Microsoft Delays February Patch Tuesday Indefinitely (sans.edu) 88
UnderAttack writes: Microsoft today announced that it had to delay its February Patch Tuesday due to issues with a particular patch. This was also supposed to be the first Patch Tuesday using a new format, which led some to believe that even Microsoft had issues understanding how the new format is exactly going to work with no more simple bulletin summary and patches being released as large monolithic updates. Ars Technica notes the importance of this Patch Tuesday as "there's an in-the-wild zero-day flaw in SMB, Microsoft's file sharing protocol, that at the very least allows systems to be crashed." They also elaborate on the way Microsoft is "continuing to tune the way updates are delivered to Windows 7, 8.1, Server 2008 R2, Server 2012, and Server 2012 R2."
Sigh (Score:5, Insightful)
I've never been a big fan of the way Microsoft rolls out updates, or how the system handles it, but since Windows 10 they've made it just a fucking agony, with annoying pop up screens, unintended system reboots (with loss of data), and just general chaos. How can a company that has been making software for over thirty years have suddenly become so stunningly incompetent.
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Maybe ask the Slashdot coders? They've been incompetent since 1997 so would have plenty of insight.
Re: Sigh (Score:4, Informative)
They fired their qa team.
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Re:Sigh (Score:5, Funny)
Wait... what did you mean by "suddenly"?
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Up until the release of 10, they have been an excellent example of how to do updates. Individually installable, commonly individually uninstallable updates with excellent documentation on what each update does. Ease of both choosing how to install, when to install, and what not to install at all.
That is all gone now.
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Maybe all the competent programmers have recently retired? That would explain a lot.
Re: Sigh (Score:1)
Guess who's one of the biggest H1B users in the US?
Re:Sigh (Score:5, Insightful)
Look at the CEOs over the various eras of Microsoft, it seriously explains everything. The current CEO is from their cloud devision, and in distributed computing, take a few nodes offline from time to time for patching is perfectly normal as other nodes are online for redundancy. Rolling updates are the norm in this area. This logic however absolutely FAILS on the desktop. Updates are scheduled to Microsoft's maintenance windows now, rather than when is the most opportune time for the consumer actively using the operating system. Now think of this not only in terms of Windows Update, but Microsoft as a whole. Gates was a business man, all of their primary software focused on productivity within a business environment. Ballmer was all about DEVELOPERS DEVELOPERS DEVELOPERS, and as much as we all love to make fun of him for it, he was indeed quite good to them (Visual Studio had decent advancements during his time). Now we have Nadella, who's entire focus has been on automation, regardless of who all it effects. Again, this worked great in the datacenter, but he's entirely missed the mark when it comes to the end user perspective.
Re:Sigh (Score:4, Insightful)
Your description is apt, but the salient insight is that a desktop is being treated like a node in a cluster -- in other words, you can take a few down without taking the entire cluster of consumers being taken offline.
This means that the purpose of the cluster isn't your individual productivity, the purpose of the cluster is your value as a consumer intelligence node. Just as in a clustered environment the specific workload of a physical server isn't important provided there are other nodes running to handle the cluster workload.
The OS isn't about providing for your productivity, the OS is to provide Microsoft with consumer intelligence.
Re:Sigh (Score:5, Informative)
They fired their QA guys, most of them gone about 2 years ago IIRC. You started seeing a dramatic decline in product quality thereafter. Did you know it's impossible to patch a fresh Win7 install via normal Windows Update? That broke less than a year after they dumped the QA teams.
Re:Sigh (Score:5, Funny)
Yes. Luckily it's easy to download the updates manually at another computer.
Ha! I lied, it isn't.
Re: Sigh (Score:1)
Actually it is easy. Google "WSUS Offline".
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Tried it. Perhaps there's something else I can Google for that actually works rather than putting up a cryptic message and exiting?
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yes, it is.
http://download.wsusoffline.ne... [wsusoffline.net]
only the actual security updates (and optional things like mse, runtimes, etc), no bullshit.
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It's not just MS. Many companies. Companies need to know QA is important, but they care not. :(
And diagnostic info (Score:1)
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Manually download and install a "roll-up patch". The earliest one I could find (summer 2015 IIRC) worked for me. Then updates would work. My Win10 tablet OTOH simply won't update. I'm not sure I shouldn't just leave it that way.
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Manually download and install a "roll-up patch".
Careful; on Windows 7, the cumulative roll-ups include the backported telemetry KBs.
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Those are the new roll ups. This is the roll up from before MS pulled that shit. This is entirely different brain damage.
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It's a common issue on the web, you need to install two KBs (order matters) (also you might need to kill the updater service for them to install)
KB3020369
KB3172605
http://superuser.com/questions/951960/windows-7-sp1-windows-update-stuck-checking-for-updates [superuser.com]
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...How can a company that has been making software for over thirty years have suddenly become so stunningly incompetent....
Microsoft only seems to care about the desktop as a means of personal data collection.
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Re: Sigh (Score:1)
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People are bitching and I think that is exactly what caused the pull back in the latest, unknown compulsory software install. They were probably going for another big control over the user power grab and chickened out, forcing the compulsory software install to be redone. These are not patches, not bug fixes, they are literally compulsory software installs and the user is not informed of the contents not can they refuse, master to slave, obey. Likely they were pushing further into George Orwell 1984 territo
Comment removed (Score:4, Insightful)
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Frankly, they got tired of being blamed for botnets caused by users not updating Windows, so now everyone gets updates whether they like it or not, and they get 'em within a reasonable time frame of their release.
I'm not sayin' it's right, but I understand their reasoning... and botnets on windows have gone down (they've mostly shifted to routers and other IoT devices).
Windows still has tools to set when updates should be installed -- it's just that no one bothers to do it. Just like no one bothered to kee
Oh...Microsoft... (Score:5, Insightful)
You've always been there throughout my tech career, for some entertainment. I loved that shell that was Windows 3.1 I gloated over Windows ME. I was Tickled when the first Zune "Welcome to the social! effort to chase the iPod came along. I was amused when you laughed at the iPhone and then belatedly came out with Windows Phone, only to crash in the marketplace. Of course there was Longhorn which became Vista. And don't forget Metro and Windows 8! People bought media and counted on Plays for Sure---- but it no longer plays.... and then there was that unlimited OneDrive storage that less than a year later users were "abusing"(haha) and it was rescinded! You gave your word and then changed it! Top it off with the devious Windows 10 "FREE!!!!" upgrade that was tricked upon people including my mother of 83 years old... and then the advertising and the advertising ID in the OS followed...so now your UPDATES DON"T WORK? Microsoft, don't ever change your character, it is entertainment that will last forever...
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People bought media and counted on Plays for Sure
As soon as it came out people started calling it "Fails For Sure", and whaddya know, they were right. It lasted, what, 3 years?
Microsoft is the Shit Show that never stops and never fails to disappoint.
Re: Oh...Microsoft... (Score:1)
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& this is why bill gates is, after 25 years, the so-called richest man on the planet.
The group Kiss was one of the biggest selling bands on the planet for a while....and they still sucked monkey balls. Having huge sales isn't always an indicator of quality.
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When Gates started, well before the Mac and Amiga and when Unix and VMS were not available for reasonably priced desktop use, Microsoft was best known for their BASIC interpreters, which were good for the time on the available computers. The PCs of the time had 8-bit CPUs without hardware multiply and could address 64K of memory, except that 64K was pretty expensive at the time (I was happy to be able to pay only about $100 for 16K) and not all computers supported it. Most of the big commercial brands ha
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I was amused when you laughed at the iPhone and then belatedly came out with Windows Phone, only to crash in the marketplace.
Although I agree with most of what you said you do realize that M$ had a Mobile OS which was used successfully on phones & PDA's a nearly decade before Apple brought out the IPhone.
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Yes but it kind of sucked as it looked like "little Windows". The iPhone was a revolutionary new paradigm.
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The gift that keeps on giving!
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I've never had the problem. Perhaps it is because you buy shitty phones because shilling for Microsoft doesn't pay much. Get a real job and a real phone.
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Is windows any different? You have to install tons of third party apps to gain basic functionality that comes as standard on other platforms.
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not an opposing view as much as "look, it's worse over there!!!1!" which actually has nothing at all to do with the subject at hand.
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There are people who simply disagree with me. They're wrong, of course, but that's no big deal. Some hold irrational beliefs (I never would, of course). Some sure seem to act like shills. When Slashdot ran articles on Russian armed aggression, there were several new accounts popping up that pushed bad pro-Russian propaganda, and they looked like shills to me. (You know, I never knew Putin cared about Slashdot.)
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I'll second this one. My TrueOS - I've not been able to apply the latest updates, and already, it's screwing up w/ Wells Fargo certificates on my Chromium browser. I'll wait a few months before I order a new DVD for $6 and then try updating then.
Won't fix (Score:1)
End of their "Wimpy" strategy (Score:1)
As in "I will gladly patch you Tuesday for a Zero Day Today"
Microsoft (Score:2)
Microsoft: "We couldn't figure out how to pour the piss out of this boot even with the instructions written on the heel!"
Exactly why the single large update is bad (Score:2)
Before they could have dropped the single patch causing the issue.
The price *you* pay for MS to desperately force you to take their spyware in Windows.
Good timing? (Score:2)