http://www.boingboing.net/2005/07/28/mi ... ne_ad.html
http://www.theinquirer.net/?article=24961

Fucking Hah.

yay for microsofts security...

Except there's some verification thing they ask you to download to make sure your windows is genuine (might even be this thing)... and yet you can download the update you wish to without downloading and running the check anyway... oh that makes sense.

that was before today...now you're required to download the check...unless you do the above. :p

I find it amzing how difficult security seems to be with software.

Kinda separate note:

I think one day, the risk of viruses and the such shall be virtually eliminated. Technology will move on and become more complex, aand less understandable to the general people that actual effective 12 year old virus writing geeks will just fade.

Yeah, but you'll still get corrupted people with some actual skills that will release virii in to the market.

I disagree. I think virii will continue to get worse every year (like they are now) unless we move to a Trusted Computing type platform, which I hope never happens. Fuck DRM.

I mean, back in DOS, there were viruses. Viruses were pretty simple back then...they plugged into interrupts directly, wrote to disk directly, everything was 16bit, etc. Do you have any idea how complex programming is in a Windows environment? It's crazy. Just to build a simple window with nothing in it takes dozens of lines of code. Stupid Windows programming.

My point being that you can't underestimate the technogeek kid. There's not limit to what they can do, given the time and motivation. Many kids are better at programming then adults and probably always will be.

Plus, they only have to find _one_ hack to cripple a system.

So uhm, if I were to format and do a windows re-install, would I be tied to downloading that verifying thingie? I mean, it's probably worked into SP1-2?

You can switch it off in your internet tools.
So much for Microsoft's security, I feel very secure with their software.

lol, cool, thanks. And yeah, after having been messing around with the ultraghey security centre of SP2 for a while I just formatted and never bothered installing SP2. Even when I turned every security option off it seemed to suck performance!

I switched the security centre off. I do believe though that you won't get new security updates without SP2, so you might consider installing it anyway.

Myeah, maybe I should. On the other hand, it's not like I'm the king of the secured pc as it is anyway. Bleh, I'll wait and see till I have my new pc.

This still works! I used it 3 or 4 times yesterday on my bosses, sons computer.

haha, that's golden. I love it. Y'know, I don't think anyone will ever be able to 'secure' computers. Like DRM and trusted computing is just BS...it'll never happen because someone will always find a hack. Makes me feel all warm and fuzzy inside.