And just what do you think us *users* here are going to do about
Microsoft's action on this site? You really thought this was a venue
for free support from Microsoft? It is a newsgroup. Microsoft
scampered away from Usenet.
Not everyone knows that. In fact, the last time I looked,
microsoft.public.* seemed to be communicating with MSDN, but that was
a while ago. Even so, I don't expect Microsoft to /do/ anything.
....although they have done before: <
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/
7645420.stm>
"Scareware" may not strictly use browser vulnerabilities (although it
may), operating instead by something like "social engineering" -
persuading you to ignore Microsoft's routine warnings about
downloading soffware with care as to where it comes from. But
sometimes you do want to download software.
To add to the confusion, Adobe products such as Flash (in Internet
Explorer) have one of the scarier and stupider genuine software update
routines I've seen - and it doesn't appear to be optional (except by
using Firefox instead for your Flash useage): they install a new
service program on your computer to do the download for you. You have
to go through /lots/ of "Yes I trust this" dialogs to let that happen.
Maybe it's part of a cunning and complex plot to persuade us to use
Silverlight instead of Flash, but Silverlight is on the back burner
now, for the desktop.
I hesitate to hint to business computer administrators how or why to
be less supportive of their users, since I'm on the wrong end of that
relationship someitmes, but I have noticed that if you can ignore any
exciting new Microsoft product or feature for a couple of years, it
goes away again: it happened to Management Studio for developers - or
the Project management features at least - and it's happening to
Silverlight.
