What Do You Want to Worry About Today?

Microsoft has released two major announcements today.  One, that they have found three more critical flaws in the Windows family that affects Windows 98 through XP.  More of the same “hackers can take over your computer and wreak havoc to your system and use your system to attack others” schtick.  Anyone else but me think that this is just ridiculous?  It’s almost a monthly expectation that yet another exploitable “critical” flaw is found.  At least they’re fixing them, but I personally think that this is just a result of incredibly wreckless coding and design, and if I were still running Windows, I’d be very hot at this point.

The second announcement concerns Longhorn.  They have announced a 2006 release for Longhorn.  As the article details, the delay is a result of the combination of them not being ready and having to spend all of their present efforts combating security flaws in their current and older OSes, and working on a SP2 for XP.  So much so, that to even hit this date, it looks like many features will be scaled back, and Longhorn won’t include some of the comprehensive features that they had touted.  Perhaps the largest compromise in my mind is the incomplete implementation of the WinFS file system.  This was really a core part of making Longhorn stand out from previous Windows releases, and bringing it up to par with other file systems, in some ways even improving on them.

No big deal though, right?  XP is working fine, and if it’s not broke, don’t....oh wait, yes it is, and yes they are.  Slowly.

Posted Wednesday April 14, 2004 in News by Chris Curtis

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Comments

eh, i could care less, ive got intrusion blockers and a firewall.

im not on the windows hating bandwagon, xp has done me well and its not bluescreened in 6-8 months.

By Greg Ferrell on April 14, 2004 at 10:26am link

You’re not following: some of these security flaws don’t require someone to send or receive information on nonstandard ports, or to have to get around a Firewall.  You, Greg, are one-up on most Windows users because you aren’t using Internet Explorer, but one of the critical flaws allows people to access your machine through IE and Outlook Express regardless of whether you have a firewall, and would probably piggyback on regular old allowed data that would go undetected by the likes of BlackIce and other blockers.

MS has done a lot of good and helped bring computing to the masses, but I don’t know any other industry where this type of negligence just gets brushed off so lightly and accepted as part of business.

By Derek Jones on April 14, 2004 at 10:37am link

true, still.

off subject, hows the mac going CC?

By Greg Ferrell on April 15, 2004 at 01:34am link

He’s getting ready to use iDVD for the first time here shortly.  Still having a heck of a time editing mpeg-2 footage.

There was a videographer the other day that came onto the boards asking for help....he had bought two DVD-camcorders and wanted to know how to edit all of the footage he had taken from his first wedding.  I nearly died.  The answer, of course, was to take both camcorders back, buy DV camercorders, and run analog out of his DVD player to the new camcorders and then capture the footage.

Even I didn’t try to convince him to go the “demux your mpeg-2” route.

Apple seriously needs to change their licensing agreement.  Yes, you shouldn’t edit weddings with mpeg-2, but Quicktime should be able to handle some basic trim functions.

By Derek Jones on April 15, 2004 at 08:15am link

yea, i agree, when i get a mac im still gonna see what i can do.

Are there programs to get avi to mpeg2 easily? i can do it on my pc rather well, bu ti want to use the mac programs to edit and make better menus for it.

also, can you get dvds to work on your xbox derek? i know that nero 6 ultra has a setting just for xbox compatability, and it works rather well.

By Greg Ferrell on April 15, 2004 at 11:00am link

I haven’t tried it yet, as I don’t have the DVD remote accessory for the XBOX.  Never felt the need to spend $30 when I have three DVD players in the house.  One in each bedroom and on on the compy.

By Derek Jones on April 15, 2004 at 12:16pm link

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