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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.'"
This may have been a bad move, but Microsoft knows that in actuality there's nothing the users (corporate and private alike) are really going to do about this. They may complain a bit; write some unpleasant articles in some online sites/blogs, but at the end of the day you're still going to be using their stuff. Effectively saying "just suck it down and shut up". And in reality, this is what 99.999999% of Windows users are going to do.
If you have an effective monopoly, trust really doesn't matter.
-USR1
In order to break trust, you must first have trust.
So, Microsoft is not trusted anymore? Boo hoo. What exactly have they done to deserve any sort of trust at all?
Making laws based on opinions that stem up from false informations leads to witch hunts.
Anyone who trusts Microsoft after the past two decades of dirty behavior is a fool.
"I've got more toys than Teruhisa Kitahara."
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
Even without TPM, even without CPU serial numbers, if the update software has to change my computer without telling me, it is operating out of bounds. I can't trust it in enterprise; I can't trust it at home; I can't trust it as an install or development environment.
kris_lang
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?
How about full disclosure about what's changing on YOUR PC? There's no reason why MS can't provide that in a timely, good, cheap manner. The real problem is that MS is a monopoly, and they can do whatever they want, and there's no other product that users can easily switch to.
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...
So far, in my experience, it's never been fast (with patches taking months), nor cheap (300 bucks for an OS?), nor good (do I have to explain?).
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
manually, you can select what updates you want to apply and which you don't. As for hosing a system, MS has no monopoly on that. I updated my ATI drivers on Friday and I lost my 3D capability until I rolled my drivers back. Had similar things happen with Adobe stuff until I switched to Foxit. Frankly none of the software companies impress me with their auto updates. I trust none of them.
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)
I don't see the update mechanisms for the major Linux distros having the same kind of problems and their users are much more vocal and much less forgiving than Windows users.
The fact is Microsoft has been caught a few times implementing stealth fixes or trying to force major updates (eg. IE7).
Some of what I say is fact, some is conjecture, the rest I'm just blowing out my ass...you guess.
I was working as as PC tech for a university at one point, and it was policy to install all critical Windows updates on the university-owned computers. On one computer, I accidentally checked the hardware updates as well as the critical updates. For some reason, Windows update decided that the video card (an Nvidia TNT2-based card) needed to be updated with the old, Microsoft-provided, French-language video drivers. This computer was using English Windows XP, and there were no language packs installed or anything. Anyway, Windows blue-screened when coming back up. I had to start it in safe-mode and remove the drivers to get it to work again. I remember thinking that if a "normal" user had installed that update, they would have been screwed into having to pay $100 for a "professional" to fix Windows. After that, I started paying attention to the hardware updates. And I noticed that on approximately 5/100 of their computers, Microsoft listed the French-language Nvidia driver as an appropriate hardware update.
I'm not suprised. When looking at what is being downloaded (either automatically or manually) you have little idea of what you're actually downloading. All you get is a strange ID number for the update and an extremely generalized discription of what is being fixed (or unfixed). As the updates pile up, the process takes longer and longer. When there is an update it insists on interrupting whatever you are in the middle of. When it downloads it sucks up CPU time. And when it's finished it will not leave you alone until you restart the computer.
"Ice? You want ice? There's never been any ice! Ice is just a myth!"
I totally agree with the tag that reads "editorsdontgetit". The problem with having this stealth update capability in the first place is that it's a clear and obvious vector for attack and p0wn4g3.
If somebody figures out how to hack these stealth updates (and now that people know the capability exists they will definitely try), then we can all look forward to the time when a rootkit or other exploit is pushed down to machines and installed with the blessing of the OS and the complete ignorance of the person whose machine just got screwed. And it'll look like a legitimate update as far as all parties are concerned after the fact.
The author claims that it's a "Bad Thing(tm)" when people eventually decide to pull the plug on Windows Update, and I agree given all the legitimate patches that have been made available this way. But on the other hand, what choice do we have? Do we leave a door open that has been proven to be used in an untrustworthy fashion by the very people that are telling us to trust them and that they're making our machines better/safer/++?
Will somebody please start writing games for Linux so I can be free of this nonsense?
C
The Sun is proof that we can't even do fire properly.
That has nothing to do with it... the problem with Windows Update recently is not that they aren't pushing out updates in a timely matter or that they are pushing out buggy updates too quickly, it's that they are being sneaky about updates. There's no reason that they couldn't be up front in disclosing everything about what components of your system will be changed with any given update. It's when they say an update fixes a specific problem, and then also install windows genuine advantage behind the scenes that we have a problem.
Blindly trusting a third party, especially one with a track record like Microsoft, with updating your production systems may be an unwise move.
How long it will take to someone to figure how to make they own updates using the door open by Microsoft in they OS ?
If I was a hacker, I have begun to work on this door as soon has the "feature" has been released.
Imagine, using Microsoft Update to update your virii or you Troy, that a nice "feature".
Ceci n'est pas une Signature !
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?
From the article:
"Some people feel that stealth updates and pushing WGA to users under the guise of a security update is paving the way for all sorts of nasty and restrictive DRM mechanisms to be pushed down the system. While I personally don't take this view, it's easy to see where these extreme ideas come from"
Yeah, anybody's experience with Microsoft's increasing paranoia, intrusiveness, and FUD is where such non-extreme and very sensible ideas might come from.
Linux sites have a far wider array of configuration differences than Windows systems do: Not the least of which being multiple cpus and generations of systems, Windows in the enterprise is kept solely single-use because Windows admins know maintainability is hard, but Linux in the enterprise tends to have a larger number of functions because the Linux admins know maintainability is a solved problem.
The reason both is true is a social effect of getting software from "third parties"- that is, a cloud of developers that do not communicate with eachother. Whenever one of them does something "tricky" or "wrong", generally speaking nobody else in the cloud knows that they are doing it (When they do, it's called a "known incompatibility").
Linux distributions don't have "third parties"- most Linux admins get all of their software from the distribution itself. That means there's no cloud where "that's a problem with your other vendor", or "that's a problem with running Microsoft Exchange on the same server as IIS", and so on. The buck stops immediately, it gets resolved and everyone benefits.
Historically, other unix suppliers have had the same problem, and a lot of people just assumed it was (practically) unsolvable until groups like Debian and Red Hat- looking to solve a particular technical problem (of managing the necessary modularity of a GNUish system) also built up the social framework necessary to solve this very social problem.
Microsoft simply cannot do this. It's not a matter of "just making better patches", they need to be the sole supplier of software in order to solve this problem, and their users need to be able to patch and redistribute that software. Not just legally, but actually encouraged to do so.
The other side is that a lot of people don't see it that way. I still trust Microsoft to not mess up my machine, even if they're pushing stealth updates to their software. I'm usually anti-stealth anything, I hate software DRM for that reason (don't go patching my CD rom driver to play your game) but in this case it's a good idea to have Microsoft able to stealth update the windows updater, it's one piece of software on your machine that doesn't really interact with the others all that much.
:P.
I know a lot of people are going to clammering slippery slope here, claiming that MS will use this to destroy everyone's life, but I just don't see it that way. Yes the computer's mine, and yes I should know everything that's installed on it, but if MS really wants to stealth patch their updater then yay for them, all that means is I won't have to go through the whole 'Windows Updater must update itself to receive Windows Updates from the Windows Update Site' nonsense again. So long as Microsoft stays within that box of only stealth updating the updater, and I have no doubt they will, I trust them.
Doesn't mean I don't still want to get Linux running though
There are two kinds of fool One says 'This is old therefore good' Another says 'This is new therefore better'- Dean Ing
I call bullshit on this alarmist blog. 99% of the world's Windows users don't give a shit about the updates, and will click anything that pops up on their PC. Most of them likely have no clue what "Windows update" is. The 1% that know what their doing have likely never trusted Windows/Microsoft for anything in the first place. To say that "Trust in windows update is eroding" is just a bit fud-dish.
You have one company holding every networked Windows PC on the internet at the capability of doing whatever they want the PC to do: update, spy, DRM, etc.
If they do not begin to communicate and be more open, I'm afraid the consumer base is going to feel it is more and more like "1984."
Microsoft is in a unique position and yet they cannot do any of it right.
I've been quite happy with Windows Update, leaving it on Automatic all the time and frequently authorising "Optional" updates when I was prompted that they were available. That lasted until Windows Update felt the need to install a new display driver while I was logged in, rather than when I was, say, restarting my PC. End result: 15 minutes of twiddling my thumbs and blind-typing to my IM contacts as my PC struggled install the new driver (I got a black screen, then a tiny-resolution, screen, then a full-resolution screen with no mouse pointer, then nothing but the mouse pointer...) and eventually fell over. Anyone else got some fun stories on that front? The majority of end-users simply don't trust their computers to do as they're told, as we've seen with stories of people checking and double-checking file copies to make sure they've actually "stuck", and any disaster can reset that trust. By handing such a potentially dangerous process (as far as users who can't find the Device Manager and revert things are concerned) over to the computer, Microsoft's making a big gamble.
No kidding!!! What do you say at this point?
Trust isn't something you got by default. You have to give me a reason to trust you.
Unfortunately MS has shown time and again that their primary concerns are not their users but their business partners. Which does not mean their customers, though.
Now, an update to an OS can alter it considerably. The OS sits between me and my data, it controls all input and output my machine generates, it controls all data received and transmitted, can alter, generate or suppress information, in both directions. So the technical possibility is there for MS to decide that certain data is no longer to be displayed, or that certain data is to be transfered without my consent out of my machine. I don't say that MS would do that, only that they have the technical means to do just that, and I could not interfere with it (unless I put a filtering router between the machine and the internet).
What's more a problem is that you usually get very limited information about the "patches" that are about to hit you. If anything, you get a cryptic citation of some KB article that may or may not be relevant for you. More often than not, you don't get any information about the changes that are about to happen in your machine. Also not necessarily a move that builds trust. Do I get all the information necessary to decide whether I need an update? Worse, there are "updates" you cannot decline. They are pushed to your machine without asking. Could there be one that "breaks" my machine, or makes it behave in ways that I do not like? That disable my MP3 collection because it contains no DRM, or that doesn't let me install certain programs for "security reasons"?
If there was reason to trust MS that they wouldn't even think about doing something like that, it would be a non-issue. I have no reason to trust MS, though. MS has shown me no compelling reason that they are on "my" side, but they've shown me time and again that they don't care about me, their customer. So, why should I trust them that they will not change something in the system that is unfavorable for me, without even asking me first?
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
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'.
Yes i have.
"What do you mean you don't use Apache as your webserver?!?!?! Doesn't everybody?!?!?! What else would you POSSIBLY USE?????"
The monopoly is part of it, but the other part of it is the whole notion of software licensing, which convinces companies like Microsoft that not only do they own the software you're running, but the computer it's running on.
The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
It may be obvious to us, but not to the general population. Remember that this is a ZDNet article. People reading ZDNet are in the majority, Windows users who don't know Microsoft's evil tricks as much as we do. I'm glad that columnists write these articles once in a while, to make people realize Microsoft is not the "quality assured" company they pretend to be.
If we want to evangelize about open source/gnu linux, articles from "relatively neutral" parties such as this one are a very good resource.
Given the amount of money Microsoft earns with Windows, I'd expect they can afford "fast and good". It would even be a good business strategy not to try and save a few dollars here. But obviously, "fast and good" is not happening.
Which leaves me with two possible explanations:
1) They are overly stingy at the expense of damaging their reputation.
2) (more likely) Over the years, the Windows codebase has grown so convoluted that it is nearly impossible to handle, even with the manpower of Microsoft.
C - the footgun of programming languages
You forgot about the firstborn
For everything bad you can say about Windows Update (and I certainly do), for the vast majority of users (and if you can somewhat accurately consider yourself technically competent, you're not in it) it's by far the lesser of evils.
1) Didn't even think about rebooting my box by itself, regardless of configuration
2) Installed updates when I turned my computer on, not off - if I'm turning it off, then any second I'm going to be slinging the machine in my backpack, and jumping on my motorbike. Last I heard, Microsoft didn't possess the magical mystical powers required to ensure a hard drive works perfectly in these conditions.
3) Fucked off when I press the "I don't want to reboot now" button, instead of pestering me every 30 seconds like a bloody 4 year old.
None of these should require registry tweaks or policy hacks - they should all be *defaults*.
Two points...
/.
First, most people don't really trust their computers anyway, because they don't understand them. So the "trust degradation" of giving Microsoft free rein is minimal, maybe even negative, because "At least Microsoft understands my computer, and if anyone can keep it running, they can." Basically it's responsibility transferral for something they don't understand.
Second, there are cases where trust is absolutely required. A few I can think of are medical/HIPPA, military, and media. In a way, the first 2 embody opposite requirements from the 3rd. The first 2 absolutely require data integrity and system control, and the machine owner is central, in control, and responsible. There seems to be quite a difference between medical and military usages, and IMHO it's because medical usage grew out of IT departments, where such things were understood. It appears that military usage grew out of command/control and procurement, where they weren't. As a result, there's no shortage of people waiting to see the fireworks between Microsoft an HIPPA for the former, and the Win-Yorktown and all of our current cyber-security fears for the latter.
As for the 3rd example of trust mentioned above, you can find DRM arguments all over on
The living have better things to do than to continue hating the dead.
http://technet2.microsoft.com/windowsserver/en/library/797e56e1-a611-4f36-8bfe-99f8e6af26cf1033.mspx?mfr=true
FTA - "How can I be sure that updates are safe to install?
Windows uses Secure Socket Layer (SSL) to encrypt the transfer of system information and updates between your computer and the Windows Update Web site. Each file that you download using Automatic Updates has a digital signature from Microsoft. Digital signatures are designed to ensure the authenticity and integrity of signed files. Automatic Updates will not install files that do not contain the correct digital signature."
throw new NoSignatureException();
How about full disclosure about what's changing on YOUR PC? There's no reason why MS can't provide that in a timely, good, cheap manner.
Microsoft believes that hiding details of security updates (for instance, about vulnerabilities which have been patched quietly, along with the officially announced ones) helps them to protect customers. So from their perspective, there is some reason for secrecy.
I don't understand the motivation behind the WGA checks. Microsoft sends a very confusing message regarding its purpose. One result is that those who believe they've got illegally copied software on their hard drive won't patch their Windows. I don't see how *this* is in Microsoft's interest. Or, to put it differently, there already is very little trust in Windows Update anyway (even though, from a technical perspective, their track record is nothing but spectacular).
Don't get offended, but anyone trusting Microsoft is the best next thing to a fool. It may only be my humble opinion, but it was drawn from experience of many people. Sometimes it's just best to put the damn update service to disabled.
All the sexy babes want me... to fix their PC.
MS doesn't want your firstborn. They's have to support and maintain it and could be sued into the ground when they fail.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
...that developers from MS Gold partners are telling you to shut down automatic updates because they can/may/will ruin the $1 mill. .NET based project they are developing for you.
I have heard this from several different MS partners in the past years.
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.
Sure people can easily switch to Linux, but most people have a difficult time just typing in a URL in their browsers address bar, you really expect them to be able to function in Linux? As much as us geeks love to tinker, most folks want an appliance and desktop PC's just aren't there yet.
Being a spelling & grammar Nazi is a sign you do not poses the intelligence to contribute to the conversation
Auto updates are the work of Satan's own bum.
Seriously.
I have Thunderbird, Firefox, iTunes, VMWare and Adobe Acrobat Reader installed. In their default "automatically hassle user for updates every time they're available", you'd be lucky to go more than a few days without discovering that something needed to be upgraded and therefore restarted.
Vista, by default downloads updates, installs them AND reboots!
This happened to me.
Totally offtopic, but who cares?
I have a rather exotic rig at home, mostly built from stuff I had lying around. A couple different network cards, an uncommon Intel mobo, a surround sound card, a USB microphone and 1/4 jack interface for recording, five or six hard drives of all sorts, and a MIDI card I found in a bin somewhere. Couple that with an NVidia card, and I pretty much expected Ubuntu to choke -- and choke hard -- on it.
But it identified all my hardware perfectly, and it all works. Now I'm using Rosegarden and Sooperlooper and Audacity and Hydrogen to produce my music (with Jack: sweet vishnu what a nice/confusing program). I'm running XP in a virtual machine. There's only one program I use (Notion, notation/symphonic playback software) that requires Windows.
For me, the most complicated setup on this entire rig was getting the virtual machine working. Which wasn't hard at all.
[ think ]
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.
I think they were talking about how you do not have to pay for the patch.
I don't have to pay for my Linux patches. Where is that going on? I'd like to see that scam in action.
Microsoft has a company to run.
They offer the least possible features that the market allows for the highest possible price they can fetch. Indeed, Microsoft is a Marketing company that employs a legion of developers. The product, for the most part, is testament to that. No innovation to speak of and more license restrictions in the next product.
Let's unwind the propaganda a bit.
1. The average useful OSS project is not a headless zombie with a bunch of peace-loving anarchists running around it. There's somebody that has FULL control of the project. In fact they all have better organization than all of the big companies I've ever worked for.
I know that Microsoft in particular has quite a bit invested in spreading the headless-zombie-anarchy idea around but it's just not true.
You are paying too much for what Microsoft offers and have been for over a decade. Please take a step back and examine the situation with a little more rationality. You'll be much better off without Microsoft.
http://www.maxineudall.com/2010/02/should-economists-be-sued-for-malpractice.html
Or, to put it differently, there already is very little trust in Windows Update anyway (even though, from a technical perspective, their track record is nothing but spectacular).
Let's go with this a minute. To have a comparison, I will use Synaptic on Ubuntu. Both are consumer oriented. Both allow you to do unattended. Both allow you to get user aproval before patching. (Other then the WGA update, point to Ubuntu)
Ubuntu has had several spectacular failures that have resulted in a system that will not boot to the desktop. Microsoft has had a few good ones that call you a pirate and shut off functionality. The Ubuntu fix was within hours. The Microsoft fix was within days. On paper they are quite close, but in the real world MS is hated. Why this is should be the first priority at MS before more people realize just how viable Ubuntu is for many people.
Unfortunately, you can either have it fast and cheap, or cheap and good, but you can't have it fast and good. And with M$, you can't have it cheap, of course with M$, you can't have it good, period.
Who is general failure, and why is he reading my hard drive?
No third parties on Linux? I stopped reading your post right there. Linux is third parties.
How about solid roll-back capability? Then if my computer was working properly yesterday and isn't today after the update, I can just roll back to yesterday's OS and wait until the next update.
Actually the complaint is about the auto-update service automatically updating itself. There's no k/bs about that.
We've actually had windows updates that pretty much crippled our autodesk batch printing systems and cost us nearly 2 weeks worth of man hours to fix. Our final workaround was to have a machine totally unpatched that just simply does autodesk batch printing.
An article on that subject by someone above the blithering blogger level would be useful. This subject needs coverage in the Wall Street Journal or Business Week. There are some real issues here. If you're a bank, what do bank examiners think of Microsoft having a backdoor into your systems? If you're a health care provider, is there a HIPPA compliance issue? If you're a law firm and some of your clients are adverse to Microsoft, is it a breach of your duty to your clients to let Microsoft control your systems? If you're a defense contractor, is that back door permissible?
Many such companies run background checks on anyone who potentially has access to their data, and audits of what's happening within their own business. Who's auditing Microsoft for security? Who actually has access to the master keys that allow pushing an update? How many people have access to those keys? Are they US citizens? Do they have security clearances? Are they bonded?
Now those are the questions to be asking.
TFA was about M$ lying about their updates and forcing unnecessary updates on the luser.
Patents Drive Free Software as Hurricanes Drive Construction Industry
There's "switch" which implies changing your operating system, and then there's "switch" as in changing your OS and being able to do everything you previously could on your old OS after the switch. Linux is definitely in the former, but not the latter, unfortunately. It's getting closer every day, but as long as that .1% of things people do can't be done on Linux, then that is no panacea.
And you quite clearly represent the demographic of the average user :D
Well, Microsoft has billions of dollars and more labor than some of the smaller countries in this world. It's true that these projects are very complicated, but similar things have been done with far fewer resources...
++ Solaris
++ SkyOS
++ ReactOS
It's not so much that these projects are hard but that it's hard to co-ordinate all the people involved to use their resources as effectively as possible. Take for example the story about the resources MS dedicated to their Vista shutdown menu. It's true that the said button is an aspect of the system, but a comparatively negligible one; those 5+ programmers employed for that same period of time could accomplish a great deal. For example, they could have optimized the network stack sufficiently that it may not have been necessary to throttle it when music plays. In essence it's no longer a question of difficulty but a question of efficiency.
How do you kill that which has no life?
Ok, but now apply your general arguement to the specific case.
Question: What part of the recent unannounced, compulsory Windows update was
- urgent?
- safety critical?
- different from previous updates that were handled more conventionally.
The answers to those questions are why peple are in a snit.
As for the fast/good/cheap quandary, the analogy is wrong. The old saw refers to new work, especially custom work. But patches are equivalent to warrantee work or repairs, where "cheap" isn't a factor. When I want something fixed under warrantee, I want it "fast" and "good" - "cheap" is simply irrelevant to me, as I'm not paying the direct cost. Companies that try to provide warrantee work with "cheap" as a factor miss out on "good" or "fast", which ALWAYS hurts their reputation, and deservedly so.
Also, "secret" shouldn't be part of the customer service equation. Ever.
"As God is my witness, I thought turkeys could fly." A. Carlson
I have to use Windows for one single heavy duty application, so I have no choice. But I loaded a new hard drive with Win XP Pro XP2, the updates at that time (2 years ago or so) and the application.
The Dell has never been back on line since then, and has never sufferred a BSOD, nor any update issues, and has stayed up virtually 100% of the time, performing flawlessly.
All work on the web is done on my MacBook Pro, thank you, and it has never suffered any downtime, either. Well it didn't until I filled up its hard drive and needed a larger one.
I am seriously tempted to repeat Win XP SP2 install on a new Dell to take the next version of the application I must run. The last thing I want is crap from the web shutting me down for various crapo reasons.
This is a problem that the western world has. I'm 45 these days and I believe society is changing, while I can't be 100% sure, as I am getting older and changing as well, but apathy and disregard for our rights and freedom is growing at such an alarming rate.
We have rights, we do, but we need to fight for them or people, politicians, and corporations will simply assume we will be lazy fucks and taunt "nah nah nah nah nah" and take them away.
We have the right to own our machine. We have the right to tell companies "I won't open a word document, send it to me in ISO ODF or PDF or text." We have the right to remove Windows from our system. We have the right to sell our OEM Windows licenses.
Without even getting into politics or the growing U.S. police state, corporate america needs a dope slap. We, ALL OF US! have to stand up to corporate shit. We do not stand against it in great numbers, then nothing will ever get done.
Call tech support when shit happens, keep them on the phone for a long time, it costs them money. Send products back, it costs them money. Tell people to avoid products that suck, it costs them money. When the shit that comes from China has lead in it, sue them, it costs them money. The government isn't going to do anything for you, the politicians represent the corporations. It is only when bad corporate policy costs them money, will they change and not one minute sooner.
Start RETURNING computers, WHOLE COMPUTERS, because vista sucks. If Windows is part (as OEM's claim) of the computer, the the WHOLE COMPUTER is defective. That will make the Dells and HPs start to offer new options. Seriously, if 10% of the slash dot readers went out and bought new computers at the big retails stores tomorrow and returned them the next day siting that Vista does not work and is not reliable. It would make a HUGE impact on the industry. No one could ignore it.
But, no, no one will do that because they ARE to fucking lazy.
Surprise, surprise.
As Bruce Schneier points out, the problem is not that Microsoft can install updates on your computer without asking, but as soon as it gets cracked, then soon every script kiddy on the planet will also be able to do so.
Then you're really going to be screwed.
-mike
-- "So, what's the deal with Auntie Gerschwitz et all?"
I can't understand why anybody would allow a company to have free access to their OS. How much more likely are you to get nailed by an evil-doer if you wait a couple of days before installing an update to make sure there's no problem with it?
I look at all the bloat-ware Microsoft seems to believe I want or need on my system, add in all the stuff they want to install for their own reasons, and I have no intention whatsoever of allowing them unsupervised access. If you had some heirlooms in your house, would you hand over the keys to a cleaning agency with a record for occasional carelessness?
I've calculated my velocity with such exquisite precision that I have no idea where I am.
I have four updates to install right now. Out of the four, one is for Outlook Express which I don't even have installed. Another update is for Windows Malicious Software Removal Tool, which I never install and in addition always tell it not to bother me with any more updates but they still keep appearing.
I guess the problem is control. If you want to retain control of your machine, you end up fighting against the system and have to watch it very closely. The alternative is to drink the kool-aid and allow updates to take over your machine ceding control to Microsoft. For me, I'd rather try to retain at least the semblance of control over the machine I use on a daily basis.
Once I was a four stone apology. Now I am two separate gorillas.
Wait - I don't understand... you have linux machines, you use linux machines, and you think PuTTY and WinSCP are great tools keeping you from using linux?
I assume you mean that there is a lack of graphical utilities under Linux for SCP/SSH? Konquerer has an scp agent built in (fish://user@host/path/to/dir), Gnome allows you to mount a server via ssh/scp, OSX has Fugu, and if you want a graphical SSH then kssh is pretty much identical to PuTTY (though personally, I like my shells to be simpler).
Now, the other arguments (number of sales/downloads etc) I can't argue. I have to admit in my own development I see far more OSX downloads than Windows, and more Linux than OSX. Of course, what I write is primarily server monitoring apps and dashboard/konfabulator stuff so that would be logical.
An operating system should be like a light switch... simple, effective, easy to use, and designed for everyone.
"alarmist blog'? 'fud-ish?'
:-)
This after Balmer calls Linux 'communist' and threatens law suits for alleged patent/copyright violations? (But doesn't seem able to carry through to court, where they want proof.)
To claim that "99% of the world's Windows users don't give a shit about the updates, and will click anything that pops up on their PC" sounds like somebody's having a bad day.
But then I am a Mac user on 3 boxes, Linux on another and XP(SP2) on a third, cowering behind a firewall (or two.
MSBPodcast.com The opinions expressed here are my own. If you don't like 'em... Think up your own stuff.
While rhetoric like "betraying user trust" and "eroding customer confidence" make for great fodder on sites like slashdot, the sad truth is that Ma and Pa Sixpack are oblivious to all of this. As long as their dusty old Dell still gets onto the intarweb, they're happy. They just click "OK" every time the systems asks them anything, and don't really care WTF windows update does.
Slashdot: come for the pedantry, stay for the condescension.
I don't think you understand the issue here. The issue is that MS users who chose not to get automatic updates got an automatic update anyway. This is a matter of trust. I don't know why you are talking about NDAs. Companies that didn't want automatic updates from MS had an automatic update installed. NDAs are neither here nor there. I also don't understand the relevance of Linux to this. It's not a matter of what was in the update. It's the fact that it was installed automatically despite the fact that users had expressed a preference not to install it automatically.
Reality is defined by the maddest person in the room
While I agree with much of what you say, there's just one problem. Not once do you address the issue at hand!! Pushing out updates to people that have specifically said "no thank you" is wrong under all circumstances! There is no excuse. It can't be justified. It's one thing to try and convince a court that your web browser is an integral part of the OS, and quite another to force updates on people that don't want them. I think you may have missed the underlying issue here. Trust or now, lack of same!
This guy has apparently NEVER read a comic book! Weird. I'm no comic nerd, and probably haven't looked at one in a decade, but even I caught the "BLAM" reference and totally understood it. Very weird.
Amen to that. I love my windows box. I do most of my coding in linux, but my windows machine is my main computer. I find that there are a few (somewhat related) things that really tie me to windows - familiarity, support and ease of use. My windows box is basically for fun and utility. I don't want to baby-sit it. I want the fully-written and company-supported drivers for my strange hardware, and I don't want to be told to re-write the source code myself when I'm having problems. Don't get me wrong, it's nice to have the option to do so, but I don't want to do it in my free time. For work, yes. For home, no. Let the company do it. Call me lazy, but my definition of down-time rarely includes doing the stuff I do for work.
I think that's probably one of the major problems for the introduction of linux to the desktop. The average geek likes open source, or at least the thought of it. The average user wouldn't touch the source code with a 20 foot pole anyway. They (and I) want company-written and supported software. Of course, that's a bit of a catch-22 anyway, because companies won't write drivers for linux until there's a demand, but there won't be a demand until there's good software out there.
...no two people are not on fire.
poprocks.
man, I feel like mold.
You can have the same functionality as winscp with konqueror or krusader in combination with fish:// or scp://. You can also use different protocols such as webdav:// or ftp:// to manage remote files.
DNA is the ultimate spaghetti code.
Please remove this post as it states my sig as part of the argument. I Love the fact that MS is so broken.. It keeps me employeed!! ;-)
The ones that get this will laugh.. the others...
Well flame on.
love the taste, hate the texture
Not entirely true. PCLinuxOS' and Ubuntu's Synaptic works quite well. Look for the software you want to install, select it, install it, run it. Usually. (but then, not all Windows software runs without configuring it first)
Irony? Yea, it's like goldy and bronzy, only it's made of iron!
Windows update breaking healthy system? Virtually never, Linux on the other hand...
:( I've hand updates that just break gnomes "task bar" so bad I had to swtich to KDE to continue using that install till I could reinstall the entire thing. Functionality erodes at the rate that after 6-12 months any linux install I've ever had that I put updates too (some I do and some I don;t as required by my job pf maintaining some kernel and X drivers) THe install becomes so hosed it's useless and I have to reinstall from the latest didks for that distro. (Some merely cut off support completely after 12 months)
This happens with EVERY linux distro I have ever installed within 6-12 months of use. The only way to keep a linux install from breakign is to NEVER update after a clean install.
The updates come almost DAILY. Kernel updates come in "stable" kernel lines that break the ABI and cause perfectly installed and functioning hardware to stop working until you hand rebuild and hand re-install the drivers for them.
People complain about Windows version upgrades but Linux routinely breaks itself with point point releases in "stable" lines
I have ZERO trust in ANY update I do with Linux now, Microsoft has 100 times as much information about their updates than any Linux distro (even if it isn't 100% complete) and the non-breakage trust is about 100 times higher for Windows than Linux (pick any distro, I've installed moret of them).
An awful lot of these posts really seem more like freudian slips than anything informational. Unconsciously everyone KNOWS what a shabmbles the Linux update situation is so to try to stave off some kind of guilt about it they find ways of picking no their enemy for the same thing instead.
It's REALLY EMBARASSING GUYS!
Contrary to popular belief, coding is not all free blow-jobs and beer. Those things cost MONEY!
And, you know, even some geeks like having things that just work. There was a time when I'd build my own computer and spend every waking hour monkeying with the thing to make it perform 0.5% better in a specific task. Maybe I'm just getting too old for that, or maybe my interests have just shifted, but this Macbook I have, which doesn't really require anything of me to perform properly every day, is a needed breath of fresh air.
I think the big shift for me was during college, when my Frankenstein computer failed during the one particularly hectic spring essay rush. I bought a Dell laptop because it was cheap and could be at my door in three days. Since then, I've never built a "main" computer again. I still have my HTPC project and a few other things, but it's really, really nice to know that I have one computer that will always work when I need to actually, you know, DO something that matters. No driver headaches, no dodgy hardware, no constant configuration. I open the lid, do my thing, then close the lid. Although I have become a real Mac fan, this isn't a pro-Mac post at all... it's a post in strong favour of things that don't require me to screw around. If I WANT to screw around, I will, but at least the choice is mine now. I've put that same principle into play in what I drive, too. I have a 2000 Mazda Protege, which never fails, as my daily driver. Then, I have a 1988 Nissan Pathfinder with 31" tires, a lift, etc for those days where I feel like tinkering. That truck sits apart for weeks if I don't feel like getting my hands dirty, and you know why? Because it can -- I don't need it to get me to work. It's beautiful. If you can afford it, life really is better when you don't have to drive the project (both literally and as a metaphor for computers).
Frankly, even if it costs me my Geek Card, I'm never going back to the "old way."
-
Inventor of the term 'pardon my French'.
ssh://user@host/path/to/dir works great in gnome for me without having to mount anything
as does
smb://windowsuser@windowshost/sharename/path/to/dir for windows hosts
One thing I'd really like but haven't been able to figure out is how to get it to translate windows links my colleagues send me (s:\path\to\shared\file.doc) to something nautilus understands (smb://usernameforSdrive@HostForSDrive/ShareForSDrive/path/to/shared/file.doc) - seems non trivial but would be a real timesaver.
I'll admit this may be a little tinfoil-hattish but it makes me wonder if MSFT is the only player in this saga. Just supposed in the wake of 9-11 hysteria that someone in the administration had the brainy idea to slip a traceable...something...in PC's to track terror suspects. Not something that reported to a third party...too easy to spot the traffic. Something that relayed the data through MSFT so the destination would remain hidden. Now the forced updates are wiping out whatever it was.
Probably out there but a few years ago suspecting the phone companies of listening in on the phone calls of millions of Americans without a warrant would have been really out there.
And before that was the revelation that printers were spitting out identifiable information in the background.
It's a sad testimony that wholesale spying on PC users is not out of the realm of the plausible for the current administration to attempt or Microsoft to cooperate.
It may be years from now before we find out the whole truth. What we know today should send a shudder through every freedom loving person in this country. I'm mildly surprised so many hard-core right wingers are okay with the government spying on them.
That's our life, the big wheel of shit. - The Fat Man, Blue Tango Salvage
Synaptic downloads a list of all updates to the user and the user's computer determines what updates are applicable.
Microsoft uploads a list of 'everything' on the user's PC to Microsoft and Microsoft determines what updates are applicable and then stores that uploaded list, associated with your registration information, for an undisclosed period of time.
When information is power, privacy is freedom.
I've long thought the same. Looking at the US situation, that method of government (american style democracy (i'm usian, btw)) (oh and I like scheme;) works really well in small groups with common interests. And it *still* works well in the right scale: small towns, social groups (neighborhood associations, PTG's etc) but rapidly loses effectiveness as you move up in scale. In fact I think the number, at least for governed populations, is much smaller than 1e7. You really need to know at least a sizable portion of your fellow citizens to develop a situation where you give a damn about the rest of the population. Once you get to a "them" mentality, its all over because who cares if it hurts "them" so long as "we" get what we need/want. I think that if the local level is working well, then it will carry up the government ladder to regional and even national levels because the local effectiveness keeps people involved. If you, as a citizen, have access (I mean *real* access) to your elected representatives, and those representatives have some clue who you are, then government will work for you. If not, then apathy sets in.
Probably the same for capitalism as well. Capitalism works great when everyone knows everyone else, or at least most everyone else. I, as a retailer, know my customers and my customers know me. I'm happy to sell to them for a reasonable price that supports me in a reasonable manner and they are happy to buy from me knowing that they're not being screwed. They know this because they know me and know my lifestyle, at least somewhat. Once you no longer know your customers, then you begin to view them as objects with money that you want to get. It's sort of inevitable (I know, I own retail businesses). Likewise, if you as a customer don't know the producers/retailers of goods and services you purchase then you objectivize(?) those people and no longer care about their living and working conditions, you begin to just want the stuff as cheap as you can get it.
It is my opinion, based purely on anecdotal experience, that the system breaks irrevocably once the scale of the local population gets above some number of thousands (maybe 10-50, at a guess) and the population at large is also sufficiently large (a few million?).
man, I feel like mold.
Is laziness. In well over 50% of the cases we run in to at work where someone shut it down, the reason is because they didn't want to bother with having to reboot their computer. They want to be able to run simulations over night and can't bother to have them save state once a week. Sad, but that really is the #1 reason we run across.
*EVERYONE* did not get an update.
Again, large enough business with a standing MS relationship != joe user.
What peeves me is how often I see people unnecessarily double clicking on hyperlinks, dialog boxes, error messages, start menu, close button, etc... Their only luck when it actually makes a difference is that so many people don't have the coordination to hold their mouse still when they click that their second click misses entirely. I havn't gotten a single person to pay attention to their actions, let alone "switch" their minds to be aware of what they are doing with their HIDs. If you can't switch people to using single clicks on hyperlinks, how do you switch them to linux? They don't even care when it doesn't work. Amazingly, Ubuntu has managed to address the *cough* "average" user.
Want Big Business out of government? Take away the incentive and start by getting government out of big business!
Not only that, but the grandparent post deliberately, I suppose, obscured the issue. The issue is trust, not honest mistakes.
Microsoft's recent sneaky update has caused severe problems: Microsoft Stealth Update and Windows XP repair don't mix. If Microsoft weren't sneaky, at least customers could deal with the mistakes more easily.
Quote from the ZDNet article: "The overall impression that I get as someone who deals directly with the company is that Microsoft believes that it is right and anyone making a fuss is ultimately wrong". It's not surprising to me that billionaire virtual monopolists would have developed arrogance.
However, that's not the REAL problem, in my opinion. The real problem is that people think that Microsoft is a software company that is routinely abusive. But it isn't. Actually, Microsoft is an abuse company that uses software as a means of delivering abuse. I think a lot of people agree that, if you look at it that way, Microsoft is excellent at what it does.
Well, actually. Yes, there is a reason why they shouldn't be disclosing everything they do upfront. Tht reason is ignorant users. These are people that freak out whever they see anything they don't understand, and gobbledygook about patches will send them screaming for IT support lines around the world.
Having said that, there should be ways to find out what was done, just not "up front".
If you need web hosting, you could do worse than here
Any time I see that particular update appear in the hardware updates, I always hide it from the user. I have only had it successfully work in a very small handful of cases. It has failed so many times, I shudder when it shows up. It has failed so bad on two occasions that a rollback didn't fix it. I had to replace the video card to get XP working properly after installing that piece of malware.
I can spare MS the work... When Ubuntu fails, that is due to an error, and it doesn't call the user a pirate. When Windows fails to validate, that is dues to MS thinking the user is a pirate (and being quite verbal about it).
Rethinking email
you can do more than just browse them like a file browser as well, KDE can also save to those different protocols, assuming they have write support.just yesterday I needed up upload an email attachment to a website, all I did was put the save location as ftp://path/to/save/ and it saved it there. can't get much easier than that. The whole KDE IO slaves are just so easy to use a caveman could do it!
I've often wondered with the slow Vista uptake whether MS would torpedo XP via updates that actually degrade performance or break things deliberately. It's weird, I have a number of XP boxes with very good reliablity, but in the last 3 months I have had a number of software related failures on nearly all of them - most requiring re-installs. The drivers haven't changed, usage hasn't changed, the only thing that has changed is the MS updates. No hard evidence, but many fellow admins I know have seen similar oddities occur (esp after the stealth update)...
It could just be coincidence as it would be a very dangerous move by MS, yet I wouldn't put it past them. Users who are having to fuck around are surely more likely to consider switching OS. For the bulk of desktop users that would be Vista.
The best fastest way to get people out a building is to set it on fire...
I think the difference is that in FOSS community, the senior developpers are the ones that get to fix the code, and quite often it's the person who committed the error in the first place (and is, therefore, most intimate with the issue at hand). In large companies - vast majority of them - the code is fixed by juniors; people with no experience (maintenance is handed as *the* activity to get experience), little expertise and quite often short lifespan (and the resulting "I might not be around in 6 months, so why should I care what happens" attitude).
Your windows machine downloads a catalog xml file with all the patches, file vers, hashes, etc. Your local machine does the comparison and requests the updates.
sudo apt-get install putty
Why anyone would want to use the linux version of putty when there is no point is beyond my reasoning, however.
So a boom of mac lovers came from Apple giving away lots of computers to schools, like cigarette companies giving away cigarettes during the war (all of them). Both became an addictive disaster. Microsoft made shady deals that would make the devil squirm to make stores and prebuilt computers Windows only. There will never be a switch to Linux. There IS going to be a new generation of computer users. From OLPC to all the (for now) poorer schools and countries adopting/mandating Linux into public education, and other businesses unwilling to submit to the Microsoft tax (approaching 100 percent?) Average users / morons are going to use Linux because it is what they are used to, and the pay to switch will be a luxury once Microsoft actually has to be competitive (look as OSX or the history of Apple OS in general). 5-10 more years for Linux to reach middle class schools in the US, and other other countries, plus another 20 years for the generation born into that world to reach the work force. Software of the future CAN'T continue to be developed the way it was/is done in the past/now... Unless everything ends up Macromedia/Java... And if that happens, just throw me in front of a freakin train. Remember all those companies / people that didn't think computers were the thing? They didn't switch, they died. :)
Want Big Business out of government? Take away the incentive and start by getting government out of big business!
You were modded funny, but insightful would have worked too...
Vista... 5 years later
Vista... Expensive as hell for what you get
Vista... Resource hog, broken security model, missing anything really useful worth upgrading for
Hat Trick!
No sig for you!!
Always put up with it? To a point, but soon that hurdle of switching to something else seems worth it when time and time again MS does something to make computing more difficult for the end user. And that hurdle is getting smaller all the time. And I am not talking theoretical nonsense. I work for a library at a large university and it is become unbelievably hard to maintain a large fleet of public computers. Genuine Advantage has broken our update scripts causes massive manual updates to be needed, and they continue to change this, with no guarantee that the next patch Tuesday will or will not require a different process. On top of that, to build an image using MS's own sysprep, has about a 80% failure rate! It can take up to two months to fulling update an image that we know will always boot up correctly on all the computers we use (and we only have three different models). Then there is vista. Right now, hardware requirements aside, it is not ready for mass use. It isn't stable enough for 4 guys to keep 150 public machines running. We would probably need about 15 people. And if SP1 fixes these issues, there is still the hardware side. Maybe we have been spoiled with the fact that 5 year old computers could use the newest software, but that is the way it is set up now. We use computers that are 5 years old, and older for specialized systems, and we can't go back to the university and say, "oh, well MS needs more hardware, so we need to double the computer funding." So as Vista stands now, it would be about 3-4 years before the entire group of computers will run it well enough that busy college students can use it. MS has stated quite clearly that XP will not be supported that long. So soon we may not have any choice but to leave windows. And it may not be that long. I have already been handed a project to evaluate the ability for linux to be used on public computers. The requirements are IE7 and Office 2007 working as well as "All media in books in the library are readable." The last requirement isn't going to be hard. But even if the only way to do that is to set them up with VMware that runs a downloaded workstation of windows, it will probably be much easier to send out a new workstation file than do the updates required from MS. And when linux is running for free on all the public desktops, albeit in the background, how long it is going to be before wine can get IE7 and O2007 working along side the free variants and the university says "Why are we paying a Windows site license?"
There's nothing hidden or scary about the way they do it. If you actually read the articles that accompany the patches, you can find out everything you want to know about each individual one. As for Automatic Updates, you have a few options: download and install automatically, download automatically and install manually, or turned off completely. You are the one making this choice, not Microsoft.
I think they have everything asked of them to take care of their patching issues. At every step, there have been complainers. First, there was nothing but downloading patches when something broke. This is the norm for every other application on the market, as far as I can tell. It wasn't good enough for the complainers because "you make us patch too often!" So they started Patch Tuesday. This turned into "you can't tell me that you can patch just once a month and be safe!" Then Automatic Updates was setup and it became "you can't go do this on your own, we want to control it!"
The only thing the complainers get out of it is a sense of sticking it to The Man. Now, get off your hig horse, setup Automatic Updates to the option you want, patch your systems in as proactive manner as you feel comfortable, and quit playing Minesweeper.
That being, piracy and people passing on upgrades.
/. who like an OS that purrs like a pussy. Business gets an acceptable OS, over time. Home users get a cheap and good enough OS. OEMs & Dell/HP get their $ from new hardware sales. Microsoft gets what its illegal monopoly has allowed them to swindle.
When people download Windows, Microsoft doesn't get money. When people stick with an older version of Windows, Microsoft doesn't get money. So, they provide a crap OS (XP or Vista) and then update the thing to a passable state.
Result? (1) The OS becomes "OK" over time but (2) becomes a bear to install & update on a new computer due to the number of patches (& reboots) so home users and tech shops won't even bother or will charge for it (putting it out of reach as an option), and (3) becomes a bear for the average techie to install on their custom box, due to a dearth of drivers and the long install time, to the point where it is cheaper in time & energy to buy it installed on a new computer.
Everyone wins in this situation, except people like the majority of those on
Now, if Microsoft actually delivered a good OS (e.g. Win2000) they would majorly shoot themselves in the foot. No need to call home to register product. Easy to crack/copy/install...forever. Half decent techies can re-install Windows for their neighbors. Corporate world doesn't need subscriptions, and even gets a little "careless" about installs. Microsoft loses on every front.
So, is Microsoft's behavior really all that surprising? And if not, is it worth complaining about? Accept the way things are or go for an alternative.
I come here for the love
http://www.happypenguin.org/
http://www.linuxgames.com/
Sure, you can say they're inferior, but you can't say they don't exist. At the end of the day it's a question of whether you value your freedom more than the latest whizbang games.
While most end-users get their software from their distro, where do you think the distros get it from?
The vast majority of packages are maintained separate from any distro, and they're pulled into each distro by the distro maintainers. The real reason why the the linux updates are more reliable is that the developers can _talk to each other_. Most packages have mailing lists, newsgroups, forums, etc. and solutions can be developed in cooperation with the other developers.
As for the buck-passing thing...it happens with linux too. The application team blames the platform team which blames the distro which blames glibc, and they in turn say that the distro needs to upgrade to the latest version, which isn't compatible with the distro's compiler....and so it goes.
I do this with XP. Works great. But then, I don't run update in the full blown, update without telling me anything mode. When I installed a few fixes and the system halted, I rolled back. Viola, it worked.
Politics is the art of looking for trouble, finding it everywhere, diagnosing it incorrectly and applying the wrong fix.
Today is red jello day - all workers must eat all of their red jello. Failure to comply will result in five demerits.
So MS causing things to break, as in the updates and Vista, is a more serious problem than it would be for other OSes. It strikes at the heart of their business model--selling things that have basic functionality to clueless users.
I have a hard time believing that MS would allow _anyone_ access to the source. Unless they're trying to set the business up for a patent infringement lawsuit or something.
"You get one of the above, and only on one product".
Cheap - Base OS on OEM. So cheap that it irritated the DOJ just a little (but not enough.)
My first Journal Entry ever, in 8 years! http://slashdot.org/journal/365947/aphelion-scifi-fantasy-horror-poetry-webzine
Windows update breaking healthy system? Virtually never, Linux on the other hand...
Oh no! Microsoft was impugned with no mention of Linux, so Microsoft has to have a shill to FUD linux anyway.
In case you haven't noticed this whole thing ISN'T ABOUT LINUX, so don't try to make it about Linux.
A clear and informational debate about Linux vs Windows is a valid topic, but not in the context of Microsoft sucking for and because of its own doing.
My experience for several years has been that Linux is light years beyond Windows in terms of detecting hardware and installing appropriate drivers (the big exception bing wifi drivers, of course). They used to tell you to make sure you copied all of the info out of Device Manager before attempting a Linux install so you could hunt down the drivers you would need to get your hardware working. Now, it's more like pop in a Ubuntu CD to identify all of your hardware before doing an XP install. And I'm not talking about weird, esoteric stuff that you could understand. This is basic things like NICs and sound cards. Even the various HP Laserjets we have scattered around the office stump Windows' hardware detection tool, while simply plugging the printer in to a Linux box often results in a working printer with no further user intervention.
I don't care why you're posting AC
I don't think that's it.
A friend of mine is friends with (no kidding) Prince Bandar. Bandar has observed that the difference between a monarchy and a democracy is that in a democracy when you lose touch with the people, they vote you out. In a monarchy, you have a revolution and you lose your head. I my opinion this profoundly misses the point, which is that how governments change is much, much more than some irrelevant implementation detail. It's the single most critical thing.
Democracies don't ensure good government, they ensure that bad ones are removed with the least disruption to peoples' lives. Bandar conveniently glosses over the part of the story before the monarchy loses its heads, the part where the failing regime's secret police is snatching potential dissidents under the cover of night.
But his point about the precarious position of leaders in situations where there is no ready means of choice or replacement is worth considering. Having the ability to to impose measures without effective consent, and to do it secretly is no big deal. It's actually doing it that steers you down the road to an appointment with Mdme. Guillotine.
It's hyperbole of course to compare Microsoft with a despotic regime, but thatdoesn't mean there aren't important parallels to be drawn. Can any organization resist the temptation to quietly "fix" things, to make problems "go away", if those things are in its power? Especially when that organization is under pressure and the people running it have a lot to lose?
Sure. It's possible. It's just tempting to try to discreetly impose your will on people hoping they won't notice, which of course they will.
Post may contain irony: discontinue use if experiencing mood swings, nausea or elevated blood pressure.
... MS has been sharing source code for a LONG time.
I am aware of the in built ssh things in Konquerer and such. Indeed I use them. What I find for my work is that winscp is superior.
And I did not say that these stopped me from using Linux, rarely a day goes by that I am not actively logged into a linux box and working. What they do is stop me from dumping windows, that's an entirely different thing. Plus they are open source, which is ok.
I get lots of visits from Mac users on my site, but I have no way of compiling an OSX version of my software, let alone maintaining it with updates. If I did things might get interesting.
and if you want a graphical SSH then kssh is pretty much identical to PuTTY
Or they could just run the Unix version of PuTTY itself.
http://www.tecchannel.de/ueberblick/archiv/402064/index15.html
When information is power, privacy is freedom.
session saving. That's the biggie for me. I have lots of machines, not all of them local. Having a menu to choose from is nice and easy.
Well, if Microsoft spent half as much time in making a decent product in the first place, they wouldn't have to sneak in all the "features" that help preserve their monopoly. This is what people are upset with. OS X updates, for example, make the computer run better, in contrast to the Microsoft's method of updating your computer to ensure you reamain a Microsoft Customer.
Who else has noticed that the latest wave of Microsoft shills say "I use linux all day at work programming", but at home, my personal machine is Windows. I just LUV my windows box."?
I originally trusted MS with Windows updates, but as usual with matters concerning Microsoft, it was a huge mistake.
The updater got greedy and decided to update my MS Office. I don't have outlook installed, since I never use it. The updater however somehow failed to detect that and started downloading a "critical update" for Outlook without permission. It then started asking me if it's ok to install, but naturally the install always fails, as the files are not where it thinks they are, so it cancels and later again asks me whether it's ok to try. I've been seeing that wizard ever since for a few months now. The solution? I can think of two actually:
1) Reinstall the OS (preferably to something Open Source)
or
2) Get used to the thing.
That's how it always is with Microsoft - the bug is there for so long that everyone knows about it, and then it's not a bug anymore. It's a "feature"...
There are two kinds of people - those who are radioactive and those who have already decayed..
Also remember, XBox and Live is what Microsoft really wants Windows to be like.. that's the goal... Vista is the means. Just like XBox, they don't "owe" you to tell you what's going on.. like it or go else where!
I am a cave man you insensitive clod!
vi +
Nope, that's not the problem. The problem is with transparency.
I can accept that not all code is perfect and that in a beast of an OS like Windows it is entirely possible that an update will break something. That's fine. That's OK. And when I decide to install an update I am aware that I may need to fix something after the fact. I don't have a problem with this.
What I do have a problem with is Microsoft not telling me what their updates are doing. Yes, generally speaking, there is some indication of what the update is supposed to address. The patch notes will reference a hotfix or KB number or something like that. A lot of the time you can tell what is likely to be affected. But not always. Microsoft has repeatedly released updates with incredibly vague or downright misleading patch notes. And then there was the recent stealth update.
I've got Automatic Updates disabled on just about all of our production systems. I can't have some update showing up in the middle of the night and hosing a server or a couple dozen workstations. I always read through the patch notes before applying updates and, to the best of my ability, check with software support to make sure nothing is going to break.
But if an update claims the only thing it does is fix a bug in IE when in fact it messes around half a dozen low-level network components then I have little if any ability to predict what is going to be broken by that update.
"Work is the curse of the drinking classes." -Oscar Wilde
Is that even possible? Maybe I'm not thinking outside the box enough, but wouldn't a flawless rollback capability require mirroring the contents of the entire hard drive? Even compressed, most people simply do not have that much amount of free space, much less room for multiples (daily, weekly, month rollbacks)
Doesn't the typical Windows user trust almost everyone, anyway? Most of them rely on blacklists to make the decision about whether or not to execute some code that you email to them! If McAfee's 27-month-old database doesn't say it's malware, then it's ok to run it with full admin privs and direct access to the hardware.
As copyright owner of this comment, I authorize everyone to defeat any technological measure which limits access to it.
Great sarcastic troll! Kudos!
I would definitely mod you funny if I had points.
The cesspool just got a check and balance.
I am an insensitive clod you insensitive clod!
Familiarty? You said you use Linux all the time, so you're equally familiar with both. right? Something sounds untrue there.
Support? Do you really mean MS phone support? Really?
Ease of use? That's tied closely to familiarity. Maybe you mean the ease of use of most Windows programs, which generally are easier.
Maybe there was a driver you needed that wasn't available, which is where your source code argument came from, but it's a bit dishonest to suggest that a willingness to alter source code is a requirement of a good Linux experience. Strange hardware either works or it doesn't.
I've had Linux on my laptop for over a year. Everything just works, there's nothing to babysit, and I have the same level of support that I ever got with Windows - none.
Those are my principles. If you don't like them I have others. -Groucho Marx
And that's exactly the reason. EOLing a person prematurely is illegal.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
Not true.
The only people who got silent updates were those with autoupdates running, and configured to download and notify, or just to notify.
If you had automatic updates disabled, or set to do nothing, you got no auto patch. If you were using WSUS/SUS or any other 3rd party patching tool, then you got no silent updates.
Generally, this means companies wont be affected by this whole thing at all, since they're using WSUS, SMS, or some other solution.
With Linux, you get all three
Not sure why you got modded flamebait. Fanbois, I guess. I think you are pretty much right, except I'd make one correction:
/.) know why media doesn't work out of the box, and that it's not really Linux' fault. But that doesn't matter to end users. It either works or it doesn't. Lack of media support is bad for home use, but arguably good for business use.
'This excludes Linux from "serious" office work.'
Actually, Linux seems to be more for the office than home. I wonder why (other than legacy apps) businesses use Windows, actually. Well, I don't wonder, actually -- in most cases I am pretty sure it's good old inertia.
There are two things about Linux that make it less than desirable for the *average* user at home while at the same time make it ideal for business. Disclaimer, on my main machine at home I have a dual boot with ubuntu and XP. I actually prefer ubuntu and would use it exclusively were it not for some windows-only software I need to use and keeping my wife sane by giving her what she is familiar with (who is NOT a geek).
1) lack of media support. Now, before someone flames me as to why linux doesn't play DVDs, MP3s, etc, out of the box, don't waste your time. And a boot to the head for the first person who mentions OGG. Who gives a CRAP about ogg? We (here on
2) ease of installing software. Riddle me this: how do most people install software in Windows? I'd bet my bottom dollar that most people pop in a CD and autorun takes over, or they download a program to their desktop and double click it. Hell, that's how I do it. Why? Because it's easy. Now, I do like synaptic and apt-get. But they are not easier than double clicking an icon on your desktop. Most users know how to search the web for software, so that's not a problem. So, while synaptic saves you this step, I'd argue that's irrelevant. It's easier to search the web than some program that suffers from what I like to call "yellow pages syndrome", where stuff is placed into arbitrary categories. This forces you to use the sub-par search feature and wade through heaps of unintelligible results. Synaptic's search is no google; and installing stuff on Linux is not as easy as on Windows. And that's OK. I don't want anyone installing comet cursor or Bonzi-buddy on my computers anyhow.
In a business setting, Ubuntu offers what you need: a secure, lean, cheap, and easy to administer platform. It has a good office suite (Office is good, OOo is good enough). It has a superior web browser in Firefox. It has a good eMail program in Evolution. Did I mention it's secure? If I started a small business, I'd at least try going 100% linux.
blah blah blah
What's really broken with Windows - trust. Not even Windows Update, but Windows in itself. Windows Update is just another add-on that tries to install crap onto your machine, like that "Malicious Software Removal Tool".
And of course the whole crappy spyware and trojan ecosystem, but that's not directly caused by MS.
I finally gave in and bought a Mac - I want Photoshop, and I can't have that on Linux (and no, forget The Gimp for what I'm doing).
I knew Windows Update was dodgy, but this is far beyond the so-called red hand of guilt -- MS would have to be some kind of anti-Pict with its whole body dyed red for this expression to apply in this instance. Got me thinking more and more about simply sucking up the hit in productivity from missing *nix software and making the jump, regardless of required apps that I can't get to run under Wine. Part of smart business is reducing your exposure to risks, and MS is looming ever larger...
Cheers,
"What in the name of Fats Waller is that?"
"A four-foot prune."
If you go out of your way to buy a machine that "just works", why couldn't you go out of your way to buy a machine that's Linux certified? I understand you like OS X, but there's no reason the same thing wouldn't work with Linux. There's plenty of compatible hardware out there, and well-polished distros that just work.
My blog. Good stuff (when I remember to update it). Read it.
I'm assuming the OP was letting us know the number of machines he was dealing with, which I found to be useful information. Now if he did indeed mean 5 percent of an undisclosed number of machines, I'm with ya.
Never let a lack of data get in the way of a good rant.
Well, I did read the linked article. They claim that Windows Update (WU) uploads a complete list of installed hardware to the MS server; and the server then sends WU a list of applicable updates for that hardware. They also claim (with less certainty) that the product identification key and a signed hash of that key are sent to Microsoft as a way of potentially denying updates to pirated copies of Windows.
These are possibly reasons for concern, but just to be clear they are a far cry from the upload everything!!!oneoneone!!! approach claimed by the grandparent post. Keep in mind that at the end of the day, any automatic update server (Windows, Ubuntu, insert your OS) can learn a lot about what's installed in the system being updated, if only by analyzing what gets downloaded. Or would we all be better served by an automatic update system which always downloaded every available update whether it was needed or not?
Your metaphor is flawed.
The problem is that MS is under the gun. Sometimes they release too soon, and blam it shoots them in the butt.
There. I've fixed it for you.
Of course, there are folks that say, "If they would have designed it properly the first time..." But, you know what, a project the size of an OS, kernal, Office app is very hard to weed out all the problems.
No, if you had designed it properly the first time, it would have been easier in the long run to weed out all of the problems. The fact that MS has such a difficult time producing secure and stable software is itself evidence of a design failure. It's not that the programmers make mistakes - it's that the designers and architects didn't account for this fact in their original design.
At this point, Microsoft does not have the option of producing secure software. They either go with a new, secure design which breaks backward compatibility (and cedes much of their marketshare to Linux), or they patch the old one at a rate just fast enough to keep users from switching to a Mac or Linux.
Microsoft Windows is, I suppose, an example of a classic computer science axiom: design your software as if it will be used forever, because it just might. The things which computer programmers underestimate the most is the frequency with which quickly, poorly-written code becomes the baseline for a company's new product, promises of a rewrite notwithstanding. Suddenly, some shoddy code becomes a standard, and the rest of the world has to suffer billions of dollars in lost productivity and endless hours of frustration attempting to get their computers to work as they should.
The society for a thought-free internet welcomes you.
Well, if the linux putty is anything like the windows putty, you can talk via your serial ports just as easily as ssh-ing.
When our name is on the back of your car, we're behind you all the way!
That's exactly what i was thinking as i scrolled through these comments. Think maybe Microsoft managed to get a company to write some kind of bot to take old /. posts about linux, switch the words windows and linux around and repost them in any windows related threads? :)
Yeah, I LUV windows too. Because it breaks. A lot. And people give me good money to fix it. So I say Microsoft's monopoly is just job security. But I'll still use linux at home.
and then there's "switch" as in changing your OS and being able to do everything you previously could on your old OS after the switch.
It is for this reason that I think Microsoft should be broken into an OS company and an applications company. There is no reason why an application, like a word processor, should care which OS it is run on. The world could use a programming model like the networking OSI model.
When our name is on the back of your car, we're behind you all the way!
The article you quote does not support your statement.
All they say is that the hardware id strings are sent up to MS, which returns a driver list.
They also imply in the following paragraph that its not how it happens for software, though they dont explicitly say so either way.
In fact, Microsoft is a Convicted Monopolist , currently being monitored by the Department of Justice.
Never mind how they got to 90% market share. They do have a 90% market share. And they have been found by several courts of law to wield that 90% power as a monopolist. Harming the industry and end user for their own benefit and to further their monopoly.
vi +
Really? Then when I was in Dell's server support and Microsoft's NT 4.0's service pact 6 came out, all those calls about Oracle databases no longer working was a feature? And you think it was documented in the NDAs? Funny how SP 6A came out less than two weeks later - same update minus the attack on Oracle. Same stuff different day for MS. Add to it if they do close (or just get hacked or DdoSed off the net) all those XP and Vista systems will die the next time they try and fail to authenticate. Trust? I trust that the shite will be hitting the fan - maybe not today or tomorrow, but it's coming. Even the most advanced equipment in the hands of the ignorant is just a pile of scrap.
I think he just explained that.
.NET. Now they just need to do it with something that matters to the average user. It's not a matter of "if", but of "when".
Mac OS X "just works" out of the box.
Linux, not so much. Even Ubuntu requires that I fiddle around with some stuff before it's properly usable. Here's a sample of the idiotic config crap necessary:
- twiddle the X config file to get certain mouse buttons working - I have a 5-button mouse. Only 3 buttons are supported by default, so I have to go add a couple more buttons to the mouse in the config file. How hard is it to just have a nice HID manager that polls the device for its button/axis count and binds everything to a set of commands? Really, it shouldn't be that tough. Mac OS X calls them Button1..ButtonN. Windows does the same but calls them Joy1..JoyN. Motion axes are handled similarly.
- get "special" video drivers to do anything that requires hardware acceleration - To be fair, this one is slowly going away as the Damned Hippies (you know the type) lose control of the community. Ubuntu at least gives you an easy interface to get this if you want it. But to be completely fair, there's not even an issue with this if you use Mac OS X or Windows.
Oh, and before you say "but you can compile your own stuff under Linux and customize it however you want", 1) you can do that on Mac OS X too, and with mostly the same tools, 2) with several distros (Ubuntu, I'm looking at you) the tools aren't included and you have to track them down along with their dependent libs/tools/etc. (again, no different from Mac OS X), and 3) that doesn't meet the definition of "just works out of the box" in even a small way.
You're right in that there's no reason why Linux couldn't work the same way as Mac OS X. But it doesn't. And it won't until the Damned Hippies are removed from the equation. They are now the fly in the ointment. They've contributed a lot, and they deserve the credit for that. But they need to stop dicking around and get things to the point where it "just works" (and the word "completely" really should be added to that) or Linux will never catch on with the masses. And the longer Linux takes to catch on with the masses, the longer Microsoft & Friends have to keep trying until they get something right. They've already done it in the dev community with
The parent did state that there was not another OS that a user could "easily" switch to. Your criticism of Linux appropriately highlights the difficulties in that, and I wouldn't describe the option of throwing away your computer and buying a MAC as evidence of choice in the OS market.
"Anyone can go into any computer store and buy a computer that doesn't have Windows."
That's just not true. Until recently, NONE of the major computer makers (Dell, IBM, HP) would sell you a PC with Linux installed, nor would they sell you one without a Windows OEM license.("Just re-format the hard drive." said the kindly Dell salesperson).
Windows remains dominant because Microsoft used its "early" position as a market leader to strong arm computer vendors into selling ONLY Windows PCs. It was: "put Windows on 100% of your computers" or "we won't sell you any copies of Windows". THAT is what gave them monopoly power in the PC market. It's only natural that most people became accustomed to the Windows OS, and that the majority of smaller software makers designed their products to run on Windows.
You have some valid points, and I know that there is a certain amount of irrationally rabid anti-MS sentiment. Just don't try to pretend that everyone started out on a level playing field, and Microsoft gained 95+% of the OS market simply because the "competition" couldn't deliver a viable alternative.
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!
......Now MACs are very powerful, very stylish and very elegant, but they cost about TWICE as much as a standard PC........
First you have to define a "standard" PC. If it is a laptop, then a Macbook is certainly no more expensive than an equivalent unit from a top manufacturer. Today, the Mac is as close as it is possible to get to a universal computer, one that will run any software presently available. Beside the OSX it comes with, it is possible to run any flavor of Windows or Linux and the programs that are associated with each OS. I have 3 versions of Windows and Linux on my Macbook, as well as the OSX 10.4 it came with. Of them all, VISTA is by far the slowest and most resource hungry, especially power from the battery.
The biggest advantage of Macs is that they are built and tested as a complete computer SYSTEM, hardware and software. That approach will ALWAYS have considerable advantage over the piecemeal way of doing things by the rest of the computer industry. What OTHER, especially technological consumer item, besides computers, comes in bits and pieces, for the user to figure out and get it all to work? When customer buys a car, he wants one with an engine, transmission and running gear, all matched, engineered and tested for performance, economy and safety.
Apple is the only computer company is a position to develop software and hardware together and sell the whole, complete computer at a good profit. Maybe MS should start building computers with a special version of Windows thereon that "just works". They could still make a separate version of Windows to sell, as they do now.
All theory is gray
Comment removed based on user account deletion
I don't suck at anything. :-)
MSBPodcast.com The opinions expressed here are my own. If you don't like 'em... Think up your own stuff.
I discovered the when Windows Update wants to download something, it seems to dominate the network bandwidth of the machine, despite MS claiming that it plays nice with bandwidth. On my own machine this has meant that some applications could not connect or ran slowly during Windows updates. When I share a slow wireless network with other machines, I found that things got nice and slow when WU kicked in on those machines.
So I turn it off, and hope I remember to update when I have time to wait for it to do it's thing. I have noticed that some MSI files turn it back on again as part of the install. My machine slows to a crawl so I notice what has happened pretty quickly.
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."
May contain traces of nut.
Made from the freshest electrons.
Just to clarify, I wasn't talking about MS phone support. I've never tried, but I don't doubt it's probably awful. I was talking about support from other companies in terms of software and drivers for the products. There's just so many companies out there that write windows-only software. If something goes wrong and you're using some third-party software, you're basically on your own. Clearly that's not linux's fault, but it's a definite problem and for me it's a big barrier to using unix for my main machine.
It seems sometimes that slashdot is very black and white on this issue. It's become like a religion. You're either MS or you're unix and never the twain shall meet. All I'm saying is that windows is not inherently evil and unix is not the definition of perfection. I still know a lot of hard-core geeks who still keep windows boxes around because there are things they just can't do with a unix box. I mean, hell, look at the stats for the slashdot site even. Windows users are the silent majority.
Look, I'm not anti-unix. Please no one take this as a personal attack on your computer choices. If it works for you, and you're not having these problems then more power to you. I was just trying to point out some of the reasons why I don't feel a unix desktop works for me. No OS is perfect, and if linux wants to get into the desktop market, these are some of the things I see as barriers. That's all.
ok...cue the insults about my mother and such. I'm a windows user on slashdot - I have thick skin. =)
...no two people are not on fire.
Compared to some (most) of you guys here I'm just a noob when it comes to computers. Now I have been around them ever since I was 3 (I'm 21 now) and I know my way around one, and I know a good bit about the hardware side (I'm majoring in EE at the moment). However, I've never had any interest at all in trying to "tweak" my system as far as the software and whatever else you can do with it goes. This is why I've never gotten into linux, there is simply too much to worry about and do if I want one thing to work. For instance (and maybe its different now) installing the nvidia display drivers is always a pain in my ass. All i want to do is run an installer and let it do its thing with MINIMAL input from my end. But in linux I have to shutdown the graphical shell (or whatever it is) change configuration files, make sure my kernel is updated, blah blah blah etc. etc. That's way to much shit that i EVER want to deal with. Keep in mind also that 80% of the population is the same way. As the parent post said, I JUST WANT IT TO WORK. To me ease of use the the single most important thing, which overrides any trust issues I have with Microsoft. I hate Microsoft for my own reasons, but unfortunately (for me anyways) I will continue to use their OS (not Vista, but XP Pro) until I can find something else that is just as easy.
Lastly, I would love it if anyone here had some great guides for linux, something that could really get me going with it. I would LOVE to switch to linux, but with all the games I have, and my laziness, it just doesn't seem like the logical choice at the moment.
Putty also works on Linux. You can compile it or use the premade binaries. It doesn't store your servers in the registry though like on Windows...oh the humanity!
They ARE out to get you simply because They are in it for themselves and they don't care about you.
The EU, the DOJ, the tiny states of California and New York to name a few disagree with you.
Also, just because you aren't willing or able to learn Linux doesn't mean that others are as incapable as you.
Put that in your Microsoft koolaid and drink it.
Does anyone else find it funny that people can bash Microsoft all day long and no one cares, but god forbid anyone attacks Apple or they end up as Flamebait or a Troll... I wish I still had some mod points left.
I don't know about you, but when I decide that I'm going to whine about Microsoft, I'll pick something that actually matters.
There is also a similar command (lsusb, I think) for USB devices. The only thing I have never got working using this procedure is the Sony Memory Pro stick reader in the laptop I am currently using. If anyone has ever got one of these working under Linux I would love to hear how.
I dont read
Actually I've had similar issues as yours, but none in the past few years. I run Fedora at home (Fedora 7 if you're curious) and haven't had an issue with breakage in the past three Fedora versions. I administer a *lot* of RHEL5 boxes at work and haven't had a single issue with updates or breakages.
Now, some distributions (like Fedora) are considered to be "fast-moving" distributions and therefore there are a *lot* of updates that become available very regularly. Doesn't mean they're untested, just that there is likely to be a lot of them. On the other hand there are more "stable" distributions like Debian stable, Slackware, or CentOS that focus mainly on necessary security updates and not much else.
There's also the issue of 3rd party repositories. Some are better than others, but if you enable non-supported repositories or just randomly install a lot of junk that isn't made available in the official repositories then you must accept the inherent risk of running unsupported software. The updates that come from upstream (Fedora, in this example) are designed to work with and are tested on Fedora systems. Not Fedora+atrpms+livna+freshrpms, and not Fedora+"some 30 odd programs I compiled and installed using `make install`". I'm not saying you're guilty of this, but a lot of broken installations are broken because of people doing exactly these things.
Each distribution is a little different as well, and if you use Debian you should learn to use Debian-specific tools. If you learn Fedora you should learn to use Fedora-specific tools. Hacking about things on a Fedora box using some guide on the Gentoo wiki isn't the proper way to go about things.
I highly doubt that if you take any modern well-supported distribution (Fedora, Debian, Slackware, CentOS, etc), install the latest version, and keep up on updates that you're going to have any breakages. At least I haven't seen it happen.
*I didn't mention *buntu in this post because I *have* had issues that distribution in the several versions that I've tried, and therefore (contrary to the vast majority) when I discuss linux or GNU/Linux I'm referring to just about any distribution other than *buntu or its many derivatives.
I may have to share this planet with animals, but I'm doing my damn best to eat every last one of them.
Trust? Sure, but Windows Update was broken well before these stealth updates became apparent, and a reinstall of XP Pro the other day reminded me how much so:
* Using a browser to patch the OS
* Having to update the updater before updating
* WGA
* Non integrated service packs (SP2 is a separate download/installer)
* Multiple reboots (6 to bring the OS up to date)
* Slow (3.5 hours lapsed from start to completion)
* Over abundant tray notifications (Your system may be at risk! Turn on auto updates!)
Do you realize you just refuted your own argument?
I think you're nit-picking here. If I say, "do not install stuff on my computer unless you ask me if it's OK", it's a breach of trust if something is installed without me being asked.
Reality is defined by the maddest person in the room
Yes, I used PuTTY on Windows and liked it a lot. That's why I installed it on this Ubuntu box. It works just as well for everything I've done with it (like any great Unix tool, PuTTY has lots of functionality I've never used)
"When you have eliminated the unacceptable, whatever is left, however improbable, must be the truthiness" - Holmes
Which bit of what I said was not true? There are people (companies or individuals) who told MS not to install patches without asking and MS went ahead and installed a patch without asking. Surely that's a breach of trust?
Reality is defined by the maddest person in the room
I didn't say that everyone got the update. Even if it's only a few companies or people who got an unrequested update, it's still a breach of trust, surely?
Reality is defined by the maddest person in the room
At the recent 50th Anniversary of Medical Genetics here at the UW, multiple presenters, researchers who flew in from around the world, spent a lot of time trying to tell Windows not to reboot, just so they could use Powerpoint to show their presentations.
...
Microsoft had, of course, downloaded updates and refused to stop asking if it could reboot.
On a laptop.
Which part of "Wait until I shut down my laptop at the end of the day" don't they get?
-- Tigger warning: This post may contain tiggers! --
Isn't that why they call it Anti-trust?
You are confusing updates vs. Backports.
Updates are small security patches in the form of a DIFF file that are applied to an existing peice of software. Backports are entirely new versions of software. Fedora makes no distinction between Updates and Backports. In CentOS and RHEL, Backports are not allowed. In Mandriva, Backports and Updates are Segregated into Main Updates, Main Backports, Contrib Updates and Contrib Backports. Backports are more likely to break something than an update will, Ubuntu also Segregates Updates and Backports.
And no companies who wanted and took control over their patching would have been impacted by this.
The ones that had AutomaticUpdates turned off did not receive it. The ones running WSUS did not receive it. The ones running SMS or other 3rd party tools did not receive it.
I have no argument with you that MS shouldnt have done that, and that their response to the complaints has been less than stellar.
But most businesses wouldnt have been impacted at all, as any business who wanted control over their patching is running WSUS or something else, and did not receive this patch.
It sounds like I'm being really nitpicky here, but that is not my intent. What I'm refuting is that this went out to everyone in the world, especially businesses. There's a meme floating around that this is a big violation of auditability and control for businesses, as unexpected patches were applied without their permission. This is not true, as any business who cared about having control was not using AutomaticUpdates, and so did not experience this problem.
Or, on SUSE (some debian distros too) you can use hwinfo. It makes lspci look like a toy sometimes.
If it's a breach of trust you didn't do a very good job of reading your license agreement. If you can't, or refuse to understand the contract you're entering, perhaps you should "just click no".
Actually, I was referring to situations where a person wanted to install Linux on a box that was currently running Windows (and I was talking about more than a few years ago). It may be hard to believe if you are relatively new to Linux, but there was a time when installing it was complicated enough that LUGs would hold "Install-fests" for the uninitiated. If the box you were about to help the newbie put Red Hat (or Slackware) on had a working installation of Windows, you could save yourself a lot of headaches by booting it up and carefully noting the items listed in Device Manager, before formating the hard drive and selecting packages.
Of course, things have changed a lot with the advent of better hardware detection (and Google, which also didn't exist back then), to the point now where the best way to find out what is "under the hood" of that beige box you found in the corner of you closet is to pop a Ubuntu CD in it and boot it up. It may not identify everything, but it will certainly be a lot more successful than an XP SP2 disc, which was kinda the point I tried (but apparently failed) to make in my first post.
I don't care why you're posting AC
The birth of a geek. Put the tech in their hands, and if they can, they'll learn all they can about it.
Bullish Machine Tzar
Really you have to do all that? Wow.
I'm glad on both my Ubuntu PCs all I had to do was click
Applications -> Add/Remove -> Search: Nvidia -> Tick Nvidia Driver -> Apply
What you don't realize is that in windows you also have to shut down the graphical shell to update your video drivers. They just call it "reboot."
I didn't say that every company got an update they didn't want. I said that "Companies that didn't want automatic updates from MS had an automatic update installed.". That doesn't imply all companies, at least where I come from.
Reality is defined by the maddest person in the room
Mirror servers download the debs and you can pick a server location from a list to get your automatic updates from. So you're most likely getting your debs from a server not even owned by canonical. For example I was in Thailand last year and picked to download my automatic updates off a Thai mirror site. Now I'm back in England I picked a UK mirror.
You're trying to make it sound like it's no greener on the other side but it just comes off as a FUD attack. You're wrong on this matter and Microsoft is in the bad for stealing Windows Users data.
>The requirements are IE7 and Office 2007 working as well as "All media in books in the library are readable."
What is the rational for MSO2007?
Especially since it does not produce documents that conform to ISO 26300 requirements?
Amber
Wind Beneath Thy Wings
It didn't happen to me.
It was a breach of trust. They told their customers that they could be notified of a patch but not have it automatically installed and then they went ahead and automatically installed a patch, even for those customers who wanted to be notified but not have it installed. I'm not sure why you're trying to continue this argument.
Reality is defined by the maddest person in the room
Walks into PC world.. Only windows PCs
Walks into Currys.. Only windows PCs
Walks into the office sony store.. windows again..
Walks into Tesco.. Budget PCs and Laptops.. Only windows
Walks into Sainsburys.. see above
> In a business setting, Ubuntu offers what you need: a secure, lean, cheap, and easy to administer platform.
/., etc.
And to further minimize their time wasting, you can "easily" install Dansguardian. That will block all those nice time wasting sites --- eBay, YouTube, MySpace, eBid, K5, digg,
Amber
Wind Beneath Thy Wings
yeah...although I don't know if I could bring myself to do that. Preventing crapware installs is one thing, but being the net nanny would make me one of *those* people.
blah blah blah
I just bought a Ubuntu Dell instead. Sends pretty much the same message and is a lot less hassle.
"Be grateful for what you have. You may never know when you may lose it."
Sure it's not "Out of the box" TM but if you just installed Ubuntu I don't understand what the problem would be following those steps that would take you 10 seconds on a broadband PC, maybe longer depending.Here you're essentially complaining that Ubuntu isn't windows. Newsflash it's a different operating system, as just demonstrated above installing software is simple so I don't understand you ease of use argument.
Feel like playing a game? Applications -> Add/Remove -> click Games -> Read the game descriptions and ratings -> tick the ones you want to play -> Apply.
Need an FTP program? Applications -> Add/Remove -> Search: FTP -> Read the program descriptions and ratings -> tick the one you want to try -> Apply.
What is so difficult apart from the fact that "it's not the way windows does things"? It's not suppose to be, it's suppose to be better and easier.That's great just like the time someone in the office had a virus on their flash drive and popped it into someone else's computer and then that person popped their own flash drive into my computer and gave me the virus, which then spread to my home computer when I put some stuff on my flash drive. Ofcourse I didn't know this because the virus file was in a folder with a weird name which hides itself when running windows. Of course mount that partition on Ubuntu and that folder pops right up.ARE YOU KIDDING!?! Read above! Most users have no clue how to install software and your idiotic suggestion to "Google" for software (wtf?) is not only difficult for unskilled users but also it's not platform dependant to windows.You can do that on Ubuntu too. It's called a deb file. You double click that and it'll install a program for you. For example I use Skype so I went to http://www.skype.com/go/getskype-linux-ubuntu and downloaded my deb file to the desktop and double clicked it.I assume you're talking about add/remove which is what I was talking about further up. If you noticed you would have realised that those "categories" are the items in your menu of where the program is going to be installed that way the user knows where to go after they installed the program!
You claim you use Ubuntu but all you have done is spent your time complaining about how Ubuntu isn't windows therefore no one will use it.
I think you're right. If you're lazy and all you want to do is play games, stay with Windows XP or whatever Microsoft wants to shove down your throat at the time.
I would also say that you're going into the wrong profession. Engineering is not for people who are lazy. Engineering of any kind requires you to be self-motivated. If what you are saying is true and you really would genuinely love to learn about Linux, then laziness shouldn't be what's stopping you. If laziness is keeping you from doing what you want to do, your computer operating system is the least of your worries.
I'm not trying to discourage you. I'm trying to encourage you. I'm telling you what you need to do to move forward. You can't afford to be lazy or play too many computer games.
In the past (past meaning 10 years ago) I would have bought your argument and it would have had some validity, but now it's not true. Download and burn a Ubuntu or Kubuntu CD, throw it in your computer and start using it. You don't have to know anything more these days. It's the easiest thing you've ever done.
You don't have to "learn" Linux anymore. If you want to "learn" it, try Slackware, Gentoo, Linux from Scratch, or maybe Rock Linux. But those distros are *not* for people who are lazy.
Fresh horses and more whiskey for my men.
Pardon me for trolling. I should have just directly answered the points brought up by the previous poster... wait a second, troll??... wtf?!
Those are my principles. If you don't like them I have others. -Groucho Marx
Microsoft betraying user trust on several separate occasions and this behavior is eroding customer confidence in the entire update mechanism.'
I think there are probably a lot of people on Slashdot that got burned early by WindowsUpdate, and never trusted it again. I've been burned a few times, and now I leave automatic updates off unless I have a good reason to leave it on. Nevertheless, I really believe that Microsoft is making a mistaking screwing around with this particular sacred cow, although I'm sure the temptation to abuse it was just irresistible. As Wally from Dilbert put it, "What would be the other reasons for having power?"
Still, if our good friends Joe Average and Joe Sixpack get it into their heads that WindowsUpdate has a significant chance of blowing away their systems, they're going to just turn it off and to Hell with patches and fixes. And you know what? They'd be right to do so. This is a stupid, dangerous game that Microsoft is playing.
The higher the technology, the sharper that two-edged sword.
I've been watching and occasionally commenting against (possible, but not for sure) MS Shills that keep playing bullshit lines. MS is my bread and butter as far as making me $$$ in the consulting business, but I don't pull punches when talking about the reality of the problems with their software. Vista shills ESPECIALLY piss me off. I'm glad a handful of people spent a few weeks getting their Vista stable enough for their games to 'run', that doesn't mean it should be recommended to new users or even experienced users in a small office.
Cheers.
This is my sig. There are many like it, but this one is mine.
The funny part is, I'm a *huge* Apple fan. Only thing I buy anymore. Oh well, one 'Troll' comment won't kill my karma!
"You claim you use Ubuntu but all you have done is spent your time complaining about how Ubuntu isn't windows therefore no one will use it."
Thanks for spending the time to tell me stuff I already knew. You sir, have managed to Totally Miss The Point. That, or you just advertised the fact that you don't read very well.
The Linux community in general responds well to honest criticism. It's the few like you who turn people off to Linux, you and your petulant, self-righteous sneering that you mistake for information.
blah blah blah
With Synaptic and most (all?) other linux updaters, there is no identity information transmitted to the update server - in fact you are free to get your updates from a vast network of unrelated servers through standard protocols with no serial numbers or other forms of registration required.
With WU, your registration information is required in order to download any updates. So, you get one tiny point for the fact that in 2002 the mechanism existed to get all your software info, but MS wasn't using it yet, maybe even today 5 years later they still aren't. But they are effectively getting the same information based on what you download in combination with your registration info.
When information is power, privacy is freedom.
All I'm saying is that windows is not inherently evil and unix is not the definition of perfection.
Do you consider that a restatement of what you wrote? I'm not attacking Windows. I felt your criticisms weren't legitimate, and I told you why. Your only real point is that Linux doesn't have drivers for all hardware. The same is true to a lesser extent for XP, and moreso for Vista. Besides, since most people buy computers with the OS preinstalled, it is reasonable to assume that your one point would be a non-issue for someone who buys a Linux computer from Dell or HP.
If your point is simply that Linux isn't for you, then yes, I think that's likely.
Those are my principles. If you don't like them I have others. -Groucho Marx
And people don't like to trust Microsoft. But really, can you categorically and scientifically prove that Apple, as a private company with a structure similar to Microsoft for all intents and purposes (ie, make money, leverage one arm of the business to sell another, push price as hard as possible, generally anticompetitive where practical to be), can be trusted to the same extent? (And yes, people will immediately say, well Microsoft have gotten caught for these practices and Apple hasn't gotten caught yet so evidently they are more trustworthy).
Can you likewise trust the producers of your most beloved Linux distro? They may not be a profit minded company, but does that mean the quality of their updates will as a result be higher?
Or, as we have just demonstrated, if you can't trust the company you get your updates from, should automatic updating be stopped altogether?
I am government man, come from the government. The government has sent me. -- G.I.R.
Amen brother. The unified package management which the good Linux distos provide is probably my favorite thing about Linux. I've gotten to the point where I usually won't even install software at all if it isn't provided as part of the distro. As a result, I know everything is up to date. I can get a list of every installed software package. I can get a list of all the files which make up any one package. I know I can remove it. I can find out exactly why any particular file is on the system. None of them are stomping on each other. It's great. It's really gotten kind of amazing. Windows and MacOS users, by and large, have no idea just how bad they have it. Their systems are total fsck'ing chaos, making their life hard, and they think it _has_ to be that way. Sad really. At work, I feel like I'm cheating. It's so easy to keep every single application up to date, and the Windows folks struggle just trying to keep the OS up to date.
Some people actually trusted Microsoft? When? Where? Who? I thought it was just viewed as a necessary evil if one wanted the convenience of auto-update... Doesn't the click-through license MS provides pretty much grant MS the right to do as they wish? I'm still confused about where trust enters in.
Wasn't it Bill Gates who said that "if you run someone else's program on your computer, it's no longer your computer"? By allowing Microsoft to run auto-update services, could MS reason that by running "their program" on your computer, you acknowledge that it's no longer, strictly, your computer?
I don't know what distro you're using that's upgrading the kernel on a stable release, but if you want a distro that's actually stable, try Debian. Updates are for critical flaws only and they do nothing but patch the bug in question. No random new versions of things.
BTW, I've been running Debian's development branch ("unstable", which does get new versions of things on a daily basis) full-time for about six-and-a-half years, and the only reinstall I did was when I bought a whole new computer last year. Even with daily incremental upgrades in the unstable branch, noticeable breakage is uncommon and major breakage is rare, and with a bit of maintenance it's quite maintainable in the long term.
The distribution vendors don't necessarily write the updates, but they do integrate them. A particularly good example is Debian stable, as the Debian security team backports patches if upstream doesn't. Other distributions may have a similar system in place for their stable or supported releases.
Even when that's not the case, the packager building and testing the package "works for" the vendor of your distribution. Even though they get the code from third parties, they're still integrating it themselves, building the package themselves, and making sure it conforms to the distribution's packaging standards. This essentially means the updates are all coming from the same source.
In a true third-party scenario, that last bit doesn't happen. When you get an update for e.g. Backup Exec, Microsoft hasn't checked that the update operates in the expected manner and doesn't do anything clever/stupid. You're getting an update that's been tested by Symantec in whatever environments they consider to be likely for their customers to be using, and that's it. They don't necessarily understand how Windows fits together, and they certainly don't use the same packaging standards that Altiris or Trend or VMware or HP or Microsoft do (just picking these companies based on what's installed on one of our servers). Most of the time this is fine, as even if multiple vendors do use their own clever but ill-advised hacks they're unlikely to conflict; but it can happen. Hence why dedicating servers to particular tasks is more common amongst Windows folk, because if a conflict does arise it's
While the Linux distribution model doesn't guarantee things won't interfere with each other, the fact that they are using common guidelines for how packages should behave greatly reduces the chances of problems occurring.
If you're wanting to compile random stuff downloaded off the internet, sudo apt-get install build-essential.
If you want all the dependencies for every source package handled automatically, I suppose there's Gentoo -- although at least some of these will be handled by apt-get source, which is at least a handy way of getting the source for some package you already have.
That's not doing it right, that's faking it. At least technologically, .NET is theoretically (and pointlessly) cross-platform, but most .NET apps are Windows only.
I should also point out that year after year, the same people complain that Linux isn't ready -- yet year after year, it gets amazingly closer. This year, I put it on a work laptop, and wireless Just Worked. Out of the box. WEP, WPA2, everything, with a nice Gui -- at least as nice as OS X's, I dare say. Came with a dozen apps that I needed, out of the box -- sure, they'd be free downloads on Windows, if you know where to look, but that's not exactly "just works" either.
It varies, person to person -- depends what you need. For me, Linux has been better for a long time now, and only recently am I having to shift back to Windows at work -- and then only because I work on HD-DVD, and haven't gotten Microsoft's HDi tools running yet under Wine, or the .NET parts under Mono. But then, they don't work on Vista yet, either. (Yes, even Microsoft has stuff not ported to Vista yet, after a year...)
Don't thank God, thank a doctor!
I'm not sure if Wine is even in Ubuntu, but I know the version there lags behind real Wine development...
So WineHQ hosts their own repository. You can add that to your list, and thus automatically update both Ubuntu and Wine, both through Synaptic, or the system tray thing, or Adept if you're on Kubuntu.
This isn't limited to adding one package at a time, or adding stuff not really in the normal Ubuntu. Medibuntu provides all the codecs and such, of questionable legality, which are needed to make an Ubuntu box play modern media. Add one repository, update, and install maybe three or four packages, and you've got DVD playback, win32codecs (not that they're needed much), and so on.
In other words:
Ubuntu already includes a massive repository of stuff to update, from your web browser and OS (which Microsoft bundles together) to your bittorrent client. Windows Update can be "upgraded" to Microsoft Update, which will then handle all Microsoft products (provided they are new enough) -- but it will not handle any non-MS products.
Third-parties can provide their own repositories, which you can mix and match with the official ones. On Windows (and OS X), the system-wide update is vendor-specific, meaning each vendor has to go reinvent the wheel and provide their own package management system, and many don't. (Case in point: on Windows, my only indication that there are new nVidia drivers is when Steam tells me, and Steam didn't come from nVidia. On Linux, they get installed automatically. Video drivers are kind of important to keep updated.)
Net result: On any decent Linux, updating is a one-stop shop. Maybe not one click, but maybe three.
On Windows and OS X, critical updates are near-automatic, but if you're like me, there are still anywhere from five to twenty additional free apps that need to be updated individually, by checking their website, downloading a new installer, uninstalling the old version, installing the new one, etc. Slightly easier on OS X only because installation/uninstallation is faster -- for SOME apps.
Don't thank God, thank a doctor!
I'd also love to know what Kernel version you are referring to as I have only been using Linux since 2.2 days. I know it was around for a long time before then though and from what I have heard using it could be somewhat interesting to say the least.
I dont read
Should be mentioned that the latest Unreal, Quake, and Doom are always ported fairly quickly.
Also should be mentioned that quite a lot of games work under Cedega, or even vanilla Wine. I believe WoW is like that -- stock WineHQ will work fine.
Don't thank God, thank a doctor!
OSX automatic updating, always asks permission before downloading, specifying what the downloads are for and allowing you to choose only a selection of them. Security related downloads are in separate packages and clearly marked. At any rate no installation can take place without the user giving the root password. This is far from being a bother to me, it raises my trust in the updates and allows me to forgo updates I really don't want, which are never the security updates. A blogger who worked on the vista GUI said they had an OS box on their table throughout the process of designing the vista GUI, why didn't they learn from it?
That's the first question. On my Ubuntu, updates never break anything that wasn't broken already, but sometimes they fix things. What you want is a stable distro, not "kernel line", so that you know that a kernel update (from your distro) won't break a driver update (from your distro).
About your GNOME update: Did you try creating a new user? Sure, not easy to do, but you managed to install KDE. In fact, if you were going to reinstall, you might as well have just done "rm -rf ~/.gnome", and reset your entire environment.
Not easy, but did you even bother to ask anyone, on IRC or something?
Try Ubuntu. You get 12 months of support for the short version, which is released every six months, and 3 years of support for the LTS version. You can also get discs of the new version shipped for free, assuming the upgrade doesn't "just work".
This, by the way, is actual support you can buy from Canonical. Chances are, the community will support you as long as you like, and again, no cost for upgrading -- with Windows, if Microsoft decides not to support Windows XP anymore, you're stuck with Vista, AND the $200 upgrade fee (or more).
Microsoft does not include full source code. They barely include a changelog. Sorry, but you lose this one.
Maybe you just don't know where to look? Did you ask?
On Linux, I have everything update automatically, through the same interface. It updates from a distro, which generally tests for incompatibilities between various software, so I don't have to. On Windows, Microsoft products update through Microsoft Update (assuming you enabled it instead of just "Windows Update"), and everything else updates through its own update service, or not at all -- there's likely a dozen programs I have to check manually. OS X isn't any better.
Don't thank God, thank a doctor!
I've got good news. Modern consumer-oriented Linux distros do usually just work. I recently installed Fedora and I've never had to exit the GUI or manually edit config files (except to do stuff that normal humans wouldn't need or want to do), and the only kernel update was done automatically through its System Update. The major issue now is hardware support, but Linux is far better than it used to be, and Vista has problems there too.
Slow down, cowboy! It has been 4 hours since you last posted. You must wait another few hours.
I wasn't trying to criticize linux as an operating system. Saying I like windows does not mean I automatically hate linux. It's not a one or the other thing. But as a desktop OS, linux has some issues, and they're not even necessarily related to the OS itself.
I do feel the support issue is a big one. You're right, not all hardware is supported under vista. Obviously there is some hardware that doesn't work in XP either. But, I mean, they have to have drivers for SOME os, so XP is less of an issue. The big problem, though, is that most companies will eventually write vista drivers. People will probably start to make the switch when that happens. This isn't necessarily the case for linux. Now, this wouldn't be a problem if everyone did just use the pre-installed stuff and never changed their hardware, but that's not something you can assume. Even add-on hardware usually requires drivers.
...no two people are not on fire.
It may be excellent, but fatally flawed if such assertions are made. Come on, he's clearly talking out of his ass :)
Lets not forget that Bill Gates got Microsoft started by ripping people off, stealing technology and other borderline criminal activity that business people call, well, "business". So it takes no small effort to consider that this mentality is embedded in the very company that he created. So if that is what it is all about, well, the customer is, well, simply "trash". Simply put, Microsoft doesn't care and they don't need to care. They already have your money anyway. Will...
HAHA and this is why I have stayed away from linux, thanks for the help AC. Instead of any helpful comments to maybe get me started I'm criticized for my lack of understanding and called "ignorant and dumb."
Thank you for an honest reply. Lazy was definitely the wrong word to use in my post above. I actually do enjoy going into the terminal and learning as much as I can about linux. I guess I find the same satisfaction and would compare it to reformatting my computer and installing the OS again. I like the problems that arise, and there is nothing better than solving those problems and knowing that I did it. Anyway, I guess I just needed someone to kick me in the ass. I'm really not sure why I keep on going back to XP, familiarity i guess, that and the games of course. I guess I can dual boot to keep XP, I certainly have enough space for all of it. Anyway, thanks pillbender.
With Linux, you get all three
Not really. Linux is definitely cheap, but it's not that fast, and not that good. It's about as fast as Windows for regular desktop usage in my experience, and is orders of magnitude "better" than Windows in many ways, but still not as good as it should be (that just shows how bad Windows is). Linux is not a panacea; it still has plenty of room for improvement.
It's faster than Vista, and good is subjective. There is always room for improvement, but with windows, how much actual improvement has there been since Windows 2000? Microsoft has had seven years to improve on what they brought with Windows 2000, and how far have they actually come? Compare this with Linux, how far has it come in the past seven years?
Oh, I absolutely agree Linux is far better than Windows; I said this before, using the term "orders of magnitude". But as you said, "good" is subjective, and I think Linux still has some improvement needed. Of course, I'm a perfectionist, so nothing's ever "good enough" for me...
One big problem I have with Linux is with disk I/O: when one process consumes lots of disk I/O, all the other processes grind to a halt. I see this every time I move a large (300 MB+) file from one RAID volume to another. There's a lot of talk about CPU scheduler fairness these days, but for some reason people aren't talking about I/O scheduler fairness. The CFQ claims to solve this problem, but it sure as hell doesn't seem to work for me.
My point is: don't fall into the trap of comparing Linux with Windows, and getting complacent when it's better than Windows at something. That's not really good enough, because Windows is crap. That's like (here comes a car analogy, watch out) building a car and making it better than a Yugo, and celebrating this fact, when it still has a long way to go before it reaches the level of a Ferrari or Bentley. The problem with software and OSes is that there aren't any Ferraris or Bentleys out there to compare to, and even though software is still an immature field compared to other types of engineering, people forget this.
Which is why Linux is still under active development.
We NEED to be able to address the trustworthyness our computing platform and platform updates. Any automatic update process has the potential to be abused. If a hacker or spy-agency can gain control of an update process then all sorts of security issues arise. This is true for any software that pushes updates not just Microsoft. We have many clients who have every legitimate reason to need secure and reliable computing platform, some are law enforcement, legal, medical, mental health care agencies and ordinary people. Historically a reasonable option for a trustworthy platform has been offered by microsoft software along with a healthy dose of best practices configuration. Most problems occur when the best practices are ignored. What can we tell clients about the trustworthyness of the update process? Namely what assurances are in place that prevent the application of some federal order telling Microsoft or redhat or some other vendor to distribute an update that exposes client information without the knowledge of the systems administrator(s)? We need to address this concern somehow. Thank you, Matthew Joy Bright Solutions Inc.
You've misinterpreted my response. I have no desire to FUD for MS, only to clarify the technical picture. A more succinct version of what I said:
- Windows Update works in a similar way to the Ubuntu update you are championing. It downloads a list of all updates along with some XML data about what they apply to.
- But according to the linked article WU does send MS server a list of installed hardware; from this the server sends WU a list of applicable driver updates for that hardware.
- In either case, if the update server wanted to track what software you have installed, it's still a trivial matter to parse the server-side logs of what was downloaded. Even though the initial apt-get update only pulls a list, after that you still have to download the actual updates your system needs. If someone downloads the update for SuperFoobar2001.3, it's a good deduction that this someone (at IP address 123.4.5.6 or whatever) has SuperFoobar2001.3 installed on his computer. Drivers too - a user is unlikely to download drivers via apt-get for hardware that's not installed.
What's the difference here? Either update mechanism can learn what you have on the PC. The WU setup does give MS one bit of info that the APT system doesn't pass: the unique Product Information number (PID) for that installation of Windows. ow that we know this data is collectable (but not necessarily saved or analyzed), the real question is: what are they doing with that data?That's the difference and I already said that in the post you replied to.
Please stop trying to fit me into any of the pro- or anti-MS pigeonholes.
None of my post cared specifically who has the data. Microsoft, Canonical, God, the Devil - that wasn't the point. The point was, whomever you get your updates from can know what software and hardware you have. The question isn't what they can know, it's whether they bother to do anything with the knowledge.
Then, thinking back to when XP launched, I seem to recall Windows 98 having similar "all of a sudden it's broken" issues... perhaps there *is* a link - Microsoft launches a new OS, and the previous flagship OS is sent a "kill switch" that causes it to write random data to random places? Say, one bit every umpteen or so cycles? Thereby guaranteeing that the previous "best thing EVAR" is no longer stable and reliable...
Hmm.
Perhaps we should all look to the EU's response to Vista, and switch to linux instead of switching to Vista.
Perhaps we should all stop supporting Windows in any way, shape, or form.
On a side note, if anyone wants to support me and my family while I forget my Microsoft indoctrination and learn linux well enough to make money supporting it, feel free to drop me a mail.
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