Slashdot Mirror

← Back to Stories (view on slashdot.org)

Microsoft Delays February Patch Tuesday Indefinitely (sans.edu)

Posted by BeauHD on from the until-further-notice dept.

UnderAttack writes: Microsoft today announced that it had to delay its February Patch Tuesday due to issues with a particular patch. This was also supposed to be the first Patch Tuesday using a new format, which led some to believe that even Microsoft had issues understanding how the new format is exactly going to work with no more simple bulletin summary and patches being released as large monolithic updates. Ars Technica notes the importance of this Patch Tuesday as "there's an in-the-wild zero-day flaw in SMB, Microsoft's file sharing protocol, that at the very least allows systems to be crashed." They also elaborate on the way Microsoft is "continuing to tune the way updates are delivered to Windows 7, 8.1, Server 2008 R2, Server 2012, and Server 2012 R2."

5 of 88 comments (clear)

  1. Sigh by MightyMartian · · Score: 5, Insightful

    I've never been a big fan of the way Microsoft rolls out updates, or how the system handles it, but since Windows 10 they've made it just a fucking agony, with annoying pop up screens, unintended system reboots (with loss of data), and just general chaos. How can a company that has been making software for over thirty years have suddenly become so stunningly incompetent.

    --
    The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
    1. Re:Sigh by darkain · · Score: 4, Insightful

      Look at the CEOs over the various eras of Microsoft, it seriously explains everything. The current CEO is from their cloud devision, and in distributed computing, take a few nodes offline from time to time for patching is perfectly normal as other nodes are online for redundancy. Rolling updates are the norm in this area. This logic however absolutely FAILS on the desktop. Updates are scheduled to Microsoft's maintenance windows now, rather than when is the most opportune time for the consumer actively using the operating system. Now think of this not only in terms of Windows Update, but Microsoft as a whole. Gates was a business man, all of their primary software focused on productivity within a business environment. Ballmer was all about DEVELOPERS DEVELOPERS DEVELOPERS, and as much as we all love to make fun of him for it, he was indeed quite good to them (Visual Studio had decent advancements during his time). Now we have Nadella, who's entire focus has been on automation, regardless of who all it effects. Again, this worked great in the datacenter, but he's entirely missed the mark when it comes to the end user perspective.

    2. Re:Sigh by hairyfeet · · Score: 3, Insightful

      Go to YouTube and look up Banacles Nerdgasm's "I was fired" video if you want to know why MSFT's OS division has turned to shit, but the short of it is they fired the QA and tester teams in their entirety in one giant culling. Now YOU are the beta tester for the actual customers which Nutella has made clear is the ENTERPRISE users, not the Windows Home or Pro buyers. Basically Windows Home is now the alpha, Windows Pro the beta, and Enterprise is the finished product.

      Why do you think you can't turn off updates or all that telemetry shit even on Windows Pro, which as the name implied in the past was for professionals? Its because they need to see how badly the patches fuck your system up so they can fix or remove them before it gets to their actual customers, all those corps paying juicy endless rent to have Windows Enterprise licenses. So congrats all of you that took the windows 10 "free" upgrade or worse actually bought Win 10 Home or Pro, you gave your precious time and hardware to be a testbench for a product you don't even get in return.

      --
      ACs don't waste your time replying, your posts are never seen by me.
    3. Re:Sigh by swb · · Score: 3, Insightful

      Your description is apt, but the salient insight is that a desktop is being treated like a node in a cluster -- in other words, you can take a few down without taking the entire cluster of consumers being taken offline.

      This means that the purpose of the cluster isn't your individual productivity, the purpose of the cluster is your value as a consumer intelligence node. Just as in a clustered environment the specific workload of a physical server isn't important provided there are other nodes running to handle the cluster workload.

        The OS isn't about providing for your productivity, the OS is to provide Microsoft with consumer intelligence.

  2. Oh...Microsoft... by surfdaddy · · Score: 4, Insightful

    You've always been there throughout my tech career, for some entertainment. I loved that shell that was Windows 3.1 I gloated over Windows ME. I was Tickled when the first Zune "Welcome to the social! effort to chase the iPod came along. I was amused when you laughed at the iPhone and then belatedly came out with Windows Phone, only to crash in the marketplace. Of course there was Longhorn which became Vista. And don't forget Metro and Windows 8! People bought media and counted on Plays for Sure---- but it no longer plays.... and then there was that unlimited OneDrive storage that less than a year later users were "abusing"(haha) and it was rescinded! You gave your word and then changed it! Top it off with the devious Windows 10 "FREE!!!!" upgrade that was tricked upon people including my mother of 83 years old... and then the advertising and the advertising ID in the OS followed...so now your UPDATES DON"T WORK? Microsoft, don't ever change your character, it is entertainment that will last forever...