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Woody and Susan,
ZDnet has picked-up on the first part of Susan’s journey: https://www.zdnet.com/article/windows-10-patch-expert-begs-microsoft-please-fix-uptick-in-botched-updates/?ftag=TRE5575fdc&bhid=20703193368173122880888901483479 . You might want to loop the author in on the “official” response of MS so the ZDnet story can be updated.
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This specific couplet is found in the fifth verse, one of the “radical” verses, contained in “This Land”. Woody Guthrie was afraid to perform these “radical” verses, particularly after the song became popular and, hence, because Woody didn’t perform them, they had become forgotten. Near the end of his life, Woody became concerned people would never hear these verses again, so he took Arlo aside and made him memorize all the lyrics to “This Land”, seven verses in all, so that the “radical” verses would not be forgotten and would be passed on to future generations. Like a good son, Arlo followed his father’s direction and has made sure, most of the time, to perform this verse while in concert or with smaller groups of people. Woody Guthrie – A Life by Joe Klein, p. 437, hardbound first edition 1980.
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If not 7-Zip, then what other program that does what 7-Zip does AND doesn’t contain the security holes about which you are concerned? (Redundant of post entered before logging in and tagged as anonymous.)
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Well, I’m a life-long Cubs fan, so I am a certified masochist. Still, I haven’t applied the patches. More to the point, it seems very clear that, in particular, Win 10 is actually a Rube Goldberg machine, which MS seems to then apply a new Rube Goldberg machine to when the previous Rube Goldberg machine doesn’t work. I think it was either Ch100 or Noel, who once commented that, in the past, it has taken a while for a new MS OS to stabilize. I think that observation is true, although I didn’t have the problems with Vista others did and I found Win 7 stable from the get-go. In any event, we’re deep enough into this to see there is likely no way out for MS and Win 10 now. Again, Ch100 and Noel know more about this stuff than I, but with this track record of not fixing things, and often times making matters worse, to ultimately really fix this seems to me to be nearly impossible.
What’s next for MS is unclear, but they’d be completely shortsighted, at this point, to end support for Win 7 in 2020.
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Reminds me of the classic joke:
A man asked for a meal in a restaurant. The waiter brought the food and put it on the table. After a moment, the man called the waiter and said:
“Waiter! Waiter! There’s a fly in my soup!”
“Please don’t speak so loudly, sir,” said the waiter, “or everyone will want one.”
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Sam and Woody,
This just in: Firefox WebExtensions may be used to identify you on the Internet .
My strategy is set: I am staying with ESR as long as I can and then assess the FF alternatives, PaleMoon, Waterfox and there seem to be additional FF branches in the works.
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I just ran Windows Update in my XP (ltsb/POS Ready 2009)/virtual machine setup. No patch was offered. As an aside, as of a few weeks ago, XP people are having trouble accessing Windows Update from either the security center or the control panel. However, XP WU can still be accessed directly from the Internet at this page: http://update.microsoft.com/windowsupdate . In fact, this will be the only way for one to view past updates, hidden updates, etc. if you are no longer able to access WU from the security center or the control panel.
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Benjamin Disraeli said: “I am prepared for the worst, but hope for the best.” What we seem to be doing, these past few days, and it is most certainly vital, is something in between these two points: We are discussing how to avoid the worst. Obviously, this is the best first line of defense and all that have contributed to this should be thanked profusely.
But, we are not spending much time on the actual topic of “being prepared for the worst”. And whether it is WannaCry/WannaCrypt, or something else down the road, I think we should be spending some time on what to do if you get hit. So, this is going to be my topic, perhaps Woody will want to start a new thread for this topic.
Back in November Woody posed the question: “What’s the best way to do a full image backup in Win7?” This discussion can be found here: https://www.askwoody.com/forums/topic/whats-the-best-way-to-do-a-full-image-backup-in-win7/ . Not surprisingly :), no consensus was reached, but a number of imaging programs were mentioned in this thread. Those new to this site, since November, should strongly consider going back to read this thread.
After that, to whatever extent you are unfamiliar with imaging your primary hard drive, and this is probably most valuable to the home user, the pros on this site will likely have their own strategies, it is time to become familiar with imaging and then starting to do it. Because if you get hit, the best/easiest solution may be as simple as going back to a previous image (depending on how old the image is, some data will be lost unless you also are running constant backups of critical files). But even if imaging isn’t the “full” solution, and you have to do a clean re-install, after that, you can then go to your latest image and get back to pretty great point, before the infection, where all/most of your programs are present, all/most of you data is present, and most important, all of your Windows updates, to that point, are present.
I am an attorney by profession, so I am not the person to tell you how to image, what program to use (I use Paragon Backup & Recovery), etc. That said, I do want to make one thing very clear to newbies to imaging: IT WILL NOT BE ENOUGH TO LEARN HOW TO IMAGE BY RUNNING YOUR IMAGING PROGRAM INSIDE OF WINDOWS FOR THE OBVIOUS REASON THAT, IF YOU GET HIT, AND ARE FROZEN BY SOMETHING, YOU CAN’T OPERATE IN WINDOWS. So, yes, by all means, start to learn how to image within Windows but make certain you have a CD/DVD/Thumb Drive, containing the imaging program, and your bios is set to boot to this device/media before launching Windows. If you don’t know how to do this, hire somebody to do it for you. And make certain you know how to image but, more important, make certain you know how to restore an image from your CD/DVD/Thumb Drive. Again, if you don’t know how to do this, or you can’t figure it out, then hire somebody to spend one or two hours to teach you how to do this.
In summation: Now, more than ever, part of preparing for the worst must include knowing how to image and actually having images available for emergencies. Personally, I keep two available (on an external hard drive that is turned off unless I am using it), just in case one image is corrupted. Some may want more images, but two seems to be the minimum. As for scheduling, you must decide for yourself the correct frequency for your situation. But, please, if you don’t know how to create images of your primary hard drive, it’s time to learn, or be taught, a new skill.
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