I love IP Tables....

[Les Mikesell]

jdow wrote:

>>> Now, I can see why, as a programmer, you would not want to be held
>>> liable for damage cause by a mistake in programming. After all, who
>>> has time to get all the bugs out. but there is a BIG difference
>>> between a bug in a program, and a program that is poorly designed in
>>> the first place.
>>
>> An accidental flaw that is not discovered by anyone until after 
>> release is one thing.  Continuing to distribute after the flaw is 
>> known is something very different.
> 
> Now we are into a whole new discussion.

No, this is _the_ discussion. Even if you follow best known practices, 
some software flaws will always slip past your testing.  There's no real 
world testing quite like the real world.

> Should Fedora Core maintain both
> the original ISOs and/or a full set of fully updated ISOs for first time
> installs?

Personally, I think they should.  But I normally install from the 
k12ltsp distribution which comes a bit later and is rebuilt with current 
updates plus the ltsp and other add-on packages.

> Should Microsoft?

Well obviously... Within a couple of months of XP's release you couldn't 
download the updates on an internet connection before you'd be hit by a 
virus.  If they hadn't released the SP2 (or wherever they are now) 
release you wouldn't be able to do a new windows install without heavy 
firewalling.

> In both cases I believe the answer should include fully up to date
> patched ISOs and commercial CDROMs.

At least in the case where network exploits are discovered in the base 
system that would interfere with the ability to perform the updates 
after an install.  However, there should also be a simple facility to 
obtain these updates for systems that do not have internet access or are 
isolated for security reasons.  I'm not sure if Windows has a mechanism 
for that or not if you want to stay ahead of the bundled service packs.

-- 
   Les Mikesell
    lesmikesell at gmail.com