It's 2017 and Microsoft is still patching Windows XP+ – to plug holes exploited by trio of leaked NSA weapons Microsoft today addressed 96 CVE-listed vulnerabilities in its products – plus issued more emergency patches for unsupported versions of Windows menaced by leaked NSA exploits. A special bulletin from Microsoft on Tuesday explained the emergency update includes fixes for legacy versions of Windows and Windows Server dating …
>MS still cleaning up after Windows XP
All I can say is Apple could learn a thing or two. Windows still supports security updates to Windows 7 on the Mac Pro 3,1. Apple hasn't supported security updates for it in years and its their frigging hardware. Yes on average their OS may be a bit more secure but all modern OS require updates to stay secure.
Windows Update has failed on my Win7 box ever since MS started their update roll-up BS a few months back. Any non-rolled-up'ed update installs without issue but not a single rolled-up package has successfully installed once all the reboot/failed/roll-back cycles have completed.
I've rolled back the install with images from six, twelve, and twenty four months ago with the same results. Now, I'm putting the final touches on both my Win7 and WinXP VM's so I can nuke the Windows partition and be done with MS installs that ever touch the web.
I still feel a tinge of love lost whenever I boot into Windows but it's quickly overcome by the shadow of abuse and failure. Sometimes you just have to let go of the hope for what could have been.
Neither Edge or Chrome is ever going to be that secure if they include flash by default even supposedly sandboxed. I occasionally have to go find Edge's adobe plugin and nuke it after system updates which is annoying. Long live Secunia for pointing it out.
XP should of died long ago, but there is still many top firms holding onto to it, and I am more that sure IT staff would love to migrate but from experience, there is probably many places that have legacy applications that will not run on Windows 10. You cannot blame your IT Department because at the end of the day they are not in charge of the purse strings.
It's not just because of legacy applications. Computers are business tools and for many businesses XP does the job and is well understood by users and support staff. You don't expect to buy a new set of screwdrivers every five years just because the manufacturer has a new range with different shaped handles, often shaped in ways which make many tasks trickier to do.
And they never have.
So?
"The IT Crowd" made hilarious comedy but part of a real IT departments job is to warn the rest of the business of what happens when you run out of support on your current OS, both on servers and desktops and how much those costs are going to rise if anything goes seriously sideways.
It's also about preparing for working out what it takes to migrate those applications to another OS, which in reality means another Windows, or finding out what has to change (like getting a supplier to update their S/W) to make it happen.
It's that tricky management / IT interface so hated by techy types.
Except IRL it's really quite important
bug-free and secure.
FTFY.
Then again it takes a lot of creativity to keep building OS's that can soak up every spare bit of processor and disk capacity, despite the growth in both.
Got thing it's illegal to disassemble Windows. You have to wonder just how many delay loops (witting or unwitting) there are in that code.
No idea about anons... really those in the real "know" probably have legal contracts water tight. But those customers walking in and occasionally seeing the screens or other floor staff could make guesses. We will know in 20-30 years when people talk of their old days on the job, fixing that BA server problem etc. ;)
But I did once get a comment from bank staff, apologising for the delay. They said the branch had new software. So new in fact it still had Dollar signs where the pounds should have been. :D
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