Live data from Hacker News

MS Paint is here to stay

blogs.windows.com

241–250 of 320 posts

Re: MS Paint is here to stay

#241

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not if the entire App and Windows Store system is disabled per corporate policy and/or firewall.

That's not really MS's fault then, is it? If IT doesn't want you installing apps, that's on them.

>> That's not really MS's fault then, is it?

Yes it is. Paint has been a bundled app for decades and they have decided not to include it any more. "Available for free" is different than "comes included". Also, this whole thing looks like a big advertisement for their new Paint3D or whatever it is. They promote it in the blog and point out that it has a lot of features Paint has, and oh by the way it's free in the store too just like Paint.

Re: MS Paint is here to stay

#242

Earlier quoted context omitted.

One main paramount of security is to reduce your attack surface. One of the first steps to that is to uninstall/remove things that don't belong or that you will not use. An ad-riddled(with ads likely served by a relatively insecure ad network) game is not something that belongs in a corporate network. Try removing CandyCrushSaga and Facebook, and XBoxIdentityProvider(among many others)...they come right back after th…

Well, if your policy allows installing random apps from the Internet but forbids installing sandboxed and vetted apps, then you're not making any sense, regardless of whether the latter type of apps may still be a risk.

I didn't catch the angle in one of the parent posts that everything BUT windows store was allowed, but re-reading the chain I can see that now. Yes, blocking sandboxed and vetted apps but allowing anything else is indeed nonsense.

The biggest issue with the Windows Store is the forced installation of several apps that do not belong in an enterprise environment, unnecessarily increasing attack surface.

Re: MS Paint is here to stay

#244
post #232

Earlier quoted context omitted.

One main paramount of security is to reduce your attack surface. One of the first steps to that is to uninstall/remove things that don't belong or that you will not use. An ad-riddled(with ads likely served by a relatively insecure ad network) game is not something that belongs in a corporate network. Try removing CandyCrushSaga and Facebook, and XBoxIdentityProvider(among many others)...they come right back after th…

Yes, and the person I was replying to works in a place that seems to allow users to install random software from the internet. Thats 99.99% of your attack surface, why not restrict that? I'm not going to get into the details of sandboxing here, but needless to say managed applications running in a sandbox are a big improvement over unmanaged, unsigned applications running with admin rights.

Agreed. See comment to your sibling post.

Sadly even now I run into large software companies that require users to have local admin privileges(and disable UAC) for their software to function correctly. And that's in the finance sector.

I've been dealing mostly in the healthcare sector now and it's even worse. Particularly with imaging software vendors. I deal with some that still only support Windows XP.

Re: MS Paint is here to stay

#245

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's not really MS's fault then, is it? If IT doesn't want you installing apps, that's on them.

>> That's not really MS's fault then, is it? Yes it is. Paint has been a bundled app for decades and they have decided not to include it any more. "Available for free" is different than "comes included". Also, this whole thing looks like a big advertisement for their new Paint3D or whatever it is. They promote it in the blog and point out that it has a lot of features Paint has, and oh by the way it's free in the sto…

But corporate policies can also uninstall it. I've been on plenty of corporate or educational machines without it installed.

You're trying very hard to be a victim here. It isn't optimal that it is removed from the stock OS, but its still there.

Re: MS Paint is here to stay

#246
post #179

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Had tried to do this before and did not work. As I'm curious, just tried it again and the Win7 calc just does not want to run. So wondering why it would work on your end. Do you have an old .net runtime on your machine perchance?

Possibly. Or it's an earlier version of calc.exe I'm actually using - I'm not sure. If you think you can trust me (you can!) - try this one: http://www.jaruzel.com/files/calc.zip

Thanks. Pretty sure that it is not a Win7 version, your binary is from 2001 and only 100kB.

In that case I'll stick with Microsoft Calculator Plus from 2005. Now if you need a binary of that... then I can post a link for you. :)

Actually here you go: http://www.vimalin.com/download/CalcPlus.zip

The installer in the zip is signed by Microsoft.

Found your version :p Just bumped into my calc archives and did a binary compare with a Windows XP archive I had of it and it matched. So turns out it is from Windows XP and yes that one works.

Re: MS Paint is here to stay

#247
post #11

What is, and has been great about MS Paint is that no matter what Windows machine I have been on, I know that I have had it available. No matter if it's my old grandma's computer, if I have needed to quickly do something simple with an image, MS Paint has always been there for me. Now that will no longer be the case. If I have to download and install it on the computer before I use it, then what is the point? It will…

Additionally you can't download apps off the windows store unless you sign up for /into a Microsoft account, which is a much bigger pain than simply downloading the first app you find searching on Google. Also my corporate windows 10 laptop has the entire window store and modern app infrastructure disabled, meaning I would not be able to access MS Paint.

Everything useful has been implemented online already. Case in point: http://www.jswidget.com/index-ipaint.html

(This is just one of many paint-in-a-browser sites.)

Re: MS Paint is here to stay

#248
post #11

What is, and has been great about MS Paint is that no matter what Windows machine I have been on, I know that I have had it available. No matter if it's my old grandma's computer, if I have needed to quickly do something simple with an image, MS Paint has always been there for me. Now that will no longer be the case. If I have to download and install it on the computer before I use it, then what is the point? It will…

paint on windows 3.1 had more features. for example, it had the ability to erase one color to another color. I was a bit shocked when I opened paint in '98

It still does - you have to set up the from and to colour, and then use the eraser with the right mouse button

Re: MS Paint is here to stay

#249

This thread shows clearly the negativity around everything Microsoft does, especially if you compare to other technology companies. Apple deprecates some API or removes a feature? "It's the future, you have to adapt, etc" Microsoft deprecates a toy program made 25 years ago, but still offers the option of downloading it for free? "How dare they, I want it in the base install, etc"

Do you read Apple threads? It's like nothing but hate once they do something new.

Also, everyone generally liked paint's simplicity, no we have stuff like candy crush default installed on Windows.

Sure, maybe not a huge deal for most people but I can see how some would be disappointed.

Re: MS Paint is here to stay

#250

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Active Desktop was always optional, wasn't it? And was it really used for advertising by default? I thought it was mostly arbitrary browser windows that you could attach to the desktop.

Active Desktop was on by default in Windows 98 and had channels from content partners that pushed to the desktop.

No. This was something that your PC manufacturer might have done after an install but not by default when installing from scratch.

Also, a completely different thing entirely.

Post reply on HN