IE 7

[Ozzy10]

but isnt it FACT that firefox is over rated too, its had vunerabilities that allow full access to ppls comps, its now getting hit by virus writers and adaware.

so its no safer that ie

at end of day its up to you to choose and not be swayed by other people

 

 

[morph3us]

Perhaps, but I'm still a better developer than you are

your a bit stuk up for a kid

 

MSIE is the browser that is pre-installed on 98% of all PCs. While I am now recommending Macintoshes and Linux-based computers to all of the people I meet who are total computer newbies (since OS X is a trillion times easier than Windows will ever be),

 

Thats debateable it depends on how the user is comfortable to use

 

I'm not dissing Microsoft

 

LMFAO that is aload of bullox your constantly dissing Microsoft in how they develop their software in how "linux is so much better Than windows".. I cant belive i saw that

 

from ozzy

but isnt it FACT that firefox is over rated too, its had vunerabilities that allow full access to ppls comps, its now getting hit by virus writers and adaware.

so its no safer that ie

at end of day its up to you to choose and not be swayed by other people

 

Amen Brother Every peice of software will have unerabilities.

 

Overall Ziggy shut the f*ck up and let them do their jobs. Cuase this debate will go on forever

Edited March 1, 2005 by morph3us

[Ziggy]

Dude, I'm not a "bit stuck up for a kid". You are not a developer. I am. So I feel that I am well within my right to critique the version number of IE 7.0. Microsoft has SAID THEMSELVES that they aren't planning on adding many new features to it -- they only plan on making it more secure. Which is fine, and I'm glad they're taking some initiative. But I don't see where you get off trying to tell me that I don't know what I'm talking about when you obviously have no clue what you're talking about.

 

MSIE will be a minor security upgrade, not a major feature upgrade. IE7 isn't going to be any major difference over IE6 other than it'll have more restrictions. And I'm hoping that they'll adopt the Gecko security model in some shape or form.

 

As for dissing Microsoft, I don't. Saying that one operating system is better than another is not dissing the other. Linux is better than Windows. Porsche is better than Ford. I'm not saying that Ford makes shitty cars, I'm saying that Porsche makes better cars than Ford. The same applies for the OS argument.

 

As for Ozzy's comment that "ooh, virus writers and adware makers are attacking Firefox, oh no, it's going to be worse than IE now!": bullshit. I'm subscribed to at least 50 bugs on Bugzilla, most of which involve user-end security. I can read and almost write C/C++. I've seen the code that does the security checks for extension installation. There is absolutely no way for adware to maliciously get installed. There are two ways to install adware in Firefox:

1) the user presses "Install" on the extension installation dialog

2) the adware is an external program and it modifies the Firefox profile (which is in a directory name that is random, so it makes it partially hard).

In both cases, it is user error. On Windows, you can format the hard drive on a usermode level. Sure, a program can modify the profile and install itself, but the same program could also format your hard drive, hard reboot your computer, fry your power supply, flash your EEPROM so your BIOS won't work, and short out your video card (since you can, in usermode, adjust the video clock and voltage).

 

Here's an analogy:

I can put a padlock on my door. It'll keep people out, but anyone can get in if they have a tool to cut the lock off. I could improve that security by putting a deadbolt on my door. They're much harder to defeat than a simple $1 Wal-Mart padlock, but they can still be defeated. MSIE is the $1 padlock. As with any computer system, Firefox will be getting broken into and there will eventually be users affected (so far, nobody has gotten bitten by any bad Firefox worms). It's inevitable. But, and this is why I choose open source over commercial products, I can be assured that somebody, somewhere, will be able to fix the issue days, hours, or even minutes after it is discovered.

 

Case in point? Ping of death. It took Linus Torvalds twenty three minutes to patch it and release a new version of the kernel (as well as patches to older versions [~3KB]). It took the BSD kernel about 45 minutes. Commercial UNIX vendors had a fix within the week. Microsoft Windows didn't get a fix for THREE MONTHS. The fix ended up being about 45KB. This was also in the day when Windows 98 was new. They didn't have to test the fix on every configuration; all they had to do was recompile the DLL for 95, 98, and NT4 and they were set to go. The problem in the first place was the lack of bounds-checking on ping packets. It allowed a ping packet to fill up more than it's supposed to. The fix for those is a one-liner. Windows is written in the same C that Linux and BSD are written in, so it makes absolutely no sense to me why they would need to take three months to fix the problem.

 

That incident is one of the reasons I don't trust Microsoft. I'm not dissing them, I'm just saying why I don't trust them. And let's not forget the other things, like breaking Windows 3.1 on DR-DOS even though it worked flawlessly, making MS-DOS 5 break Lotus 1-2-3 for no reason, buying OS/2 and then screwing IBM and their customers, the whole "IE can't be uninstalled from 98 first edition" argument (it can, I do it, and it works perfectly [better than usual actually]). Sure, Microsoft makes good products. Exchange is a pretty good communications server (the other commercial ones suck). I would never run it because I can't trust that Microsoft will keep me protected in case I get screwed (whereas with Postfix or Sendmail, if a problem does occur, the patch will be out very quickly and I can apply it myself).

 

Sorry for the rambling, it's just that some people apparently don't get it. IE7 is only going to be a minor update. The version number is a mind game. Open source will always be infinitely more secure than commercial products (open source potentially can use every person on the planet to develop their software and patch bugs; closed source/commercial products only have a couple hundred people). I'm bloody tired of this argument getting brought up.

 

And a little FYI: I like Safari better than Firefox. But I don't own a Mac and have no intention of buying one (32 bit IA-32 games won't run on a 32/64-bit PPC).

 

(I'm writing this in lynx because MSIE is broken on the lab computer at Vo-Tech and I don't have administrator privileges so I can't install Firefox -- but I can run PuTTY and connect to my SSH server and use lynx)

[Cleric xtx]

A good example of version updates is available on Maxthon's history. Maxthon started at v0.1 and is currently on v1.2 with many fixes, additions and updates.

[Ziggy]

Cleric, you understand what I mean . Maxathon understands the concept behind minor and major version number changes .

 

And Maxathon is really the only MSIE-based browser I'd ever feel like touching. Even though I'm fairly content with Firefox (okay, I wouldn't change a thing), if I had a choice between Maxathon and MSIE, I'd pick Maxathon. Or Maxathon and Netscape (I hate Netscape).

[Ozzy10]

ooh, virus writers and adware makers are attacking Firefox, oh no, it's going to be worse than IE now

 

why dont you learn to read posts instead of changing the wording around to suite yourself

 

i said

but isnt it FACT that firefox is over rated too, its had vunerabilities that allow full access to ppls comps, its now getting hit by virus writers and adaware.

so its no safer that ie

at end of day its up to you to choose and not be swayed by other people

 

so stop being an arse and misrepresenting what i said

 

that fact is that a lot of highly respected people on the net also agree with what i said and agree that firefox is going to be exploited more as it gets more users and the fact that a lot of security companys are now looking into it more in depth means they will find even more exploits in the coding like they have done with ie.

 

[Ziggy]

why dont you learn to read posts instead of changing the wording around to suite yourself

 

Because you're whining about it. Yes, it's a fact that Firefox will eventually get hit with viruses, malware, etc. But internal coding practices almost completely prevent anything from maliciously happening unexpededly. I say almost because there's bound to be a bug somewhere. But there's a 99.995% chance there won't be any unexpected Software Installations without the dialog. It's called drive-by downloading. Firefox shouldn't be vulnerable to any of this (but IE is, in many different ways [Windows Media Player license download bug is one of them...). It should not be possible for a program to maliciously become installed in Firefox via a bug in the software.

 

Sure, it will happen. But if you knew the inner workings of Firefox, you'd know that it'd have to happen outside of the browser (with allowance for a few bugs that allow something to happen inside it, but that's VERY unlikely).

 

so stop being an arse and misrepresenting what i said

 

that fact is that a lot of highly respected people on the net also agree with what i said and agree that firefox is going to be exploited more as it gets more users and the fact that a lot of security companys are now looking into it more in depth means they will find even more exploits in the coding like they have done with ie.

 

IE isn't open source, so they can't find exploits in the code... Although I'm not disagreeing with you (someone will eventually drill the lock on the safe), it's blown WAY out of proportion. Here's why:

 

MSIE is a shell for Trident, the MSHTML rendering engine.

The Windows operating system also uses Trident.

If there's just one piece of code out of place, a web page can get full access to Windows.

 

Compare this to Firefox (and even Firefox 2.0, which will probably use the Gecko Runtime Environment or Gecko Rendering Service):

Firefox is a user-level application using Mozilla Gecko.

Blocks prevent Firefox from parsing Cross-Platform Install (XPI) files unless you allow it.

Even if a page did manage to defeat these blocks (and in theory they can't, because there is no way around that dialog), they'd only get access to what your user can access, and if you secure your system properly, you should be running as a limited user or guest, so that shouldn't be anything more than personal files -- NOT the entire operating system.

 

Even if there were two "holy shit" bugs in Firefox for every "holy shit" IE bug, the bugs would be far less severe than IE ones because IE is tied very closely to the OS.

 

And as of last month, my Windows drive has the user "Keith Gable" as a limited user. And my Linux drive (default boot) has always had me as a limited user. So the "well, why don't you try that" excuse won't work.

 

(OT: Windows BSODs now because of a mobo upgrade; Linux didn't even require a kernel reinstall)

[Cleric xtx]

Despite previous indications, the upcoming Internet Explorer 7 (IE7) will be available for Windows XP Professional x64 Edition and Windows Server 2003 SP1, as well as Windows XP SP2.

When Microsoft chairman Bill Gates unveiled the project two weeks ago at the RSA Conference in San Francisco, he stated that the software would become available for Windows XP only.

The improved version focuses on security enhancements, but Microsoft has given few details about the product's features. A spokesperson for the company declined to comment on features or technologies in IE7 for this article.

However, the browser's development team has shed some light on the software on Microsoft's Internet Explorer blog.

"We currently plan to make IE7 available for Windows XP SP2 and later," said a recent posting. This means that the browser will support both 32-bit and 64-bit versions of Windows.

 

The blog stopped short of addressing questions about support for Windows 2000 users, although the earlier statements imply that those users will not be able to use the upcoming version because they lack the security enhancements in SP2.

Next to XP, Windows 2000 is the version of the operating system with the highest number of deployments, according to Joe Wilcox, a senior analyst with Jupiter Research.

Microsoft's decision to limit IE7 to Windows versions that have SP2 makes sense, the analyst told vnunet.com.

"Microsoft has already made the decision that the security enhancements [in SP2] would be for XP only. I would expect new features in IE 7 as well, but the foundation is around security," he said.

The move also contradicts the largely held belief that Microsoft is speeding up development of IE7 purely as a response to increased competition from open source browser Firefox. Redmond has always maintained that security concerns are the major factor.

Microsoft has announced that an IE7 beta will be available in mid-2005. A final version will be released "once IE7 meets the quality standards our customers demand", the company said in an email to vnunet.com.

Wilcox expects this to be around the end of 2005 or early next year.

 

-----

Personally, I'd dispise the idea of the update being available to only XP SP2 and up because I refuse to use SP2 - it's more hassle than it's worth. So what if SP2 has a few security updates; Windows (initially) made SP2 completely optional.

Although IE is not my default browser it's still run by other programs, such as mIRC and MSN Messenger. Therefore, I prefer to have my IE as secure as possible. If Microsoft are going to restrict any further updates to SP2 and up then I'm switching to either LongHorn or 2003 (not Linux or Mac because they don't support the games I play ).

Microsoft, in my opinion, should stop making stupid changes to allow for new Windows users but try and keep the users they already have. As previously stated, Microft has never been no ever will be as easy to use as MACs so they should stop restricting computer-literate users. Windows 2003 was good in that aspect as it was an advancement of 2000 Advanced Server without comprimising anything.

SP2 is annoying to me - it blocks safe content that computer-literate people would be aware of anyway, such as stopping downloads unless accepted; downloads have to be accepted anyway!

[Ozzy10]

All that said and the day after release of latest version of firefox and it has an exploit that can allow someone to take over ya comp, so its still not as good as you make out.

Firefox is being hit NOW with some adaware etc

 

Just admit that it has flaws and stop trying to play them down.

 

ALL software has some kind of flaw in it

 

You say firefox releases fixs, well lets see

the 1.0.1 took a week b4 firefox update checker told me there was an update, even though i new there was one.

As to other updates, the browser doesnt get them all cause they usually update with a new version (and dont say about the nightly stuff cause none tech will update from the browser)

1.0.1 left 1.0 still on my comp when i installed it, you would have thought a browser "so good" would have removed the old unused files but it didnt, it even left the links in the start>programs> list

so i had 2 links and neither was labeled with the version number

 

so if they cant even get something so simple correct , i hate to thing what the rest of browser is like.

 

But like i keep saying , its the users choice of which browser they use.

My choice is only to have firefox for checking tg and td to make sure it shows correctly, apart from that i will stick with ie.

 

[morph3us]

edit by ozzy10: no personal attacks