Once again this is a good reason for NOT having the auto update feature in XP (or any other OS) turned on.

Mike

I have some sympathy for Microsoft trying to idiot-proof the Windows installations for people who think a PC is an appliance, but they are not doing it well enough to earn anyone's trust.

Today, I think the only way we can come to grips with the remotely controlled zombie machines used for extortion and online warfare, as well as the ridiculous amounts of viruses, is for the home user ISPs to do what university campuses are already doing:

No one is allowed to connect fully to the Internet through the campus network until their machines have been scanned and found to have the latest updates to both OS and apps, and then they're checked again periodically and taken offline when necessary.

PCs are not appliances, and won't be for some time (probably 10-30 years).

Who decides when an OS is 'up-to-date' ?
There are so many permutations that it will be an impossible task to handle for any ISP. and any ISP must then in turn support all OS'es and apps to be able to check this. imagine the outcry if for instance AT&T decided that only 32-bit Window 7 machines were 'approved' ?

Imagine the outcry if hundreds of thousands of Windows PCs were hijacked every day, and used for extortion of business around the globe, while many millions of PCs were rendered unusable by malware, in a lot of cases repeatedly on the same machine!

Oh, wait a minute. That has already happened, and there was no outcry.

Never mind.


Consumer ISPs supporting only Windows machines? For quite a few of them that is already the case in their customer support departments.

32-bit vs. 64-bit? That could happen too, but they could reasonably figure that consumers who bother installing 64-bit OSes have a better understanding of computers,

PCs need to become more like appliances, but because of the rapid evolution of functionality, I hope this doesn't happen too soon. Other than for the many consumers who are suffering so much because of the truckloads of feature diarrhea filling every corner of Windows, before Win 7 at least.

Windows 7 greatly benefits from having been stripped by EU lawyers, let's hope Microsoft sees the light here and doesn't start piling on unused add-ons with wide-open doors that remain open unless closed by a computer science graduate (I'll give them credit for having fixed this in some places already).


A lot of consumers would benefit from having PCs with only e-mail and minimal web browsing capabilities.

Just imagine how much safer a stripped-down Windows could be...

Of course that won't happen anytime soon, because Microsoft has been using immense complexity to justify very high prices (meaning "costing nearly as much as the computer it runs on"). What percentage of Windows' functionality do you use? 5%? Maybe if you're a power user. 1%? Perhaps. Are you using Microsoft Office? If so, do you really think you are using more than a few percent of what is in that $125 (student edition) to $495 (professional edition) box?

And as we are beginning to see from Google Chrome and other efforts: in an appliance, the OS doesn't matter.

I'm sure that keeps Steve Ballmer awake a lot of nights.

ATT is already doing this in some instances. I have ATT service and use their Yahoo mail. They're constantly offering to set my mail back to "Classic" mode because they don't support Firefox on Linux. I ignore the request.

ISPs don't need to know if a computer is up to date, and if they did want verification I'm sure it could be faked.

Rob

ISPs don't need to know if a computer is up to date

When they get on the receiving end of a DDoS attack on one of their business customers, they would surely come to regret their own responsibility for that, and I expect they could also save a bundle on support calls.

And the rest of the world would surely be happy to have fewer zombies out there, which would also mean less revenues for organized crime.

stopping computers from being hijacked isn't going to be done by a company/govt forcing anyone to. It takes responsibility of the end user, just like so many easy to stop diseases out there that people get every day on purpose.

also, ironically, there are plenty of options for people to have simple, easy internet that is pretty much virus free, they just don't want it. They want what we tell them.

Hi, I can imagine that people get easy to stop diseases through negligence or drunkenness, but on purpose? Can you give me any examples? Cheers!

stopping computers from being hijacked isn't going to be done by a company/govt forcing anyone to. It takes responsibility of the end user

You mean it's not like the speed limits on socialized, er, public roads?

I personally do not believe the old saw that "speed kills."

It's inattention that kills people.

But since we can't control other people's inattention, we start looking for some other way to reduce the mayhem.

So we introduce speed limits (the first one was 4 mph!).

Come to think of it, there was a big debate about speed limits on private toll roads some years ago.

"Finally we can take off the shackles of government speed limits and drive at any speed we want!!!"

After a lot of initial excitement, the private owners of the toll roads soon came to the conclusion that they would be the ones paying for the human carnage when drivers didn't take responsibility for their driving, so it was back to the same speed limits as on the socialized, er, public roads.

A hundred years ago, you could go to your local pharmacy and say, "I need a bottle of heroin for my son's cough. Come to think of it, it's a really bad cough, I better get a case!"

If people had had a sense of responsibility, we would still have been able to buy heroin for our coughs (it's said to work very well actually).

But given that everything in nature is subject to the bell curve of "normal distribution," we have to protect everyone from those on the low end of the responsibility curve.

Likewise for smoking bans in public places and offices. States that implemented this recently saw a greater than 40% reduction in heart attack hospitalizations within 3 years, including for the non-smokers!

I have said this before. If Microsoft were concerned about anything but Microsoft, they would have separated their browser and their e-mail client from their operating systems a long time ago. Instead they would rather have 2-12 security fixes a week instead of addressing the core of the problem strictly for self serving reasons.

How they manage to get the victims to defend them defies belief.

John

"If Microsoft were concerned about anything but Microsoft, they would have separated their browser and their e-mail client from their operating systems a long time ago."

Not sure about the browser, but they have seperated the email client from the OS in Windows 7. It's now only available as a seperate download from their website:

Mail - Windows Live

Jim