I was reading up about IE8 Beta 2 yesterday, and I came across an interesting post about how ActiveX controls will be handled in IE8. The part I found interesting:
If a vulnerable control has been exploited, IE has included a poison-pill option—the “killbit”— to block usage of specific controls within the browser. Vendors who are aware of a vulnerability in their control should contact Microsoft to setup a killbit for a future software update package. For more information, please refer to Knowledge Base article 240797, How to stop an ActiveX control from running in Internet Explorer.
I think that's pretty awesome. If a vendor doesn't want a vulnerable control affecting their users anymore, they can have Microsoft prevent it from loading beyond the current measures they have in place. Maybe Adobe can use that to kill the versions of the ActiveX control that keep crashing IE7.
[via Neowin]