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Microsoft wants Automatic Update for Windows
Edward Dao writes "After the embarassment of last week's blaster worm, Microsoft is weighing the possibility of automatic update. Microsoft not only wants to upload the latest patch on to users' computer but also installing it for them." This will work out really well for everyone I'm sure. Yikes! Can I at least press 'Ok' first?
... how they will get people to activate the TCPA/Palladium features.
Now we know: MS will do it for you. How kind of them!
Automatic protection from running applications that break following a patch? At least a corporate user can call the helpdesk, while a novice home user would have no idea why something stopped working suddenly, and would chalk it up to "Computers are evil". The divide between the tech-aware and tech-unaware grows exponentially.
Feh.
MSBlaster wasn't an embarrasment for MS, but for the lazy sysadmins who, with a month's prior notice and the patch to fix it, were still hobbled by the bug. If people who are in charge of systems and security spent more time patching and paying ATTENTION to things like Bugtraq and less time complaining about MS the world would be safer.
How is this bug more of a bummer than how gnuftp was compromised and potentially more damaging? Oh, don't hear people moaning about that on here now do you...?
The tale is telling, is it not?
Two things from the article:
And...
So... only for home users and users can shut it off!
So don't freak out too much... maybe this will actually help... think if this had been in effect for slammer... we keep bitching that the 'patch was available, why didn't people use it!'... well, this would fix that problem.
One other thing from the article:
Now that makes sense!
If you RTFA you'd find that Microsoft is only "looking very seriously" at this idea
Microsoft are MORONS. The fix for this particular worm required SP2 or greater. That is 8 hours and 10 minutes over dialup.
Windowsupdate is a god send for people with broadband but MS are going to be required to send CDs in the mail if they want to keep dial-up users up to speed.
Life is the leading cause of death in America.
Okay, now what happens when they decide to enter some draconian language into the EULA that you supposedly agree to by installing these patches....are you now just agreeing to whatever they want by simply using Windows? You now have no choice in this case?
Karma: Chameleon (mostly due to the fact that you come and go).
If they don't know what a patch is, then they're in more danger of a virus attacking their computer anyway. So "the divide between the tech-aware and tech-unaware" shrinks exponentially, as viruses become far less likely. The very rare case of a WU breaking something will have little impact in comparison.
This is a bad idea on soooo many levels
First of all is their patches. They sure as hell aren't 100%. So one day your favorite program might work, and the next day it might not. All wihtout you doing anything. This is why businesses take a while to evaluate patches.
Secondly, what if there is an exploitable bug(and there will be at least one). Every windows machine out there might be downloading viruses instead of updates. If someone were to reverse engineer the network interface, and hack a couple DNS servers, they could have all those users downloading whatever they wanted, even illegal things, or viruses, hacks, anything.
Plus there's the privacy issues. I konw that right now windowsupdate could send MS anything anyway, but if we all expect it to update any time it wants, we have no controls at all on our system, MS could send an update to lock you out of your own system if they suspect you of something, or just for the hell of it.
While I don't expect this to actually go through, its important to be wary of just how abusive such a system could be.
P.S. I, for one, welcome our new windowsupdate.microsoft.com masters.
"People are going to have to accept mandatory updates as part of the warranty process,"
Since when does Microsoft include a warranty on Windows?
Actually, it's quite good. You'll note that it's emulating only the X11 libraries, really even only the X11 server itself. The slowdown of having X apps pass through that layer also occurs on Linux, *BSD, or any other OS. KDE and GNOME may be open standards, but they're not as nice-looking as Aqua, and the WindowServer that runs Apple's windowing system, is, AFAIK, part of Darwin, and thus open.
Darwin is not a kernel, Mach is the kernel. You'll note that it's the same micro-kernel that GNU Hurd uses, and if Hurd isn't Unix, what is (nowadays)? Darwin may be based on FreeBSD, but the kernel is Mach, which isn't. Also, you seem to be overlooking that most Linux programs are compiled for Intel processors, not PowerPCs. Thus, they wouldn't run anyways. However, most do compile with little or no modification. Netinfo is never used directly. Requests are handeled by lookupd, which uses Netinfo, but searches flat files (/etc/passwd, /etc/hosts, etc.) first. Netinfo also allows networks that share common printers, hosts, network configuration, users, mounts, etc. to be constructed easily. Unlike the registry, Netinfo is documented, and has manipulation utilities, for both the command line and the GUI. And, it's never gotten fscked up (for me.) Mac hardware may be expensive, but- it's better. Even the Linux people who use Linux on Macs agree it's faster, better, etc. on a Mac. Macs are more durable, featureful, more standard, and "just work" more and don't work less.
Okay, find music for that cheap on Linux (while still supporting the artisit. It's hard. The music industries wouldn't stand for a service without DRM, and you'll note Apple is pretty darn nice. Unlimited CD burns (but no more that 10 for the same playlist), 3 computers, unlimited iPods. Plus, AACs are MPEG-4, which is darn good quality, and darn small file size. I would never use Windoze, and always like Linux. But for me, Mac OS X is a great UNIX, and is all I need it to be.
It would seem youhaven't taken a close enough look at Mac OS X.
Moderators: Mod me down troll all you want, but mod the parent down troll as well.Where are my mod points when I need them? This is perhaps the single best argument raised in this thread. I'm a broadband user (ah the joys of in-home ethernet) and I'm in the process of puting together a new machine. It's running windows because some of the software my school requires is Windows only.
Now, I've been downloading updates for the last hour or so now. I understand that the Microsoft site is probably pegged following all the media coverage of the latest worm, but nonetheless, I'm a broadband user and it's still taking me a significant chunk of time to download all these updates.
Dialup can only be worse. If MSFT wants to keep the users current they've gotta either find some way of updating Windows that's not quite so hard on dial up (mailing CDs sounds good) or they need to find some way to bring the average patch size down. I have a hard time buying into the idea that the problems in the system really require a patch of that size. With a little more creative work you'd think they could find a more efficient way to insert the new code.
Killfile(TGK)
No trees were killed in the creation of this post. However, many electrons were inconvenienced.
By default, automatic update is enabled for Windows. Anyone technically savvy immediately turns it off five seconds after installation is complete.
Sounds like you're unreasonably paranoid. I've been using Windows 2000 for three years and whenever I need to reinstall (usually due to hard disk crashes or building a new machine. NEVER because the OS or Microsoft did something stupid) the first thing I do is go get all the updates. Nobody who is "technically savvy" wants to run a version of their OS that is three years old. Why? For reasons of security, stability, and compatibility with new software. Why not have the OS go find them for me?
Stop speaking for me. I consider myself technically savvy due to my degrees in Electrical Engineering and Computer Science as well as my hobby of building PCs for my friends. At first, when a service pack added the auto-update feature to W2K, I had it set to let me verify updates, but then I noticed something: I kept hearing about worms and vulnerabilities in Windows on Slashdot and from my friends a day or two after I saw my PC automatically find the fix from MS. It certainly beats going to windows update myself after the fact. I let auto-update have free reign after that discovery.
The fact is that most people who use Windows do not understand that they need to update their OS in order to keep their computer running. What's the first thing you do if you try installing a piece of software and it doesn't work? Roll back to a earlier backup? I doubt it. If your hardware seems to be working you go and get all the current driver and OS updates because developers usually release their software built on platforms with recent OS and driver versions.
Obviously I think automatic updating could be a good thing, but there could be some problems. Nobody with a modem connection wants their OS to automatically dial in and start downloading 15MB patches. You also may not want your server to start downloading patches at peak traffic hours. I hope that MS leaves the option for user input for these reasons. It also only currently downloads critical updates. Their decisions about what is critical have been reasonable so far.
One good thing that you might not see coming from the auto-update is that now you don't need Internet Explorer to use the windows update site.
Dewey, you fool! Your decimal system has played right into my hands!
The last thing that I saw break my system was a patch or update to DirectX. After it installed, my laptop blue-screened on boot. I was unable to fix. After re-installing the OS (and everything else) at great cost to my time, the patch/update worked the second time.
Right now we're holding off applying Win2K SP4 to our web servers. It contains a change to the security model that will break some of our ISAPI extensions. The fix is trivial, but we haven't had time to check it out on a test bed, nor deploy it to all our servers (unfortunately we have to do them manually as we don't have anything like SMS deployed).
It'd be pretty damn noticable on my British Telecom phone bill.
Not everywhere has free/inclusive local calls, remember.
Andrew Oakley - www.aoakley.com
I guess it depends on what you're calling a defect. If someone comes along and pours sugar into your gas tank your car won't keep running right. Is that a recallable defect?
If someone sends a particularly malformed request to a process on your machine it won't run right. Is that a recallable defect?
I'd say no in both cases.