Softie Follies: Update Signals and Waveforms
July 22, 2022
Sine waves go up. Sine waves go down. Sometimes, the tidy signal becomes chaotic. I wonder how many at Microsoft remember images like this:
The wave is nice, tidy, simple, peaks fully realized, etc.
Now what about this wave form:
Looking a little chaotic, right?
I read about two Microsoft announcements, and the result is a burst of the chaotic in my limited mental apparatus.
The first write up reports that Microsoft is shifting from updating in the most annoying way possible to a slightly less wacky method. “Goodbye Endless Updates? Report Says Microsoft Is Moving Back To The Old Schedule & Windows 12 Is Coming” states:
Back in 2015, a Microsoft employee revealed that Windows 10 would be the last OS they launch but Windows 11 is a thing now and, according to this report, Windows 12 is coming as well. After a few years where Microsoft tried to turn their OS into “Windows as a service”, deploying countless updates instead of a big release every few years, now the company seems to be changing course.
Will there be some spicy chaos added to the Windows whatever? Of course. The write up explains:
Starting with Windows 11 version 22H2 (Sun Valley 2), Microsoft is kicking off a new “Moments” engineering effort which is designed to allow the company to rollout new features and experiences at key points throughout the year, outside of major OS releases. I hear the company intends to ship new features to the in-market version of Windows every few months, up to four times a year, starting in 2023,” reports WindowsCentral.
I thought that Microsoft said in 2015 Windows 10 was the last version of Windows. Obviously my memory is faulty, chaotic like the seemingly randomized fluctuations in Microsoft’s tactics to achieve global domination.
The second write up hits a bit closer to home. “Microsoft Patch Tuesday Update Has Broken Another Really Important Software” explains:
It seems some updates that came as part of this month’s Patch Tuesday broke MS Access runtime applications. Multiple users have reported having this issue to Microsoft, saying MS Access 2016(opens in new tab) and MS Access 2013 are having issues, post KB5002112 and KB5002121 updates. Microsoft has since acknowledged the existence of the problem, with Shane Groff, software design engineer, noting(opens in new tab), “The Access product team is investigating this issue. Thank you for the report, we will update soon.”
I think this means that Microsoft’s wizards cannot fix problems in a reliable way. But there is another twist to the story. The cited article asserts:
Right now, there is no official workaround, or a way to bypass the issue, so the only way to address the problem is to uninstall the patches. That, however, also means exposing the system to multiple known vulnerabilities…
I think this means that an outfit relying on Microsoft Access has a nifty set of options:
- Stop anything requiring Microsoft Access
- Uninstall the outstanding update and create some opportunities for bad actors
- Get rid of the crazy, often unstable and sometimes sluggish Access and embrace a more 21st century solution.
You may have some other ideas; for example, selling the business and taking a long-postponed vacation, thinking about the relationship between stress and heart failure, calling Microsoft’s ever helpful customer support team for intellectual inputs, or some other super duper fix.
Several observations:
- Microsoft appears to be unqualified to perform strategic and tactical functions their customers deserve and want; for instance, functioning systems and secure software
- Microsoft pushed out Windows 11 before the oven timer binged (no pun intended, of course). The half-baked software cookies are just not too appealing and could make some companies wary of what bad actors can and will do
- Microsoft wants to “manage” a big game company which has a wonderful legacy of treating employees in a professional manner when Microsoft cannot manage its own update coding.
Net net: I think this graph captures the outputs of the Softies and its apologists:
Stephen E Arnold, July 19, 2022
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