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Recent jargon The JBoss/Elba/Geronimo story, not continued (for now)  9/29/03 The Ultimate in Moblogging  9/28/03 Microsoft Monoculture meets Monsanto  9/28/03 An immodest proposal: RSS configuration of networked desktops  9/27/03 Of Patches and Potatoes: Windows, Monocultures, and Bad Things Happening  9/26/03 Java: more ground clearance than you could imagine  9/26/03 Samba refreshes  9/25/03 Is Verisign untrustworthy?  9/25/03 JBoss Boss to Geronimo: Fork You  9/24/03 Once again, McNealy disses software (sort of)  9/22/03 Um, there's a difference?  9/19/03 Notes proves to be still relavent...in an odd way  9/17/03 Sendmail bug  9/17/03 Live from Moscone, it's iSight  9/17/03 Patents of Mass Destruction  9/9/03 The Joy is Gone  9/9/03 Copyrights Good, Patents Bad  9/6/03 Termination Dust for Web Apps?  9/5/03 Stick that in your pipe and syndicate it  9/3/03 The pains of a breakup  8/27/03 The last straw  8/25/03 Darl is an anagram for lard  8/22/03 spam-slinging websites from hell  8/22/03 Microsoft Bugs--the military option  8/21/03 Patch, patch, patch  8/20/03 Toward a new syndication format: RASH  8/11/03 archives October 2002 January 2003 February 2003 March 2003 April 2003 May 2003 July 2003 August 2003 September 2003 from the blogosphere elsewhere in my egoverse Home whoami gallagheria (family nonsense) my day job (not affiliated with this drivel)   August 2003 Sun Mon Tue Wed Thu Fri Sat           1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31             Jul   Sep

Wednesday, August 20, 2003 Patch, patch, patch Last night, as we were settling in from our trip home, I started applying the backload of patches to my eldest son's Windows XP PC that had accumulated during the month it sat idle. There were 9 "critical" updates, 16 "recommended" updates, and 7 updated device drivers. Since everything else in my house (well, at least since the security patch reboots killed my Compaq server) runs on Mac OS X, the security patches on the single XP machine have become a disproportional administrative burden. So has the general upkeep of the machine--deleting off all the crap software my son inadvertently downloads, ferreting out spyware, and getting rid of the pre-loaded garbage that HP shipped on the hard drive have been an ongoing distraction. And I'm a guy who's administered Windows and Unix networks. Imagine what it's like for Grandma when she gets a Windows XP PC and a cable modem for Christmas. The security patch feature has to be made more simple--and more automated--for home users, or every new vulnerability in Windows will turn Grandma's PC into a member of the legion of undead PCs trashing your network. 3:03:18 PM    comment[ so far] © Copyright 2003 Sean Gallagher . Last update: 9/29/03; 1:13:14 PM .