Today I got into work, now sometimes I have to leave my PC on, mainly as I am in the middle of something, and switching it off would my path of work to be interrupted as I get in. Anyway, this morning I realised, my PC had restarted itself. I rolled my eyes, and immediately started thinking “bloody Microsoft”, which is very easy to think, they just had their weekly update schedule pass (every week on a Tuesday) and my PC needed restarting.
I got to thinking though. It isn’t Microsoft’s fault. I blame the people who don’t EVER restart their PCs. Some (not all) updates need a restart as they update something important at the kernel. These can be security features that mean the PC isn’t secure until a restart happens.
Now, Microsoft has had some flack over the years about security, so they decide “I know, let’s restart the user’s PC”, not entirely a good idea as some people want to delay for a bit, but some people just keep delaying it ad infinitum. The best part is, these users end up being the victim of some hack, become a zombie or are compromised in some way and will immediately blame Microsoft anyway. It’s all about the education. In fact, some of these people will even be surfing the web without an anti-virus or firewall! A huge risk, as a columnist once said “…on par with group needle-sharing after having unprotected sex in a Third World orgy”. Ok, he was talking about opening email attachments with a .exe extension, but it’s the same thing. The majority of spam now comes from compromised computers.
So, until people start thinking about their system security, unfortunately we’ll be having our PCs restarting for a while. The only alternative, is to force a restart straight away like Apple do. I kind of like their way of doing it.
