Microsoft is a company that takes a lot of heat from the public. Sure the Northwest giant may have made some tiny mistakes in the past, but it really does have its customers’ best interest at heart! Take the security update Microsoft issued earlier this week. If you think about it, Tuesday’s KB951748 security update is the most secure patch Microsoft has ever issued in its long and storied history. What’s the best way to ensure that Windows 2000 / XP users don’t come across any malicious code on the web or in their email? Kill their internet connection. Brilliant! Of course there is the slight chance that this end result wasn’t Microsoft’s intention. Perhaps they were merely trying to address the DNS issue discovered a few months ago and reported at length, and they screwed the pooch. The problem might just be that Microsoft has never heard of a little software firewall called ZoneAlarm. We can’t blame them though; it is after all, the most popular software firewall in the world. Countless Windows 2000 and XP users ran into quite a problem between Tuesday and today when a conflict between Microsoft’s security update and the popular firewall software resulted in the inability to access the internet. Mmm. Greatest line ever:
A spokesman for Microsoft said PC owners were not contacting it about any problems the update caused.
Hmm, perhaps that’s because they can’t get on the internet to contact you! After all, no one is dumb enough to try to call Microsoft Support anymore. Luckily CheckPoint has issued an update for ZoneAlarm already so Microsoft need not worry about cleaning up its mess. Note that PC users with the free version of ZoneAlarm may have to download and install the latest build manually. So what’s the deal Microsoft? Bill retires and the whole place goes to, umm, poop?
