Microsoft struggles with Patch Tuesday

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No problems here

Just got updates via windows update.

Why not try to be just a bit objective and professional...just once in a while.

You know what Microsoft is dealing with here and yet you continually take every opportunity to pick at it. Childish actually.

If you would open your eyes and take into account the massive scale of both software and configurations and clients that Microsoft is dealing with on a daily basis, you would then understand:
1. why they only send patches once a month. Leading security professionals have spoken on this matter numerous times. It's the best way for Microsoft to do it, do it as cleanly and insure all customers and possible configuratioins are taken into account.
2. With a large unified system such as microsoft, it is almost impossible to stupid proof all entry points. It wouild be like America taking away all freedoms for security. You can't do it and maintain a system that is more about security than anything else. Why even have computers if that's the case. It's a law enforcement issue and an education issue. Not a MS issue by and large.

Allow me educate you. We run an end to end enterprise class healthcare system that is in the top 3 in the world in terms of user base. With this system we have had HUGE success at providing the best healthcare possible where automation and IT is concerned. However, it is a fully integrated system that unifies it's components across all boundries. The largest benefit is you can achieve economies of scale very quickly as opposed to using seperate vendors for each module and maintaining a large number of interfaces which vary in their messaging techniques. Most small to medium sized hospitals in the world have also found this to be true. And the ability to completely eliminate redundancy is not possible otherwise. Therefore not only is the system highly integrated giving us information across all department boundries out of the box, it also keeps hardware costs to an absolute minimum.
the downside? Lots of patches. Patches for the patches. Is this a problem. No, the alternatives are so lacking in either functionality or ease of use and esp. ease of administration.
So it is with Microsoft and it's integrated suite of apps which grows by number and sophistication by the day. Luckily Microsoft has taken care to minimize administration and has abstracted much of it away to the point IT generalists can run a windows shop successfully.

I've used Unix and know it's strong points. I worked with it and programmed in that environment for 10 years. The .NET environment is just so much more productive and and make programming a completely enjoyable task. I would never go back or switch from Visual Studio at this point. There is so much power in this framework and Vista takes it to another level. To me, that is why I want to make the move to Vista. I don't really care about the nit picking over whether it's too big or too many bells and whistles, or too slow to come out...hell it was just earlier this year most radicals were complaining about having to retrain all the time and new versions were coming out too fast.
Have you even tried any of the MS server products? There is really nothing bad to say about SQL Server. SQL 2005 is great and the ability to use .NET code in Stored Procs but even SQL 2000, six years later is full featured enough to run a medium sized business and provide every bit of OLAP needs out of the box.
Paying up front has great advantages to you know. We paid 25K for an open volume license of Office 2000 and 5K for SQL 2000 w/ a ton of cals and I can say I have alone returned the cost on these products over the last 6 years let alone the entire staff. They don't break. SQL is as solid as a rock. I've had an MSDN subscription since we switched from Unix and these tools are the best i've ever used. I've also had the pleasure to work with the dev. editions of all client server apps such as biztalk and sharepoint. These have come a long way. Many people, believe it or not, willing buy Microsoft for the integration, full blown documentation and support no every product (you don't get that with very many OSS projects) and it's flat out usefulness in the enterprise. Admin is a cinch and today's servers are solid as a rock. Sure, everytime there is the smallest bug in an MS product it's news on zdnet, but they are very minimal in real life and use. We network with thousands of users around the world and the real concensus of MS these days is it's very solid and what' making news is a non issue in any respectable shop.
Linux and Unix servers are fine but we simply have no use for them. Not enough vertical market support yet and they really no longer have a huge advantage on windows server these days and MS simply has the edge on available software in every category that just runs. Server 2K3 can run a year w/o a reboot easily.

Posted by: xuniL_z   Posted on: 10/10/06 You are currently: a Guest | Members login | Terms of Use

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