Friday, October 12, 2012

Firefox 16 All Clear But That's The Internet For You

They announced today that yesterday's big scare, the Security Hole in Firefox 16.0.0 has been fixed.

That really doesn't change a whole lot.

Sure, you should update if you're already using Firefox 16.0.0, and it means that that hole has been plugged.  What it doesn't change is that machine you are using to look at what I have written has more security holes than that and the fix someone puts in for one piece of software may break something else in that software.

Like they said in Hill Street Blues all those years ago "Lets be careful out there".

For every hole they plug, someone will find another. 

The best fix for something like that is to simply step back and choose your poison.

(Boy am I full of old hackneyed sayings today!)

The latest and greatest cutting edge software isn't always the best.   Sometimes it works, and sometimes you are reading some fool on a blog telling you to roll back what you did and wait like I did yesterday.

Thing is that you never really know what will happen and when you get a good update or not.

I tend to be very late on some software.  Adobe PDF and Flash, Java both are terrible.  They are constantly nagging me to update.  When they do, they demand that I stop what I am doing, close my browser or even restart the computer for what we call "Application Software".   This isn't some major component in the computer, this is a stupid PDF reader.

Write your update programs better.

When you are like me and open upwards of 150 web pages before even getting started, having to upgrade your PDF reader and start over again just isn't really going to happen the way they want it to.

So what I did is I tell all these annoying little pieces of software that I need to do my thing to check and tell me what's out there but let me decide when to upgrade.

I'm not having an enforced coffee break because some fool in a software development team misspelled a word on a screen somewhere.

The reality is that we're all flying blind and hoping for the best.   You can either be annoyed at having to update a couple programs a couple times a day, or you can push it all off and have the illusion that you're controlling your destiny.

Honestly, I just don't know which is best.

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