Microsoft pulls a patch and offers PHANTOM FIX for the mess Another Patch Tuesday, another mess for Microsoft, which has pulled update 3004394, aka “December 2014 update for Windows Root Certificate Program in Windows”. Redmond says the patch “is causing additional problem on computers that are running Windows 7 Service Pack 1 (SP1) and Windows Server 2008 R2 SP1. This includes the …
Make Microsoft bear some responsibility for the costs of their errors. Though it was a very successful business model innovation and helped Microsoft make lots of money so they could pretty much take over the computers of the world, in practice it has been really bad. In fact, my firm belief is that if MS were suddenly required to pay for all the damages caused by their errors and carelessness, the company would be bankrupt. (Their other major business model innovation was selling upstream, to the manufacturers, so they could basically ignore the actual users of their software. Actually, it's an exaggeration to give MS full credit for either of these, but MS perfected them.)
So here's a way to implement a solution: Cut Microsoft into separate pieces and require they compete with each other. Each company would start with a copy of the source code and an equal fraction of the employees and facilities and equipment, and after that they have to compete. They can even work on a standard version of Windows (as seen by the installed programs), but any information they exchange (for example about the Windows APIs and how they work) has to be exchanged in public.
Rather than eternal bandages, the daughter companies would have strong incentives to offer real solutions. For example, MS-A might add a data recovery service to provide some protection against loss or theft. MS-B might offer a more expensive OS but with backup services and security signatures imbedded into your data to protect it from theft. MS-C might go the route of focusing on performance speed without accepting any increase in liability. Whatever. The point is that we would have real choice = real freedom and as the code bases diverged, we would get more real security, too.
That couldn't sound further from a "fix" if it tried.
What if MS-A didn't like the change that MS-B was making and didn't want to include it, or felt it was worse than a feature they were adding?
It's easy to tell you - because in Open Source where this "public" exchange you talk of exists, you end up with a million forks and variants, or infighting, or someone ultimately ruling the product.
The real fix is simple - MS needs to go back to the QA side, and kick some ass. Of it has let them go, beg forgiveness. This is a worryingly new trend of every month a broken patch be giveth, and we've noticed it at $dayjob - but it isn't historically the case - overall problems had been pretty rare.
Two a year is pretty rare for this in my book.
There are about 100 MS patches a year, so a 1 in 50 fuckup isnt very common and given the complexity of pushing a patch (especially when devs have a tendency to rely on "features" which get patched out), that isnt a crushingly bad failure rate.
It's easy to criticize and difficult to create. Armchair quarterbacks are a dime a dozen.
NO manufacturer of operating system software could bear responsibility for their programming "bugs" as there are just too many variables in software compatability to do so.
Also every programmer has a different style and does things a slightly different way. Trying to figure out what another programmer did is often incredibly difficult.
If YOU can design, program & market a better product, feel free to do so.
But in the meantime, please stop offering harebrained "solutions" to problems you can't solve.
Hey, Microsoft are the ones who "designed", i.e. cobbled together, the most complicated software ecosystem ever. They have been hoisted on their own petard.
Security is now one of the company's strengths." I would laugh a lot at the folly of this assertion except for the fact that I have to troubleshoot botched Microsoft security updates. I think I have the one described here on my hands right now. In any event, I ran the latest security updates on a system here today. Now instead of booting cleanly, it boots and then the screen goes dark.
One would think that being able to roll out maintainable systems and being more capable than a CS major writing code from his bedroom is what Microsoft should be about.
Apparently not.
The roots of barely-functional consumer-tier software meant to overtake IBM quickly cannot be shaken, it seems.
Wasted hours yesterday, trying to update a new Win7 install so it can go out to the client. I went through all the hoops (also was not able initially to install the System Update Readiness Tool, until I found a suggestion to turn off the Windows firewall), to no avail. Kept getting "Windows Update encountered and unknown error" messages. Trying to get help by clicking on the link, would give "Microsoft.com is not responding" errors, which led me to believe that the update servers were overwhelmed. Hence my continuous attempts, hoping to squeeze in during a rare lull.
Strangely enough, doing this morning's update also successfully installed a device (that only the user (non-admin) account encountered. Device Manager did not know about any problem devices (it supposedly was a USB Root Hub). Even making the user an administrator did not resolve that issue.
There is still one optional update (Intel graphics adapter) that refuses to install, but at least the machine can go out today.
--------> Would like to nuke Windows, of course.
there is rarely the need to deploy the updates the day they are released. In fact, it seems prudent to make your own patch day the tuesday after microsofts offering as most of the issues are plugged by then.
Besides, fucked patches are still a relatively rare occurance.
Dont see android being updated as regularly...Nor apple. I appluad MS for their stance on patching software, even with an odd hiccup...
PS, reg staff, WTF have you done to the site????? For the love of god, revert back...
Depends on the patch - the vulnerability it fixes, how easy is to exploit it, and if exploits are alrready in the wild. A compromised system may be worse than one with issues.
But of course you need to test patches on a test system before applying them - ignoring this basic requirement to save some money can be very costly afterwards...
Quite unpleasant that it was forced onto my machine considering that I have set the options specifically for download and notify me about the updates - BUT not install automatically. Bad form!
Resorted to looking inside the 29kb downloaded binary file where it reveals that it's related to KB3004394 and has the text 'FixBrokenUpdate' within it. Gradually the mystery is revealed...
Nice waste of my time that could have been eased by having web pages available at the same time as the patch was released! Bad form!
This is hardly the first time I've had a Win7 box nobbled by updates and that's something that I could never say about XP, despite running the latter right up to its termination date. My impression is that the management at MS just don't regard Win7 as being "current". They'd much rather you upgraded and so if patches occasionally bork your system then so be it.
I feel a little sorry for folks who have only just migrated to Win7 from XP, in the reasonable-but-now-apparently-erroneous belief that they'd have five years of support ahead of them. My advice to anyone now would be to go all the way to 8.1. It's not that much harder and at least MS seem to be supporting that platform effectively.
If you are actively recommending people who use ordinary computers migrate to the trivet-infested desktop of Windows 8.1 you are Satan Made Manifest. The whole user interface is newer uglier and harder to use unless your workforce does all its work on smartphones of course, where fatfinger-on-tile is the way to go.
I presume you also run a lucrative user training business. 8oD
After acquiring a windows 8 laptop I had to fix, I decided to try windows 8.1 for a decent length of time.
What an absolute cluster fuck.
So then I tried classic shell which immediately transforms the desktop into a much more familiar pleasing format. But what classic shell cant do is resolve the other stupid fucking issues that just get in the way. Stupid things, like msconfig being removed and integrated into task manager. Things in places they just shouldn't be.... Easy things made difficult for the sake of change.
So a week later I've dumped it, its an utter fuck up of royal order... Touch screen desktops are like finger print scanners. Cool gadgets but hopeless within the world we live in...
Back to 7 for me......
Here is a suggestion, Congress requires MS runs the patches 10 days before...
yep, 10 days before they release them to the public MS must have 100% of the patches deployed on 100% of the computers at Microsoft. Make em eat their own dog food or dog shit, whatever they decide to put in the food dish!
not to allow automatic installation of updates. No matter how many times, and how vociferously, they recommend it.
Automatically check for availability of new updates, sure, and let me know when they are there. But *I* decide whether and when they get installed.
(I have, in the past few months, developed the habit of waiting a week or so after Patch Tuesday for news like this.)
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