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What's Really Broken with Windows Update - Trust
Be Cool writes "According to ZDNet, Microsoft has steered itself into a real trust tarpit with Windows Update: 'See, here's the problem. To feel comfortable with having an open channel that allows your OS to be updated at the whim of a third party (even/especially* Microsoft ... * delete as applicable) requires that the user trusts the third party not to screw around with the system in question. This means no fiddling on the sly, being clear about what the updates do and trying not to release updates that hose systems. While any and all updates have the potential to hose a system, there's no excuse for hiding the true nature of updates and absolutely no excuse for pushing sneaky updates down the tubes. Over the months vigilant Windows users have caught Microsoft betraying user trust on several separate occasions and this behavior is eroding customer confidence in the entire update mechanism.'"
In order to break trust, you must first have trust.
I don't think 95% of Windows users care if Microsoft is untrustworthy or not as long as they feel it keeps their computer from getting hacked.
+1 IDisagreeSoHeMustBeATrollOrAnAstroturferOrAShill
as long as you've got powerpoint and can read the Word documents you're sent in the mail?
* Fast
* Cheap
* Good
So when is MS going to offer any of these?
That's good, because I paid a hell of a lot of money for my copies of Office & Windows. They are not "cheap" by any regard, so that is eliminated from your (very accurate) list. We should be approaching "fast and good" at any release now...
You can have it: * Fast * Cheap * Good. But, you can only choose 2 of the above.
But you get it: Slow (with more than one semantics), Expensive and Ill-Designed all at the same time.
CC.
TaijiQuan (Huang, 5 loosenings)
Yes but Linux also had a bunch of hobbiest around the world looking at the code not getting paid to fix the problem. Microsoft has to pay its employees to fix the code. So if Microsoft has 1000 employees and say 150 or so are working on patches. Half of those are for the OS and the other half are for office. You have 75 people working on OS patches. Linux on the other hand you have a few thousand looking at the code working on a fix.
I smoked pot once. But I DID NOT inhale. Will you hire me?
I guess I can see why they made this a 'stealth' update on Windows XP/Server 2003. I had to perform a fresh install of Windows Vista last week, and the first time I fired up Windows Update, it gave me a prompt which ran something along the lines of:
"Windows Update needs to download an update so that it can update to provide you with updates".
I felt so dizzy trying to comprehend that, I just clicked 'OK'.
You forgot about the firstborn
"Who are you?"
"WTF! Shutup and give us your stuff!"
yvan eht nioj
Maybe they consider French as an upgraded version of English?
People can easily switch to Linux, right? Right?
Nope.
Hell, I've been coding for 7 years, and although I rely exclusively on my linux boxen for any large scale modeling or EA work, I wouldn't like to go without my windows machine. I like a lot of windows software. Winscp (http://winscp.net) alone is one of the greatest open source applications I have ever encountered, and it's windows only. I'm also a fan of putty, ssh session saving is great, and putty and winscp integrate nicely. I find it extremely easy to inspect progress of experiments on all machines using these two programs together, transferring files between machines is so easy its silly. This alone would encourage me to keep a copy of windows on one machine.
Anyway, in spite of my initial lack of interest in windows versions of my software, the mob has spoken, downloads of my software for windows (though still still tiny) outnumber those for Linux. So I couldn't drop windows if I wanted to
Not perhaps the most impressive list of reasons, but I suspect I'm not alone.
Not to forget there's also games, but everyone say that one.
For certain very small values of easily.
And before anyone starts telling me about how they gave [insert distro of choice] to their 84 yr old gran/4 yr old neice/dog (*delete as appropriate) and they could work it fine within minutes, we are talking about comparitive ease for Mr and Mrs J Public between switching to Linux and staying with Windows. Linux is improving, but I still would not say the switch is an easy one.
The difference isn't the time it takes. The difference is what the time is spent for.
At MS, engineers argue who has to do the fixing.
With Linux, geeks argue whose fix is more elegant and better.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
Don't mess with the WTF. You don't want to know, because when you know, you go WTF immediately.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
Yeah, I'm scared to run that update - if Windows Malicious Software Removal Tool works as good as it sounds, it'll probably remove half my Windows installation for me.
Once I was a four stone apology. Now I am two separate gorillas.
I am a cave man you insensitive clod!
vi +
I am an insensitive clod you insensitive clod!
No one gets to talk to my machine without my say-so.
And I stopped Windows updates right after XP-SP2. There's a hardware firewall AND a software firewall. And I'm often running one of the unixes rather than XP.
No trust! None at all!
cmon, I trust Microsoft just fine. Vista certified drivers? I trust those. I trust everything MS does, actually. I'm not a tool, I promise, but I have no reason to distrust them.
It's more of a "nothing to hide, nothing to fear" situation. I don't see any of you losing millions (yes, millions) of dollars arbitrarily because some snotnosed middle schooler doesn't think he wants to pay for the product you developed. So how does microsoft get those millions back? They have to impliment security measures, just like the RIAA, Game companies, and every other industry who is suffering from rampant thievary. So no. I have not been "betrayed."
Sounds right.... after all, they consider Vista to be an upgrade to XP.