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Thanks for the tips!
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Very well said.
From Patch Lady’s post on the Home Page:
My biggest paranoia is that more and more people will stop updating because of the reality that we are seeing.
I no longer use Windows at home, personally. My workplace is covered under Enterprise, so they patch when they decide it’s safe. But my wife’s computers still use Windows 10. I have used Windows for some time, and I am technical enough to know what the Windows message loop is.
I was all set to patch last weekend when I saw the dire warnings/MSDEFCON 1 setting here on askwoody.com. So I didn’t patch. It’s now getting to the point that, between the horrible quality of the patches and the other demands on my time, I might get our Win10 computers patch maybe once every 2-3 months. Thing is, I can’t just sit down and apply patches. The patching procedure is such a chore now (because I have to protect our machines against garbage like last weekend’s fiasco) that that there are some months when I just decide that I have more important things to do.
And I’m technical, and know the risks of not applying security updates. Eventually, I would imagine that we’ll just find a non-Microsoft solution and put an end to the madness.
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“I see that you’ve been able to accomplish an entire 2 hours of productive work of your own. Would you like me to help you ease back into the role of Microsoft beta tester by applying even more updates?”
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The only time people want an update is when they look for one. For the average user that does not care, they *never* go looking for updates. The updates just happen to them.
In recent months, I agree – updates are just happening *to* us. Well put.
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This is going to sound a little like these lines from Airplane!:
Rumack: What was it we had for dinner tonight?
Elaine Dickinson: Well, we had a choice of steak or fish.
Rumack: Yes, yes, I remember, I had lasagna.
I mainly get news at this point from the BBC app. Occasionally I’ll peruse NPR. But IMHO, these sorts of aggregator services have way too much sway on what articles people read.
If I had to choose between the two offered here and nothing else, I’d pick Google News. I’d much rather look for interesting articles myself than “wade through the tiles.” I have too many bad memories of cleaning out flooded basements for that.
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Even so, the other day it occurred to me that the aggressive use of Home users as cannon fodder has another monetization effect… it drives actual home users of Windows, who are ostensibly the people Windows 10 Home is written for, to upgrade to
Pro, just to get a modicum of control over the updates on their own PC (but still far less than they would have had with Windows 8.1 or 7 Home).other platforms that don’t treat them as a Microsoft asset, but as individuals in control of their own hardware.FTFY.
EDIT: Then I read to the end of the post, and found that it didn’t really need fixing. Outstanding post, Mr. Ascaris.
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Another point that has been brought up elsewhere is that, if everyone is busy making changes to support Microsoft’s latest flavor-of-the-month, those are developers that aren’t developing software that competes with Microsoft.
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Drive-by Malware Artists the world over are in awe of your accomplishment.
We have a term where I work called “drive-by patching,” which occurs when, e.g. the Unix team patches the OS without informing anyone, so all the applications that were running on that server then have to be restarted, etc. This made me smile.
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Some krill are bigger than the rest,
Linux is the slightly larger krill, making no effort to move out of the whale’s path, holding the ticking time bomb while saying, “Go ahead, Microsoft. Eat me.”
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Definitely better questions. I would say the answer to both questions is Yes, Absolutely.
I started using Windows in the 3.11 for Workgroups time frame. I am now running Linux Mint on my primary machine. And if all I need to do is check eMail, I do that on my smartphone. I don’t think my Windows skills will atrophy any time soon, since it is still in use at work and I still support people who use it, but it is nice to flex my Linux muscles as well.
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To me, this seems like not only a safe way to manage Windows, but a prudent one provided one backs up one’s VM. If the VM is subsequently compromised, either through malware or “malupdates” from Microsoft, you could restore an earlier version of the VM and not be faced with the onerous task of rebuilding your entire Windows installation from scratch. Since the VM is essentially running as a separate layer, it would not have direct access to the hardware, so it would not seem to me to be vulnerable to Meltdown/Spectre issues.
I’m basing this mainly on questions asked elsewhere where people with this setup are trying to play games that have not been ported to Linux, so they’re playing them within a Windows VM. They’re asking e.g. how do you get good graphics performance within a VM. The answer is you don’t, because the VM isolates the game from direct interaction with all the processor goodness that the game is attempting to utilize. Any 3D-like performance has to be simulated by the VM.
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