「朱72」　shu72.com

Microsoft is flipping companies the bird again and this time kicking Symantec and McAfee to the curb. This all stems from Microsoft not being very helpful to other vendors on the disclosure of their new underlying kernel for Vista so measures can be taken for those vendors to supply updated software to protect consumers using the upcoming new OS release. The European Union has already fined Microsoft $970 million over the new Windows version and it’s not even due out until early next year.

If people got frustrated over Microsoft setting IE browser and the Outlook/Outlook Express mail client as defaults on their Windows system when they used other programs, think of the problems people are going to have if they have their own particular security-software and they first time boot up Vista only to learn that the familiar Symantec or McAfee programs have bee replaced with something new. Microsoft’s very own security-software: OneCare. Not only will people have to learn the workings of a new Windows system, they’ll have to learn a different security system as well. For those who want to keep on using Symantec or McAfee or whatever, I bet OneCare will be made difficult to disable or remove like other standard Microsoft mainstays.

I still have not successfully removed all of Outlook Express. Remnants are still lurking my around system and when I would try to do a Windows Update through IE, it would always supply an optional checkbox to update an Outlook Express security flaw update. I tried to uninstall as much as I could and have not used it in many, many years. Of course, I have turned off automatic updates so I can have some control what gets installed and when.

It seems like people will not get a real choice to switch to IE7 or stay with IE6 for a awhile longer or at lease be able to switch back. Vista will have IE7 packaged with it. Like SP2 before it, the IE7 browser will be an automatic forced install under the disguise of a “security update” for XP SP2, XP Pro x64 ed., and Server 2003 SP1. Since I had Automatic Updates already turned off before the release of SP2, I waited a bit until the initial kinks and bugs were dealt with before manually installing SP2.

There is only one or two sites that I’ve visited that still require IE6 only to access and use some features. I don’t visit these sites often and don’t know if they’ve changed their browser preference. Others have. I wonder if those sites will work with the new IE browser or will IE7 users, being mistaken for another browser, be denied access and asked to download and/or use IE like other non-IE users?

With the now public release of IE7 there are already an information disclosure vulnerability bug. This could be used in scams and phishing attacks. Anti-phishing is something introduced in the new browser. Just think, a bug found in a new anti-phishing browser that essentially could render the anti-phishing feature useless. I guess I’ll wait a little bit longer before making an update. From what I heard there’s not much to see about IE7 since Mozilla/Firefox and Opera (and probably others) have long had tabbed browsing and/or handled RSS feeds.

There has been a lot of talk on the internet of people trying to get their websites ready for IE7. I don’t recall this hype and type of talk when other browsers made their major releases. It is rumoured that IE7 will support web standards like HTML4.01 and CSS2. Hee, haw! Many people such as myself have long migrated to at least XHTML1.0 and CSS2. I’ll just concentrate on what the widely held standard W3C recommendations are and not what this or that browser can, can’t or won’t handle.

I’ll follow the middle way.