MC and others agree to pay for extencded updates.

[micky]

Customers like Morgan Chase and some other big banks have agreed with
MS to pay for extended secuirty (and other?) updates for XP, after April
8, when security and other updates are scheduled to end.

Because thousands, tens of thousands? of ATMs still run XP.


Acc to NPR news but I'm sure you'll see it everywhere before the day is
out.

 

[Mayayana]

| Customers like Morgan Chase and some other big banks have agreed with
| MS to pay for extended secuirty (and other?) updates for XP, after April
| 8, when security and other updates are scheduled to end.
|

Yes. They'll make the patches. But they won't let
the general public get them. Your purchase has "expired".

I also read that the Chinese gov't might maintain their
own support. Perhaps a kind of black market patch system
will come out of that. Personally I'm not concerned. I don't
allow Windows to auto-update, anyway.

 

[OldGuy]

After serious thinking Mayayana wrote :

Yes. They'll make the patches. But they won't let
the general public get them. Your purchase has "expired".

I also read that the Chinese gov't might maintain their
own support. Perhaps a kind of black market patch system
will come out of that. Personally I'm not concerned. I don't
allow Windows to auto-update, anyway.

So just how many more holes are there in XP?
After all these years you would think that lessons would have been
learned specially since MS has come out with WIN7 and Win8 or is Win7
and Win8 so different that it does not apply? In that case, based on
the previous, Win7 and Win8 must have a bunch of their own new holes.
Oh dear, what am I getting myself into buying Win7 or Win 8 systems?

So, end of life may mean that MS can not get any more free publicity on
XP since it is pretty clean now but Win 7 and Win 8 still need cleanup.
As they say, any publicity is good publicity (or something like that).
i.e. bugs keep MS in the new.






lol

 

[Jon Danniken]

Customers like Morgan Chase and some other big banks have agreed with
MS to pay for extended secuirty (and other?) updates for XP, after April
8, when security and other updates are scheduled to end.

Because thousands, tens of thousands? of ATMs still run XP.


Acc to NPR news but I'm sure you'll see it everywhere before the day is
out.

We knew about this last year, although without naming any particular
companies:

http://www.computerworld.com/s/arti...aft_XP_patches_after_April_14_but_not_for_you

Jon

 

[rogergonnet]

Tens upon tens of million of PC are still running on Windows XP.

In 2013, more than 320 million machines were bought. In 20 years or so,
perhaps 2 or more billions were fabricated, many of them working on XP. It s
therefore probable that XP is still running on some 200 million PCs, most
owned by poorest people, not by Morgan Chases and their equivalent.

Cutting so many people from any security regarding their computers is
insane, **criminal**, dangerous, and but for big bankers and companies
that I don't care of since they can buy new machines, I consider that
Microsoft should be sued and sentenced dor FRAUD in organized gang.

Nowhere any clients having bought a new or an older pc running on XP has
been informed that his machine will become the prey of such a gang.

Worse, only the poorest people who have no money to buy a new one or buy
a new system shall be the victims of the gang.

Still worse, XP was running more or less okay, while the three next ones
like Seven has neve been even able to install correctly, and now, Eight
(decried by many as an aberration for desk or laptops) is still worse, as
far as it seems.

And since Bill Gates, the richest man of the planet is supposed to have
large charities sums to give, stealing them the security of their machines
is doing the exact reverse of what he pretends to be.

It's a real shame.

If at least, MS was offering a symbolic low monthly sum to pay to keep the
pc's updates, it would still do lots of money of such an offer.

When we buy an automobile, of a house, it certainly can be repaired,
restored, etc, even later; buy here, MS proposes you to stop using any
external link with an XP PC, otherwise you're at risk of seeing your PC
vandalized by crazy or dishonest whatever.

That XP is older than the next systems, well, it's the same, but as long as
it has no big destruction of its HD, or screen, it should be updated, or
else, and all the private individual owners should receive these for free.

 

[Stan Weiss]

While I have two XP machines, the machine I am posting this from is W2K.
Nothing happened when MS stopped support for W2K. What is making me
think about moving this machine to XP is not the lack of support for
W2K, but the general programs that I use and the fact that their newer
versions do not support W2K. But having a min requirement of XP SP3 in
most cases.
Stan

 

[BillW50]

While I have two XP machines, the machine I am
posting this from is W2K. Nothing happened when
MS stopped support for W2K. What is making me
think about moving this machine to XP is not the
lack of support for W2K, but the general programs
that I use and the fact that their newer versions do
not support W2K. But having a min requirement
of XP SP3 in most cases.

There are some programs that I use that don't run under Windows 2000
SP5 either. But I have lots of XP SP2 and SP3 machines and even some
programs may say they need XP SP3, I never found this to be the case
yet.

 

[Nil]

Well I do not believe that.
When a code method is built to do a task and has been found to be
solid it should be archived and used in the future to build a new
OS. I think they start from scratch each time and make the same
systematic mistakes over and over at whatever level they work at.
After all these years they cannot plan better?

Believe it or not, that is reality. No operating system is bulletproof.
All are exploitable if you search hard enough.

 

[Mayayana]

| > Software (including operating systems) is extremely complex. There is
just
| > no way to patch all holes or security breaches - it's an ongoing
process,
| > like life.
|
| Well I do not believe that.

Here's an interesting piece about how long software
goes unpatched:

http://arstechnica.com/security/2012/10/zero-day-attacks-are-meaner-and-more-plentiful-than-thought/

An increasing number of attacks seem to be "0-day".
That is, they're not patched yet. There's big money in
bugs. And now there's even big money in finding them.
Look up "pwn2own" for articles about rewards paid to
hackers. The other day I was reading that rewards are
also becoming a problem: The hackers want to wait for
the biggest rewards before they disclose bugs they
know.

Then there's also the problem of companies just
ignoring bug reports until the person reporting goes
public with it. That seems to be oddly common.

You can avoid Java, script, Flash and PDF plugins
online, but no matter what OS you use, even if you
keep it patched as much as possible, you can't
avoid 0-day exploits.

 

[VanguardLH]

Customers like Morgan Chase and some other big banks have agreed with
MS to pay for extended secuirty (and other?) updates for XP, after April
8, when security and other updates are scheduled to end.

Because thousands, tens of thousands? of ATMs still run XP.

Acc to NPR news but I'm sure you'll see it everywhere before the day is
out.

Anyone with enough money can cajole any software developer or anyone
providing services or goods to establish a special support group to
continue supporting the product. If you're willing to pay the salaries
of the folks in that special-interest support group then you get the
product supported for longer. Like Leer jets, few companies actually
own their own. They pool the cost amongst several companies and share
the resource. The same can be done to share the cost of establishing
special-interest (custom) support groups. If you have $4M to spare, I'm
sure you could get Microsoft to form a special-interest group just for
you.

If you work in software development house that builds enterprise-grade
software that costs over $50K per seat, the customer can buy whatever
level of support they want during the normal release period for the
product (they get better or more support than other lower-paying
customers) or even long after, even decades, after the product has
expired. I've seen customers paying a developer to continue support on
a product that required an ancient version of IBM VSE that was dead for
20 years. If there is profit to make, likely someone will take your
money to give you support. You can do the same for cars, too, by buying
extended or special service contracts from one or multiple sources.

They're willing to pay for custom support. You are not. It's about the
money. If you pay enough, they'll support it for you.

 

[Mayayana]

| What is making me
| think about moving this machine to XP is not the lack of support for
| W2K, but the general programs that I use and the fact that their newer
| versions do not support W2K. But having a min requirement of XP SP3 in
| most cases.
|

Indeed. That's the worst problem with MS nding
support for OSs. It gives software and hardware
companies an excuse to end support.

 

[micky]

| Customers like Morgan Chase and some other big banks have agreed with
| MS to pay for extended secuirty (and other?) updates for XP, after April
| 8, when security and other updates are scheduled to end.
|

Yes. They'll make the patches. But they won't let
the general public get them. Your purchase has "expired".

Well my question is, How long before someone in the computer dept. at
one of these banks etc decides to distribute the patches for free, or
profit? Will they have a unique id? They don't now, do they?

Anyhow if he and someone from another company compares their two
versions, they should be able to find the unique id and de-unique it.

 

[Paul]

Well my question is, How long before someone in the computer dept. at
one of these banks etc decides to distribute the patches for free, or
profit? Will they have a unique id? They don't now, do they?

Anyhow if he and someone from another company compares their two
versions, they should be able to find the unique id and de-unique it.

Yes, but your hypothesis is there is some compelling value
to these updates. How do you know that ?

The AV company providing tools to such an "extended support" customer,
will be covering the OS whether the patch is in place or not. If the
"extended support" customer cannot get protection for WinXP, they'd
have to switch out of it anyway. Maybe move to BeOS or something

A support story, needs both patches and an AV strategy. In a business,
it isn't good enough for your IT department to apologize, when nobody
can work. There has to be a more complete support picture.

And Microsoft will be working, behind the scenes, pushing developers
to use .NET 4.5, so nobody can buy software for their WinXP machines.
So on the one hand, you bought your "extended support", but Microsoft
is still working to make your WinXP as in-compatible as they can manage.
And .NET 4.5 and other changing strategies, is how they'll do it.

Imagine if the very next Microsoft Office, doesn't support WinXP.
I can see a few sad faces in the IT department then. Or a few
Linux/LibreOffice converts. There are many forces pulling on the
situation, all at the same time. More destructive than constructive
forces.

A real question would be, if business is going to skip Windows 8,
what happens if Windows 9 is a continuation of the Windows 8
business strategy ? What then ? Windows 9 had better have
"zero training costs" and a good migration strategy. Not like
the mess that exists now. Maybe business will adopt ChromeBooks
for their employees. The possibilities are endless, especially
when the price is taken into account.

Paul

 

[Mayayana]

| And Microsoft will be working, behind the scenes, pushing developers
| to use .NET 4.5, so nobody can buy software for their WinXP machines.
| So on the one hand, you bought your "extended support", but Microsoft
| is still working to make your WinXP as in-compatible as they can manage.
| And .NET 4.5 and other changing strategies, is how they'll do it.
|

That's an interesting idea. But .Net has always been a tool
mainly for customers, not for MS or their partners.
I had to install .Net 2.0 recently only because I built a new
computer and the onboard chip is ATI (which AMD apparently
bought out). ATI unfortunately uses .Net for their display
applet. Up to now I've never had any .Net framework installed,
and I wouldn't use any software that requires it. There's just
no good reason to use it for Desktop software, or to be saddled
with such a bloated support package. And there hasn't been
any difficulty in avoiding it.

And these days MS is trying to push Metro apps, telling
the DotNetters, "Don't worry. You can use .Net to write
the new trinket apps. .Net will work as well as javascript
for that." Ironically, .Net was actually intended for use writing
"web services" and to compete with Java server-side. That's
how long MS has been trying to push their services scam.
Now .Net is 12+ years old and being "deprecated".

The thing I fear more than incompatibility is
lockdown. .Net, code signing, NTFS permissions, WinRT and
Metro have all served a dual purpose: On the surface they
represent potential security and stability improvements, but
they also represent steps in locking down the Windows API
in preparation for a services interface.

Another aspect of this is that Microsoft is actually twisting
their own arm by providing corporate support. In the past
they've been very good about backward compatibility because
business customers require it. By supporting XP they're putting
themselves in a position where they need to support XP software
as well.
At this point XP is over 12 years old and still widely
supported. Apple, by comparison, generally supports about
2 years (2 versions) back. Since Apple won't support their own
products, software developers also don't. It's easy not to notice
how bad Apple is if one doesn't use it, but awhile back I was
helping a blind friend who needed to download some kind of
special purpose software. I've forgotten what the software was,
but it was available in Mac and Windows versions. The Windows
version supported Win2000+ (1999). The Mac version supported
the version before last. (About 2 years) Fortunately he was
using an XP computer that I had built for him. If he'd had a
Mac it would have been time to buy another new one.

I don't mean to imply that the Microsofties are acting with
honesty or decency. Just that since their main customer,
in their own eyes, is the corporate world, they're forced to
maintain backward compatibility as long as those companies
are running software they've written for an earlier version of
Windows.

 

[Paul]

| And Microsoft will be working, behind the scenes, pushing developers
| to use .NET 4.5, so nobody can buy software for their WinXP machines.
| So on the one hand, you bought your "extended support", but Microsoft
| is still working to make your WinXP as in-compatible as they can manage.
| And .NET 4.5 and other changing strategies, is how they'll do it.
|

That's an interesting idea. But .Net has always been a tool
mainly for customers, not for MS or their partners.
I had to install .Net 2.0 recently only because I built a new
computer and the onboard chip is ATI (which AMD apparently
bought out). ATI unfortunately uses .Net for their display
applet. Up to now I've never had any .Net framework installed,
and I wouldn't use any software that requires it. There's just
no good reason to use it for Desktop software, or to be saddled
with such a bloated support package. And there hasn't been
any difficulty in avoiding it.

And these days MS is trying to push Metro apps, telling
the DotNetters, "Don't worry. You can use .Net to write
the new trinket apps. .Net will work as well as javascript
for that." Ironically, .Net was actually intended for use writing
"web services" and to compete with Java server-side. That's
how long MS has been trying to push their services scam.
Now .Net is 12+ years old and being "deprecated".

The thing I fear more than incompatibility is
lockdown. .Net, code signing, NTFS permissions, WinRT and
Metro have all served a dual purpose: On the surface they
represent potential security and stability improvements, but
they also represent steps in locking down the Windows API
in preparation for a services interface.

Another aspect of this is that Microsoft is actually twisting
their own arm by providing corporate support. In the past
they've been very good about backward compatibility because
business customers require it. By supporting XP they're putting
themselves in a position where they need to support XP software
as well.
At this point XP is over 12 years old and still widely
supported. Apple, by comparison, generally supports about
2 years (2 versions) back. Since Apple won't support their own
products, software developers also don't. It's easy not to notice
how bad Apple is if one doesn't use it, but awhile back I was
helping a blind friend who needed to download some kind of
special purpose software. I've forgotten what the software was,
but it was available in Mac and Windows versions. The Windows
version supported Win2000+ (1999). The Mac version supported
the version before last. (About 2 years) Fortunately he was
using an XP computer that I had built for him. If he'd had a
Mac it would have been time to buy another new one.

I don't mean to imply that the Microsofties are acting with
honesty or decency. Just that since their main customer,
in their own eyes, is the corporate world, they're forced to
maintain backward compatibility as long as those companies
are running software they've written for an earlier version of
Windows.

Actually, I see one other troubling trend.

I had my Windows 8 disk drive connected up, and I was
booted into Win8. I tried to install a copy of Netscape
Communicator 4.76 or so, and the OS stopped the installation.
The browser was blacklisted, and not allowed to install.

I don't particularly like this capability. And that example
constitutes abuse by Microsoft. It's one thing to blacklist
their own software (prevent Windows Virtual PC from
running in Windows 8), but it's quite another to
stop any third party tool from installing. No
matter how well intentioned, this is *wrong*.

My desktop is not a fondleslab or a phone.
And I don't need "Big Brother" to help me run it thanks.
If I bork the OS by installing that software, that's
my business.

I ended up using WinXP for my Netscape Communicator temporary
install and test. Because WinXP wouldn't pull something like that.
I was trying to remember whether it was Netscape Communicator
which had the FTP retry capability (if a download stops,
you can pick up where you left off - requires server-side
support as well). I seem to remember some browser in the
past as having that capability.

Paul

 

[Mayayana]

| I had my Windows 8 disk drive connected up, and I was
| booted into Win8. I tried to install a copy of Netscape
| Communicator 4.76 or so, and the OS stopped the installation.
| The browser was blacklisted, and not allowed to install.
|

I haven't heard of that and couldn't find anything online.
Do you know what's doing the blacklisting, or what they're
calling this "feature"? If they're really blocking software
that's a whole new level of brazeness.

 

[Paul]

| I had my Windows 8 disk drive connected up, and I was
| booted into Win8. I tried to install a copy of Netscape
| Communicator 4.76 or so, and the OS stopped the installation.
| The browser was blacklisted, and not allowed to install.
|

I haven't heard of that and couldn't find anything online.
Do you know what's doing the blacklisting, or what they're
calling this "feature"? If they're really blocking software
that's a whole new level of brazeness.

I'll give a screenshot, as I cannot find a reference
online to this practice.

In this picture, the contrast and brightness were adjusted,
so you can read it. The screen is dimmed while this is happening,
and the band across the screen is modal (must be dismissed). I
used a screenshot utility with a timer to take a snapshot. The item
circled in red is the one I tried to install, a 32 bit copy of
Netscape Communicator 4.76.

http://i58.tinypic.com/igf9yw.jpg

This will also happen on Windows 8, if you try to install
VPC2007 or Windows Virtual PC from Windows 7. Even though
VirtualBox still installs. You could run Windows 8 Preview
on top of Windows 8 Preview, using VirtualBox. So at least
that works. I can't run HyperV here, because my processor
has no SLAT (Extended Page Tables).

*******

There's a suggestion here, the message is actually caused by
a 16 bit installer.

http://answers.microsoft.com/en-us/...-your-pc/2b50e205-271c-4c1c-a472-a0f48baca789

The program uses InstallShield at the top level. A test
with file.exe suggests it's not PE32 and so it's a 16 bit
problem.

False alarm.

Too bad the error message couldn't have
told me that. As it's the same error I get with the
virtual machine software that won't install. And I doubt
that stuff uses a 16 bit installer.

Paul

 

[Mayayana]

| The program uses InstallShield at the top level. A test
| with file.exe suggests it's not PE32 and so it's a 16 bit
| problem.
|
| False alarm.
|

That's good. It's nice to hear sometimes that things are
not as bad as they seem.

On the topic of Microsoft controlling things, I just read
an article in the NYT this AM about how people are upset
because Microsoft found the identity of a code leaker by
reading the Hotmail of a blogger who published the leak.
Of course, MS, Yahoo and Google claim the right to rifle
through their customers' email in their TOS. But
their customers like to pretend it isn't so. The NYT was
clear in pointing out that MS was within their rights. They
also quoted two apparently relevant people offering their
opinions on the matter. Neither said it was wrong in any
way. One said it was "stupid". I think the other called it
"unfortunate". All were in agreement that what Microsoft
did wrong was not to trespass on private property but
rather to allow the public to see evidence that in our
growing corporatocracy, rights are provided by money,
lawyers and ownership of congressmen, so corporate rights
trump citizen rights.

| Too bad the error message couldn't have
| told me that. As it's the same error I get with the
| virtual machine software that won't install. And I doubt
| that stuff uses a 16 bit installer.
|

I saw something about that problem recently.
Maybe it was in the Win7 group. People were talking
about pros and cons of 32 vs 64 bit.

For what it's worth (you may already know this), it's
easy to check an executable. Just open it in a hex editor.
Somewhere near the front of the file will be "NE" if it's
16-bit. A 32-bit PE file always has PE00. ("PE" followed
by two 0 bytes.)

 

[Paul]

| The program uses InstallShield at the top level. A test
| with file.exe suggests it's not PE32 and so it's a 16 bit
| problem.
|
| False alarm.
|

That's good. It's nice to hear sometimes that things are
not as bad as they seem.

If you look at my screenshot, the system response is absurd.

A band was placed across the screen. The screen was dimmed.
The band must be dismissed with the button on it, in order
to use the GUI. You can't do anything, until you acknowledge
the band covering the screen.

The response was way more than is needed, to indicate an
installer run has a problem.

That's part of the reason I went off the rails and
mis-interpreted the symptoms. You'd swear I'd tried
to break into Fort Knox with my program with the 16 bit
installer (and 32 bit actual executables).

If you look at the response I get, when running
something that needs Administrator privileges on
Windows 8, the "error 5" dialog is much more
reasonable. And as far as I know, that error is
coming from the application itself.

Paul

 

[Paul]

From: "Paul" <[email protected]>


"Was this Win8/32 or Win8/64 ?"

It's Win8 x64. Running on an Intel system (not ARM).

Paul