on Windows Vista the exploit runs with fewer privileges because UAC is enabled by default, so the damages are very very limited to current user space

Ryan, here is a thought I think valuable to you, and hope you will reflect on it, and consider.

It came to me, walking across town, days after reading this post first, giving a sigh, and taking Quicktime, again, off my machine until fixed. Because I can't afford an attack right now.

Yet I realised today: there was no need for this, and losing the ability for iTunes, and to see the many Quicktime/mp4 etc. items to keep up with the multimedia side for contracts I give.

The only reason I had to remove Quicktime, so recently patched, is because _you_ decided and this boy in Britain decided - to go public on some obscure fault before Apple has a fair chance to deal with it.

Can you please try to think straight about this? Because I have believed you to be one of the more level heads in the journalist pool, and I would think you would like to be the most effective at it.

You are not effective when you broadcast obscure hacks so that criminals know they are there, in my view at least.

Out of a long life, I would more than appreciate the need to apply pressure once in a while. But this is very clearly not that case. Instead, it is yet another of the coders with more time than they should have on their hands, and now trying to get famous or get money or get hired out of the fault they managed to dig up.

I do not believe we do any service to the community by communicating these persons'quests for fame or their results - up to the point where the company involved has had a fair chance to see the problem, and in a reasonable timeframe correct it. As Apple did the last time you got angry with them, with the 7.4.5 QT release.

This fellow is clearly playing even the new British rule for all he can get - claiming he isn't even sure the right way to contact Apple.

Meaning he hasn't contacted them at all!

How fair, or effective, is that?

Meanwhile, again, the services many persons use and depend on are interrupted -- for weeks at a time. For example, QT videos are a staple of multimedia learning sites, as well as product demos and cooperative sites see-how demonstrations: in addition to their direct commercial role in iTunes and the like.

Do you see why I ask you to think this through again, and consider how much you do what the ones who hope themselves to be seen as hotshots wish? That's not a pretty community they belong to, and when exploiting this way, doesn't look very different to the criminal element they exist in very close proximity to, at least one would think after reading about the auction sales of hacks.

Intelligence which is not socially aware is not in the least respectable, and I think these persons are going to understand that only if their ostracization is not mistakenly helped into limelight over what is are non-moral acts.

Regards,
Narr vi