You could have stuck in a pic of the EeePC beach girl here, surely a time for your holidaying admin to make use of a UMPC.

Any excuse really.

...the only critical core OS bug doesn't apply to Vista or server 2008, but does apply to all earlier OSes.

Bill must be doing something right...

Thanks for the info. I'll set Wednesday 13th August aside in preparation for fixing peoples Windows computers after they run their updates.

/Mines the broken coat covered in patches.

is that because they haven't got a fix for that bug in Vista or WS2008 yet?

/cynic

Good to see they read the "How would you rate the usefulness of this content ?" comments when victims respond

The "Microsoft Security Bulletin Advance Notification"

http://www.microsoft.com/technet/security/Bulletin/advance.mspx

still points to JUNE 2008 (despite this being pointed out last month)

Paris? Because she would have (probably) been able to read the comment and fix the link by now

... just to pre-empt them. I update my linux* server every few weeks and almost always there's some 20 to 30 patches. Far in excess of the Windows patches usually.

Frequently these include a core kernel update. How often does *that* happen on Windows? !! ;)

So in other words... non-issue. Software needs updating, regardless of OS. Deal with it.

* Yeah, I run windows *and* linux. Both fine for the jobs they are used for.

Yup, i'm gonna bite.

What do Windows patches patch? The OS and maybe a few MS programs. What do (most) linux patches patch? Every damned app - that's what.

And how often do my Linux boxen say, "you must now restart your system to complete activation of updates"?

Darn near NEVER.

And if you think that either is "fine", then your standards are really, really low. Or (perhaps) your usage is extremely simple.

What does MS patches accomlish? Security issues.

What does *nix patches accomplish? Added features, bug fixes, security issues.

The last "patch" MS came out with that actually added a feature was WinXP SP2. A bit different than "patching" KDE or Gnome. (especially if you "patch" from KDE 3.x to 4.x)

they fixed the memory leak in IE7

Well, for instance, each and every time that you get an update for the kernel, or glibc, or ...

So, basically, once a week.

But vary rarely does anything break!

Funny, that's not my experience. Also, on the occasions when my Linux boxes do update the kernel or glibc I generally wait a few days (up to a couple of weeks) for an opportune time to bounce them, which takes 22 seconds on my slowest machine.

It's nice to have the option isn't it? More than once, mid-patching, I've had Windows ripped out under me without so much as a 30s window to save my work. I've had it install patches after I asked it not to, I've had it brick itself with patches, and I've had patches chew up applications. I've never had that with Linux (not saying it's not possible, but I've not seen it).

Linux also promotes world peace and leaves a minty fresh taste in your mouth, with zero (yes ZERO) calories. Mmmmmm, Linux!

Apple is on it's 5th [or more?] security update this year. Each update is growing and growing [they are accumulative] to reaching 50+ MB [granted it's one file to fix all the updates - a sort of service pack]. And right after it's released more issues crop up. with the growing number of updates Apple has released, I suspect they need to go back to school and secure they OS and apps properly.

They still haven't fixed the DNS flaw for the clients. Twice these security updates "broke" various Internet based apps [Safari, mail, etc.].

As for Linux, one guy had a Linux distro in a VM. Didn't open it for a couple of months and YAST listed 200 updates!

If it is so damn good, why do you have to keep fixing it, Bill?

Twelve more! Twelve more! We had 17 in July and 11 un June. I would say "Bugger me" but you might take that the wrong way.

On the bright side, at least MS is issuing patches for their product, rather than taking their "Vista features" Mojave Experiment approach of "It's great the way it is, you just don't see it."