Yeah, like Peter said in his other post, if you sub to the M$ bulletins is one way. One should avoid the update site since contrary to what M$ says it does indeed scan your HD for "personally identifiable information" and DOES send personal info back to M$. Or at least it did. I can't find the URL on that right now. You can go to the update site to see what you need, then block all with your firewall and then read the page. It of course still just scanned your HD, but blocking net access after that point is still a good idea. Make a note of the updates it "CLAIMS" you need, then you can look the updates up at any search engine to find out if you really need them, and download them. (Jerks have the right click disabled there, so you can't copy and paste the update #'s in the usual manner. So, you have to highlight the update's # and text, then 'ctrl C' to copy them then you can paste them into Notepad so you won't have to type all of them). You can also click the "read more" links under each update to find out if you really need the updates (that's usually under the links of "technical details" I think or "mitigating factors" on the "read more" pages) but that still leaves you on the update page. It's ok to d'load them from an M$ site, I'd just avoid getting the downloads from the update site itself, for one; like I said it really probes your PC, and another is you'll have the physical downloads you can save from that point on to a CD for when you reformat or if you have to reinstall them, or install on other PC's, etc.
What concerns me most about the update site sending info back to M$ (other than them lying about it) is receiving UCE from parties that M$ will notify if they find their software on your HD. For example, if they find "software *AB*" on your HD they may tell "Company *AB*" about it, and other companies associated with "Company *AB*" and or "software *AB*" so they can then harass you with related UCE from scanning your HD for your email addresses. I can't recall if they actually do THAT, but I'm not going to chance it and I certainly would not put it past them. -Clint Happy New Year to all & God Bless Clint Hamilton, Owner http://OrpheusComputing.com ) ----- Original Message ----- From: "Dr. Rick Gillespie" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Am I to understand that there arre sites where one get get XP updates without going through MS? Rick -----Original Message----- From: Peter Kaulback One thing I like about 98 is that the user must allow a program to run on most occasions while with win2k and XP DCOM lets anything run for you, M$ is in the habit of building software that optimally runs perfectly for you regardless of how much you like it :( But the memory management of win98 is abhorred, same with it's security model, and it's dependence on DOS, though when the file system heads south it is much easier to deal with than when this happens on an NTFS drive. Driver control in 98 is hell while in XP it is so smooth If you are legal with all of your software then there is little to worry about with regards to Microsoft. Many software vendors have similar processes from software activation to anonymous usage reports to error reports. Remember MS is now pulling 98 out of support so if someone finds a real good exploit things could be interesting ... for 60% of the installed MS operating systems world wide, yes 98/98SE is very popular still :) Peter Kaulback In the hour of 11:12 AM 12/30/2003, Dr. Rick Gillespie spoke this: >Good morning, all. > >I was researching Win XP info thinking that I might want to upgrade from my >current Win 98 OS when I stumbled upon the following information. After >reading the following info I'm not so sure that I want XP. Much of what is >discussed is beyond my expertise but some of you might be interested. This >reeks of "Big Brother is watching". I think I'll stick to Win 98! >Rick ============= PCWorks Mailing List ================= Don't see your post? Check our posting guidelines & make sure you've followed proper posting procedures, http://pcworkers.com/rules.htm Contact list owner <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Unsubscribing and other changes: http://pcworkers.com =====================================================
