I’ve just spent the weekend patching with my children.
We weren’t sewing brightly coloured swatches of fabric over holes in trouser knees, but getting new versions of various programs for our computers.
I’ve got a desktop PC and a laptop, with different versions of the Windows operating system on each.
And my daughter Lili has an Apple iBook, running the very different Mac OS.
So we had three different sets of patches to download from various websites so we could fix bugs in various programs, plug security holes or get the latest improved versions of stuff we use.
A ‘patch’ is a way of fixing a program without having to remove and reinstall it.
It usually comes as a separate program, which you copy onto your computer and run.
Most are small, and take only a few seconds to download over our broadband connection.
But some are several megabytes and can take ages.
And some require you to restart your computer once you’ve installed them, which takes five minutes each time!
All in all, it’s a lot of hassle, but it’s better than getting hit by a virus or worm, or having my files read by a hacker.
And I was feeling guilty because both my and Lili’s computers had been telling us that there were updates to install – but I’d ignored them for over a week.
Confusing
However it seems that many people do manage to ignore these reminders.
The MSBlast worm that infected millions of computers this summer could have been stopped if every Windows user had installed a patch from Microsoft.
The patch had been up for over three weeks when the attack started, but lots of people didn’t know it was there.
Part of the problem is that there are simply too many patches, and users have better things to do with their time.
One idea being put forward is to have patches that install themselves automatically every time you connect to the internet, without the user having to do anything.
This might sound good, but sometimes the patches themselves can cause problems.
On Friday Apple had to apologise to customers who had downloaded the newest version of Mac OS because it stopped some computers connecting to networks and the internet.
Microsoft also has sometimes had to release a new version of a patch to fix problems caused by an upgrade itself.
Frankly, I don’t fancy having Microsoft or anyone else sending my computer new programs that I don’t know about.
It would be nice if we didn’t need patches at all because every program was bug-free and perfect.
But that’s not going to happen.
So for the moment we just need to persuade everyone that patching their computers is just a good habit – like cleaning your teeth or checking the battery in your smoke alarm.
Do you regularly download patches?
Click here to have your say!
|
