OPC - Don't install Internet Explorer 6!

To be sure, that might be some of it. But, I've had good luck leaving them among folks with niether computer skills or preference regarding OS. Including one place that was "just shutting it off" at the end of the day until they asked what was all that crap was that scrolled by when they started up. Installation these days doesn't afford much opportunity to add skill value, the recent box I did at work autodetected everything and the only thing I did "by hand" was the disk partitioning as I don't like how the automatic Druid uses extended partitions. I actually kinda miss participating. Of course this was an old "obsolete" P2 266 with no sound or anything and a cheap 2mb Trident clone video card. That stuff should be autodetected by now. If fact, all the work I've done is on the TWiki and Apache configs. The box is stock.

Regards

cww

>This week the Bagle worm raised the bar with an attachment-less version.
>Last week we reported Bagle.M/N was using polymorphic virus techniques to
>infect executables on a victim's hard drive. The latest versions, Bagle.O,
>Bagle.P, Bagle.Q now use the Internet Explorer Object Tag vulnerability to
>infect users systems running un-patched versions of Internet Explorer.
>Using an exploit described in Microsoft's security update MS03-040, the
worm can
>automatically run and install itself when a user opens an e-mail.

you must have been missing warnings like this all along... and this is just one of so so soooo many... every you go to a site on IE you are exposing yourself to someone running malicious code or god knows what else... why do you think it's been officially renamed Internet Exploder 6??

No not at all. We just run patched versions. The report refers to unpatched versions.

Regards

Peter Whalley
Magenta Communications Pty Ltd
Melbourne, VIC, Australia
e-mail: peter*no-spam*@magentacomm.com.au
delete *no-spam* before sending

Firefox and Thunderbird are excellent! I believe they just might be the breakthrough apps that will propel OpenSource into the mainstream.

Hey, and as far as avoiding using IE for the Windows Update, easy, dump Windows!

I didn't think I'd be saying this so soon, but I do believe Linux is getting very close to being a viable replacement for Windows for the average user. Check out Linspire, sure it's not the choice you'd make if you're a Linux / GNU / FreeBSD... geek, but for an average Windows user that is comfortable installing software from one click installation set-ups, it's a very good "bridge" into Linux without the steep learning curve; i.e. it gets you into the ballpark, and once there, you can improve your skills and move into other distros. In fact, you can get a fully pre-configured Linspire system for under $500 with working modem at Staples, WalMart, Sub300, etc. There are laptops pre configured with Linspire too. No excuses now to not go Linux.

Also there are low cost development apps. For example, RealBASIC - Let's you write VisualBasic like code in a graphical IDE/RAD (even converts VB projects) on Windows or Mac, and the target application is one file that can be compiled to run on Windows, Linux or Mac. Write once, deploy on all three platforms.

Also; Open Office replaces Word, Excel and PowerPoint; Nvu replaces FrontPage. The only thing missing from the Office Suite is Access, and I think OpenOffice 2.0 will have something called "Base" which will address that too.

Rick Scott