The shoddyness of Microsoft: Internet Explorer Update Fiasco

Internet Explorer 6Microsoft Corporation comes under a lot of flack from the IT community for slipshod work. The constant state of software being released by them that is either incompatible with everything they (and anyone else) has done, and an unprecidented number of security holes leads to much ridicule of the organisation.

I’d like here to just make a point of the latest (as at December 15th 2001) blunder that the company has fallen into. They have today released what is being termed as a major patch to their web browsing software, Internext Explorer. This has only been made available for versions 5.5 (Service Pack 2) and 6. While end-of-life’ing older versions is probably acceptable, it should be known that 5.01 SP2 is not that old, and the lack of a patch for this older version will hurt some organisations and their SOE.

Just to not miss other coverage of this, here are stories on Slashdot and The Register.

The main point is thus: take a peek at the image here showing my laptop with its installed MSIE 6.0 under MS Windows Millennium Edition, and me trying to install this update.

Screenshot Which begs the question: what version do I have of MSIE installed? And where is my patch to fix the security vulnerabilities that MS is (perhaps) trying to rectify?