Jeff Rivett has worked with and written about computers since the early 1980s. His first computer was an Apple II+, built by his father and heavily customized. Jeff's writing appeared in Computist Magazine in the 1980s, and he created and sold a game utility (Ultimaker 2, reviewed in the December 1983 Washington Apple Pi Journal) to international markets during the same period. Proceeds from writing, software sales, and contract programming gigs paid his way through university, earning him a Bachelor of Science (Computer Science) degree at UWO. Jeff went on to work as a programmer, sysadmin, and manager in various industries. There's more on the About page, and on the Jeff Rivett Consulting site.
Lifecycle is the term used by Microsoft when presenting the various dates related to the sales and support of their products. The Windows Lifecycle fact sheet provides all the relevant dates for all versions of Windows.
The lifecycle for Windows 7 was recently updated by Microsoft, making October 30, 2014 the last date on which new PCs can be sold with Windows 7. Shortly afterward, that date was removed, and it now appears as ‘To be determined.’ Someone at Microsoft apparently saw the latest sales figures for Windows, and realized that given Windows 7’s growth, stopping sales of that O/S in 2014 would significantly reduce overall revenue. Presumably a new cutoff date for OEM sales of Windows 7 is being debated internally, but I have no doubt that the October 30, 2014 date will eventually be pushed back.
As usual, Flash in Internet Explorer 10 on Windows 8.x will be updated separately, by way of Microsoft Update. Google Chrome will also get the new version of Flash via its own internal update mechanism.
Yesterday being the second Tuesday in December, another batch of updates was made available by Microsoft. This month there are eleven updates, affecting Windows, Internet Explorer, GDI+ and various server software. Five of the updates are flagged as Critical.
The official Security Bulletin Summary has all the technical details. As usual, there’s a somewhat less technical explanation of this month’s updates over at the MSRC blog. The MSRC post is worth reading, if only for the explanation of the difference between a security advisory and a security bulletin. The short version is that a bulletin is always associated with an update, whereas an advisory usually isn’t.
Those stories make our ISP (Shaw) look pretty good by comparison with Comcast, Verizon, and Time Warner. Still, our WAN connection has been up and down during the last few days, and I’m still waiting for a service call. It’s up now, but it’s been down for a total of 34 hours in the last week.
People are still staying away from Windows 8, according to the latest sales figures. When compared with historical Windows 7 sales, Windows 8 is selling extremely poorly.
To make matters worse for Microsoft, Windows 7’s current growth rate exceeds that of Windows 8. In other words, Windows 7 sales are increasing faster than Windows 8’s. That problem may actually get worse before it gets better – if it ever does get better – as we move closer to the end of support for Windows XP on April 8, 2014. Standard advice to anyone upgrading from Windows XP is to go with Windows 7: a solid operating system that will continue to receive support until 2020.
Microsoft is obviously aware that Windows 8 is starting to look like Windows Vista or Windows Me: versions of Windows heavily criticized and properly avoided where possible. And as you might expect, they are starting to look at backtracking on some of the most-despised features of Windows 8. Windows 8.1 brought back the Start button, but without the Start menu, that move was mostly pointless. But the next version of Windows may bring back the Start menu.
Christmas is coming, and along with it, holiday-themed scams, spam and malware. It’s a time for families to come together and celebrate, but it’s also a time to be wary and vigilant.
CERT has provided a handy set of guidelines and tools you can use to avoid being the recipient of one of these unwanted ‘gifts’.
Version 18.0.1284.49 of the Webkit-based (and sadly deficient) Opera web browser improves stability and adds a few new features, including camera/microphone support, the ability to move tabs between windows, custom themes, and custom search engines.
Another stealth release of Firefox happened on November 15. Version 25.0.1 apparently fixes some security vulnerabilities and other bugs. With the total lack of any kind of announcement for this release, and the way the release notes include changes in previous releases, it’s difficult to be certain what’s new in this version. For instance, the version 25.0.1 release notes point to the ‘Known vulnerabilities‘ page, but there’s nothing listed there that’s specific to version 25.0.1. The release notes for 25.0.1 also point to Bugzilla (‘complete list of changes‘), but the list of fixed bugs shows everything for version 25, and nothing specific to version 25.0.1. What a mess.
boot13