Friday, December 26, 2003
What are you waiting for?
The title above is perhaps one of BTs most annoying advertising campaigns ever, the simple response is "You! If you'd upgrade the exchange, then maybe I could actually get broadband". For a company that has shown a massive reluctance to take the braodband bull by the horns, tries to fob people off with low grade midband or ISDN for as long as possible, and only slowly rolls out ADSL across the country, it's galling to see them trying to put the blame back onto the public for the slow appearance of broadband.
But maybe there's a bigger problem waiting to hit all of us. With MS only making available patches over the internet and users requiring ridiculous numbers of them and hence huge quantities of data, there is a clear assumption that everyone is on broadband and so can work this way. When even a new computer requires MBs of patching, it's clear that we have a lot of insecure, unpatched systems connected to the internet. These machines get worms and viruses, act as unintentional mail relays, and generally contribute to the unhealthy nature of the web - and it's not the users fault.
We should not have to download patches, updates and updates to patches to make a NEW machine up to date. It's simply not on.
The title above is perhaps one of BTs most annoying advertising campaigns ever, the simple response is "You! If you'd upgrade the exchange, then maybe I could actually get broadband". For a company that has shown a massive reluctance to take the braodband bull by the horns, tries to fob people off with low grade midband or ISDN for as long as possible, and only slowly rolls out ADSL across the country, it's galling to see them trying to put the blame back onto the public for the slow appearance of broadband.
But maybe there's a bigger problem waiting to hit all of us. With MS only making available patches over the internet and users requiring ridiculous numbers of them and hence huge quantities of data, there is a clear assumption that everyone is on broadband and so can work this way. When even a new computer requires MBs of patching, it's clear that we have a lot of insecure, unpatched systems connected to the internet. These machines get worms and viruses, act as unintentional mail relays, and generally contribute to the unhealthy nature of the web - and it's not the users fault.
We should not have to download patches, updates and updates to patches to make a NEW machine up to date. It's simply not on.
(c) 2003-2005 Russell Beale
Atom
RSS