Morning coffee

nf0 asks an interesting question in the forums. “What’s your favorite source for finding Windows Update news?”. Personally I don’t like the Windows Update function at all. I try to stay alert to online media sources, the Langa Letter, Lockergnome or even winguides.com for security updates. Let’s face it, most online sources love to tell you when M$ has a bug, so you’ll hear about patches. I really like to be able to investigate a patch and other’s experience with it before I install it on my machine, since Windows Update doesn’t really allow that, I use alternate means. How about the rest of you? Got a few ideas to throw around in the discussion?

One other thing pointed out in the comments below, why do online media companies that run a story about software patches not link to the patches themselves? My theory is that they’ve spent too much time at the “stickiness” altar. They are so worried about providing an external link and you leaving their site that even when it would be of obvious benefit to their readers, and make their site more useful, they can’t do it. It’s really sort of stupid when you think about it. The site I noted above, winguides.com, does have a write-up of the vulnerability and then links to where you can download the patch directly. That’s useful! I may have to make note of it and stop pointing you to media stories about vulnerabilities and point you to their short write-ups instead.

I may be a couple of days behind on this, but our good friend Dwight, aka the Geek, has his regular blog going again. Looks good! Now if he can just get his rent worked out for May 1, things will be grand, eh?

This story disturbs me. Wake Forest University officials bought handheld devices because students were fed up with long waits to get in to frat parties? Since WF forces fraternities to record students who attend any parties where alcohol is served (which is dubious in and of itself, but the frats are on WF property, so we’ll pass on that.), and students complained about the long lines to get in to said parties, the University bought handheld devices to scan student ID card at these parties. After all, being sure all your students get into frat parties has got to be high on the list of priorities for expenditure, right?

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