From Lileks:
If they made Frankenstein movies nowadays, the sequels would be odd: the Monster could not go on a rampage until he’d downloaded the latest firmware. “Improves compatibility with villagers, resolves conflicts with fire.”
Seems like he came with malware preinstalled. At least in the Mel Brooks version. “Abby Normal. I’m almost sure that was the name.“
The Monster runs Windows 98 Second Edition and currently has no viable upgrade path.
I bought a new computer last Friday. Not a really high-end system (AMD quad core, 8 GB RAM, 750 GB hard drive, good video card, Windows 7) but certainly adequate to meet my needs for some time. The system runs great. However, there has not been a single session of using the computer where it hasn’t downloaded at least 3 software updates. So far, the record is 20 updates in one session, with 13 updates in an earlier session that same day.
Now, I know that a new box will need to get the updates published since the disk was imaged but this is getting a bit ridiculous. Are they having that many problems that they need to push so many updates?
It’s mostly patching up security vulnerabilities that are being found by the MS dev’s. Some of them resolve capability issues between the O/S and applications that don’t want to play nice.
A lot of times MS creates their own security risks by publishing a fix for a problem that no one knew about until they told everyone. So, hackers will suddenly start pounding away at the newly broadcasted weakness and further find things to exploit. In turn MS then has to issue a patch of the patch to resolve some lingering exploits that they missed the first time around. In other words, it will never stop updating on a nearly weekly basis. So, just keep the auto update on and let it do its thing. I know of a group of users that had some tech oriented person go in and disable the auto updating to “improve performance”. They got hit with a virus that used a exploit which was patched back in early ’08. All the other machines sitting around them that were patched were fine.
You are talking about the latest version of Windows. You know, the operating system that gets sold when still effectively in pre-beta?
Actually, Vista was the beta for Windows 7, probably the longest and most expensive beta testing program ever. So far, 7 seems fast and bullet-proof on my system. Time will tell.
McGehee: “The Monster runs Windows 98 Second Edition and currently has no viable upgrade path.”
*Hands McGehee my copy of the Gorgon Linux installation CD.*