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January 30 VeriSign CertificateI'm using Vista and IE7 on my primary system, and to my surprise, it complained about the certificate when going to the Paypal site. Checking the certificate, the problem wasn't with the Paypal certificate itself, but rather the VeriSign intermediate CA certificate that they were using; it was telling me that the one installed on my system had expired in January 2004. The particularly odd thing is that I know I had been to the Paypal site earlier in the month, but it was before the previous Windows update was pushed out a couple of weeks ago. What's interesting is that this isn't an issue with Windows XP or 2003 Server. While I don't know for certain that the Windows update was the culprit, it's the last thing on my system that I can think of which could have possibly done this. In any case, if you should run into this problem, the solution is to download the current intermediate CA certificate from VeriSign's website. Unfortunately, they strive to make this as confusing as possible by offering this labyrinth of options, so here's the link right to the certificate: https://www.verisign.com/support/install2/intermediate.html It will display a certificate in a textbox, so just copy it to the clipboard and save it to a text file named something like "VeriSign Intermediate CA.cer" and then you can import it by right-clicking on it and selecting Install Certificate. If you use the defaults, it installs it in the right place, which is the "Intermediate Certificate Authorities" store. Once installed, you just restart the browser and viola, life is better again and the certificate shows an expiration of 10/24/2011. WinHelp on Windows VistaOne of the changes in Windows Vista was the removal of the legacy WinHelp viewer winhlp32.exe which was used to display RTF-based online help. It's a help format that dates back to the days of 16-bit Windows, and it hasn't really been updated for quite some time. When Windows 98 was released, Microsoft introduced a new help format called HTML Help which (as the name implies) was based on HTML rather than RTF.
For those of us who beta tested Vista and have been working with the RTM build, it's not a surprise that the old WinHelp help files won't display. Instead, you get something like this:
In Knowledge Base article 917607 Microsoft says that a version of the WinHelp viewer will be available in time for the consumer release of Windows Vista scheduled for early 2007. Well, today is that day, and there's nothing in sight.
I understand why Microsoft wants to deprecate the old WinHelp format, and I didn't have a problem with it not being available as part of the original RTM build that was made available to developers and volume licensees. However, with the general commercial release of Vista, I think that this creates a unnecessary hardship for users and the software companies that maintain legacy applications. In some cases, creating new help files may not be possible; it also simply may not be feasible to do because of cost. To use the new HTML Help format, you can't simply convert the content from RTF to HTML; changes also need to be made to application so that it uses the HTML Help API. The combination of updating large amounts of help content and making code changes to support the format may simply not make financial sense.
If there were technical reasons why WinHelp wouldn't work under Vista, then that would be one thing. However, this is a political decision that they've made, and they're offering no solution to the consumer who is using older software. Their choices are to either live without online help, replace the software, or to simply not upgrade to Vista. What I think Microsoft has missed here is that the path of least resistance is to not upgrade their operating system. As long as Microsoft had committed to releasing a version of WinHelp for Vista, then this would be little more than a minor nuisance. Vista has been released, and yet there's no word as to when (or even if) a version of the WinHelp viewer will be made available. The knowledge base article hasn't been updated in over two months, and questions about this issue on the Microsoft forums go unanswered. Microsoft needs to release a Vista version of the WinHelp viewer, and they need to do it now. January 29 Fear, Uncertainty and DoubtIt’s hard to believe all of the FUD that is being repeated (over and over) about Windows Vista by the press and bloggers. The interesting thing is that you could slowly see it start to ramp up from when the RTM build was published; now, just a few hours before the official launch, it’s at a fever pitch. The tipping point was probably the Gutmann whitepaper that basically asserted that the DRM in Vista was a Very Bad Thing™ and that started a whole round of misinformation, speculation and paranoid conspiracy theories. The thing that really annoys me the most, however, is that you have these techno-pundits who have never actually used Vista simply regurgitating things that they’ve read on someone else’s blog or some article in the trades. It’s like a book reviewer who glances at the cover, reads a paragraph or two of the forward and then writes a scathing review denouncing it as rubbish because they’ve read a previous book by the same author that they didn’t like. Not only is it disingenuous, it’s patently unfair to both the author and the potential readers. The same principal applies here. If you haven’t actually used the operating system (and I mean really use it, not just install it), then you have no business writing about its vices or its virtues. Here’s a sampling of some of the questions and comments that I’ve come across over the past few months:
Windows Vista is a solid operating system and a definite step forward for the platform and for Microsoft’s commitment to security. It is not a panacea; it will not eliminate all security threats, resolve every compatibility issue, end world hunger or create a lasting peace in the Middle East. Upgrading to Vista will not be a religious experience for you. Likewise, you are not risking eternal damnation by installing it. It’s just an operating system, folks. |
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