Linked by Thom Holwerda on Tue 14th Apr 2009 15:19 UTC
Windows The Conficker worm, which spreads by infecting Windows computers who are not properly kept up-to-date, was supposed to make a big splash on April 1, but that day passed with a deafening silence on the Conficker front. Since then, there has been some movement by the worm, and data gathered from enterprise users of Sophos' Endpoint Assessment Test indicates that 10% of Windows machines have still not been properly patched, leaving them wide open to a Conficker infection.
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RE[4]: Comment by kaiwai
by aperh on Tue 14th Apr 2009 16:30 UTC in reply to "RE[3]: Comment by kaiwai"
aperh
Member since:
2007-01-03

No this doesn't make any sense. You buy a device, you are expected to maintain it. Doing software updates is part of the day to day life of a computer user, be it windows, mac, or linux. That's like saying you should buy a car and never have to put gas in it or change the oil, it should do it by itself? See? It makes no sense. Whenever somebody purchases a product, there are some constraints that have to be met, in the case of a car you need to fill the tank and change the oil, tires, etc. With a computer you need to do updates.

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RE[5]: Comment by kaiwai
by sbenitezb on Tue 14th Apr 2009 16:39 in reply to "RE[4]: Comment by kaiwai"
sbenitezb Member since:
2005-07-22

You cannot compare software with a car. This kind of analogies don't work. If you want to do the *-car analogy, then if your car is defective by design you have rights to sue and get your money back or a better/well designed car. Doesn't happen with software.

Still, if your car starts to missbehave, you don't actually fix it yourself, but send it to the mechanic. Now if we talk about software that would mean you should take your computer with the technician whenever a bug pops up. That's stupid. Ask most people and they don't even know what a bug is in software terms. You are certainly not to expect anyone to patch his own computer. That should be fully automatic. At least with critical updates. Car analogies don't work because the car itself can't changes his own physical parts, but I'm sure there are cars with digital equipment that can autoupdate their firmware as needed. In fact, it's most certain that your cablemodem/dsl modem autoupdates itself whenever the ISP thinks it's needed, and they surely don't ask you to do it manually or ask for your permission.

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RE[6]: Comment by kaiwai
by aperh on Tue 14th Apr 2009 17:17 in reply to "RE[5]: Comment by kaiwai"
aperh Member since:
2007-01-03

But the analogy works when you consider updating as a regular maintenance task which is what it is. It is *exactly* like having to change oil, tires, etc, these are all part of regular maintenance of your device.

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