Microsoft Forces Shutdown of Autopatcher 290
kaufmanmoore writes "Posts on Neowin and Autopatcher's site announce Microsoft has forced the closure of the Autopatcher download section. Details are scarce as to the exact reason for the take down after over 4 years of availability, but an official from Microsoft legal says that it has nothing to do with Windows Genuine Advantage. Goodbye to another useful tool that helped sysadmins apply Microsoft's numerous patches."
This is sad... (Score:3, Interesting)
WindizUpdate next? (Score:5, Interesting)
Are the patch installers still available? (Score:5, Interesting)
Torrents for August release plz?
Microsoft (Score:3, Interesting)
Apple and Linux, he we come!
Re:One down, X to go. (Score:2, Interesting)
I wouldn't exactly say good riddance, but I'm not exactly sad to see it go either...
Re:Morons. (Score:3, Interesting)
I don't think that it has been a secret that cracked versions of windows have the potential to contain malware embedded at the deepest levels, to suggest that patches couldn't also be infected is a bit on the dishonest side.
As to whether this is really why, I have no idea. But I personally wouldn't feel comfortable downloading a copy over the net, even without any sort of threat of lawsuit.
What I would like MS to do is make it easy for people to download their patches, and hang onto them. Especially since windows doesn't run well for extended periods without being reinstalled.
Microsoft is immune to bad press (Score:5, Interesting)
Shutting down Autopatcher is nothing to them and will not affect their business in even a negligible fashion.
I would like to think otherwise but I can't. They are unstoppable.
You're missing the point! (Score:3, Interesting)
Now what would be useful, is for Microsoft themselves to make it very easy for you to download and burn an 'windows update' DVD that'll take each version of XP up to date. Downloadable direct from Microsoft.
Alternatively, they could offer hashes for the downloads on Microsoft's servers, which Autopatcher can be pointed at in order to verify the downloads.
Had they done that, then they'd avoid all the negative PR!
Re:How 'bout getting that in writing next time? (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:It was good, but (Score:4, Interesting)
Yeah, except that neither of those things does what autopatcher does. I don't want to have to reinstall the whole OS just to keep patches up to date, and I don't want to have to lay ethernet cable several hundred miles to my relatives' homes in order to patch them quickly from a server I control.
Terrific. How long before they break even that? (Score:5, Interesting)
offline update is terrific; its basically a script that wgets the patches directly from Microsoft,
The geinous of M$ can not be understated. Rather than let people share the burden of distributing their "patches" (efficiently [netcraft.com])they will make everyone go to them. We have just seen how well they do at an easier task [slashdot.org].
It won't be long before they only allow "authenticated" clients to download.
The contrast between this and the free software world could not be greater. Every gnu/linux distro has been easy to keep up today for the last ten years and there are verified mirrors everywhere. When you download a package from a mirror, you can md5 sum check it against the original source and most package managers do this automatically. M$ on the other hand, won't even let you distribute what they consider "free". Be wary when someone from M$ advocates BSD, love of your freedom is not the reason for their advice.
Re:Should have bought and funded it instead (Score:2, Interesting)
Hmm Wonder if Australia can pick it up (Score:1, Interesting)
What about the other fish? (Score:2, Interesting)
AWFUL (Score:1, Interesting)
We use Autopatcher ALL the time for in house clean up work... ie... who wants 6+ boxes trying to download patches and clog up your bandwidth?
Slipstream? Don't make me laugh. Who doesn't already have an SP2 XP disc? If you're setting up a new box... activate, drop autopatcher on it, and you're done. WSUS? Why waste time adding another person's box to our domain, update, and then remove?
MS's own update ISO's? You really think I want to stick like 9 different discs... in several machines? And still not get like 1/2 the updates out there?
And of course... it has saved our bacon times when our net access was down(usually a backhoe hitting the fiber), or when Windows update simply wouldn't work(dreaded Win 2000 windowsupdate issues, even on a clean install).
Honestly, I don't think we can go back to downloading the same damn crap 5 at a time again. Just ridiculous.