What did they take away? On April 11 they released patch 912812 which forces a modification on IE due to the Eolas patent case. In order to get around the patent dispute, IE now requires some sort of user interaction before running any embedded content. The way around that is to embed content dynamically using VBScript or JScript, a giant pain in the ass.

We use a lot of ActiveX. This one isn't our fault (save for the fact that we used ActiveX to begin with). The patch to break IE was optional when released at the end of February. It was first announced that it would be forced onto machines in the April 11 security roll-up on April 1. Thanks for the warning, guys. We need more than a week and a half to reprogram three major versions of our software.

The last time they boned us this badly was with XP SP2. We used to use background window pops to pass data between some ActiveX components. Microsoft had not only recommended the method, we had their developers working with our software monkeys to make the damned pops work the way they were supposed to.

This shouldn't have come as a surprise since they'd screwed us royally with the JVM/JRE fiasco. All our components were filled with the poisoned Microsoft JVM-only stuff. MS had to stop making the JVM available, we had to work with it, then shortly afterwards, a patch came out from Redmond which removed the JVM. Yet despite the hell this caused us for months, we went with their ActiveX.

So anyway, I understand when Aunt Minnie questions why she has to get a new version of some software even though her helpful XP Home machine just finished telling her her it had loaded the updates and that her computer was just peachy. What I don't understand is a goddamned "system administrator" who doesn't read MSKB documents on a patch, can't grok the fact that major code changes have to be made to our software, and that those changes can't be written and tested inside two weeks.

Bootnote: he didn't like the suggestion that he could stop patching his Windows servers and workstations. Quoth he: "I have to patch the Windows machines. I just don't want to have to patch your software anymore. It should just work."

Even Notepad gets patched: the current version is 5.1.2600.2180, dumbass.

Root Cause: 3-3rd party
Sub-type: Microsoft OS

Actual Root Cause: 17-Fuckwit
Sub-type: Lazy-ass whiner