4 ms·
Windows machines get forcibly updated because users kept letting their boxes be part of botnets which hurt other users.
by sp332 6y ago
Windows machines get forcibly updated because users kept letting their boxes be part of botnets which hurt other users.
- ballenf 6y agoOne day we'll reminisce about the time when it wasn't illegal to let your machine be on the internet without a mask.
- ta17711771 6y agoAnd we were allowed to steer the car.
- sp332 6y agoWhile criminal botherders are in a sense "more" responsible for the damage, Microsoft also has some liability in their negligence when then wrote vulnerable software. But it's relatively easy to hold MS accountable for their part than to extract damages from botherders. So MS either covers their butts by locking down the software or pays out the nose for damages.
- google234123 6y agoIf we have to give that up to save 1.35 million people's lives a year in car crashes then it's worth it.
- rbecker 6y agoAccepting such a giant restriction ('not allowed' implies no override) would mean you are at the mercy of whoever controls the self-driving cars. They can kidnap you any time you enter a car, or prevent you from using your car to escape, or just subtly make your life very difficult. Historically, people that allowed themselves to completely fall into someone else's hands have not fared well. The words 'slavery' and 'genocide' tend to come up when describing their fate.
- reaperducer 6y agoIf we have to give that up to save 1.35 million people's lives a year in car crashes then it's worth it. If you're really serious about getting death statistics down, outlaw alcohol and a dozen other things globally and save even more.
- LorenPechtel 6y agoIt's not just Windows boxes. I recently upgraded someone's phone--running iOS 8. It had to be updated because an app that was important to her wouldn't run with it anymore.
- Dylan16807 6y agoNot by all that much. If we actually want to care about botnets let's put more priority on preventing IP spoofing.
- toast0 6y agoBotnets can attack directly, and don't need to spoof IPs. A couple thousand residential computers doing TLS handshakes can ruin anyone's day just as fast as a few computers in a datacenter spoofing udp chargen requests.
- Carpetsmoker 6y agoI don't think there's anything wrong with that, but if you're going to do forced updates then you might as well spend some time making the entire user experience nicer. I don't know what the technical challenges are exactly, but not forcing a reboot unless there's really a critical patch might be a good start.
- corty 6y agoAnd not mixing security fixes with feature upgrades, not forcing the latter to be installed would be nice. That would also reduce the massive breakage many windows updates cause due to poor quality and high change rate.
- Carpetsmoker 6y agoI think that might actually be harder than it sounds though, since Windows is such an integrated system.
- corty 6y agoThat is a kind way of putting it. I would say Windows lacks modularity and is a messy monolith with a lot of spooky crosstalk.
- Carpetsmoker 6y agoYeah, maybe. I don't really know much of the Windows internals, so I try not to assume too much (hence my question in the top comment[1], which was very much a "curiosity"-question, and not a "omg, wtf"-question). [1]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23656237 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23656237
- mywittyname 6y agoMicrosoft could put effort into making Windows Updates completely silent and not require a reboot.
- anoncake 6y agoWindows machines get forcibly update because users didn't use their personal property the way Microsoft wants. How exactly they shoot themselves in the foot is irrelevant, they have every right to do so.