On Sun, 21 Sep 2003 18:25:50 EDT, Sean Donelan <sean@donelan.com> said:
"I recently put this suggestion to Microsoft and their response basically avoided the whole issue. Why wouldn't the company want to offer such a CD, assuming that's the motivation behind their stonewalling?"
It would cost money to produce and ship a new CD on a frequent enough basis for it to do any good. Consider that we're seeing worms within 4 weeks of the patch coming out. How many CD duplicating places are willing to take on a multi-million run with a 1-2 week turn-around, once a month, every month? And how much of a market would there really be? Are there enough people that would apply patches if they got a monthly CD that it would actually make a measurable difference? What price point are they willing to pay for the CD, and what does it mean for Microsoft? I mean... look at it from Microsoft's point of view - why should they *CARE* if 65% or 85% of the hosts on the Infobahn are exploding Pintos, when unlike a Pinto exploding on the Washington Beltway, a Pinto exploding on the Infobahn doesn't affect their bottom line any?