[CS-FSLUG] IE6 in todays market place

[Josiah Ritchie]

LOL, I completely overlooked that. Thanks for pointing it out.

JSR/

On 6/10/11, davidm at hisfeet.net <davidm at hisfeet.net> wrote:
> You just made me smile!
> "...governments and other crooks ...."
> (cynicism=0)
> Not because I disagree.
>
>
>> On Fri, 10 Jun 2011, Josiah Ritchie wrote:
>>
>>> The other issue is that pirated MS software can't be updated. Is that
>>> perhaps the reason so many Chinese users are on IE6? This is one
>>> reason why I discourage people, especially our missionaries, from
>>> buying software from the cart down the street. From what I understand
>>> in Brazil it is expected that your software is pirated and this
>>> actually makes it harder to share open source software. The initial
>>> hook of "free" doesn't mean much.
>>
>> (cynicism=1)
>>
>> It's probably part of the picture. I can go right now to a friend and
>> get pirated copies of any MS OS for nothing. These work by simply
>> installing a valid-but-rescinded Volume License, removing WGA and
>> declining to update it. Otherwise, they update same as any legitimate
>> copy. To all appearances, the cracked ISOs are clean, including the
>> bundled scripts for inserting the bogus license. I am told the ISOs were
>> available in a select few languages. "Win7 Ultimate, anyone? Would you
>> prefer 32-bit or 64?" As I understand it, Chinese is excluded from that
>> list, so the Chinese ISOs probably come through an entirely different
>> set of crackers with less "noble" motives.
>>
>> Of course, I agree there are probably a lot more of those older systems
>> which can only run older OSes for which IE 6 was the last update.
>>
>> OTOH, plenty of commentators suggest MS is not really serious about
>> stamping out piracy, for much the same reason federal criminal
>> prosecution of major crime never touches the banks who make the crime
>> possible. That is, if most of the world uses your stuff, it retains
>> its value, whether it be Windows or dollars.
>>
>> So while I would not be worried about any real dangers from using these
>> pirated copies in terms of viruses, I am very much worried about the
>> vast security risks of using Windows even at its best. If you like it,
>> fine, I'll try to help you make it work. But I don't like sacrificing
>> that much control to some software Borg which hasn't shown much
>> kindness, nor all the other agencies capable of cracking every version
>> of Windows at will. I won't say MS is in bed with these others, both
>> government and private, but I'm sure the list of unreported and
>> unpatched vulnerabilities noted in the HBGary fiasco represents the
>> difference between those who tend to report those when they are found,
>> and a rather large number who do not report them. And they never seem to
>> run out of new holes.
>>
>> I don't fear the snooping. I'm wide open. Rather, it's the same reason I
>> urge my clients to let me secure their computers and routers with a
>> strong password, or even by moving to Linux. There are enough risks
>> without being promiscuous to abuse. If they *must* run Windows, at
>> least be as secure as you reasonably can handle, with all the good
>> protective software. I also urge them to learn more about compsec
>> procedures and risks. All it takes is one roving crook with a netbook
>> tapping someone's unsecured wifi to ruin innocent lives; it happens far
>> more often than is reported. Just so, Windows machines are too easily
>> turned into bots. (I know, preaching to the choir here.)
>>
>> I'm not sure I can utterly reject the theory governments and other
>> crooks really do prefer to keep people using Windows as much as
>> possible.
>>
>> (cynicism=0)
>>
>> And then there is the moral question of whether software piracy is a
>> sin...
>>
>> Ed Hurst
>> --------
>> Open for Business - http://ofb.biz/
>> Kiln of the Soul - http://soulkiln.org/
>> blog - http://soulkiln.myopera.com/
>>
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