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Adobe May Change To Monthly Patch Cycle
Trailrunner7 writes "Adobe, which has been under fire for the security of its flagship products, Flash and Reader, for some time now, may be on the verge of changing its patching process to push fixes out on a monthly schedule, which would coincide with Microsoft's monthly Patch Tuesday releases. The change would be the second major adjustment to Adobe's patching process in the last year or so. In 2009 the company moved to a scheduled quarterly patch release process in an effort to give its customers a better chance to plan for testing and deployment. That change was generally well-received. Now Adobe may change the schedule again in order to get patches out more quickly. The company is considering releasing its security fixes for Reader on a monthly schedule, the same day that Microsoft releases its patches."
But will they stop placing that stupid icon on our desktop during every single update?!
They updated their patch name to the following:
Problem Mitigation System.
Apparently, you have to be careful. The patches are often bloated with excess code, and can ruin your day if you look at them the wrong way.
Now I won't know whose patch messed up my computer after the update...
I don't get the feeling malware authors are going to be negatively affected in any way.
I'm not tense. I'm just terribly, terribly, alert.
Seriously, Adobe, why do I have to reboot after updating your damn user-land software? I can even install some OS patches without rebooting!
Insert offensive troll-style sig here. Please mod or respond appropriately.
stop using adobe.
You know you suck when your company is playing catchup with Microsoft on security and patching.
Hey !! Adobe !, if you insist on following Microsoft's example of distributing crappy software with even more crappier default settings, then please arrange we can update the crap via WSUS as well. your own distribution tools S U C K !
How about releasing a full installer of the latest revision, instead of this idiocy where we have to download 9.3.0 from their website and then manually tell it to install 9.3.2? It can't be /that/ hard.
Hail Eris, full of mischief...
E pluribus sanguinem
I have spoken to a number of heads of IT about security. They seem to really hate Firefox with a strong passion.
Why? Because they don't inform admins ahead of time if there will be a new patch coming out soon. They release security updates with no warning or set schedule (so admins have to scramble each time there is a new security patch). With IE (via Windows' patch Tuesdays) and now Flash/Reader having a set schedule, Firefox will be the only commonly used software that doesn't have a scheduled security release.
I am an IT and these update are PAIN IN THE ASS. Personally, I am tired of updating every single piece of software I use individually BUT it is very bad for my customers. 1. Most of them include crap like Norton scan, toolbars and other badware. 2. The majority of my customers require older version for their manufacturer system to work (old java, old acrobat reader, IE7 or less, ...) so when they do update (because they are harassed to do it) their software stop working. After that they are afraid to update anything and they become a security risk.
3. The frequency of theses updates are so high it just get people mad.
4. Why do we need to reboot for a software update, we're in 2010.
Can't Microsoft put their foot down and ask anybody who want to do update to work with them ?
I think Adobe deserves a little credit here. Increasing the frequency of commercial software releases is not trivial. They are aware of their vulnerabilities and quality issues. They genuinely want to make their software better, and they want those improvements available to customers sooner.
Please don't, my house is downwind . . .
"Think about how stupid the average person is. Now, realise that half of them are dumber than that." - George Carlin
The last sentence in the summary is a repeat of the beginning of the paragraph. Further, the second-to-last sentence is unnecessary - the information there (that the previous quarterly patches were also on microsoft patch tuesday) can be easily added to the sentence before it.
Not that I expect well-written summaries here (and let's be honest, most people don't even read the summary in its entirety, much less TFA) but this is pretty bad.
I do not look forward to "that time of the month" when my PC bleeds Adobe out of its port
Adobe patches are crap in general.
1. They usually take the form of nearly complete product updates, patches 80% of the size of the installed product are common.
2. They currently only rarely issue roll-ups so you end up in the you have to have 9.3.1 base, then install 9.3.2 patch , then install 9.3.3 patch can't jump from 9.3.1 directly to 9.3.3
This sort of stuff drives the guy at my company in change of Adobe software deployments insane. For a new machine install it takes forever as each individual patch is installed by the software deployment system.
Power Corrupts,Absolute Power Corrupts Absolutely, leaving one person(group)in charge is absolutely corrupt.
just put them windows / MS update
I do not look forward to "that time of the month" when my PC bleeds Adobe out of its port.
In addition to MS patches and girlfriend's problems, this is another monthly problem I don't look forward to dealing with. Who am I kidding? This is slashdot. I don't have a girlfriend. But I'll tell you what, my mom's aim is better than normal when she's throwing things at me from top of the basement stairs once a month.
Well, there's spam egg sausage and spam, that's not got much spam in it.
This makes sense for home users, however, for enterprises, they like complete control over rollout of patches. The risk of a patch causing problems that impact the business could be very costly and is avoided at all times. IT Departments like to have the patch and test it internally to ensure there is no impact to the business before rolling it out. Also keep in mind that in many enterprises, the end user doesn't have admin access and can't apply the patch anyways.
...and the second Tuesday of the month can become a national holiday for everyone except IT (and Free Software users). The next step will an act of Congress declaring the Monday before the second Tuesday of the month to be Patch Tuesday so as to create a three day weekend.
Warning: this article may contain humor, sarcasm, parody, and perhaps even irony. Read at your own risk.
Hasn't anyone else noticed that the last few big adobe patches were on MS patch Tuesdays?
Will it update if the only user running the system is a regular user under Windows? That would be great for people supporting their parents/grandparents who won't know what to do to update.
When a patch goes wrong or breaks something you'll have to do more work to figure out whose patch just broke your machine.
These posts express my own personal views, not those of my employer
Adobe exceeds expectations again with upping the frequency of the updater we all know and love.
... motivating software engineers (by loss of MONEY) who release things that have big ass security bugs in them in the first place. And put up a scoreboard of the engineer with the most stupid bugs for all to see.
"We have gone X days without an exploit." - just like the safety signs in factories. Since after all, it is software safety we're talking about here.
+++OK ATH