Podcast 062
Spolsky: There's a Macintosh on my desktop, that I don't use that often, but when you have a Mac, every day or two, there's this little Apple software updater/globe/thing. It's like this little blue ball on your dock...
Atwood: Uhuh
Spolsky: ...and it just starts jumping up and down. Every couple of days, because it gets excited about something. If you click on it, it tells you that a software update is available.
Atwood:I kinda feel like I wish that a lot of the updates would just silently install.
Spolsky:Yeah
Atwood:Or just go away
Spolsky:It's just not important, their just not... okay there's some new bug that you guys found in your code.
Atwood:Well it could be important. I mean look at exploits in the browser, that hugely important.
Spolsky:I know, but there has to be
Atwood:Firefox has had like massive exploits. Like they have like, I think there's bugs in their Javascript engine now, that need to be fixed. That like if you go to a certain page, you'll literally be owned, that it'll be arbitrary code execution.
Spolsky:But nobody's going to that page! Why would anybody go to that page? You see?
Atwood:OK. So lets say nobody updates their software. So everyone has Firefox 3.5.0...
Spolsky:[Laughs] OK.
Atwood:... and a year from now, there's going to be tonnes of pages that have that exploit on them.
Atwood: Uhuh
Spolsky: ...and it just starts jumping up and down. Every couple of days, because it gets excited about something. If you click on it, it tells you that a software update is available.
Atwood:I kinda feel like I wish that a lot of the updates would just silently install.
Spolsky:Yeah
Atwood:Or just go away
Spolsky:It's just not important, their just not... okay there's some new bug that you guys found in your code.
Atwood:Well it could be important. I mean look at exploits in the browser, that hugely important.
Spolsky:I know, but there has to be
Atwood:Firefox has had like massive exploits. Like they have like, I think there's bugs in their Javascript engine now, that need to be fixed. That like if you go to a certain page, you'll literally be owned, that it'll be arbitrary code execution.
Spolsky:But nobody's going to that page! Why would anybody go to that page? You see?
Atwood:OK. So lets say nobody updates their software. So everyone has Firefox 3.5.0...
Spolsky:[Laughs] OK.
Atwood:... and a year from now, there's going to be tonnes of pages that have that exploit on them.
