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Re: [OM] Are you cannon fodder?

Subject: Re: [OM] Are you cannon fodder?
From: David Thatcher <plusphoto@xxxxxxxxxx>
Date: Wed, 13 Feb 2019 22:06:00 +1030
On Tue, Feb 12, 2019 at 01:49:53PM -0800, Jan Steinman wrote:
> Woa, do Windows users actually have to put up with stuff like that?
> 
> Jan

Jan,

They do, (as do Mac users - Apple just don't tell you about it - and
silently patch your system as soon as you connect to the Internet- but
thanks to the work of the FreeBSD community, problematic updates for
Macs are few and far between)... In all seriousness though, the article
really overblows the problem, it really isn't THAT bad.  From the text,
it appears to me that something like  a flat tyre, or someone skipping
out on their round at the pub would be a "life-changing-event" for this
guy...

Sadly though, the required-update problem is endemic to the software
world. The users end up doing  the Quality Assurance and regression
testing for the vendors. Every piece of software has bugs, some are just
inconvenient and cause annoyance, and some are really nasty and expose
the users to attack from 'black hat' operators*. It's the latter that
mean that updates should be performed regularly and fairly quickly after
release. The small risk is that some of those updates may be
show-stoppers for the system. OSs like Linux or BSD UNIX are for more
technically-oriented users, and so don't update automagically as you are
expected to know to run/manage  updates or upgrades at the appropriate
times, and know how to dig yourself out of the poo...

I've been in the corporate networking industry for over 20 years - end
user systems are better than they have ever been. If you think windows
updates problems are bad, follow one of the major networking equipment
vendor security update lists...  this is why organisations like CERT
exist, otherwise they would just sweep them under the rug.

When I worked in the (arcade) video game industry 25 years ago it was
exactly the same - software updates came down the pipe with disturbing
regularity, and I was forever stuffing reprogrammed EPROMs in video and
pinball game boards (in those days the bugs were in the former category,
but now that everybody's gear is connected to the Internet... :) )

*Never mind the social-engineering scam callers! I've strung them along
a bit and then told them I have a TRS-80, ZX-81, a Commodore 64,  a
VZ-300 and even a "Little Man Computer"... unfortunately they realise
I'm playing them and they hang up.

davidt
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