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Microsoft Skips Patch Tuesday
maotx writes "According to their recently released security bulletin, Microsoft will skip this month's Patch Tuesday. Patch Tuesday, also known as Black Tuesday amongst Administrators, is the second Tuesday of every month, in which Microsoft releases a series of patches and critical updates for its various operating systems and applications."
Hey, you know what? The average user still doesn't give a damn. And that's why windows is so insecure -- it's not because it has market share, it's because the average user doesn't feel the need to update.
Show this to your friends and family that don't know what a real hacker is
The whole idea of releasing patches only once a month and on a set date is ridiculous.
Vulnerabilities aren't discovered and exploits aren't written to respect the timing of Microsoft in this regard.
What happens if a vulnerability is discovered and an exploit written for it a couple of days after patch tuesday? Microsoft's whole bug fixing scheme is then set to only handle it 28 days later.
And we all know what happens in 28 days later.
What happens when a vulnerability is fixed that needs more testing for many people, but also comes attached to vulnerabilities that can be simply exploited? do we wait for the former before applying the latter, or apply the latter and to hell with the consequences in the former?
I think this is moron thinking. Each patch should be one small patch to fix that vulnerability and only that vulnerability. no other bug fixes with regards to non security issues, no combining patches, no waiting for days to fix a patch.
Then the monthly updates can be set client side however the client wishes to handle it. daily or weekly or monthly. whatever they wish to handle. at the time.
It's a rare open source project that can match Microsoft on that.
It's a rare open source product that's being used on ~95% of the desktops.
home
It's only after it becomes unreliable (or really ugly from rust etc) that you think about replacing it.
Software (despite what M$ would have us believe) doesn't wear out.
The only way to sell new stuff is have it break down. They only fix a few vulnerabilities at a time to make us believe they're trying to keep it safe, but they really built the "rust" at the factory.
Add a few new "features" (read code bloat) and the replacement cycle starts all over again.
They're probably secretly supporting a few exploits the keep the damand up.
I just had to restart my Mac to install iTunes 5 and always have to for an OS update. Some security updates don't require a restart, but many of them do as well.
I have always wondered what it would be like if magically, all of M$'s non-techie customers (private and commercial) suddenly had the ability to fully understand the way their "Magic boxes" work, and could objectively evaluate what Microsoft tells them.
What a wonderful day it would be if average users started asking hard questions and DEMANDING answers (as in: Why does there need to be a patch Tuesday in the first place?)
I'm not a Linux fanboy by any means( I use both windows and linux boxes, and both OS's have their own advantages), but why in the hell should anyone who pays money to a company for an OS have to put up with it having to be patched and updated constantly just to keep it functional?
How long do you wanna bet it would take for Suse, Mandriva, or Redhat to go bankrupt if they had issues with their products on the scale that M$ has?
Hopefully, over the next couple of generations, most people, having grown up with computers since early childhood, will be educated enough not to be snowed by all the FUD and misinformation coming out of Redmond and demand products that are secure and functional "out of the box".
Uh, your TCP/IP stack?
Would putting a microkernel in Linux even leave you with Linux? Linus Torvald's opinions on microkernels is well known.
The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
That's complete BS. The average user does give a damn.
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The problem is that the average user is scared as hell to update their Windows OS because when they have in the past it broke things and caused all sorts of problems.
There's an old saying: "Once bitten, twice shy".
You do the "right" thing only to get bitten in the ass because of it, you learn quickly not to do that again.
The average user isn't a geek and while so many geeks can't understand this fact and rant how most people are clueless.
This works both ways. How would you like it if every trip to the auto-mechanic you were chided for having certain tires, not using a particular brand/weight of motor oil, not being timely enough in getting a tune up, why didn't you change your own oil, your tire pressures too low? Or if you went to a lawyer, you were spoken down to and treated like a schmuck because of your ignorance of legalese?
So when these people run Windows auto-update in their attempt to "be good" and then need to call in some geek to fix it, only to get an ear-full of crap about IE this and Outlook that and VB-de blah de blah, you think they really want to suffer that indignity again?
It's a two fold problem really -- Running MS Auto-update is like playing Russian Roulette and if you lose, you've got to fork over cash for a lecture from some holier than thou sociopathic computer geek that's lost all perspective of life outside
So for many, the best option is to ignore the patches to avoid the headaches they've learned by experience to associate with negative experiences.
And it's people like you that help reinforce that associative perception. Good job.
Yeah, the fact that I had to back out a patch the other day because it broke security auditing is a great example of Microsoft testing patches "through the roof." That's just me: another satisfied MS enterprise customer . . .