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clivel:
Anyone who is still using Windows XP needs to make sure that they no longer use Internet Explorer. A critical security vulnerability that affects IE versions 6 to 11 has been discovered. It is serious enough for the US Government's cyber-security agency to issue a warning.

Although this vulnerability affects all versions of Windows, Microsoft will issue patches for Windows 7 & 8 in due course but not for XP. In the interim users of 7 or 8 should probably rely on Firefox or Chrome.

However XP users will be permanently left high and dry, so for now XP users will need to permanently drop IE in favour of either Firefox or Chrome, or better yet switch to Linux, preferably sooner rather than later, because as more and more security holes arise XP will become completely unsafe to use on any computer with an Internet connection.
Clive

BaronJ:
Hello Clive,

I've been telling Windows users that IE is unsafe for a long time and that they should change to another web browser. Indeed when the EU forced M$ to give users the ability to choose to download and use a different browser, I said that it was a good idea.

clivel:
Hi Baron,
It is not only IE's vulnerability that is an issue, but also a completely cavalier attitude to anything approaching standards; as a web developer IE was the bane of my life.
Things that would work as expected using Opera, Firefox, or Chrome would fail on IE, but not in a consistent manner, because the different versions of IE are not compatible with each other either. So pages often require a number of browser specific code sections - a few sections for the different versions of IE and then one section for almost everything else. And what complicates it even more is that you can only install one version of IE per computer so testing the various IE workarounds requires a number of computers or virtual machines. It is a complete nightmare.

On my last web project I estimated that my client could have saved at least 25% if not more of the development costs by not providing IE support but unfortunately MS having rammed IE down everyone's throats made ignoring IE an impossibility if my client wanted to stay in business.
IE should have been put out of its misery years ago. I cheered when the EU forced MS to provide choice, I only wished that they had of forced them to unbundle it completely.
Clive

garym:
I said I would post my experience of installing Linux Mint as a dual-boot with Windows XP so here goes:

I read a few sites documenting how to do it. This was the most useful.

http://www.freeyourselffrommicrosoftandthensa.org/06-dual-boot/6-3-dual-boot-linux-mint-with-windows-xp-or-windows-7

I have a desktop system with one 500 GB hard disk. It was partitioned into two primary partitions, one of 50GB which was the C drive and the rest (450GB) as the E drive. To install Linux I needed to create some unallocated space on the disk. First I made sure I had everything on E backed up to an external USB hard disk.

I also used Macrium Reflect http://www.macrium.com/reflectfree.aspx to make an image of the C drive again onto the external disk and a also rescue CD that I could boot from if things went wrong (I said I was cautious).

Download Gparted Live from http://gparted.org/download.php

The link to click is "Download gparted-live-0.18.0-2-i486.iso" Beware of all the Download buttons on the page which are adverts for other software.

Burn image to CD.

Then I used a Gparted Live CD to boot from and shrink the second partition from 450GB to 250GB. This left me 200GB of unallocated space that could be used for the Linux install. I booted back into Windows to check that the resize hadn't corrupted the disk.

Next I booted from the Linux Mint DVD and after it has loaded the desktop double-click the 'Install' icon. When I got to the screen asking how I wanted to install it I selected 'Something else' at the bottom of the list. This allowed me to choose the partitions that will be created. I created four logical partitions as follows:

name size partition type
Boot /boot 1GB /dev/sda5 ext4
Root / 30GB /dev/sda6 ext4
Swap 2GB /dev/sda7 swap
Home /home 167GB /dev/sda8 ext4

I chose to place the bootloader on sda, which means that Linux's GRUB boot manager will replace the Windows one. From the reading I'd done this seems more reliable and easier than modifying the Windows boot manager to dual-boot.

When the installation has finished it asks you to reboot. Take out the Linux DVD and reboot.

Now I've just got to learn to use it.

Hope someone finds this useful. There are many pitfalls so don't expect me to sort them out for you.

Gary

BaronJ:

--- Quote from: clivel on April 29, 2014, 07:46:50 PM ---Hi Baron,

IE should have been put out of its misery years ago. I cheered when the EU forced MS to provide choice, I only wished that they had of forced them to unbundle it completely.

Clive

--- End quote ---

Hi Clive,
I couldn't agree more ! The excuse or reason M$ gave for not unbundling was that it was the mechanism used to keep Windows up to date. The browser choice was simply a sop to satisfy the EU. As far as I am aware it only happened in the EU and not in countries outside.

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