It does rather highlight the problem of mono-culture - much as the potato blight has caused famines for folk who could grow little else,  it seems we are building a very brittle IT dependent world where most things run on Windows, and only a very small fraction of the folk who depend on it also understand how it works underneath the point and click level well enough to fix it. And the doubtful wisdom of all the updates being installed remotely as soon as they become available, rather than only on some machines, then waiting a day to make sure it works, to do the rest.

The good news is it was only a mistake, albeit quite an expensive one.

If it serves to makes folk realise how much worse it would have been if it had been a spoof update that loaded normally, and then wiped the disks, which is the sort of thing a truly bad actor would do, then maybe it is a bit of a  'wake up' call.

It did have the rather refreshing effect for me, of being able to order and pay for a pub lunch by standing at the bar holding cash, while others about me were  waiting looking at their respective fondle slabs and look puzzled and disappointment (I'm of a generation that is no more likely to leave the house without money as I am to leave without underwear, as it just feels odd.)

Mike

It does rather highlight the problem of mono-culture - much as the potato blight has caused famines for folk who could grow little else,  it seems we are building a very brittle IT dependent world where most things run on Windows, and only a very small fraction of the folk who depend on it also understand how it works underneath the point and click level well enough to fix it. And the doubtful wisdom of all the updates being installed remotely as soon as they become available, rather than only on some machines, then waiting a day to make sure it works, to do the rest.

The good news is it was only a mistake, albeit quite an expensive one.

If it serves to makes folk realise how much worse it would have been if it had been a spoof update that loaded normally, and then wiped the disks, which is the sort of thing a truly bad actor would do, then maybe it is a bit of a  'wake up' call.

It did have the rather refreshing effect for me, of being able to order and pay for a pub lunch by standing at the bar holding cash, while others about me were  waiting looking at their respective fondle slabs and look puzzled and disappointment (I'm of a generation that is no more likely to leave the house without money as I am to leave without underwear, as it just feels odd.)

Mike