Link Microsoft writes an extension to Firefox that reduces how secure Firefox is, while making it difficult to uninstall. Then they install it without even asking the user. What the fuck ?
...ok? Is my eyesight just bad? Doesn't really look very greyed-out to me. Also, I'm not sure how this differs from Java plug-ins. I start to wonder how much of this article is just paranoia... Java/.NET are fairly different from ActiveX.
Looks like some update changed it, as it was greyed out on my machine. Still doesn't excuse it being installed without permission.
Wonder if it's something to do with Windows 7 ... I would agree that it would be preferable to at least ask the user if they wanted to add the extension. You don't usually expect MS to be playing around with Firefox (... sort of. More MS employees than you'd think use it).
It was probably Microsoft being completely sloppy and it was just broken. Some dude blogging that everything they do is intentional doesn't really convince me that they know what they're doing over there. I'd believe stupidity over malice. And what's wierd is I just re-installed Windows Vista a few weeks ago, and it ASKED ME if I wanted to install Microsoft .NET framework? How is it that it's not asking anyone else? lol
The assistant plug-in, or the .NET framework itself? The latter isn't so different from installing a new version of DirectX - it's the former that has people worked up. (Apparently. ) Generally anything that gets written at Microsoft would have been asked for by some manager or other, yes ... but that doesn't necessarily mean they had any secret agenda behind it (considering this is an add-on for a third-party browser the answer is most likely a big fat "no" - I'm kind of surprised they even bothered to put it in an automatic update since they didn't for the WMP plug-in). It is conceivable that someone forgot to ask themselves "but are the users going to appreciate automatically installing this without even asking?". The difficult-to-uninstall issue seems just an inevitable byproduct of the fact that it's installed on a per-machine scope, not per-user. It could be that if you have admin access you can still remove it (hence my situation), though. That or I only have Firefox installed for a single user. I can't quite remember the details any more.
greyed out on mine, but I can disable it... that is messed up... I have admin access. MS has no business installing "addons" to firefox... if we want the addon, we will go out and get it... that is pure bullshit...
I just installed Firefox, and my uninstall button is not greyed out, but what I don't understand is how it showed up there immediately after installing Firefox without doing anything else?! I'll have to agree that is pretty damn lame. Does Windows just inject programs with it's own shit during installation? Yikes. Fuckin' Microsoft.
sigh dont' you start mr Filter... While I like Mac's they are still more expensive, and I am always seeing issues with people getting games or other software they want to use to work. (And I am typing this on a linux work station, so I am not a MS fanboy...)
You are asked to install .NET. But if you have installed it, this extension comes down in one of the critical .NET updates. Apparently if an extension is referenced in the registry, then Firefox will automatically load it without asking the user. So Mozilla have to take some of the blame for the uninstaller being broken. But that doesn't remove any blame from Microsoft as they either didn't test the uninstaller, or decided that a broken uninstall wasn't an issue.
I agree they are a bit pricey. As for games, I don't have a single game on OSX. Everything is installed through bootcamp and I've had very few problems that way. Of course, that makes you have to have access to a windows OS disc. Regardless, pretty shitty of microsoft. I'm droppin by my parents this weekend. I'll see if what it looks like on their PC.
I found this extension on my Firefox as well. Tried uninstalling it, and it said it did, but when I restart Firefox it is still there. So then I tried disabling it, and restarted it. Looked again and saw it was greyed out. Then I uninstalled it. Finally, it is gone. I am running Windows 7.
i enjoy my mac, but it being a laptop means external mice don't have the correct acceleration drivers. but bootcamp fixes that should i decide to put windows on there again (i hate the hard drive location restrictions of windows via bootcamp though)
I'm not sure what you mean about the location restrictions. Do you mean the naming of the drive itself? The biggest annoyance factor for me is ejecting the windows partition every time I boot up into osx. I would like to keep it off permanently since there's no use for it in OSX since they use different partition formatting (ntfs, ext3, ext4, etc).
maybe it was the version of xp i used, but it wouldn't boot unless i put it's partition at the first sector of the hard drive