No *wonder* MS stuff gets hacked!

[kengr]

I was getting ready to run some security checks on my main system (I had to reboot it because of an annoying Firefox bug anyway)

I'd already run Spybot and Ad-aware on the other two systems the other day.

Spybot updated just fine Adaware came up with this weird error message.

After much digging, I determined (via a lot of googling) that it needed the Visual C redistributable library. So I download it from MS, and install it. And then re-install AdAware. (That's another story, it shouldn't have just errored out like that And It took a lot of reboots and install/uninstall cycles before things worked).

So, a bit ago I check to see how the Spybot run was going. And noted the Windows update icon down on the quicklaunch bar.

I click on it and it a security fix. For the Visual C redistributable library I'd downloaded direct from MS not 4 hours ago!!!

Good grief. What kind of idiots don't have the *patched* version of files up for download???

ETA: And now that the patch has been downloaded, it is taking *forever* to apply. It's been half an hour so far...

Comments

[stickmaker.livejournal.com]

They're not idiots. It's policy.

(Yes, being sarcastic, here.)

[stickmaker.livejournal.com]

I will say that while Apple is better than MS at this they aren't immune. I installed Snow Leopard to days ago, and not only have had three or four updates to apps (though not to the OS) but am still having problems with Firefox. Several times, closing a tab or window has crashed the browser.

Also, if I try to run an .ASX file by double-clicking or using right-click Open, I get a notice that I need to install QuickTime. Doing right-click Open With/QuickTime works fine. QuickTime was one of the apps which updated.

[kengr]

Firefox on my Win2k box will sometime crash (complete with "crash reporter was unable to save a crash file" or some such message) when I try saving a graphics file from a web page. Say what?

And let's not go into the braindead changes in handling of tabs.

[fayanora.livejournal.com]

So try Opera. Or Google Chrome.

[kengr]

Can't synch bookmarks and passwords between the systems with Opera (or at least not without upgrading the OS)

Google chrome won't run on anything older than XP.

[maxstories.livejournal.com]

Slashdot had a post about a web server botnet - leveraging Apache and coordinating with PC botnets. It's not just Microsoft that has problems. It's the entire artificial ecology of the system.

In organisms this sort of immune system failing would cause death and more successful immune systems would propagate outwards.

[seawasp]

Unless the organisms had a stranglehold on the ecology in some other way, and bred fast enough that immune system failings were not a problem.

[kengr]

You totally misunderstood my point.

MS had a version of the file for download THAT NEEDED A SECURITY FIX APPLIED!

If they've had time to update the code that does the "does this part of Windows need an update" check, then they've had time to replace the file on their servers with a fixed one. In fact, they should have done that *first*.