IE no more on OSX... (bloatware related)
Swayze
14,705 Posts
Who stills uses IE anyway? End nears for Mac version of IEMac usersThe minority of Mac users on IE will need to switchMicrosoft has advised Mac users of Internet Explorer (IE) to switch to rival browsers such as Apple's Safari.The advice came as the software giant formally announced the end of IE for Apple Macs.Microsoft initially said it had stopped work on the browser in June.No more security updates will be provided as from the New Year. The browser itself will be removed from Microsoft's Mactopia site and no longer be available for download.Alternative optionsThe current version of IE for Macs is effectively three years old, making it an outdated browser compared to its Windows equivalent.In June, Microsoft said it had stopped work on developing the browser.It has now put the final nails into the coffin, announcing that it will not provide any further security updates as from the end of the year.The browser itself will be removed from Microsoft Mactopia download site from 31 January.On its website Microsoft recommended that Mac users switch to "more recent web browsing technologies such as Apple's Safari".Other alternative browsers include Firefox and Opera.The only potential problem for Mac users could be with websites designed to work exclusively with IE.In June, web-testing firm SciVisum surveyed 100 UK websites and found that one in 10 of them failed to work properly on the Firefox browser.***[/b]*Web admins, stop writing pages strictly tested with IE.
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Holes found in PC virus defences[/b]
Computer security firms are in a cat and mouse game with virus writers
People using Windows computers were unprotected against new viruses for 56 days this year, research shows.
Security firm Ironport counted how long it took anti-virus firms to produce an antidote following the first appearance of a malicious program.
It found that, on average, anti-virus firms took 17 hours to respond to new threats.
Some viruses took far longer to tackle and in one case specific defences took more than three weeks to appear.
Data delay
Ironport gathered its statistics from its monitoring system that looks at incoming and outgoing e-mail traffic for more than 100,000 organisations.
Matt Peachey, Ironport's Northern Europe regional director, said that watching this flow of traffic helps it spot outbreaks as they start because all the messages carrying a virus tend to be of a similar size.
For instance, he said, a sudden influx of messages bearing zip file attachments 60-100 kilobytes in size could signify that a novel virus is starting to spread.
"Something like that really stands out from normal internet traffic," said Mr Peachey.
Sometimes updates to anti-virus programs for new viruses appear quickly, he said, but in many cases users are left vulnerable for many hours.
For instance, said Mr Peachey, the first antidotes for the Sober virus appeared, on average, 16 hours and 14 minutes after a new variant was first seen online.
Palyh virus in e-mail inbox, BBC
Many viruses are spammed out to potential victims
By contrast the Bagle and Mytob variants took far longer to tackle. In total, users went unprotected against Bagle variants for 79 hours and 25 minutes.
Mytob took far longer - 496 hours and 16 minutes for protection against all variants to appear.
The 56-day total emerges when all the time taken by anti-virus firms to produce specific defences for viruses is added together.
One factor in the data is the sheer number of variants in some virus families. Many virus-writing groups attempt to overwhelm anti-virus defences by pumping out versions that differ only slightly from each other.
The more variants in a virus family, the longer total time it will take firms to react. At last count there were more than 100 variants of the Mytob virus.
Graham Clulely, senior technology consultant at security firm Sophos, said anti-virus companies did not solely rely on specific signatures to combat virus threats.
Many anti-virus scanners use heuristics and fingerprinting type techniques that can identify malicious programs before they are well-known and named.
"These know a piece of code is from the same family," he said. "We can see the relationship even though it has not been seen before."
"They are so similar to existing variations that we are going to block it," he said.
As a web developer, it's hellish explaining to people why IE for OSX is basically guaranteed to NOT work with the latest code while IE for Windows is the standard.
When you start up IE on OSX it still says "1995 - 2001"
any self-respecting mac user still have IE installed on their mac ?!?!?!?!
I must say tho. Firefox 1.5 is pretty damn good. It's almost made me a full time convert.
I mean, what else are you gonna use to dl firefox/camino/opera packages?
safari?... it comes with osx
I never ever ever use Safari, so I guess I forgot about it.