[nzlug] Observation on installing firefox to WinXP (SP3)

[Mark Foster]

>> I've never seen it before but I have to say your report gives me yet
>> more pause on the Windows front... talk about anti competitive...
>
> I can only say "what?!" to that; this has been a feature of Windows for
> years under any security settings.
>
> When you download a file from the Internet with the system tools it
> marks it as "warn before running" and displays that dialog before
> allowing you to continue.
>
> The purpose of this is to allow Microsoft to blame the end user for any
> security problems from running code they download.
>
>
> Ahem.  I mean "to protect the user" of course.  Yes, that was it.
>
> In any case: this doesn't require high security, requires explicit work
> on the part of the software that downloaded applications to mark them as
> untrustworthy, and is about as secure as spraying a can of "hacker-away"
> on your PC ... but it was easy and visible, eh?
>
> Regards,
>        Daniel
>
> (In other words: I agree with most of your thesis, other than the
> anti-competitive bit, but I am shocked you have not seen this yourself
> if you have used Microsoft software for any length of time.)

To be honest I very likely have seen it before; It'd be one of those 
dialogue boxes I've never read because when I open an .exe, I know what my 
intentions are. (Inversely if I get that prompt and havn't opened one, I 
click Cancel...)

Perhaps then it's my over-familiarity with Windows that means I havn't 
seen it before ;-)  I primarily imagine that the dialogue I am mentally 
picturing is the one that IE presents when you click on a download link 
for an exe file, actually... and as I don't use IE, I probably don't see 
that one very often either....