0ptional
Don't Trust Your Friends with Your Decanter
- Joined
- Feb 22, 2003
- Messages
- 5,594
Kill it.
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Time To Kill ActiveX?
- Thread starter HardOCP News
- Start date
I agree. I am a web dev and personally never had to implement active x. lucky me. But, I work at a major hospital/university and we use abotu 80% of those apps Azhar mentioned on our intranet. Actually we use a couple more. My company is lazy as shit and still uses ie6 and norton 9, so gettin rid of active x for us would cost in the hundreds of thousands of dollars and disrupt ultra-critical medical systems for way too long.
Thank corporate america, active x isn't going anywhere. Plus like most said, dont install it and if you do, your stupid ass deserves whatever happened.
The guys that knocking ms office hasn't really know office. Word is Word processor the basic functionality is there in Open Office, but there are many advance features that people don't ever deal with or care with. 90% of the features aren't even used w/ normal people because they don't know how or care about it. At any rate, yes Open office may be an alternative and a free alternative but it does not work for everyone as some may think. We have a company that's still using Office 97, and there's many Access database that uses VBA and import and exports data from access to excel, and or word.
As far as ActiveX, as I said earlier, one that really should answer that is a WebDev who who's going to have problem w/ it.
As far as ActiveX, as I said earlier, one that really should answer that is a WebDev who who's going to have problem w/ it.
Guess the same holds true for windows. If you use it your stupid ass deserves what happens.
Funny is how most of you are dumb enough to think that activex is the only cause of problems on the web. Funny though how half the boxes I had to clean malware and viruses off of last year had firefox as the default broswer with a few of them actually having IE uninstalled off the box. I wonder how they got malware and viruses with firefox because it is impossible according to you guys.
Let me add that I see nothing wrong with people moving to another solution for new products. However killing it off to force everyone to redo all their old work in a new solution and forcing everyone to buy new software, in addition to killing off IIS, .net framework, visual studio and all the other stuff that relays on it is a little on the idiotic side.
ultra-critical medical systems and active X dont belong in the same sentience whos idea was that they need to be shot
Agreed. ActiveX was born in an age where internet wasn't as mature and as widely used as it is now. We didn't have a boat load of asshats writing malicous code, it was and is a good idea but as with most code written back then our current threats weren't taken into account. The problem is that folks relied on it so heavily that it's hard to go back and redo it all. I certainly don't have a solution to this problem, it seems that any approach to solving the "How do we run code that interacts with the computer while in a browser session" problem will some sort of security problem. It all comes back to users being more responsible and scrutinizing the software that gets installed.
I haven't tried to install malicious content in Vista yet but IE is supposedly sandboxed by default and most operations are virtualized when running in Protected Mode.
My $.0225.
Agreed. ActiveX was born in an age where the internet wasn't as mature and widely used as it is now. We didn't have a boat load of asshats writing malicous code, it was and is a good idea but as with most code written back then our current threats weren't taken into account. The problem is that folks relied on it so heavily that it's hard to go back and redo it all. I certainly don't have a solution to this problem, but it seems to me that any approach to solving the "How do we run code that interacts with the computer while in a browser session" problem will pose some sort of security problem. It all comes back to users being more responsible and scrutinizing the software that gets installed.
I haven't tried to install malicious content in Vista yet but IE is supposedly sandboxed by default and most operations are virtualized when running in Protected Mode.
My $.0225.
Reading comprehension is something you should look into improving. When I mentioned, "install it" I was referring to the individual activex applets that ask you to install for whatever reason. ie. windows update. People have already mentioned this also, so trying to compare that to installing windows is just stupid.
OTOH, if some idiot installs windows and gets a virus that makes him lose all his data, then yes he is an idiot. You have to ask the question, how did he get infected? It's almost like blaming sex for contracting the High 5(HIV).
"Only" and "Biggest" are two very different concepts, but I see your point. I think most people's hatred for ActiveX comes from the fact that it's original programmers ignored existing international standards which served the same purpose. These standards are still the international standards which are used by every other browser today. In fact, most these standards are not even allowed by IE until version 8 comes out.
First of all, the notion that IE had been uninstalled on these PCs nearly removes any credibility from your anecdotal experience. This is because IE cannot be uninstalled. Bring up an explorer window and type in a web address in the location bar. You'll see what I mean.
Second of all, you either cleaned only 2 PCs, they all had Microshaft Office installed and used Winblows Media Player to watch Porn with "special" codecs, or you have the worst user base in existence.
But seriously, those users probably assumed that they could say yes to everything because they weren't using IE. This is a common mistake usually perpetrated by users who have been burned multiple times for doing the same in IE before downloading Firefox.
You forgot Outlook Express. At least at worthless/swiss cheezy as the others you mentioned.
The online university I work for also uses all of the above apps, as well as one in-house app that interfaces with AD through ActiveX. Until another alternative that is more secure and robust is introduced, ActiveX will remain.
Indeed. ActiveX is quite safe if you implement them properly. If you want to host a Sharepoint, make it SSL. Ditto Webmail and everything else. Lock up the server tight so it's virtually unhackable and you would still be able to grant user access via SSL and not worry about keeping things wide open.
Secure everything, and ActiveX won't be a problem
Secure everything, and ActiveX won't be a problem
uhm, I guess most of you don't realize all of those fancy ajaxy web sites use activex objects as the primary way of talking back and forth from the web servers (google, yahoo, etc). Without it, you will be living in the internet circa 1999.
You cant just get rid of activex, its like saying get rid of the tab key because not everyone uses it the same way.
You cant just get rid of activex, its like saying get rid of the tab key because not everyone uses it the same way.
It seems many of you do not realize what getting rid of ActiveX means. Getting rid of it means stopping further development on it and probably not adding it into later versions of things such as IE or what have you. It does not mean that MS is going to rip ActiveX out of every current installation of their software. Anything which currently has ActiveX will always have it and your apps will continue to work as long as the browser or whatever supports ActiveX.
Killing it off doesn't even mean EOL at this point. Security updates and such would still be done for ActiveX since it's in so much of MS's software.
Personally, I think it should die. There are other ways to do the same things. Many people get around just fine without using IE as their browser and since IE is the only browser with ActiveX the problems for average users will be minimal. In the corporate world, these places will have a lot of time to buy or develop apps which don't use ActiveX. The expense will not be as great as some people seem to think.
Killing it off doesn't even mean EOL at this point. Security updates and such would still be done for ActiveX since it's in so much of MS's software.
Personally, I think it should die. There are other ways to do the same things. Many people get around just fine without using IE as their browser and since IE is the only browser with ActiveX the problems for average users will be minimal. In the corporate world, these places will have a lot of time to buy or develop apps which don't use ActiveX. The expense will not be as great as some people seem to think.
mastertard
Limp Gawd
- Joined
- Mar 25, 2007
- Messages
- 140
Oh man... you know how they say South Korea is an internet heaven?
Think again!
THE VAST MAJORITY OF WEBSITES (almost all government, and all financial related websites for sure) require either some type of ActiveX download or at least Internet Explorer.
Another thing that pisses me off is how many online games here are operated... instead of having a direct shortcut to a game (for example, to an .exe), instead you get a link to a website (which requires IE, of course) which requires you to login before you play... I would assume then the game would then launch through some ActiveX control... and I can't verify that because to be able to login, you need to register, and to register, you need a national registration number which is almost the equivalent of a social security number. Foreigners can't get 'em
Internet speeds here are fast though, but man, I sure hope that they get rid of ActiveX over here, and free up the ability to choose your browser instead of being forced to use IE.
It has something to do with the Clinton administration not letting 128-bit SSL security standards to be released to the world, so South Korea was impatient and developed their own which ended up having users require ActiveX for IE or a Netscape plugin... we all know what happened to Netscape.
Think again!
THE VAST MAJORITY OF WEBSITES (almost all government, and all financial related websites for sure) require either some type of ActiveX download or at least Internet Explorer.
Another thing that pisses me off is how many online games here are operated... instead of having a direct shortcut to a game (for example, to an .exe), instead you get a link to a website (which requires IE, of course) which requires you to login before you play... I would assume then the game would then launch through some ActiveX control... and I can't verify that because to be able to login, you need to register, and to register, you need a national registration number which is almost the equivalent of a social security number. Foreigners can't get 'em
Internet speeds here are fast though, but man, I sure hope that they get rid of ActiveX over here, and free up the ability to choose your browser instead of being forced to use IE.
It has something to do with the Clinton administration not letting 128-bit SSL security standards to be released to the world, so South Korea was impatient and developed their own which ended up having users require ActiveX for IE or a Netscape plugin... we all know what happened to Netscape.
I'm not sure about that. I *think* IE's default is (or was) to allow all Active X.
In either case, the only time I use IE is for windows updates. Other than that I'm all Opera.
Not so. The point of ActiveX is to prompt you prior to taking action. The only thing that takes action without bothering you are sites in your Trusted Sites list. In medium security setting (which is default), ActiveX's yellow bar across the top is set to prompt you first.