Skip to main content

Really Unhelpful Advice...


A quick summary of the following article - http://www.neowin.net/news/from-my-cold-dead-hands-living-without-updates - would be: Updates are bad, don't do updates.

That unhelpful advice isn't from me and is not recommended by me, nor endorsed by me. You should run from the advice this author posits.
It is is really unhelpful and a disservice to many. As such I was compelled to comment. 
To wit:
I'm sorry, but I think this article and the point of view it puts forward are irresponsible.
As a software engineer, I know (and hate to admit) there are bugs in every released piece of software. Updates to patch these problems (whether or not they are problems visible to users or IT) need to take place. An un-patched bug translates to a vulnerability. Why would you promote vulnerable systems? For instance, would you recommend leaving an Android system un-patched that is vulnerable to the StageFright security hole?
I have used known vulnerabilities in Windows XP (missing some up-to-date patches) and easy to find tools, to crack an administrator's password and create my own administrators account. Or in other words to own the system. The weak spots are where you hack and you count on people and systems having some weak spot, somewhere. You look for the easy ones first. Just because you don't know about it happening, doesn't mean it hasn't, can't or won't.
Many of the me-too comments assume threats will be on the other-side of the network, or there are Antivirus & malware protections in place on targets, or that other security measures will protect them. Defense in depth should be mantra, a guiding principle for anyone responsible for the care and feeding of a system that runs software. Why give away any level of defense?
I'll give the author "the out" to separate updates that fix problems from updates that include additional functionality. Additional functionality is usually adding bugs and is mostly related to revenue generation or market share and competitiveness. I would call the former "patches" and the later "upgrades" and I would say that they should be separate.
But a blanket "no updates"? No thanks.

Labels

Labels:

Comments

Unknown said…
I totally agree, but this requires reading on the users part and some understanding of the nomenclature used by the vendors.
10:41 AM
Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Unit Testing - What to Test

This I wrote to answer a question that came up when we were discussing our software process and I was training developers on how to unit test. It seems a simple enough question, but I kept pondering it and delving deeper until I realized I needed to write this monograph. What unit tests should we write? How do we know what to test? Ideally, unit tests should cover every path through the code. It should be your chance to see every path through your code works as expected and as needed. If you are practicing Test Driven Development then it's implied everything gets a test. In the real world, you might not be allowed to test everything - for instance, if the testing suite ends up taking a week to run, then the world will have changed by the time it finishes and the test results will be obsolete. Unit testing at it's basic is testing an object, a method - the smallest unit of your code that it can test independently. It should test the inputs "goes into" an...
Post a Comment
Read more

JavaScript and JQuery Palettes...

I have been immersing myself in the world of d3js and more, specifically Plotly.js . This has required me to look at palettes, and to create some palettes - which I did with Paletton . I find it tedious, so I am creating some helpers, like the code below which displays a given list of palettes (each of which is simply an array of colors in your favorite format). <table id="Palette"> <tbody></tbody> </table> <script> var defaultColorsPalette = ["#ffd99a", "#225ea8", "#ffc09a", "#9dc4f4", "#ffbf58", "#ffdb58", "#257294", "#ff9658", "#61a1f3", "#ffa719", "#ffce19", "#ff6e19","#ffe99a", "#2a82f2", "#ff9e00", "#ffc900", "#ff5f00", "#036bf0" ]; //via colorweb2 var sequentialMultihueBlueYellowPalette = ["#ffffd9", "#edf8b1", "#c7e9b4",...
Post a Comment
Read more

It's all broken...

So, Scott Hanselman struck a chord again:  Everything's broken and nobody's upset . The worst part is I can see that I'm part of the problem on both sides . I've excused many problems with software - shrugging as I restart the software or reboot. I save my anger for those occasions where I fell I've lost serious work and substantial time. Other than that I accept problems, glitches, crashes as "the cost of doing business". I believe it's actually because I've amused myself and earned a living creating software, that I am able to accept what's often pitiable quality. I've spent time working on systems that are not much more than breadboards with wires cascading from it, where getting something, anything to work was a huge accomplishment. But that was then and this is now. No way would I put up with a car that suffers from numerous small problems as today's software can. And putting these two thoughts together, it's now frightening ...
2 comments
Read more