Windows Vista has critical bugs

[boise1]

By Stan Beer
Friday, 18 August 2006

Windows users who had hoped that the Vista operating system will consign Patch Tuesday to the annals of history can think again. Microsoft has confirmed through one of its blogs that two of the seven critical Windows patches released last week also apply to Vista.

Vista is clear of the most serious flaw discovered, MS06-40, which raised the ire of the Department of Homeland Security. However, the two flaws which affect Vista are still in the critical class, which means that a remote attacker can gain control of a computer without the user having to initiate any action.

The two vulnerabilities which affect Vista are addressed by Microsoft security updates MS06-042, which plugs a hole in Internet Explorer, and MS06-051 which patches a vulnerability in the Windows Vista kernel itself.

Needless to say, intending Windows Vista users will not be happy to hear that after all the work Microsoft has put into addressing the substantial security issues faced in versions to date, the best it come up with for its operating system of the future is two critical bugs that need to be fixed in a single month.

http://www.itwire.com.au/content/view/5321/53/

[mainegreen]

1. This can't be LBN every week!

After about 6 months of this it gets old.
Funny stuff though.

[Recursion]

2. People still actually use Windows?

Don't fear the penguin, people...

[Occulus]

8. ...unless you're a gamer....

Some linux users may tell you to get Wine. This is an invitation to frustration.

I did get CVSWine to finally build. Really. But I had to use a 32-bit version of Fedora to do it, as it- and all other versions of Wine, by the way- adamantly refused to build on the 64-bit version. Forum scouring for days, I discovered that, sure enough, it wasn't supported in 64 bit at all.

Then there's installing games in Wine. Please, believe me when I say that dx9wine does not run any games any better than other versions of Wine (although, strangely, I did manage to get Bryce5 running, albeit poorly, in all versions of Wine I installed). I couldn't get even my older dx-based games- such as Grim Fandango, Mechwarrior3, etc- to run, period. Some of them wouldn't even install. Forget it if the game uses SafeDisc, or some other copy protection. Basically, for Wine, the rule of thumb is this:

Newer games are more likely to "cheese out" than to Wine.

DirectX9 support? HAH! And so forth. Dx9wine actually doesn't support dx9 (!!). Older games will run, though... but almost nothing 3D will. Believe me, I tried. For about two weeks or so.

And Transgaming expects people to pay for this crap? As in, an actual subscription- when their own website states very clearly that even their own binaries may not function correctly on all Wine installations?

My Transgaming Wine quibbles:

They want me to pay to play a game I've already paid for.
They expect me to be fine with some of what I paid for theough them not functioning at all.
They utilized a loophole in the original, open source Wine license to hijack the development community responsible for the Wine project.
They don't actually give anything back to the legitimate Wine development community.
Their above actions discourage actual game developers from including a native linux binary (there are notable exceptions, id software being only one).
Their above actions put real gamiing in linux totally out of reach for most linux users, as simply using open-source Wine is in the first place an unnecessarily complex process that new users coming to linux will not want to put up with.

I'm not saying Wine sucks, but it definitely needs a lot of work (and having multiple forks of the code available for different uses does not help matters any). Really, if you want to get away from Windows, at the moment my advice is to buy a Mac running OSX with Bootcamp, or check to see which games have native linux versions and only buy those. Leave Wine to the developers until it is more, well, useful.

[cobalt1999]

3. and this surprises who? n/t

[ixion]

4. windows has critical bugs... so what's new?

why do people keep getting suckered in by MicroSuck? :crazy:

[baldguy]

5. Those aren't "bugs", those are "features".

It's SUPPOSED to do that.

[htuttle]

6. They've needed to do a wholesale rewrite for about 5-10 years

They got bit rot. Bigtime.

[ikri]

7. Vista is still in BETA

It's a BETA product. Bugs are expected in beta programs, that's why you have beta programs - to iron out the bugs.

It is not on sale. It isn't likely to go on sale until November at the earliest.

I'm no fan of Microsoft, but this is just a bullshit story - a product that is being tested for bugs is found to have bugs, why is anyone surprised.

[Occulus]

10. I think the problem is...

...nobody trusts Micro$oft to get those bugs fixed completely in time for release; as before, Vista will ship with unfixed issues Micro$oft is well aware of but won't correct until someone either points them out publicly or exploits them.

Such has been their practice in the past, and I and most others have very little doubt that that will change.

[William769]

11. Why try to use reason here?

Any reason whatsoever to bash Microsoft on Du is reason enough.

I happen to be Beta testing Vista, but then again at least some of us here know what Beta means.

P.S. Vista is slated to be released in January 2007.

[lindisfarne]

13. Not too long ago MS said it would be released in Nov (corporate version)

Perhaps that has changed.

One would expect that 6 (or 4) months before the release, the Beta version would be free of bugs that have plagued previous versions.

As others have said, these flaws may be deliberate negligence: MS doesn't put enough effort into designing a reliable product. Their decision to stop supporting Windows 98 (just 5 years after it stopped being sold as an operating system) provides a hint to the real reason behind their negligent: when they stop supporting a product, your choices are to either buy their next version, continue using the version you already purchased but be even more susceptible to flaws, or switch to another operating system (difficult if your whole corporation has used MS for years and uses MS compatible with other programs, or if you need to be compatible with other MS users).

[boise1]

12. Why are bugs being propagated from XP to supposedly 'new' Vista?

[kineneb]

9. news?

or in Valley Girl speak: Sooooooooo?

(just went to LinuxWorld in SF on Wed.)

Happy Penguin Fan.