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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
* Fast
* Cheap
* Good
So when is MS going to offer any of these?
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.
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.