Slashdot Mirror
Microsoft Suspending "Patch Tuesday" Emails
New submitter outofluck70 (1734164) writes Got an email today from Microsoft, text is below. [Note: text here edited for formatting and brevity; see the full text at seclists.org.] They are no longer going to send out emails regarding patches, you have to use RSS or keep visiting their security sites. They blame "governmental policies" as the reason. What could the real reason be? Anybody in the know? From the email: "Notice to IT professionals: As of July 1, 2014, due to changing governmental policies concerning the issuance of automated electronic messaging, Microsoft is suspending the use of email notifications that announce the following: Security bulletin advance notifications; Security bulletin summaries; New security advisories and bulletins; Major and minor revisions to security advisories and bulletins. In lieu of email notifications, you can subscribe to one or more of the RSS feeds described on the Security TechCenter website." WindowsIT Pro blames Canada's new anti-spam law.
over the years I took it for granted that the newest version of an operating system would require more resources than the last version, so my computer would be slower. Then I switched to osx, and my computer would get faster with each upgrade, since the upgrades were actual structural improvements and not just frosting. so my 5yo notebook would be faster than when it was new.
The same thing happened in the Windows world. Windows 7 was faster than Vista, and Windows 8 was faster than Windows 7. Each new version got better with their use of resources, although the system requirements remained the same for the three versions (1 GHz CPU, 1GB RAM for 32bit, 2GB for 64bit) except for hard drive use with went up by 1GB per release.
When I first tried the beta of Windows 8, the only computer that I had spare was a 2GHZ Celeron with 1GB RAM and a slow hard drive (I think that it was from 2006). It was slow to boot, but once loaded I was astounded how well it worked. I wouldn't use it for day-to-day operations, but it wasn't too far out of the ball park for speed. It didn't stop me hating the user interface (and I still do), but the actual performance did surprise me having been used to the idea (like you were) that each version in the past had got slower and slower.