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Microsoft has Delayed SP2, Again
I_am_Rambi writes "According to news.com.com "Microsoft has again delayed a long-awaited update to Windows XP, citing quality concerns. The company had planned to wrap up development this week on Windows XP Service Pack 2, but a Microsoft representative said late Wednesday that the software giant had decided that more work was needed on the update before if could be released to manufacturing." Yea, if 3 out of 5 machines failed to come back up, it needs some polishing."
...Linux and OS X pick up three. If they don't get their house in order soon, they are going to have more to worry about than browser marketshare.
dmiessler.com -- grep understanding knowledge
That sure says a lot about the system restore and anticorruption tech that microsoft said was a reason for upgrading to XP.
SP2 is supposed to be a big "security fix." Assuming that it really is, it sounds as if it's breaking lots of stuff that was previously able to work around existing security to function.
A fine is a tax you pay for doing wrong and a tax is a fine you pay for doing all right.
Every 'softie I've heard from who has seen the Windows code base has said the same thing: it is a labyrinthine collection of objects and subsystems that nobody really understands at a high level. It's actually a miracle that the whole thing builds in the first place. So when they change a few things for a service pack, a dozen other things break.
Microsoft deserves these problems. Their software is too tightly integrated. The benefit of having highly modular software is that problems tend to not spread beyond a single module or subsystem.
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Trying to be fair-minded about updates and what we'll call minor rev level releases to the OS (remember all the waiting for Godot that occurred for Linux 2.4.0 and 2.6.0), I think it is a good thing if MS doesn't release SP2 until it feels comfortable that it's ready and secure.
The key difference, of course, is that knowledgeable and concerned XP sysadmins might want to expedite patches to their systems faster than MS would like and be willing to suffer other problems and risks that MS doesn't feel would be good for the general sysadmin population to experience.
Now, if the Windows source tree and nightly builds were available, then those admins would be free to update at their own risk, an option they don't have because the OS source must remain under proprietary lock and key.
"Provided by the management for your protection."
Out of all the software compainies in the world, Microsoft is the company that has the resources to build and maintain software right. They definitely have the talent. I think the issue here is big corporation politics. Microsoft should put more of an investment into their public image (at least try to get an image comparable to lets say Google). Sure, it may not give them as big as returns pumping more people into the XP camp (service pak 2) and less into lets say Long horn, but get step one right before going to step two. The trust they will gain by the public would earn them money in the future...probably more than their current practices.
Nuttles
Christian and proud of it
Too right- my government agency that I'm contracting with is kind of late living up to this menace- I'm preparing a report for Monday on just how many "approved" software packages will be affected if we install internally. I'm only up to T in the 1400 software pagages that are approved for installation on these government computers- and already have 6.5 pages of Times New Roman 14point single-software-to-a-line list of potentially impacted software. The big sticking point is Microsoft SQL Server itself- the automatic personal firewall settings in SP2 limit SQL Server connections to named pipes, which are relatively new for a shop that has been on SQL Server since version 5....
SJW: a person who perceives an injustice, and while correcting it, commits a greater injustice.
So somehow someone guessing that Microsoft has absolutely no QA is judged "insightful"?? I hate to break it to you, but I'm sure there's just as much testing at Microsoft than in your local linux user group. You only make yourself look a little silly when you pull "facts" like that out your ass.
The new "Security Center" has three sections (Firewall, Antivirus, Updates). Each section will nag you to implement it (through an icon in the taskbar), but each section's nagging can be disabled - in your case, there's a preference to stop it pestering you to install a software firewall.
I own and opererate a wireless broadband service in western nebraska. The whole spyware malware thing has made windows almost unusable for the computer newbie. I encounter people everyday that get on the internet with their new shiney Compaq from wal-mart only to find out a week later that their browser has been hijacked and there computer is so slow (slower than it already was) that it is unusable. IMHO windows needs a pretty complete redo!
"People are installing SP2 internally all over the place and I certainly haven't heard of "3 out of 5" computers dying. In fact I haven't heard anything bad at all."
Then maybe you should email Ballmer and tell him the delay isn't needed, and he should just get some balls and release it.
Or maybe, just maybe, the average user that's going to have to install this thing doesn't benefit from a huge Redmond IT staff, firewalls, NATs, etc.
No offense, but if this is the typical thought in Redmond cubicals ("Works for me! Must be rock-solid!") then the last 15+ years of Microsoft treating their users as beta testers makes a lot more sense.
That's a stupid comment. Every OS needs patching as bugs are discovered and fixed.
Doh. Is this what a "troll" is?
Get your own free personal location tracker
I work for a large company that makes Multifunction photocopier/printer/fax/scanner office equipment.
Our machine can receive print data via a few protocols such as: TCPIP:port 9100, LPR/LPD, SMB
We even offer full Linux support for PS printing (very cool I use it every day).
What I need to know; will this new service-pack break XP's ability to print?
"The price good men pay for indifference to public affairs is to be ruled by evil men." ~Plato (427-347 BC)
Wouldn't it be fantastic if the SP2 updater would first run Ad-Aware or an equivalent and kill all the spywarer on the machine before installing the actual updates? After rebooting, users would be astonished by how quickly Windows would work.
'Holy Crap Maude, my WeatherBug is gone but this thing shore is runnin quick!'
LOL! Not meant negatively in any way, but just wondering how young you have to be to think MS has always tested using public beta's.
IIRC prior to the Win 95 public beta, the term "public beta" didn't even exist for commercial software. Being old-fashioned, public beta's are still a bad idea for commercial software IMO.
OTOH, prior to that time methods for delivering large software packages were rather limited (try that with your 9600 baud modem!).
Yeah, SP2 to XP is to include real multisessioning to Windows! Not just "switch user", one works, one waits, but true "two users at once"! Just like in original UNIX in on PDP-11!
Well, almost. The catch word is "two".
45 5F E1 04 22 CA 29 C4 93 3F 95 05 2B 79 2A B2
You don't understand what "support" we get for an install like this. We get an e-mail from JimA or BrianV with a pointer and a request to install both at work and at home. That's all. The only case when anything special happens is if an install blows up -- and the special thing there is a couple of requests: "Please send us your configuration and recent activity. And can we run this software inventory tool on the box, please?"
Meanwhile, the company runs huge install fests around Redmond, recruiting as many non-employees as we can, trying to ferret out all the errors we can.
The only case where I've had a problem is on the kids' gaming machine. One of them had installed something which came with a "present" attached without asking me first. He got to oversee the fun of flattening the machine down to the ground and rebuilding it.
"So you would strip home users of admin rights? How would they apply patches then?"
Same way we do it around here (6 machines in our house). First, they don't have admin privileges. On the OS X boxen, if they download something that requires admin privileges to install, it pops up the "Admin Password Required" dialog. Then they either get me or cancel and ask later. On the Winboxen I install everything personally.
Simple. Never had a problem. Even our 5-year-old groks it.
For the solo clueless home Win user, XP could add a little warning in addition to requiring the separate Admin password. Couple that with MS spending some of that $40-60 billion on user education. It's Redmond's ass in a sling after all.
and microsoft can whine and moan about it all they want, it doesn't change that the users will have defect computers and more important lost data .. it would be the idiots fault to work on your car without knowing what to do, so your idiot would be to blame
and will blame microsoft for it
they are not liable for it but they will be blamed anyway
btw
in case of spyware you trust the idiot because he is lying to you or you don't even know he works on your car
stop supporting microsoft with pirating their software!!!!!
"Ah, but my point was that the thirteen-year-old got raked over the coals...and then had to flatten and rebuild the box himself. ANd a lot of people have someone who will gladly rake them over the coals for installing spyware on their box."
I think that's a great approach!
Sadly though, I'm quite certain that's not the case in the average Joe User household because most of them simply don't know they've got malware running. :-/
Every now and then when I visit friends and relatives, I become painfully aware of how even my kids take for granted computer system knowledge that is a complete mystery to others.
I'm afraid households like yours and mine (and every other Slashdot reader) are rare outposts in the malware-infested forests of the 'Net.
And if the user had done system restore to a clean config before the SP2 upgrade it would have gone well. Or do you expect the SP2 installation to include a full updated malware scanner?
For instance, I already have a hardware firewall, so I don't need the software firewall to be enabled.
Does your hardware firewall protect you from other computers on your local network, or just from the Internet connection? It's getting to the point that all computers should really have software firewalls installed to augment the hardware firewalls. A lot of companies and universities have been noticing recently that their hardware firewalls don't cut it. Just like in the real world, much of the damage can come from an "inside job". It only takes one infected computer inside the firewall to endanger all the others. Unless of course each individual computer has its own firewall.
Besides which, how do you know your hardware firewall is perfect? It can't be. It's hardware separate from your computer, but it's still run by software (firmware), and as we all know any program longer than 3 lines has bugs (who said that?). I think you're making a big mistake by comparing a hardware firewall outside the computer with an internal software firewall. Today, it's a good idea to have both. Security works best in multiple layers, and two is better than one. A single point of failure is always bad. Think it over.
Why on Earth would you want to turn it off anyway? Do you think it will increase performance or something?