Nope! Not a clue! However, her grandson / tech (called over because the computer "stopped working") may well be inclined to bitch in a public forum about it. Now do they lambast granny for being the target of a social engineering attack (and who is possibly a paying customer) or do they complain about how evil MS is for halting security updates on a really, really old OS?
I don't see this as having anything to do with hapless end users, techs, or Windows XP. This is about MS being trapped between two bad alternatives. Kill support and leave some users hanging or continue support at $0 profit. I think they need to do this or risk reinforcing their image as the maker of an insecure OS.

That was my point. That's why I lead that sentence with the words "It doesn't matter". Please reread the post you replied to starting with "regardless of the root cause, Microsoft will be blamed." This is not about the OS, this is about MS (the company) catching flack for end-user caused problems.

You are right, this has nothing to do with the OS (again). The point I was trying to make is that if MS drops security support, every single finger will point at MS as the bad guy as a result of their actions. At this point there's still a chance the end user could wind up with some of the blame. Putting this off another year while XP share drops could be an excellent PR decision from MS's point of view.

Never even occurred to me to look on Amazon. Feel a bit stupid now.
Thank you for that much needed kick in the pants!

See above. After selling me a $130 program that uses their "free" service, they are discontinuing the service. Just because it's "free" doesn't mean people haven't paid!

If you google "IOS Ignition", you'll find Ignition was $130 before it was pulled. You can see the price in the summary. Yeah, I'm somewhat less than happy about this myself...

I received that happy email myself this morning and am considerably less than pleased. However, at the risk of not conforming to a potential lynch mob mentality, it would appear they're giving me 6 months of pro service on my existing account before they turn it off. This is plenty of time to make a change.

That they would make a major change like that which invalidates a previously purchased product, in my case an excellent $130 program called Ignition, with no recourse to continue other than paying them more money, tells me all I need to know about how LMI views their subscribers.

Baaaa!

There's a very large group of sect members that BELIEVE in this faith. Acting now will not harm us, it can only improve our current life style. If we don't start pushing this faith, other problems will eventually arise such as catastrophic event.
Believe in faith, it can only bring good in the end. If it's a big scam, at least we know it's not celestial villain paying for it.

I would argue that the truth very much matters. To run with your analogy, the doctor is not prescribing antibiotics, rather he is saying you need to drive a different car (or maybe stop driving altogether), move to a different place (cities are much more efficient from a CO2 standpoint), and make major changes in how you live your life. Yeah, I'd be inclined to ask questions!

YMMV on that one. I have two feet off my 2010 MBP and when I took it in last year, I was informed the only way to get replacements was to repurchase the aluminum sheet with the feet ($40). BTW, does anyone know of a place selling rounded feet that won't scrape off going into and out of a laptop bag?

True, but my point is that regardless of the root cause, Microsoft will be blamed. It doesn't matter that the OS was insecure as released or is no longer being patched. When a naïve user is tricked into installing something bad with admin rights, all fingers will be pointed at Microsoft. While MS can't do anything about a PEBCAK problem, at least the extra year of support will postpone that fecal-matter-meets-rotary-air-impeller event.

If MS stops patching security holes in XP every time grandma installs malware MS gets the blame.
With an installed user base of about 25%, Microsoft was about to get a huge black eye, deserved or not.

Your password is hunter2.

As for well trained? Probably.
"good guys"? You DID notice the part about him being an ex-cop, right?

Well.... Generally, we're not really that sure who we've killed. Let's face it, the guy flying the drone is viewing the target through a fancy webcam mounted to a plane on the other side of the planet. We've blown up weddings, created many more corpses at funerals than they started with, and garnered an awful lot of ill will via drone strikes. While you are technically right when you say "They've produced *fewer* civilian deaths..." many have noted we got there by doing things like redefining all males over 16 or so as enemy combatants rather than civilians.

Wouldn't it be great to be able to redefine your debts as assets?

So far I'd say our record with UAV's speaks for itself, and there the human influence is only once removed from being there. The whole point of a killbot would be you don't have to put it in a trench, you can deploy in a more dangerous / less controlled (maybe urban?) environment without risk of life to your own side. The constraint would no longer be troops, but resources to build and refurbish the robots.

On the plus side it's open, runs on everything (server and client), and free. I use it as the failover from MSTS (mac client sucks) or ARD (which has no PC client).

On the minus side, it's not fast so remote admin is fine but movies mostly unwatchable. No sound. No file xfer or printer sharing. It doesn't tunnel, so you are looking at a minimum of a VPN tunnel (or piggyback it off a ssh tunnel is you wanna be geeky) should you want access while off the server's network. DO NOT PORT FORWARD VNC TO THE WORLD! It does not have strong security (8 character pw no username) and the VNC data itself is not secured.

Note that there are proprietary versions of VNC that address some of these issues.