Forum Moderators: phranque
I've been posting warnings here about SP2 since before it came out. From many years in the computer business I've realised to never trust any hardware or software. Before doing anything about anything, ghost, image, backup. And then do it all again, just to be safe. I even carry some stuff around on paper (like passwords) in case the PC one day takes my electricity supply out and I have to call someone for support and they want an account number and password. Governments just aren't clued up about IT. It's scary that we trust them with the information that we do (and that we are soon to let them run an ID card scheme with biometrics stored on computers).
Anyone jumping into an update just because someone else says it's safe is a bit naive (whether that someone else is MS or Norton or a national government!).
It's pretty much a no-win for smaller businesses though - I cannot check the validity of every Microsoft update and can't afford not to do the update if it is a security patch. Damned if you do, damned if you don't. Frankly, I think I'd rather sit in a pub and blame MS for a bad update than Al Quada for a computer virus if truth be told.
but SP2 - that was a monster and we ceryainly did do that one PC at a time just in case (which I guess is a bit had over 40/80 thousand computers.)
Hire 'best-in-class' people and this may not happen. Cut costs by off-shoring, hiring 'yes people', et. al. and it will.
I installed XP SP2 and have not had a single problem. Of course I don't run games. A lot of the problems I have seen is because someone installs a game that takes 'short-cuts' to improve video play and it blows up the OS. As a matter of fact, most problems I see are not caused by updating the OS, but from other software installing and/or running programs automatically that are buggy or use undocumented calls, and it starts a chain reaction.
Note. Off shoring is not bad, you just have to make sure you don't have communications problems. Some companies do it well, and some do it really bad.
You can pay billions for your staff but it takes only one idiot...
Anyway, how did the 80K machines become 60K (theregister [theregister.co.uk]) become 40K? The longer this goes on the more this "spin" reduces the number of machines affected. What governments lack in IT management skills they make up for in "news management".
hehehehe, that's an understatement.
But you know what I'm talking about. I'm sure you have seen the same thing. If he/she would read everything before doing anything, it would help. No common sense if you ask me, of course no one did ;-))
the beancounters must have been outsourced too, because it just does not compute when some sales guy says that they can do it cheaper *and* make a profit. well yes they can, as long as they hire only the cheapest recent graduates and have no bench strength.
MS *always* puts up detailed information links on the service pack announcement pages for all operating systems. this usually includes any known installation problems.
And this, according to THE REG was supposed to have been a test. tests are supposed to take place on isolated networks. no exceptions, end of discussion.
oh, i found this bit from the inquirer to be a giggle:
The civil service word for old and poor people who have paid countless billions into the National Insurance scheme launched by a Labour government in 1947 is "customers".Desktop computers are called "clients". Civil servants are called "servers". Politicans are called "self servers".
I know they have now. A really large company my brother use to work for before he retired at age 55, the ‘bean counters’ told him that their jobs would never be out-sourced. Well, before his last day, the bean counters were told to start training people in India for their jobs.
>>the real problem is the 'low bid' mentality
Can’t argue with that. I did hear on CNBC one day that investment bankers were not lending monies to companies that did not have out-sourcing in at least their long-term business plans.
Personally I think that’s why Bush called in all the CEOs of the 5 biggest investment bankers to the White House 1 or 2 days after the election. Hopefully he was telling them to stop that practice. I personally think that they, the investment bankers, started to do that due to the fact that the government was cracking down on their unethical business practices, like accounting fraud, etc. You know, what they are all going to court for today.
