Why I finally dumped Internet Explorer

[Lars]

I am a late convert.  Bill-the-Gates crushed OS/2.  I worked around it.  He published version after version of bug-ridden slop and I made a living off of it.  From C to C++ through COM, COM+, .NET, whatever.  The theme is the same: low-quality, obfuscated software with a high rate of updates.  Today I finally hit the wall.
 
I got hacked.  It manifested on an e-commerce site.  Info was being sent to some Russian hole ostensibly to facilitate stealing my payment info.  The Russian site disappeared which left me with an odd error about not finding this heretofore unknown site.  Of course I was pissed.  I thought that I had exceptional computer hygene.  
 
Here is the part that sent me over.  The first thing I did was look for a rogue plug-in.  Plug-ins never got the attention that ActiveX problems did.  The UI showed nothing unusual but anything plugged-in I disabled, silently cursing the lack of removal functionality.  Still the hack remained: my pages were being parsed and edited before display.  Finally I got out p-explorer and found some POS dll running under iexplore.exe.  It was a plug-in.  Imagine my surprise.  It turns out that one can mark plug-ins so that they won't display in the IE interface (as with most other plug-in venues: VB, Office, etc.).
 
Need I ask why an interface to manage plug-ins would allow anyone to hide one from me?  Especially when 'hide' usually means simply increase the effort to manage them?  The 'advanced' option to hide it is given to the hackers and crackers and jackers and corproate weenies, but the 'advanced' option to know whats running on my own system is to be denied me?
 
I still remember the line from "Pirates of Silicon Valley" where Jobs says to Gates "our stuff is better" and he quips in reply "it won't matter".  I curse Bill the Gates.  I wouldn't piss on Bill Gates if his heart were on fire.

[Duo Maxwell]

1st step tward changing OSs completly? If an idiot like me can switch OSs anyone can.

[mobrien_12]

Hi Lars.  I'm sorry you got hacked.  I  hope you were able to cancel your credit cards in time.

Welcome to the forums and software written by people who don't want to screw you.

[H_TeXMeX_H]

I still remember the line from "Pirates of Silicon Valley" where Jobs says to Gates "our stuff is better" and he quips in reply "it won't matter".  I curse Bill the Gates.  I wouldn't piss on Bill Gates if his heart were on fire.

Sadly ... Bill was right ... that evil little bastard. Anyway, welcome.

P.S. This reminds me ... in the post where I said I got hacked on FC4 ... I was just paranoid. It seems the number of users gets stuck at 2 if you keep the terminal open long enough ... sorry, I'm a bit paranoid sometimes.

[Xeniczone]

Switching OSes is really hard you end up with a lot of cds that are useleass and a bunch of stuff unsupported that you used before. I still have a windows computer and I'm still switching to macintosh. I ahve a even biger issue swtching to mac. because all my software and hardware is renderd useless. I have so much x86 based hardware it is really hard onthe switch. I have decided I will switch all except my game computer because of the lack of games on mac. but iTunes is much better then media player. The only thing mac needs is a thing like iPlay or iGame like microsoft has direct x they should have a version of games that is similar to direct x making games easy to make in a all in one sort of thing.

[Dark_Me]

Why would all you hardware not work? Almost everything you have should work with a Mac.

[H_TeXMeX_H]

Yeah, I don't see too much of a problem ... unless you mean you got few games on Mac.

[Dark_Me]

Which isn't that true. There are quite a lot of games for Macs, just not as many as for Windows (why do people always say PC? Apples are PC's as well.)

[WMD]

The only thing mac needs is a thing like iPlay or iGame like microsoft has direct x they should have a version of games that is similar to direct x making games easy to make in a all in one sort of thing.

OpenGL + Core Audio.  There's a few other things DirectX does, although, I'm not sure how often they are used.

[Xeniczone]

Which isn't that true. There are quite a lot of games for Macs, just not as many as for Windows (why do people always say PC? Apples are PC's as well.)

I don't quite understand this either. I always thought that pc ment personal comptuer not windows when the definition changed I really don't know.

You are right there are quite a few but still there are more for windows. One of my favorite games Battlefeild 2 is only for windows and halo that is for both NFS is only windows. anyway you get my point.

OpenGL + Core Audio. There's a few other things DirectX does, although, I'm not sure how often they are used.

 Yeh but see the problem with that is directx is a all in one so in programming you just need to know direct x. Open gl is the graphics core audio is the audio etc. but that isn't all in one so you need to know each indiviual thing.

Why would all you hardware not work? Almost everything you have should work with a Mac

It isn't a matter of the hardware working in the mac the problem come to the software. Drivers and software that are required to run the hardware. Like example I have a ati radion 9200se unsupported by mac because there is no drivers for it. and then my ATI TV WONDER VE unsupported by mac because no drivers for it. Out of frustration i took my dvd decoder out of my p2 to see if I could get that g3 to at least play dvds. I was sure it would work because it didn't need drivers to work just a dvd software well i couldn't find the cable to link the decoder the the ati rage 128.

[H_TeXMeX_H]

Well, actually ... to delve into the realm of stupidity and ignorance that permeates my current locale ... most people here think:

Window$ = Computer

Really ... I'm not fucking kidding ... which is kinda sad ... :fu: stupid, ignorant people, they deserve everything they get.

[WMD]

 Yeh but see the problem with that is directx is a all in one so in programming you just need to know direct x. Open gl is the graphics core audio is the audio etc. but that isn't all in one so you need to know each indiviual thing.

I'm sure DirectX has a lot of differences between the sections.  You wouldn't use a video function to use audio, would you?

It isn't a matter of the hardware working in the mac the problem come to the software. Drivers and software that are required to run the hardware. Like example I have a ati radion 9200se unsupported by mac because there is no drivers for it. and then my ATI TV WONDER VE unsupported by mac because no drivers for it. Out of frustration i took my dvd decoder out of my p2 to see if I could get that g3 to at least play dvds. I was sure it would work because it didn't need drivers to work just a dvd software well i couldn't find the cable to link the decoder the the ati rage 128.

Which G3 Mac is this?  Most are capable of watching DVDs via accelleration provided by the video drivers.  The Rage 128 is included.  (And, Macs need different video cards because they need a different video BIOS.)

[Xeniczone]

g3 powermac 350mhz

[WMD]

Hmm.  With OS X's bundled DVD app, you should be able to watch DVDs fine with a G3/350 and a Rage 128.  What version of it do you have?  Version 3.0+ is required to work in the G3.

[Lead Head]

I could have sworn that the older macs used a different signaling system with the AGP port or something, so x86 compatible cards couldnt work