Windows updates and dial up users

Mon Sep 22 17:11:00 UTC 2003



--On Monday, September 22, 2003 12:41 PM +0100 Richard Cox 
<Richard at mandarin.com> wrote:

>
> On 22 Sep 2003 10:45 "Stephen J. Wilcox" <steve at telecomplete.co.uk> wrote:
>| What if MS included something in the Windows Update that gave the user
>| the option of calling a toll-free number operated by MS for the purpose
>| of downloading.. ?
>
> Toll free - in many cases international - with 56k lines max for dialup
> and many way below that, would - given the filesizes typically used in
> WindowsUpdate - be a very costly call for Microsoft.  And there'd be
> rather a lot of them, so you can be sure that M$ would be recovering
> those $ from somebody.  Most probably (current and future) users.
>
I have NO problem with that.  Micr0$0ft should start bearing the costs
of their brokenness.  If they choose to pass that on to their end users,
then that is a business decision they can make as a business.  Hopefully
when the true cost of Windows becomes part of the price tag, Windows
users will wake up and realize it's too expensive.

> WindowsUpdate would presumably refuse to update pirated copies of the
> software, but pirate copies of the software will still be just as open
> to the vulnerabilities that have been, and continue to be, discovered.
>
I have heard from multiple sources that this is not true.  I suspect
Micr0$0ft doesn't have the ability to reliably determine the difference
between a pirated copy of Windows and the same serial number being
reinstalled and repatched multiple times.

> Oddly enough the biggest killer of all will not be any of this, but the
> fact that most people will be unwilling for their single phone line to
> be tied up and unusable for the length of time each update will take.
> And then repeat that every month or so..
>
Yep.

Owen