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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."
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.
Certainly these minor push backs on SP2 are largely irrelevant, but Longhorn delays are an issue. Microsoft is worried about Longhorn delays - I beleive they have started dropping proposed features to get it out the door earlier. Sure, no one is going to wipe windows and install Linux instead of waiting for Longhorn, but if Longhorn is too long coming and the Linux desktop starts looking attractive enough you might get a few more OEMs loading it on (HP now has Linux laptops for instance). Should that actually happen you'll get people "converting" to linux simply by upgrding their computer, and to be frank, if all they do is browse the web, write email, and use Word for trivial things occasionally, they aren't really going to notice a whole lot of difference. Should anything other than Windows get much of a real foothold Microsoft will have cause to worry. It's all about "mindshare" not market share. Once other options are widely seen to be both available and viable some serious rebalancing of market share could occur quickly. Sure, Microsoft will still be dominant in such a shakeup, but we might be looking more at 70% to 30% split between Microsoft and everything else. Once that happens they really will have to compete and compete hard.
There are things to worry about for Microsoft. For now things are under control, but it only requires some small slips for things to get away from them.
Jedidiah.
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"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.
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!'
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
"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.