YAAMSR (Yet Another Anti-MicroSoft Rant)

[BlueCross]

Latest email snafu...

Got some move files from a guy I play email games with.  For some reason I couldn't open his attached move files.  Worked fine a week or two ago...  Couldn't even see the attachments.  After dinking around, I found I could forward the mail to my hotmail account and then detach and use the files.

wtf?

OK... after literally an hour of research...

1.  Updated my AV software (Trend Micro) about a week ago.

2.  TrendMicro said I have 'holes' and needed Security updates from MicroSoft.

3.  So I let the 'automatic' updater do its thing.  That should be harmless, eh?

4.  A 'security' patch to Outlook 2000 (my 'new' email reader for about 6 weeks now) prevents certain attachments (such as .exe files) from being 'seen' by the user.  One of these file type is .OPS (Office XP Settings).  Guess what file extension my gaming program uses? Yup, .OPS

5.  At first, there seemed to NO fricking way to override this.  Later I found some registry settings that might allow them through; haven't tested them yet.


So basically I hosed my email attachments by letting TrendMicro and MicroSoft do their job.

They should be fired.

[Brugdor]

That's why I prefer to just kill viruses with my hearty Dwarven constitution. 

[BlueCross]

*fires the Dwarf*

Hey, Dwarves burn quite nicely!

[Doombot]

*fires the Dwarf*

Hey, Dwarves burn quite nicely!

The beard dips into the alcohol when they drink. That's why.

[Brugdor]

*fires the Dwarf*

Hey, Dwarves burn quite nicely!

Ma beard!

*stops, drops and rolls*

[BlueCross]

Geez... that so could be an alternate title for "Eats, Shoots and Leaves"!

[TK]

I really hate the whole 'hand holding' thing the computing industry seems to be steamrollering [sic?] towards.  People who actually know what they're doing with a PC seem to be increasingly penalised because Johhny No-brains keeps downloading nasty things from thier email without giving it a second though. 

I suppose we could see this as an evolve or die kind of thing and a message to the computer literate/elite to get off our complacent nethers and remember what it was like to actually use our heads when we're in front of a computer; instead of relying on the fact that we'll always have the tools at our fingertips to prove that we're so much better than the guy who just infected his PC for the fiftieth time in too weeks with promised pictures of Jlo's bum.

[MrWeasel]

Let's analize this, your first mistake...
Trusting any software company to change your present defaults
2nd
Trusting Microshaft, period that one is self expainitory
3rd, runnin any operating system other then RedHat Linux (here come the rutabegas) (and ill spell rutabegas anyway i want thank you very much)

[Thanatos]

Uh, just to play devil's advocate for a second, you guys do know that just as Shigeru Miyamoto is the father of modern gaming, Bill Gates is the father of modern computing?  I mean, Microsoft infuriates me to no end pretty much all the time, but I still bear in mind the fact that if it wasn't for windows, the internet would never have been available to the common man.

I mean, woo, kill microsoft, except for the fact that you owe everything you've ever seen or done on the internet to them.

[AcdQueen89]

I mean, woo, kill microsoft, except for the fact that you owe everything you've ever seen or done on the internet to them.

microsoft bringing us goatsie and tubgirl.... isnt that enough to go on that rampage?

[Dragonetti]

Thanatos, I disagree. There is a huge amount of truth in what you've said, but I think the electric interwebs would have arrived even without Micro$ofts intervention. The French (and other Europeans?) had minitel before the net really took off, and I'm sure it would have evolved into an incarnation of what we're using now.

One gripe (because moaning is good, change is bad) I must share with you:

"Win XP has installed updates and your computer needs to be restarted. Restart Now or Later?" And then the bastard sign returns every five minutes in case you weren't entirely sure you clicked the right button TIME AFTER TIME. When Vista takes over I'm going to Linux.

[Chucara]

Just zip it before you send it? Or even just rename it should do the trick.

[AcdQueen89]

"Win XP has installed updates and your computer needs to be restarted. Restart Now or Later?" And then the bastard sign returns every five minutes in case you weren't entirely sure you clicked the right button TIME AFTER TIME.

never done that to me. check settings?

[TK]

if it's never done that to you I'd check your automatic update settings or run windows update.  Certain critical updates need to restart the PC to apply properly, if you've never seen the message it's likely you're not recieving important updates.

[AcdQueen89]

i've gotten the updates, but they dont bugg me more than once. i get a notice and say that i'll restart later and then four hours or so later i turn off and it does what it does. i'm more pissed off at the computer asking me if i'm sure if i want to run spybot because apparently i didnt click on it or install it myself.