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[Blacken]

Because seriously, the paragraph is FUCKING hidden.

Right-click. It's not hard.

[qwertyuiopas]

Any word version since they even thought about making vista is worse, in my opinion, than any earlier version.

IE6 starts up faster than even firefox, IE8 just loves to open slowly and then annoy you with "features".

Windows Media Player 11 replaced some neat visualizations(particle, my fav.) and the overall time/size indicators(on everything possible) for ugly unremovable album image spacewasters in the library and an ever-present "buy" button in the details window on the visualization pane.

Fortunately, all my experience with newer programs has been on *other* computers, so I still have my favoutite old versions on *my* PC. (Except office, but my dad still has a ('97?) install disk somewhere...)

[Blacken]

IE6 starts up faster than even firefox, IE8 just loves to open slowly and then annoy you with "features".

When you don't do anything like modern JavaScript, CSS, tabs, or other accepted features, you can open really really fast.

Of course, you can't fucking do anything with it, but I guess pointing that out isn't cool to the pseudo-Luddites.

[Jimmy]

If you want a fast browser, get Chrome. Frankly, nobody should be using IE6 anymore. It's the new millennium, ffs.

[qwertyuiopas]

Can't do anything?

Well, it can't annoy you with extra features and unnessecarily vista/7 inspired reflections on everything, it's navigation and toolbars take up enough space to be useful, but remain minimalistic enough to leave plenty of space for the page itself.

It, in face, *does* accept CSS, and it's javascript is merely somewhat slower.

It works on any site that hasn't specifically been designed against it.


And:

IE7 creates multiple processes that use unnessecarily large quantities of RAM, and does not close them after you close the extra tabs. Currently, two IE6 processes, one with two windows, take a total of under 50 MB ram. IE8, discounting other-process addons and tab processes, took a full 50MB to display *one* page.

Maybe that isn't much(and it isn't for my PC), but the school computers that they put IE8 on barely have 500 MB, plus with an antimalware taking up nearly 150 MB, and the OS consuming further resources, it is *very* fortunate that they upgraded the computers with only ~250 MB of RAM.

What is happening, is that with every new version they add graphical appeal for people who like all of those new games for their fancy shiny surfaces, and perople like me who care about performance are ignored, since the average PC is, on average, *more* powerful than ever before, so they feel that they can get away with using more RAM for minimal gain since few users contol-shift-tab at all, and fewer regularily.

I would happily upgrade to a newer internet explorer if it could replicate IE6 in nearly every way and only fix a few flaws while leaving everything else a setting, but nothing recent has escaped from the graphical insanity. Oh, and whatever happened to microsoft's backwards compatibility attempts? Answer: They died when vista, .NET, IE8(and maybe 7), WM11(and maybe 10), and others appeared. If they has phased the oldest features out, it would be fine, but they increased memory usage, created larger programs, designed for appearance, and lost backwards compatibility all in one big blunder.

There is a wide line between pleasantly simple and what they did, and they lept right over it, and then some extra distance. XP got the appearance just right, with simple gradients and mildly rounding that looks more natural than the older square theme, but didn't try to push it much further, and the end result was great.

Anything shinier is trying to attract those people who don't care about your CPU or RAM because all they know to ask is HD size since that is all that could be changed on the xbox.

I prefer the fancy graphics in *games*, not as in integral part of the OS ingraned irremovalby in every single window and menu. If it could be disabled, maybe it would be tolerable, but anything fancier than



Is trying to replace quality design with "appealing" graphics, and hoping that you don't notice the missing features.

[Blacken]

Can't do anything?

Well, it can't annoy you with extra features and unnessecarily vista/7 inspired reflections on everything, it's navigation and toolbars take up enough space to be useful, but remain minimalistic enough to leave plenty of space for the page itself.

You mean the zero toolbars that IE8 include by default? Oh. Oh wait. That would make too much sense, so clearly you need to just keep raging against whatever machine you like.

It, in face, *does* accept CSS, and it's javascript is merely somewhat slower.

Hi, maybe I should point out that I'm a web developer who works extensively in both and you have no idea what you're talking about. IE6's support for CSS1 was incomplete, while CSS2 and CSS3 are nonexistent.

"In fact," my ass. IE6 is ten years old and does not actually support what the modern web is built upon.

What the hell do you know about any of this? Christ.

It works on any site that hasn't specifically been designed against it.

Wrong. It works incredibly poorly for websites that have not been specifically designed for it. It's so fuck-poor that people like me have to write specific workarounds to deal with Neanderthal computer illiterates (and backassward IT departments--but I repeat myself) who still use it. Its CSS box model is wrong. Float margins are doubled for no reason whatsoever. Min-width and min-height do not work. Floated objects do not line up correctly because of intentional incompatibilities with every other browser. There are no hover states. No alpha transparency support. I could go on and on. You're completely and utterly wrong.

IE7 creates multiple processes that use unnessecarily large quantities of RAM,

What the hell do you know about what is and is not necessary? You clearly don't understand the topic at hand, so why should anyone listen to the rest of your crap?

and does not close them after you close the extra tabs.

Somebody doesn't know how the NT6 memory management model works!

(Hint: that's you.)

Currently, two IE6 processes, one with two windows, take a total of under 50 MB ram. IE8, discounting other-process addons and tab processes, took a full 50MB to display *one* page.

This just in: modern software, with additional features and functionality, use more memory.

Maybe that isn't much(and it isn't for my PC), but the school computers that they put IE8 on barely have 500 MB, plus with an antimalware taking up nearly 150 MB, and the OS consuming further resources, it is *very* fortunate that they upgraded the computers with only ~250 MB of RAM.

And more breaking news: misconfigured computers don't work correctly! GASP!

What is happening, is that with every new version they add graphical appeal for people who like all of those new games for their fancy shiny surfaces, and perople like me who care about performance are ignored, since the average PC is, on average, *more* powerful than ever before, so they feel that they can get away with using more RAM for minimal gain since few users contol-shift-tab at all, and fewer regularily.

Again, wrong. What happens in every version is that they add significant improvements to their still-kind-of-shit browser experience. IE7 brought multiprocess browsing--which means that a misbehaving page can't take down your entire browser. IE8 brought a vastly superior Javascript engine and CSS compliance that almost doesn't suck. IE9 looks to field a better CSS-compliant renderer than most of its competition.

And I haven't even touched upon the security holes in the shitpile that is IE6. Do you realize how trivial it is to write a drive-by Javascript worm that deploys a payload that runs with administrator rights? It's a solved problem. I can write an inject in about fifteen minutes if I already have the shellcode ready, and the browser is so unsustainably broken that Microsoft doesn't even try to patch it anymore.

But no, clearly you know more than the people working on IE and Trident. I mean, sure, you don't understand CSS, don't understand software development, and don't understand why you are one of the boils on the ass of people trying to make good software. But we should all listen to you!

I would happily upgrade to a newer internet explorer if it could replicate IE6 in nearly every way and only fix a few flaws while leaving everything else a setting, but nothing recent has escaped from the graphical insanity. Oh, and whatever happened to microsoft's backwards compatibility attempts? Answer: They died when vista, .NET, IE8(and maybe 7), WM11(and maybe 10), and others appeared. If they has phased the oldest features out, it would be fine, but they increased memory usage, created larger programs, designed for appearance, and lost backwards compatibility all in one big blunder.

You can turn off Aero Glass, you troll. But no, then you couldn't continue complaining, right?

[G-Flex]

For what it's worth, WMP11 being bad is no reason to use an earlier version of WMP. It's a good reason to switch to a different program entirely.


I personally dislike a lot of IE8's GUI elements, but a lot of those can be altered (although I'm pretty sure some can't) by the user, but using IE6 sounds like an absolutely horrible idea, for security reasons if nothing else, and there's a lot else.

Also, it's extremely trivial in IE8 to restore the normal menu bar and get rid of the other stuff.


And seriously, who in God's name tries to run Windows XP on a machine with 256MB of RAM, with all kind of (new) software running on it at once? That's a really awful idea to begin with.

[Tarran]

Thou shall use WOT, thou shall not go to even one unknown site without WOT.

http://www.mywot.com/

Its a great tool, real human beings rate the sites, it can be corrupted sometimes, yes, but 99.99% of the time its correct! just look at the millions of sites they rate! Mcafee is worse because its rated by Mcafee mostly, having both works too, might even be a good idea to have both.

so everyone needs to try it.

[Kagus]

You know all those little "Shoot 5 ducks and win an iPod!", or "Do 60 pull-ups before this other dude and get a free iPhone!" ads?

Yeah, well, I know a guy who clicks on those.  As in, HE CLICKS ON EVERY LAST ONE.

No, really, all of them.  He will whack the flies, drink the beer, and shoot the friggin' dancing elephant.  Does he think he's going to win the electronics?  No.  He just thinks they're fun.

...

Okay, seriously...  How game-starved do you have to be in order to do that?  Honestly...


As for me, I just got my first infection in years...   My laptop got whacked with Virtumonde. 

Someone was kind enough to link me to a couple programs that were specially designed for the removal of Virtumonde, and both of them managed to do a whole big mountain of bugger-all.  I eventually had to nuke the damn thing manually.

(as an aside, this was on the computer that I don't download gigabytes of porn onto)

[Tarran]

As I see it, there are a few ways to get infected.

1; Visiting websites that get past browser safety procedures.

2; Knowingly or unknowingly downloading with or without files you wanted, these are the most common of all infections.

3; Directly hacked by a hacker, this can do extreme amounts of damage if not stopped, because a hacker is more effective than a script.

4; Getting it from a USB flash drive, yes, its possible, if you don't be careful.

[Aklyon]

=very technical post about IE6=

I knew IE6 sucks now, but I didn't know it was that bad. wow.

[Blacken]

=very technical post about IE6=

I knew IE6 sucks now, but I didn't know it was that bad. wow.

It was the best out there, when it came out. It was quickly surpassed. It is all but abandoned by Microsoft. It's shit.

[The-Moon]

#1 Never use windows vista or 7 . Never use anything other then XP Pro.

#2 Never use the windows that comes preinstalled with a new computer.

#3 Learn how to correctly setup and install windows your self and know what to turn off and what not too.

http://www.blackviper.com/ contains a list for xp on what to turn off and on.

#4 when installing windows make sure that you only have the hard drive you are installing it too connected. And make sure your internet is completely disconnected

#5 Never ever use the wireless internet, even if its your own. A wireless internet is never safe and can easly be hacked into.

#6 never use Internet explorer, Windows Media Player, Windows Time...

#7 never under any circumstance update windows.

#8 if you do not plan to use your computer for playing games, Use linux instead. http://www.ubuntu.com/

#9 Never ever use Outlook express for mail. Always make sure you use a mail that you can run in firefox.

#10 Doing anything other then these top listed things 

[Blacken]

I can't tell if you're being sarcastic, or whether you really are that clueless.

For those who aren't terribly computer savvy: there isn't a single point of value in that mess, and it is best ignored.

[G-Flex]

#1 Never use windows vista or 7 . Never use anything other then XP Pro.

I don't understand this. Even my rather cynical friends seem to like Windows 7 enough to use it, even though they tend to dislike Vista.

#2 Never use the windows that comes preinstalled with a new computer.

Mileage may vary depending on what sort of bloatware and terrible configuration the computer has in factory condition. Make damn sure you have all necessary drivers/software on disk if you plan on paving the thing and installing Windows yourself.

#3 Learn how to correctly setup and install windows your self and know what to turn off and what not too.

Sure, why not.

http://www.blackviper.com/ contains a list for xp on what to turn off and on.

That site (and others) provides descriptions of what the service actually does and is needed for. Obviously, you'll want to enable/disable different services depending on your needs, but I'm not sure how much benefit this really has, in practice (it's probably a lot smaller than some people would tell you). I can't vouch for or against that site's recommendations in particular.

#4 when installing windows make sure that you only have the hard drive you are installing it too connected.

I honestly don't know why this should matter if you're not booting from the other hard drive or even accessing files from it.

And make sure your internet is completely disconnected

I would do this during installation, but afterwards turn on the Windows Firewall (disallowing all exceptions) and any other security measures possible before updating Windows, which I would do immediately after installing the OS and before pretty much anything else at all. Hell, I'd probably pick the service pack redistributables on a disk and update to those before connecting to the internet.

#5 Never ever use the wireless internet, even if its your own. A wireless internet is never safe and can easly be hacked into.

This is an extreme oversimplification. An unsecured wireless network is obviously trivial for anyone to log on to and sniff data from, and this is bad. WEP encryption stops that, but is easily broken. Newer encryption methods are better, and what exactly are the odds that someone is going to be outside your home trying to crack it in the first place? Seriously now. And if you're that paranoid, there are probably other things you can do in your router's settings to prevent this. Hell, if you're EXTREMELY paranoid, you can restrict access to certain MAC addresses.

#6 never use Internet explorer, Windows Media Player, Windows Time...

Seriously? Huh? I don't use IE8 and don't particularly like it, but it's not actually that bad and probably not terribly risky unless you're going to time-warp back to 2001, screw up your settings, and get some kind of ActiveX-related infestation going.

I don't know if WMP has any security vulnerabilities, but it's kind of crappy to begin with. I doubt this is a serious issue.

But... Windows Time? Really? Why?

#7 never under any circumstance update windows.

Never installing updates for a Windows installation is one of the stupidest things you can possibly do. Follow this advice if you want your computer to become a security nightmare and die a horrible death at the bottom of a snake pit

#8 if you do not plan to use your computer for playing games, Use linux instead. http://www.ubuntu.com/

That's a pretty major switch just because someone doesn't play games often, although keeping your mind open to other operating systems isn't a bad thing. I've heard a few bad things about Ubuntu in particular, but I don't use Linux so I'm not sure what a good distribution is.

#9 Never ever use Outlook express for mail. Always make sure you use a mail that you can run in firefox.

Again, why, aside from convenience?

#10 Doing anything other then these top listed things 

So he can't type in Notepad, or play Minesweeper, or install WinAmp? I mean, those weren't on your list, so I guess he can't do them.