[rescue] (Offtopic) X-Message-Flag fun for Outlook users

[Charles Shannon Hendrix]

Wed, 02 Aug 2006 @ 16:34 -0400, Ethan O'Toole said:

> Yea, Macros in documents were a bad idea. But I don't believe those
> viruses are widespread today. Perhaps I am wrong, but coming from a UNIX
> engineering house where management wanted modern Exchange, I never once
> saw any of this. Perhaps Trend Micro's small business virus scanner was
> cleaning it all up... I'm not sure.

Get out from under that rock boy!

Office macros are still a prime target, mainly because other malicious
code can use them to harvest information.  Same for Exchange: it is also
a frequent data gathering target, along with their LDAP server.

> But it has been a while since we had the widespread devestating exploits
> like winnuke, or the Microsoft web server worms, that effected the
> majority of systems on the intarweb.

Yeah, probably been almost 2 weeks...

> I use pine, and there have been similiar exploits for it. 

Please list the exploit in Pine that is even 1% as bad or powerful as
the exploits in Office alone.

> Being forced to use outlook, I just clicked the box that defaulted it to
> plaintext. I still had issues with it forcing me to top post though.

I did too, but unfortunately it has a habit of resetting the value.

A lot of Microsoft upgrades screw with your configuration settings.  I
really hate that.

It is worth noting that Firefox does this on all platforms too, though
only a couple of settings that I've found so far.  The most annoying is
how a reinstall jumps to the WWW without asking for permission, and how
it resets middle-button paste without asking.

> As far as Unix versus Microsoft, I tried to battle a guy in a debate that
> UNIX is easier to secure in an enterprise, and lost. I think he might have
> been right, that a Microsoft environment (to someone knowledgable in that
> environment) can be secured.

Absolutely.  Just turn the machine off.

> I'm not backing it fully, but there are plenty of environments running
> Windows (and I've been in them), where the common users are BEAT DOWN.
> They can't do whatever they want with the computers, and this helps
> maintain control.

Sure it helps... but use another platform and most of that won't be
necessary.

> UNIX platforms and open source software is sort of getting there, but the
> business apps that the corporations use, and the ease of use, just isn't
> there. People were too busy making window managers instead of email with
> integreated calendaring, scheduling, project management, document
> management.

Actually, it is the business apps that people *THINK* they need that
aren't there.

UNIX will do *EVERYTHING* a company needs, including a lot that Windows
won't, but the prevailing mythology says otherwise.

There is a lot of nice software on Windows that people *WANT*, but
rarely do they actually *NEED* it.

> It's sad that as bad as Microsoft is, it's really that far ahead of the
> open source stuff in many regards.

It's also sad that they are so far behind open source in many regards,
and that includes open source code that is over 15 years old now.

> Bash it all you want, it will be a while before the corporations can leave
> it.

They never had to go there in the first place.

> Microsoft Sharepoint... show me an open source alternative? None. You can
> buy Livelink and all of that, but your looking at serious engineering and
> programming costs.

Show me a true reason anyone must have it.

> Exchange? Show me a good open source alternative. Even some of the linux
> ones like Scalix required IE as the web browser when I last saw it. Yes
> you can get iCal and IMAP and plugins and all this stuff, but it isn't
> quite as integreated.

Show me a true reason anyone must have it.

> My biggest gripe with Microsoft products is that it isn't controlled by
> .ini files. If it was simple text based files and text driven logs and
> everything, with GUI wrappers, I'd be happier.

Well, unfortunately a lot of idiots are pushing UNIX software that way
as well.

Like: Gnome configuration, and the increasing use of garbage XML
configuration files.

-- 
shannon "AT" widomaker.com -- ["Trouble rather the tiger in his lair than
the sage amongst his books For to you kingdoms and their armies are mighty
and enduring,  but to him they are but toys of the moment to be overturned
by the flicking of a finger." - anonymous     ]