.
Add others that are newer projects, spin-offs of older ones, and/or previously commercial distributions and a whole new world opens up:
MINIX 3, DragonFly (BSD), PC-BSD (IX Systems), Ubuntu (Canonical), openSUSE, Fedora, Mandriva, Mageia, Scientific Linux, CentOS, Zenwalk, Salix, etc... the list goes on.
Never mind
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Yes... because if it's "free" then it must magically be inferior.
You do know what Darwin, the core of Mac OS X, is based on--right?
I already mentioned it, but I doubt that it will matter to you until they start charging for it, eh?
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Commercial BSDs and Linux distributions are far outnumbered by their non-commercial, community-based, donation-driven counterparts.
Ya they do (Score:3)
Apple generally charges $100 per upgrade and they only do fixes for 2 versions old, so they'll update 10.6 now, but not 10.5. At the rate they release, you have to update every few years to keep getting patches. RedHat charges $350-8600 per year depending on the options you want ($350 is for self support 2 socket x86, $8600 is for premium support 4 socket POWER). Oracle charges a retarded amount of Solaris support, it is kinda a hardware/software combo support and is thousands a year, and you have to uninst
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Not to mention, Red Hat's business model is based pretty much completely on support... their source is open; nothing is stopping you from downloading the patches is source form and applying them yourself, or just using one of the clones (CentOS, Scientific Linux, etc.)
I don't know about actual Solaris support costs, but I do know that Oracle is one company I will never give a penny to, so to me it doesn't really matter.
...Plus the cost of the hardware. (Score:2)
It's $40. Have fun. [microsoft.com]
Most XP machines will not run Vista/Windows 7/Windows 8...ignoring the fact that Windows 8 is awful. People will upgrade when their computer dies...if at all.
Plus the cost of the hardware. (Score:2)
Windows 8 has lower requirements than Vista/7.
I am willing to bet that most Windows XP systems still in use are capable. I have an 11 year old old Pentium 4 PC that meets those requirements.
One of the problems when Vista launched was most computers were running intel chipsets i915 wih 256mb or less and below that aren't going to be suddenly capable now, and would be less functional with Windows 8. That is ignoring all the hardware that won't work with Vista+ a lot didn't get drivers. Whatever you think of Windows 8. Its only worth getting on contemporary hardware with a machine (Maybe with good Vista hardware...if I was given a touchscreen monitor...but I'd wait for those to dip in price.)
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Why not give it a go and get back with us on its performance? Something tells me that while it might be theoretically possible on that hardware, it would be an unpleasant experience...
I have a shitty system with an Athlon 64 X2 Dual Core 3800 processor and 1GB RAM (max 2GB) and while Windows 8 is relatively snappy on its own (though still eats into swap heavily right upon boot, typical of Windows), I wouldn't dare attempt to use it for any serious work not expecting some serious memory/swapping-related pro
You're wrong about that (Score:2)
The difference is, most other companies don't charge you several hundred dollars for an operating system upgrade just to patch important software vulnerabilities. In fact, most other operating system distributors don't even charge a penny for such a basic service.
They aren't charging you to patch the security problem, they are charging you to get you the hell off Windows XP, which they don't want to support going forward because it no longer represents a marginal ongoing income for them.
Windows XP support was was announced dropped several times, finally dropped, and I understand that people don't like this, and that Microsoft had finally made an OS that was "good enough" that people don't see an incentive to "upgrade" to an OS that can only laughably be called "impr
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They aren't charging you to patch the security problem, they are charging you to get you the hell off Windows XP, which they don't want to support going forward because it no longer represents a marginal ongoing income for them.
Translation: We want even more of your money, and you can't get this security update until we've seen it in the form of a yet another complete OS upgrade. Don't like the new license or additional DRM/lockout features or Metro? Tough. Don't have a machine up to spec for our latest version? Then go buy a brand new one, toss that old one in the landfill. Don't want to pay us again for yet another overpriced OS upgrade just to get another security fix? Then go elsewhere.
They are charging you because they
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It is still a supported OS (Score:5, Informative)
MS provides long support lifecycles, 10 years from release minimum and subject to extension, which XP has been. XP will continue to get updates until mid 2014.
I'm sure they intend to fix it, they just haven't gotten the fix tested yet. MS can't just go and bash out a fix and release it and hope nothing goes wrong, they have to regression test their fixes and it is not a fast process.
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The latest versions of every other browser run on Windows XP: Chrome, Firefox, Safari, Opera, and so on.
For the record, the latest version of Safari (6.02) does not run on XP or any other Windows. It is Lion/Mountain Lion only.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Safari_(web_browser) [wikipedia.org]
Not a fix. Forced obsolescence (Score:3)
Upgrade from XP and install IE9/10. What other manufacturer provides quick fixes for a decade old OS that is now three versions out of date?
I am astonished that anyone sane would measure from the start of the XP cycle which was unnaturally long from extensive problems as Microsoft not the user. That means that 2007 when Vista was released is a much more reasonable time....If it was any good. It wasn't it ran badly on most (all) of the machines at the time which lest many people waiting windows 2007. I have four machines in my house...only one supports Windows 7, Windows 8 is quite but none have a touch screen...making Windows 8 a no no for me.
T
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Far too complicated and of limited effectiveness. Just do not use IE at all.
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FixIt (Score:2, Insightful)
They did release a FixIt, but yeah no real patch its looking like until Feb.
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It will probably be an out of the bound release. MS have done this before with emergency fixes. Remember, we just had the holidays. People are back to normal lives now.
Why patch? (Score:2)
With great power... (Score:1)
They fought (clean and dirty) to become top dog on the OS and browser front. Now what?
Botnets aren't composed of mostly Windows computers just because it's the most prolific (bought and pirated). It's also because of more than a decade of complacency.
I hope we'll see more real competition on all sides for the company for all our sake. Please, MS, dip into that vast wealth of bought out resources and your own research to make genuinely better products going forward at least. Side note: it's fashionable to ba
No sympathy (Score:1)
Punish them Microsoft!! Smite the fools. (Score:2)
What better way to convince IE6-8 users to stop being so stupid?
Most won't even notice; They will just marvel that the tablet that cost a fraction of the PC runs several times faster...and no it won't be surface.
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So Microsoft did what their most paying customers asked for. I cannot see anything stupid in that...