Why most run Microsoft, not RedHat

[Scott van Looy]

Today Dotan Cohen did spake thusly:

> On 19/04/07, Scott van Looy <scott at ethosuk.org.uk> wrote:
>> Today Dotan Cohen did spake thusly:
>> > Last semester in my physics course, right in the middle of a lecture,
>> > the professor's computer informed us that we had 4 minutes until
>> > reboot, due to updates that had automatically been downloaded and
>> > installed. He had to stop the lecture, reboot, and then find his
>> > place. During this time I took the opportunity to mention how
>> > rediculous that is, without mentioning that I don't use windows, and I
>> > was told that I'm stupid for not updating my own computer regularly.
>> > Apparently, reboots in the middle of work are common parts of the
>> > windows workflow. Worse, people accept that because it's the only way
>> > to be 'safe'.
>> 
>> I've never seen Windows do that. What I have seen it do is say "Windows
>> will be restarted in 4 minutes [cancel]"
>> 
>> Cancelling lets you do it later. Being smug about linux lets you earn
>> lower marks ;)
>> 
>
> No cancel button. I even have a screenshot of it doing that to _me_
> once: about a week before I moved over to Linux for good. I'll gladly
> send you the screenshot. It's in Hebrew, but you can clearly see there
> is no Cancel button. And I find it hard to believe that Windows in
> English has a cancel button when Hebrew does not.

Go for it. This has only EVER happened to me when it's not been an update 
but an essential system service that's gone down. There was a rash of it 
when an RPC flaw enabled remote sites to shut down the Windows RPC 
service, but that's the ONLY time i've heard of this happening.

Apparently if you're logged in as a user that's NOT an administrator you 
also get no "cancel" button, which is expected behaviour, but I've never 
seen it. I don't actually know anyone who doesn't run as an administrator 
on anything less than vista, even though it's recommended.

the rest of the time you get a "please restart windows" dialog which 
eventually just restarts windows if it's not cancelled, but only usually 
if there's a specific threat a patch has fixed. And it's easily 
disableable doing the following:

    To prevent Automatic Updates from restarting a computer while users are
    logged on, the administrator can create the NoAutoRebootWithLoggedOnUsers
    registry value in
    HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Policies\Microsoft\Windows\WindowsUpdate\AU.
    The value is a DWORD and must be either 0 (false) or 1 (true). If this
    value is changed while the computer is in a restart pending state, it
    will not take effect until the next time an update requires a restart.

-- 
Scott van Looy - email:me at ethosuk.org.uk | web:www.ethosuk.org.uk
site:www.freakcity.net - the in place for outcasts since 2003
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