Which is probably a good thing, for the following reasons;
1) Microsoft patches should not really break your machines or applications any more as the update technology has now had almost seven years to mature. Hint: We should be getting this update stuff mostly right now, and broken desktops and applications should be rare, and by far the exception, and a thing of the past.
2) The CERN Hadron collider was scheduled to start-up yesterday but will not be "up to speed" for few more months, and no major proton collisions are scheduled for this side of this year. That said, we could be in for a "Big Bang" in the New Year. For more insightful, witty and down-right useful important news reporting, look here: http://www.theregister.co.uk/2008/09/10/lhc_day_is_not_today/ .
3) Wednesday is "Anything Can Happen Day" (See the Mickey Mouse club here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Mickey_Mouse_Club ) And, who wants to die on a day like that.
I don't know what everyone thinks about the format of the ChangeBase Patch Tuesday Patching Impact report (is the RAG status helpful, cool or annoying?) That said, I had a couple of recent interesting posting from blogs and news sites regarding our Patch Update including ;
Dave Winder's comment on the "deal with it, it happens" nature of desktop maintenance and security patches found here;
http://www.itpro.co.uk/blogs/daveyw/2008/09/10/patch-tuesday-risk-analysis
And the excellent briefing by Antony Savvas on the nature of application level conflicts and the potential problems that deploying security patches may introduce into your desktop and server environment found here;
http://www.computerweekly.com/Articles/2008/09/12/232293/microsoft-ms08-052-security-patch-not-compatible-with-some.htm
I really think that Antony "gets it", when he posted the following; "There is therefore a danger that if this happens, the installation will result in an out-of-date version of this file being loaded, and overwriting the version in the patch update this month."
So, ChangeBase is planning to deliver this kind of report on a monthly basis, with the hope of working with Microsoft on the patch payload and update structures. This would be really great, as this kind of information is more useful when delivered early.
Any comments on these reports would be really helpful/interesting and any other ideas on what we should be reporting upon, would be gratefully thought about.
For those who missed the newsletter, here is the link to the ChangeBase website;
*I am not saying I was expecting the end of the world for these reasons, I was just prepared.
No comments:
Post a Comment