[LINK] WinXP problem survey

[stephen at melbpc.org.au]

Ta for thoughts, gents ..

Should have mentioned, after the system-restore-rollback
all is *very* fast & ticketyboo again, after 39 hours of
operation, and many test re-boots. No probs. How helpful
to MS would an accidental XP 'update bug' be around now?

Hence my question to others. Sure maybe looking for evil
doing where none exists, but it *would* be an ideal time
for newish XP machines (4 gig RAM etc) to play up. True?

Have asked for XP feedback widely & will await responses.

Cheers,
Stephen
 
> On 01/11/2009, at 8:31 AM, Rick Welykochy wrote:
> > And it squares nicely with our most heartfelt
> > opinions of the operating system provider.
> 
> Didn't someone say the other say, "the plural of 'anecdote' is not  
> 'data'"? ;)
> 
> One person's "unusual problem" is another's "known bug".
> 
> Even if Stephen's computer has had no changes to hardware and software  
> initiated by him, well, actually there have been changes.
> 
> Every bit of software has had its regular updates, layer upon layer of  
> them. The computer has actually been used, and over time there's the  
> continual incremental chance that a bug in the operating system or  
> application software or a power spike will cause some data corruption  
> somewhere, or a disc will develop bad sectors, or a hardware component  
> will start to fail intermittently -- capacitors on the motherboard are  
> one such early-failing component.
> 
> Even if all of the above are ruled out, I reckon software vendors  
> would naturally start allocating more programmers and testers to the  
> new version of their products to ensure compatibility with the new  
> version of Windows, since that's where the greater return on  
> investment lies, Bugs in older versions might perhaps be more likely  
> to sneak through. Windows XP is, after all, now *two* versions behind  
> the "current" release of Windows.
> 
> Humans are very good at perceiving patterns where none exist -- what's  
> that fancy word for seeing shapes in clouds? Especially if they match  
> pre-existing fears.
> 
> Here's another anecdote: maybe someone who's more OCD than me can dig  
> out the data?
> 
> The number of bugs in a software update will be roughly proportional  
> tot he seize of that update. This month's update from  Microsoft was a  
> big one. I reckon the updates in September and October tend to be the  
> biggest. And that's because they come in the annual cycle after the  
> July-August Defcon hacker conference, and the bad guys have had a  
> chance to turn the newly-demonstrated tricks into workable tools, and  
> then Microsoft has had the chance to respond.
> 
> Stil
> 
> 
> -- 
> Stilgherrian http://stilgherrian.com/
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