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Microsoft Sets Record With Monster Patch Tuesday
CWmike writes "Microsoft today issued 10 security updates that patched a record 31 vulnerabilities in Windows, Internet Explorer, Excel, Word, Windows Search and other programs, including 18 bugs marked 'critical.' Of the 10 bulletins, six patched some part of Windows, while three patched an Office application or component, and one fixed a flaw in IE. The total bug count was the most patched by Microsoft in a single month since the company began regularly scheduled updates in 2003. The previous record of 26 vulnerabilities patched occurred in both August 2008 and August 2006. 'This is a very broad bunch,' said Wolfgang Kandek, CTO at Qualys, 'compared to last month, which was really all about PowerPoint. You've got to work everywhere, servers and workstations, and even Macs if you have them. It's not getting any better, the number of vulnerabilities [Microsoft discloses] continues to grow.'"
Well, at least they *are* disclosing and patching. But then again, I switched to linux back during Win98.
C|N>K
Christ alive, this was marked troll before it refreshed after I posted it! Steady on with that Troll mod Windows users, it's like a loaded gun.
Task Mangler
The initial mods were negative, presumably to stifle discussion of those aspects of the topic. My reply to that moron was mostly because I conclude that I've suffered too many /. fools too gladly in the past.
However, it should also be obvious that I'm somewhat seriously concerned by the potential of a Warhol Worm to build a very large zombot very quickly. There were several replies that considered variations on the configurations, but my focus is just on any open vulnerability that can be exploited without user involvement on the default configuration of Microsoft's most dominant OS of the day. I'm not sure how many machines are on the Web at any time, but I am sure that the biggest monoculture is pre-pwned by Microsoft. According to http://www.internetworldstats.com/, the current Internet user population is around 1.5 billion... Now I think I've scared myself by thinking it through...
As far as being insightful, I think that's a different stretch for that post, but I'm not supposed to complain about that, am I? It's more in the sense of a revelation, which a wise friend told me is always obvious--AFTER you hear it.
Seems a waste to include suggestions for improvements to the fossil that /. has become, but... In general I think the moderation system should be more directly reflected in the dimensionality of the karma, and the dimensionality of the moderation should be cleaned up. People with high karma in a particular dimension should have extra clout in that dimension, but in general the mod points should be much more widely distributed. I also think the mod point reporting should be logarithmic. I got to playing with the numbers and now feel like the natural log would be better than the base-10 log. That would mean that +5 funny would have to have about 150 mod points behind it.
Freedom = (Meaningful - Coerced) Choice != (Speech | Beer^2), and sad sock puppets' bad mods avail them naught.
If you want to make the moderation system better, you might consider contributing.
Sure, that could work. But, of course, you would have to start at -1 in case you started posting links to goatse or attack sites in all your posts, but at least there would be no chance of you being modded up!
You know, there is a difference between trolling and pointing out the flaws in your reasoning. Just saying.
Not in the slightest. ;)
Well, maybe you will consider participating in the moderation system (God knows it needs some variation), but other than that, it's not at all constructive.
Lighten up! It's just Slashdot.
You know, there is a difference between trolling and pointing out the flaws in your reasoning. Just saying.