Microsoft Faces Angry IE Users' Questions

internetnews ^ | 7-9-2004 | Sean Michael Kerner

[NJ_gent]

"That means it's not completed, final or stable yet, and that the final stable SP2 is coming soon."

Neither is the Windows operating system, but that never stopped them from releasing it. :-)

[Terpfen]

Well, they sound fairly professional--though I'm sure a guy from the PR department was sitting next to them to "help" with their answers.

It's too bad IE doesn't offer much and version releases are so few and far in between.

[mlbford2]

MS must pay their IE engineers a ton because if one were to quit, no new SW Engineer would have a chance deciphering the IE spaghetti code.

[NJ_gent]

"deciphering the IE spaghetti code."

I cannot even begin to imagine how horrid it must be at this point. The price for integration and backwards compatability - Microsoft-style - is garbage code doing garbage work.

Microsoft would do well to hire up all the folks on the Mozilla project and simply pay them to continue doing what they're doing, then replace the default web browser in Windows with Firefox.

[Bush2000]

MS must pay their IE engineers a ton because if one were to quit, no new SW Engineer would have a chance deciphering the IE spaghetti code.

When was the last time you looked at IE code?

[Bush2000]

Microsoft would do well to hire up all the folks on the Mozilla project and simply pay them to continue doing what they're doing, then replace the default web browser in Windows with Firefox.

Grrrrrrrrrreat. Then, Microsoft could replace one critical vulnerability with another... /SARCASM

Mozilla/Firefox bug Allows Remote Code Execution (Windows only)

[William Terrell]

Any oringinal code that has been expanded, modified and patched more than twice is spaghetti by virtue of that very fact, and can accurately be called such without looking at it at all.

[sigSEGV]

Notice how its Microsoft only? Could it be because of the braindead shell: scheme handling of the OS? If it is a Mozilla flaw, why is Microsoft removing it in XP SP2?

[toadthesecond]

Yes, and a patch was released by Mozilla within 24 hours. How quickly do MS release patches for their flaws?

[sigSEGV]

Not to mention, a 5K patch that doesn't require a reboot. Even modem users can download this one.

[toadthesecond]

Or, an upgrade to IE6 that forces you to install outlook and media player...

[N3WBI3]

he price for integration and backwards compatability

Not if its modular code, a good code design should have clear inputs and output if you want to make a compatability layer write it seperatly and feed it into the inputs. Now I dont know if MS is doing this (it a Unix must).

[PAR35]

Mozilla/Firefox bug Allows Remote Code Execution (Windows only)

Apparently, the problem is with Windows, not Mozilla, since there only appears to be a problem with XP, and Mozilla avoids this problem when run under other operating systems, including 95/98.

[N3WBI3]

Patched in a few hours, and fixable by settings in 0 minutes. This bug is due to the fact that when Mozilla / Firefox encounter a protocal they dont know how to handel they hand it off to the OS (which is why it only affected windows), a quick setting. When is MS going to have there patch out for the latest IE bug? something about SP2?

[beckett]

....that the final stable SP2 is coming soon.

Soon is not good enough. We need it now.

[NJ_gent]

I'll take one security bug every once in a long while over doing weekly security/bug fixes on a browser that's so tightly integrated into the OS as to allow the attacker more control over my computer than me, and so inherently insecure (activeX, zones, etc) as to make it almost impossible to fix without a complete re-write. :-)

[NJ_gent]

"Not if its modular code, a good code design should have clear inputs and output if you want to make a compatability layer write it seperatly and feed it into the inputs."

I wholeheartedly agree.

"Now I dont know if MS is doing this"

Oh, I see you haven't used Windows much. You should come along and experience the 'joy' of having bug-ridden and securityless (to make a word up) software tightly integrated so that one bug in one thing affects everything else.

[zeugma]

I just knew you'd be latching on to that bug (already fixed btw) like a life preserver. I'm sure you'd never bother to mention that it only works if you couple Mozilla to a broken operating system, like, say microsoft's windows.

hahaha... don't you have sopme computers to patch or something?

[backhoe]

Crosslinked:

 Hijacked! New Browser Exploits Plague Web