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Windows 10 Buggy Updates? Our Patching is Simple, Regular, and Consistent, Says Microsoft (zdnet.com)
Microsoft has declined to comment on an expert's many complaints about the quality of its recent patches and cadence of Windows 10 feature updates. Earlier, Susan Bradley, a Microsoft MVP who for the past 18 years has volunteered her time helping Windows users, took a survey of over 1,800 respondents regarding the Windows 10 Update experience. She then sent an open letter to Microsoft executives summarizing the results of this survey and providing thoroughly researched material regarding the poor update experience Windows 10 users have been experiencing. In return, Microsoft argued in a blog that it gives admins all the tools they need to test and provide feedback before it releases Patch Tuesday updates. From a report: Microsoft's John Wilcox, who helps promote why organizations should move to Windows 10's Windows-as-a-service model has, at the behest of Windows pros, offered an explanation of its monthly Windows 10 quality update servicing cadence and terminology.
As noted by ZDNet's Ed Bott recently, IT admins who'd spent years learning about Windows Update needed to "prepare to do some unlearning" due to the many changes introduced by Microsoft's shift to a Windows 10-as-a-service model. "With Windows 10, Microsoft has completely rewritten the Windows Update rulebook. For expert users and IT pros accustomed to having fine-grained control over the update process, these changes might seem wrenching and even draconian," he noted. [...]
Wilcox outlines that Microsoft's guiding principles to its monthly Windows service updates are built around being "simple and predictable", "agile", and "transparent." Wilcox doesn't directly address patching expert Bradley's major complaints about Microsoft's patches of late, but said Microsoft's predictability meant IT managers should be able to handle its "simple, regular and consistent patching cadence."
As noted by ZDNet's Ed Bott recently, IT admins who'd spent years learning about Windows Update needed to "prepare to do some unlearning" due to the many changes introduced by Microsoft's shift to a Windows 10-as-a-service model. "With Windows 10, Microsoft has completely rewritten the Windows Update rulebook. For expert users and IT pros accustomed to having fine-grained control over the update process, these changes might seem wrenching and even draconian," he noted. [...]
Wilcox outlines that Microsoft's guiding principles to its monthly Windows service updates are built around being "simple and predictable", "agile", and "transparent." Wilcox doesn't directly address patching expert Bradley's major complaints about Microsoft's patches of late, but said Microsoft's predictability meant IT managers should be able to handle its "simple, regular and consistent patching cadence."
Don't worry, Microsoft is working on machine learning to make the reboots better. There was a story about it recently.
"First they came for the slanderers and i said nothing."
Windows has what they call Mandatory Integrity Control, which is very different from MAC.
The concept behind MIC is useful for systems with tens of thousands of people. Well, it would be useful, except Microsoft forgot to implement half of it. It's not very useful on a personal computer, and hence rarely used. The idea, borrowed from DoD, is that people and files are assigned security levels. Low security, medium, high, top secret. Low security people can't read high security files. That's cool - of you have tens of thousands of people who need different security LEVELS to maybe access millions of files.
The second half of that system, uses by DoD and others serious about security, is that high-level people can't write low security files. If you have top-secret information, anything you save could contain top secret information, so by default it I treated as top secret until it's cleared. Windows doesn't do that. On Windows, the admin's Keepass keyring may be a low-security file, and therefore readable by JavaScript.
Even if they had implemented MIC, both halves, that in no way replaces MAC. The two are orthogonal. It's like the CIA saying "we don't need locks on the doors because we stamped the document 'top secret'".