LOL. that's for sure, there's no more pristine software than microsoft. all that Linux/OSS junk... worthless.
I hate to burst the bubble of all you 'pristine' MS lovers, but I could post a link right now to a script that would irrecovably crash the computer of any IE user due to known IE vulnerabilities. It's not hard. The only thing with more security issues than IE is Windows itself. Mozilla is a good browser and so is Opera. If you insist on IE and want a multi-tabbed interface for it, the best thing out there is MyIE2 (that's what inspired avant, crazy, netcaptor etc.). I've used it for a long time now for IE surfing, and it's a really nice app. Zero spyware etc. Using it right now, matter of fact.
Speaking of crashing, for the last 2 days anytime I go to foxsports.com IE promptly shuts down with a Java VM error.
more evidence of the benefits of staying "pristine": ----- New Explorer hole could be devastating Browser users could be fooled into downloading executable files By Kieren McCarthy, Techworld.com January 28, 2004 A security hole in Microsoft Corp.âs Internet Explorer could prove devastating. Following the exposure of a vulnerability in Windows XP earlier this week, âhttp-equivâ of Malware has revealed that Explorer 6 users (and possibly users of earlier versions) could be fooled into downloading what look like safe files but are in fact whatever the author wishes them to be -- including executables. A demonstration of the hole is currently on security company Secuniaâs website and demonstrates that if you click on a link, and select âOpenâ it purports to be downloading a pdf file whereas in fact it is an HTML executable file. It is therefore only a matter of imagination in getting people to freely download what could be an extremely dangerous worm -- like, for instance, the Doom worm currently reeking havoc across the globe. However what is more worrying is that this hole could easily be combined with another Explorer spoofing problem discovered in December. The previous spoofing problem allowed Explorer users to think they were visiting one site when in fact they were visiting somewhere entirely different. The implications are not only troublesome, but Microsoftâs failure to include a fix for the problem in its January patches has led many to believe it cannot be prevented. If the same is true for this spoofing issue, then it will only be a matter of time before someone who thinks they are visiting one website and downloading one file will in fact be visiting somewhere entirely different and downloading whatever that siteâs owner decides. We also have reason to believe there is no fix. It may be that todayâs flaw is identical to one found nearly three years ago by Georgi Guninski in which double-clicking a link in Explorer led you to believe you were downloading a text file but were in fact downloading a .hta file. In both cases, the con is created by embedding a CLSID into a file name. CLSID is a long numerical string that relates to a particular COM (Component Object Model) object. COM objects are what Microsoft uses to build applications on the Internet. By doing so, any type of file can be made to look like a âtrustedâ file type i.e. text or pdf. Guninski informed Microsoft in April 2001. The fact that the issue has been born afresh suggests rather heavily that the software giant has no way of preventing this from happening.