Mad March Meltdown! Microsoft's patch for a patch for a patch may need another patch Days after Microsoft released its third attempt at a fix for the Meltdown security vulnerability in Intel's modern processors, system administrators say many of their 64-bit Windows 7 and Server 2008 R2 boxes are still unable to be properly patched. Pseudo-anonymous Reg reader Lawrence Birdman, who administers around 120 …
... Microsoft!
Get your (your word here) together and release working updates!
Come on already, pull your finger out and invest in a QA Team and stop relying on the poor customers who get broken updates to report them.
It is not like Microsoft has not got enough money for a QA Team!
Most update issues Microsoft has had lately could have been prevented with a bit of internal testing or quality checks.
Fix it.
"Get your (your word here) together and release working updates!"
This is why I'm staying away from Win10 at the moment. M$ insistence that they control the patch cycle flies in the face of years of personal experience with Windows patches (I spent many years in a lab testing each month's raft of patches to make sure they didn't hose company systems). I had heard about using group policy to take control of patches back, but now I hear they've borked that too so I'll continue to hold off on that laptop upgrade until they have the major catastrophe that forces them to rethink their current strategy.
billg invested in a QA team and it was good. Balmer kept it. Then Satnad came along and decided it wasn't agile enough and axed it.
So with that and Windows 7 and Sever 2008 patches being given to the Z team, you have your answer as to why every month is a fuck up.
SatNad insists that the 'always-on' Windows updates are a great thing, will help 'keep your machine under Microsoft’s control'.
There, fixed that. Face it folks, M$ does't like us annoying geeks refusing onerous "upgrades", blocking OS-native spyware and malware, turning off the tracking and spying... They HATE that. Welcome to the new "We Are In Control Not You Stupid Peon" Windows.
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I've said it before... easy solution to MS's incompetence (or another deliberate attempt to sabotage W7) is to dual boot Windows 7 and Linux (Mint 18.3 in my case).
Windows 7 is patched up to December 2017 (with Simplix Pack) and kept offline.
All online activities are done with Linux Mint.
No Meltdown/Spectre BS or MS incompetence (or sabotage) to worry about when I'm using Windows 7. If I need to go online while using W7 I have my trusty 12 year old HP laptop - also running Mint - or I just use my tablet or smartphone.
I am retired now and only use Windows in a VM - On an iMac in my case. I very occasionally run Windows 10 (the unlicenced version that nags you to get a licence); Windows XP (offline) about every 2 weeks; and less frequently Windows 2000, and FreeDOS.
Disclaimer: I spent a long time writing software, often with Microsoft stuff, but started to cut down the MS habit when Vista came out, and suspect that I will never give MS any more money, ever again...
There was an old lady who swallowed a cow;
I don't know how she swallowed a cow!
She swallowed the cow to catch the goat,
She swallowed the goat to catch the dog,
She swallowed the dog to catch the cat,
She swallowed the cat to catch the bird,
She swallowed the bird to catch the spider;
That wriggled and jiggled and tickled inside her!
She swallowed the spider to catch the fly;
I don't know why she swallowed a fly - Perhaps she'll die!
OK, I'm just an end user, with couple of small websites, and I don't run hundreds of servers, but I have to ask why Linux seems to able to be updated without running into these kinds of problems.
In years of running various distros, and accepting any update offered, I think there might have been one problem one time.
Seriously, how come Linus and all of the downstream developers can make this work, but Microsoft seems unable?
Is it because they're not back porting the fixes to versions of linux that are 15 years old and architected differently? Is it MS's insistence on supporting old pcs, peripherals and software where Linux doesn't (afaik)?
If you ran windows like you run Linux, installing all the updates offered, you'd be on 10 by now and not having these legacy problems.
..when you've been outsourcing since 1996. I assume the Q&A is outsourced to the cheapest bidder who then just marks everything as "tested" when in fact they've just pulled up into the work car park, used the work WIFI and just signed everything off from the car, before slowly driving home. Much like surveyors do when you get the basic home buyers surveyor done on a house.
I'll mention for the third time that I am absolutely happy I decided in January to stop patching my Windows 7 boxes. My intuition was correct.
The second time I mentioned it under a relevant article the ratio of "likes" to "dislike" became > 1.0. I wonder if the trend will continue ;)
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