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Thread: Microsoft starting silent upgrades of Internet Explorer.

  1. #11
    Senior Member nihil's Avatar
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    Well, getting back to Microsoft, I don't really see what they are actually proposing as they seem to be saying that security updates will continue with patch Tuesday?

    Thus far IE has been pretty monolithic with one or maybe two releases in the lifetime of an OS, unlike the dynamic development of other browsers.

    My real concern involves applying updates whilst I have something else happening on my machines. I can just imagine getting to the end of a large and complex components order and Windows update popping up and trashing the lot.................

    I must admit that I have toyed with the idea of putting them in the untrusted zone or blocking them at the firewall

    I must admit that I prefer to trust Secunia PSI and Belarc Advisor. Both will tell me if I am missing something from MS, and Belarc Advisor even tells you if you have an MS update that MS think has worked but hasn't.

    That app has helped me on several occasions when a failed MS update has been giving weird problems

    Well, if they don't sort Winders Ate there won't be a problem, as it tells me that I am up to date when I am not.............. also, I would have thought that updating your security software was critical rather than optional?

    This leads me on to what I wanted to post to try to cheer up gore.

    Having been told by Winders Ate that I was up to date, I tortured it into admitting that I had three critical and one optional (the security) updates.

    Having downloaded them, and told it to install, it chuntered away for a while then gave me these messages:

    "Restart your PC to finish installing updates"

    "Your PC will automatically restart in two days if you do not restart now"

    Now, in my understanding of the UK's "Sale of Goods (Implied Terms) Act", that means that Winders Ate is guaranteeing 48 hours uptime? Rather than the traditional "up until now from the last time I crashed, and from now until the next time I do"

    Shock! Horror!.................... will the Redmond Armani Suits spot this error in time? .................... watch this space for the next thrilling installment................

    Actually, I haven't managed to crash it yet................ but I haven't managed to crash this 32bit Vista either !!!??? Hah! I understand that...... I opened the case yesterday and stuck in a 24x SATA dual layer and replaced the 4GB of 1066 DDR2 with 8GB of DDR3 1333.

    Maybe the time has come to move on to the 32bit Winders Ate box?

    As for your auto.......... yeah, you are lucky to be alive, and of course he drove off............... you might have had an infrascope or starlight starbright?

  2. #12
    Senior Member gore's Avatar
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    Nihil:

    With the right Lawyer, I'm all but certain you could get this matter at LEAST into a Court if you found the right Lawyer. I mean, sure, they mean this in a manner that "Well, you don't want to now, so how about in a little while?" But ANYONE would just assume this, and this alone, but there is something to that I think; The way it's worded was not chosen carefully enough.

    If you're interested, they DO have a bit of a History of this; I was reading about Microsoft Bloopers, and even they were admitting some of them for a short time, but I don't think they still have them up.

    Basically it was a web site you could get to from their own Microsoft Address, and it was a list of screw ups they thought may shed some humor and light on them as a company, and some of the stuff I saw, was amazing.

    They said in one version of Windows meant for an Arabic Speaking Market, they wanted to have a little audio file lay upon Log In, in an OLD version of Windows.

    Apparently, they wanted the message to basically say hello, how are you, and whatever. It was meant to be a greeting upon log in. Instead, the message, PROPERLY translated, insulted the user's Mother. I thought it was funny at anyway.

  3. #13
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    Seeing as how this auto-update can be disabled, I think it is a step in the right direction for keeping the average user updated and secure. Although they will still likely keep the security updates as part of the Patch Tuesday, they now have the ability to patch 0-day exploits with higher acceptance rates. They may also opt to use this method for most of the IE security updates in the future in order to reduce the numbers on patch Tuesday and give the appearance of being more up on their security.
    sandwich.

  4. #14
    Only african to own a PC! Cider's Avatar
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    I dont see what the big deal is here???

    If you dont want updates to interfere with anything happening on your computer then set your update settings accordingly? Every other browser updates dynamically.

    How many times has FF irratated you with the installing updates on opening it?

    Seems to be some M$ bashing here IMO.
    The world is a dangerous place to live; not because of the people who are evil, but because of the people who don't do anything about it.
    Albert Einstein

  5. #15
    Senior Member gore's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by Cider View Post
    I dont see what the big deal is here???
    The big deal I thought was the reboot after 2 days thing. It WAS interesting.

    If you dont want updates to interfere with anything happening on your computer then set your update settings accordingly? Every other browser updates dynamically.
    Agree. Fully.

    How many times has FF irratated you with the installing updates on opening it?
    I haven't used Firefox in about two years, so it's been a while I personally won't use it anymore. I don't remember which version it was exactly, but basically, Firefox was being a resource whore, much like Windows XP usually is, and crashed for the 50th or so time.

    I then started to think why I was even bothering with it. I can't remember what exactly Firefox did after the Crash, but I got kinda pissed at it. Mind you, I am the same person who, on about 10 different occasions, nuked a file system on one of my machines and then spent hours restoring it from back ups just because it made me feel better.

    So anyway, after losing some Links I'd never gotten to back up, I got pissed and uninstalled it. I couldn't stand Firefox at that point. Not only did Firefox do the annoying **** you're talking about, but it also took forever to start, and basically would take up a bunch of RAM and Resources and just crash.

    I seriously would get so mad at Firefox. Anyway, one day, I got pissed, and just took it off every machine I have. On my Linux and BSD installations, I had multiple, MULTIPLE other options for Browsers.

    For Windows, I basically had IE, Seamonkey, Mozilla, and of course Opera. Currently, Opera has become my go to Browser. I use Opera every day, on every machine I use, on every OS I use. It's great. It's fast, it's stable, I use the Email Application that's built in and the new 11.60 is AMAZING....

    All in all, I use Opera now. I haven't looked back. I still don't like Firefox, and I still tell everyone I can NOT to use it. I've told everyone in my family, and my Cousin, who's now in College for a Computer Science Degree, was using it, and I told him my reasons to NOT use it. I told him to basically download Opera, and use that, and that he'd love it.

    When my Mom finally bought a new Computer, when I went over there to Help Her set everything up, I got Windows 7 going, then, I used IE to grab Opera.

    When my Aunt bought a Laptop, which was a few months ago, and they started using Wireless, I also installed Opera on my Aunt's Laptop.

    I won't use Firefox, and I tell everyone else who will listen not to. Use Opera; It's a hundred times better. My Wife has Opera installed too, but Her main Browser is Chrome.

    I have Chrome, and only use it for a few things, but I still mainly use Opera.

    On Windows, I have IE, Opera, Seamonkey, Chrome, and....Well, that's basically it...

    On everything else (Linux, BSD) Opera, Konqueror, Seamonkey, Dillo, and all the rest. Galeon was an old favorite of mine.

    Seems to be some M$ bashing here IMO.
    I spent my post productively; Bashing the **** out of Firefox.
    Last edited by gore; December 21st, 2011 at 02:09 PM.

  6. #16
    Only african to own a PC! Cider's Avatar
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    Personally I would like to use Opera for work but some of our intranet sites and our Salesforce CRM dont render correctly on Opera -_-, fail imo.
    The world is a dangerous place to live; not because of the people who are evil, but because of the people who don't do anything about it.
    Albert Einstein

  7. #17
    Senior Member nihil's Avatar
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    Well, for the average home user it probably doesn't make much difference, but if you are in a testing and development environment, it may well do so.

    As I have said, MS have always been monolithic in their browser development so I am not really expecting many "updates" as such, unless they are security related.

    My personal approach is to check for updates whenever I open a browser or when my updating software tells me that one is available. I let the browser do it as I have noticed that FF gets out of synch between its https:// version and the regular one.

    I updated Opera yesterday and it asked me if I wanted to enable automatic updates. The default was "yes".

    With the MS patches I just let them download and run them when nothing else is going on. I particularly need to do this with XP, as I have behavioural monitoring software running on those boxes that I need to turn off.

  8. #18
    Senior Member gore's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by Cider View Post
    Personally I would like to use Opera for work but some of our intranet sites and our Salesforce CRM dont render correctly on Opera -_-, fail imo.
    Fail for who? Opera or the Designers?

    As far as I know, Opera is still the most standard compliant Web Browser out there. I did a lot of reading about Opera before settling on it permanently, and one of the things I read about, was how it was one of the most standards compliant browsers out there.

    I thought that was interesting, and, then, add in the speed and how it starts up faster than most browsers and you have something.

  9. #19
    Senior Member nihil's Avatar
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    I have just updated FireFox on Windows XP, Vista and Win 8 machines. In all cases it asked for permission to download, to update and to restart, so FF isn't as "silent" as has been suggested.

    To be honest, I cannot see how any of them really can be, as you might well be in the middle of some complex online transaction or activity when the update is noticed?

    On the other hand maybe it isn't such a bad idea?........ "Microsoft screwed up my online tax return" has a certain ring to it

    I can't see where I might have set an option for FF's behaviour, and I certainly wouldn't have done it on the Win 8 box, as I would want to see if it did have conflicts and crash.

  10. #20
    Only african to own a PC! Cider's Avatar
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    @gore, the designers.

    @Nihil, I dont have FF installed, but it wouldnt interfere with the logged on session, only when you open it up or restart it.
    The world is a dangerous place to live; not because of the people who are evil, but because of the people who don't do anything about it.
    Albert Einstein

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