A major security patch that is one year in the making has been released by Microsoft. It took them that long to make it.
Please pass it along. 
V/r,
So it wont be long now before all of the worlds XP computers fall victim to this unpatched hole.
I wonder which countries will allow legal action to be taken against the owners of these Windows XP systems for assisting in creating security problems for everyone else?
My laptop is still running XP. Blame Microsoft for making recent versions of their flagship product stupidly expensive, then not applying security patches to older versions as their way of trying to force all their users to upgrade, whether they can afford it, or not.
I’m tempted to wipe the HD and install Ubuntu (free, more powerful, fewer security issues, not bloated - but a steep learning curve when it comes to configuring, and no support for the most popular apps that run under Windows), but… (shrug)
A cheaper alternative might be to purchase an OEM copy along with a new hard drive - the OEM copy will be a lot cheaper than the retail version and is perfectly legal as long as it is sold with some sort of computer hardware (a hard drive is the most appropriate thing cheaper than an entire computer since the operating system can actually be installed on it but you may be able to find somewhere that will supply it with any computer hardware at all such as a mouse or keyboard where the overall price will be a lot less than for the retail copy).
I know of several people who have done just that. They have never regretted the move and never considered switching back.
You could always install your Windows XP into a virtual machine running under Ubuntu and use that just for running the application software that you have that only runs on Windows. By not giving that VM internet access you would resolve most security issues.
Food for thought, for sure. As long as the VM had local network access for the web server and db server, it might be an alternative. But, as I mentioned earlier, Ubuntu has a steep learning curve when it comes to configuring - regardless of GUI or CLI. Never did fully understand *nix networking; but I can do all kinds of networky things in WinBlows. 
V/r,
It might be worth looking at some of the other Linux versions. Foe example http://zorin-os.com/ is based on Ubuntu but is intended to reduce the learning curve for those switching from Windows.
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