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Perpetually Connected Devices...

WildWestDesigns

WildWestDesigns

Active Member
Most on here know my stance on perpetually connected devices to the outside world. Some devices (critical production devices for example) should not be. Something like this: https://www.independent.co.uk/tech/...-airlines-windows-glitch-latest-b2582461.html

to me just illustrates why this shouldn't be accepted. Ai/Ps goes down, that's one thing (although don't get me wrong, I don't like it either), this to me is far worse, but it all illustrates that it is not quite as stable of a delivery system for constant usage that people seem to think.
 
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Stacey K

Stacey K

I like making signs
To think an "update" can shut the entire world down is absolutely insane.

Is there anything else reliable to use besides Microsoft products? Probably a stupid question but I have never looked into it so I have no idea. Just curious.
 
WildWestDesigns

WildWestDesigns

Active Member
Graphic Extremes said:
Windows AI now captures a screen shot every 5 seconds unless you turn it off.. It is being rolled out slowly.

It's called Recall in your settings. YOU NEED TO TURN THIS OFF
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I think they have pulled back from that at this time. I have no reason to believe that it won't be turned on in another update when this isn't fresh in people's mind and done so without any fanfare at all, just be done. So glad that I'm not on the Win or Mac ecosystem (yes Mac has something similar, but at least it has to be installed willingly first and I do think that it's 3rd party as well). I think people just need to be more responsible with their stuff and not depend so much on 3rd parties, because third parties aren't going to care as much about "your" stuff as hopefully "you" would.
 
WildWestDesigns

WildWestDesigns

Active Member
Stacey K said:
To think an "update" can shut the entire world down is absolutely insane.

Is there anything else reliable to use besides Microsoft products? Probably a stupid question but I have never looked into it so I have no idea. Just curious.
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I missed this one.

Updates by their very nature bring instability into a system. So yes, it can do that, particularly depending on who is hit (this hit infrastructure, which affects a whole lot more compared to if Adobe had an issue and people can't do their doodles for a day, especially if they can't handle the old fashioned way of doodling). They are supposed to solve problems, and in quite a few instances, they do, but because they bring in change to a system, they can also bring it down and sometimes that is not as easy to ascertain. Depending on software and workflow etc, so there are a lot of permutations that could be involved. This was one of the reasons why I never liked how MS took the approach of Win 10 (and the last supposed version of Windows, yea right) was it took a distinctly rolling release model (which I use Arch by the way (I can't resist), so I'm use to that) and Windows just doesn't have the track record to justify that type of release cadence.

As to options, there are options, I haven't used Windows (never really was a hardcore user of Macs, I have used them off and on since the 80s, but that was it and to me, they aren't worth the price tag anymore, but that's a controversial topic for another day), however, depending on one's workflow, what one needs to get a job done etc, well determine if those options are viable. Although, like was mentioned, this really wasn't an MS issue (at least not on the surface, unless this happened to happen due to a bug in MS, but I haven't seen anything about that yet), they do have other issues, but as of right now, this isn't one of them.
 
N

netsol

Premium Subscriber
AT&T had a lot more than a bad update
they recently admitted that ALL 75,000,000 customers had information stolen

not wanting to steal the thread, but, they constantly call about our enterprise clients & ask DON'T YOU THINK WE COULD DO A BETTER JOB RUNNING THEIR SECURITY THAN WHOEVER YOU ARE USING NOW

this from the sergeant schultz of network security
 
drvinyl

drvinyl

New Member
Windows screwed me over with an update just the other month I thought my plotter was broken, i had to reinstall windows to get my plotter back

Everything is failing at an incredible rate these days, just waiting on the worst air disaster to ever happen now.
 
WildWestDesigns

WildWestDesigns

Active Member
You know, I see what happened and I remember the question that comes up every so often around here. Power goes out (update happens, which while this wasn't Windows itself, Windows does have a track record, even Mac has had one a time or two (and yes, even my favorite Linux has as well)), can one still continue on with business as usual? As I get older, I seem to be reverting back to my analog roots. Dip pen, Ames Guide, straight edge, french curves, peg bar etc.

As much as I like my tech, I have a feeling that people are used to so much levels of abstraction that the knowledge has been lost and business are dead in the water when the tech doesn't work (for whatever reason). And this should make one jittering of cloud computing as well, even if the local computer is still around, can always have issues with an offsite vendor as well.
 
U

unmateria

New Member
i always use a computer for each or several machines (or a server with vms). Límited accounts without antivirus and blackbird, and forget about those kinds of problems (and privacy) forever. Windows updates is always messing up things... Sooner or later will hurt you lol if everything runs correctly, just limit account and run blackbird
 
visual800

visual800

Active Member
this is why I dont update my computer, its stupid and pointless. I dont update my iphone either and my phone last twice as long as others. If an app or a website doesnt load because Im not updated than I dont need it
 
Pauly

Pauly

Printrade.com.au
Here's the thing. Every software has bugs. This is not the first time, and certainly wont be the last time an update nukes a system/OS.

As for about the original topic, about hardware connected to the internet,
We try not to have anything that doesn't need internet connection, connected to the web.

But then again, Our Colorado 1650 is, i dont see it as a bad thing either.
Techs can remote in and tell me if there's anything minor wrong with the machine, or check a few things if there's something odd happening. This saves call outs.
The updates on that are manually pushed, so even if there was a windows 10 big that could nuke it, it wont happen.
 
WildWestDesigns

WildWestDesigns

Active Member
Pauly said:
Here's the thing. Every software has bugs. This is not the first time, and certainly wont be the last time an update nukes a system/OS.
Click to expand...

Every software has bugs, that is true. But here we have 3rd party access to kernel level permissions (this is what led to something like this having the damage that it did, and this I do blame MS for make it even remotely desirable to have a 3rd party for this type of need, or any OS at that, although when this same thing happened back in April (same vendor I might add) on Linux, the damage was not like this, that makes one wonder something else, but I digress). Combine that with perpetually connected leads to a bad recipe. This affected infrastructure, that is a vastly bigger deal compared to people not being able to do their doodles in a design program.

Take into consideration as well, this was an update that was pushed on Friday (not exactly the best time unlike dropping bad news in the news cycle) and why was it accepted as it and not isolated on a cluster of test machines to see if it did anything bad before being pushed out? This wasn't just an issue with bugs, but with personnel not really doing what they should have been doing.
Pauly said:
But then again, Our Colorado 1650 is, i dont see it as a bad thing either.
Techs can remote in and tell me if there's anything minor wrong with the machine, or check a few things if there's something odd happening. This saves call outs.
The updates on that are manually pushed, so even if there was a windows 10 big that could nuke it, it wont happen.
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Convenience in exchange for security. That is the bigger problem that we have. We have one airliner that was spared issues, because they are running what 3.1. Most of our recent issues have been because of perpetually connected. If some normie wants to be connected, that's one thing. Infrastructure is vastly different in my mind.
 
SightLine

SightLine

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Something I've warned about for years now in regards to "automatic" updates in a lot of software as well as how most cloud software does. I can recall more than once where a Windows update breaks Windows itself or causes problems with Adobe or Flexi or some other software (even on threads right here on s101 where other shops were dead in the water for a bit waiting on an update for a bad update). I learned this back in my IT career back in the early 90's... Let the general public install updated first and wait for a couple of weeks to see if there are lots of reports of problems due to some update. Always, if possible its good to turn off automatic updates in my opinion. Of course with most antivirus type software do you want to let those update their definition files automatically.

Of course this Crowdstrike issue is a bit unique and quite a poor design in that it acts as a system driver with kernel level access but allows for unsigned externally accessed definition file updates but has no built in verification that the update files are valid and correctly formatted. And the way their definition files work, if that is corrupted or invalid it causes the main application to hard error. Kernel mode applications that have an error do not crash, they simply halt the entire system. I'm betting Crowdstrike adds some sort of validation function for updates pretty quickly so that if an update fails validation it can simply continue with the current definition files and not cause this sort of an issue again.
 
U

unclebun

Active Member
Access to the kernel is indeed what allowed the Crowdstrike mistake to crash everyone's computers. But the safer alternative is essentially outlawed by the agreement the EU forced on Microsoft.

The real problem is that they didn't even test the update on one Windows computer to make sure it worked. If they had, the would have BSODed it. A mistake of this scale has happened once before, in 2010 with McAfee Antivirus, which sent out an update to virus definitions that identified svchost.exe as a virus file and deleted it from everyone's computers. The difference is that it mainly affected end-user (home) computers, as that's mostly who had been duped into buying the worst antivirus software ever. The interesting thing is that the chief technical officer at McAfee then was George Kurz, who is now the CEO of Crowdstrike. Crowdstrike's recent advertising push has been that it has the fastest update cycle. I guess if you don't test your updates that speeds up the release timeline.

I did like the fact that Southwest Airline's much-ridiculed system running on Windows 3.1 didn't crash. Neither did their employee scheduling system running on Windows 95. They don't get updates. Of course they still were affected because the airports themselves all had crashed systems.
 
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