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To: Follies who wrote (24902)	7/5/2000 10:15:35 PM
From: David W. Taylor	Respond to of 42787

*** OT ***** >> It is protected by the integrity of the browser. However, Active-X components, which can be downloaded as part of a normal html page, can have complete access to your file system as far as I know. >> (This post grew as I answered it but it does hold the clue to how to run happily using Windows and avoid ALL crashes and uncertainties. It could be worth reading for that alone and would thus be the best financial tip that get this year!) This is true if you allow the ActiveX control to have that level of access. Each control should have a digital signature, which establishes the provenance of the control. Before a control is given ANY access, the user is asked to approve or reject the control based on that provenance. There is a way to say that you "trust" all software from a particular vendor. This is done on the basis of knowing who the vendor is via an essentially non-forgeable signature. Trusting a control does not imply that you know the control to be bug free, only that you know the originator. Over time users tend to find that Microsoft is "trustable" in this one regard. All of this is implemented differently by Netscape, which is yet another reason to avoid any Netscape software. My short prescription to most of these issues is to: 1. Avoid Windows 95, 98 and possibly ME. The security model in all of these is inherently flawed and the OS is not built on a reliable foundation, hence all of the crashes. 2. Use only Windows NT or Windows 2000. In spite of all the negative publicity, Windows 2000 is far and away the most stable of all Microsoft operating systems. Unless you are keen to run video games, there is no earthly reason to use anything but Windows 2000, even for one person home use. 3. Use only Internet Explorer and NEVER install ANY software from Netscape. Their bug count is way too high. 4. Use a reliable backup strategy and do a backup EACH AND EVERY day of work. I strongly recommend Dantz Retrospect for this purpose. This is backup software designed for real people and with a large enough tape can be set and virtually forgotten. David