http://news.com.com/2100-1016_3-5590501.html
"Microsoft is alerting customers that it will soon start delivering Windows XP Service Pack 2 to all customers using Automatic Update, whether they want it or not."
Huh? How can they force me to go SP2?
Only if I let Automatic Update do what it wants, right?
In Manual Update I should be safe, I hope. I don't want SP2, I prefer SP1.
> Automatic Update
I disabled it long ago, lol
There's still the issue of WindowsUpdate. You'll have to download and install patches manually.
Just give up! We put up with so many other annoyances on our computer, what difference will installing SP2 make?
The problem with annoyances is that they are annoying.
It means I'll have to spend days removing all the new crap.
x I dont need Yet Another Crappy Firewall.
x I dont need to have to learn and hunt for all the new security holes.
x What with this buffer overflow constant checking thningamaboob? First it's a security risk itself, and second I suspect it will slow down the computer, not to mention Yet Another Program In Memory. They should fix their orginal code, not slapping a huge bandaid on the whole blackbox.
x I dont need to have Yet Another Are You Really Sure You Want To Do That? on every executable.
x I dont need SP2 install to mess up my settings.
There is nothing in SP2 that I want, so why should I want it?
> There is nothing in SP2 that I want, so why should I want it?
/ 冫─' ~ ￣´^-
/ ／ヽ丿彡彡彡彡彡ヽヽ
| 丿 Ｍr.Gatese ミ
| 彡 ＿＿ ＿＿ ﾐ/
ゝ_/／|-=・=-|⌒|-=・=-|ヽゞ
|tゝ ＼／_ ＼／ | | ＿＿＿＿＿＿＿＿＿＿
ヽﾉ ／＼_／＼ |ﾉ ／
ゝ /ヽ───‐ヽ / / That's a pretty silly
/|ヽ ヽ──' / ＜ question, IMHO!
/ | ＼ ￣ ／ ＼
／ ヽ ‐- ￣￣￣￣￣￣￣￣
> There is nothing in SP2 that I want, so why should I want it?
Update-starved Windows NT admins would choke it down like so much ambrosia.
In light of all the product end-of-life'ing and Longhorn delays, M$ is obliged to give the masses some indication of constructive activity... Even if said activity turns out to be fruitless, distracting, and oppressive.
Yeah. That "end-of-life" shtick is a scam. All the software I use is old.
ACDSee? I stuck with 3.1. Later versions are too bloated IMO.
PaintShopPro? I went back to 5.0. I feel that the newest version is unintuitive.
Firefox? I'm still with 1.0 Pre-Release. I have taken care of the security issues myself already using about:config.
Tho, Firefox is evolving fast, so I may upgrade when/if they include the optimized, faster Mozilla's Gecko code back into Firefox. Or if they fix that failed-to-cache-some-image bug (sometimes the image doesn't go into the cache and the browser has to redownload it. Annoying when the image is very large. Tho it may be because I "only" have 512mb RAM and it's XP.)
I usually go along with upgrades except in cases where the UI is altered in an utterly disruptive way and there's no way to get the old behaviour back, or in cases where I not only don't need, but don't want what the upgrade offers. Microsoft's been doing that an awful lot since the time of Windows 2000.
I feel secure knowing that Linux/OSS/free software has a lot fewer irreversibly disruptive changes. Good thing, too, since it's rarely straightforward to use old software with new libraries and vice versa. I suppose compatibility with really old versions of programs is one of Window's virtues.
> compatibility with really old versions of programs
Windows isn't all that good at that either, really...
It's pretty good. Programs written for Windows 3.1 still work fairly well, unless they try to access things which a user doesn't have access to, and even then they should work if run as administrator. My Windows 2000 machine happily ran some hardware-banging 4k demo in a .com file not too long ago. Backwards compatibility IS a big priority at Microsoft, because of all their corporate customers who run custom-written software that may be ten years old and can't be replaced.
This also means that Windows is a huge pile of layers built upon layers of various APIs and kludges. Makes it quite a mess to program for.
>I may upgrade when/if they include the optimized, faster Mozilla's Gecko code back into Firefox.
i'm using a firefox tinderbox build, and it's a huge improvement over 1.0, however...
>Or if they fix that failed-to-cache-some-image bug
that bug still hasn't been fixed, and it's really annoying since i'm on a crappy dialup connection...
What's Tinderbox?
http://www.mozilla.org/tinderbox.html
is a development tool, used to track changes and who's to be held accountable for them when suddenly tombstones from the skies etc.
http://tinderbox.mozilla.org/showbuilds.cgi?tree=Firefox
"tinderbox build" refers to the fact that it's a (hourly snapshot) development build that incorporates the latest changes, with all the resulting (dis-)advantages.