Linonut wrote:
>> On Sun, 28 Jan 2007 14:33:00 +0000, Roy Schestowitz wrote:
>>> Monthly Microsoft Patch Hides Tricky IE 7 Download
>>>
>>> ,----[ Quote ]
>>> | Opinion: Microsoft used the January 2007 security update to
>>> | induce users to try Internet Explorer 7.0 whether they wanted to
>>> | or not. But after discovering they had been involuntarily
>>> | upgraded to the new browser, they next found that application
>>> | incompatibility effectively cut them off from the Internet.
>>> `----
>>>
>>> http://www.eweek.com/article2/0,1895,2086423,00.asp
> Yeah, that crap tried to install itself, buried in 38 other updates,
> when I powered on my wife's new computer.
>
> There was a lot of other crap, too, from other vendors, on that
> machine.
>
> The average consumer doesn't have a chance against such an onslaught
> of tie-ins, nagware add-ons like Norton AV, and whining clinging
> installs such as AOL. They'll pay up, eventually.
>
> What a con game the Windows desktop has become.
Seemingly everything one installs under Windows is riddled with
dubious third-party "add-ons", many of which are installed covertly,
or at least with warnings in small-print so tiny that you'd need a
highly astute lawyer with a magnifying glass to read it.
With the increased public awareness, and their subsequent scrutiny, of
Spyware in particular, the situation has improved somewhat recently,
but there is still this very unhealthy obsession with affiliate
bundling that many vendors suffer from.
Users have had to learn the hard way, that they can *not* trust
*anyone* ... not even the big-name vendors ... to keep them safe from
covert installations or Spyware.
I recently upgraded my copy of Nero (been a Nero user for years), and
once again it came bundled with a "toolbar"; this time "Ask" rather
than the previous "Yahoo". What is it with vendors and bloody
third-party toolbars?
Yes, I got to *choose* whether or not to install it, but I would have
*much* preferred a) advanced warning that it was included in the
package *before* I downloaded it, and b) frankly just been given the
option to *not* download it at all. Nero *used* to give you a choice
(two downloads, one with and one without the toolbar). Now even that
choice has gone.
Nero just gets more and more bloated with each release. It's now so
huge that they actually issue an *apology* for it's massive bloat on
the download page!
There's about a dozen distinct apps in the Nero suite; why the hell
they can't just release them as individual packages is a big
mystery. They *used* to.
Anyway, I *paid* for the half-dozen commercial apps I have on Windows,
so I might as well continue updating them; however fraught with danger
and frustration that practice might be.
The "Windows Update" game is particularly tricky. You just never know
what bomb Microsoft are going to drop on you next, and you can be
guaranteed that it's going to be obfuscated by naming it after a KB
article and labelling it a "critical update", when in fact it's
actually a beta version of a Web browser, that subsequently b0rks your
system.
I've reached the point now, that I only run Windows Update manually
(and with extreme caution), and in the interim I disable the so-called
"Background Intelligent Transfer Service" (a.k.a. the "Covert b0rk
Service), in addition to disabling the "Automatic Windows Update
Service". Without disabling *both*, how can I be sure the system is
safe from Microsoft's unwarranted intrusion and disruption. In fact,
can I still be sure *now*?
Bah. Windows makes my skin crawl.
--
K.
http://slated.org - Slated, Rated & Blogged
.----
| "We shall pay any price, bear any burden, meet any hardship, support
| any friend, oppose any foe, in order to assure the survival and the
| success of liberty." - John F. Kennedy
`----
Fedora Core release 5 (Bordeaux) on sky, running kernel 2.6.18-1.2849.fc6
21:27:00 up 71 days, 13:48, 4 users, load average: 0.16, 0.15, 0.16
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