Week 5 Blog 2: Installation of Windows Update Without User Permission

Windows surprised lots of their users by downloading windows updates without asking any permission. The people who are get surprised are the ones who had set up the operating system to ask them for permission before installing any updates or patches. Lots of users who have mentioned above noticed after June 9th, their computers start windows updates and set of security patches when they are rebooting or turning on their computers. This will happen when windows determine new patches, then sometimes it will show update icons in the task bar. That’s the case when you are rebooting or turning on, those update will be installed without caring about the permission part. I believe this bug should be solved and windows should not be able to decide to install the updates. One of the reason, that I agree with, is that Microsoft released numerous versions of patches on the same date. And in one of the article mentioned, the extra demand for downloading patches and updates, may have caused some downloads to be incomplete. Also Microsoft Support Document admits that “incompletes downloads are known to disable the notification icon and possibly the approval dialog that's supposed to appear during shutdown.” Microsoft manager denied the updates issues were a bug. Paul Pottorff, a senior product manager with the Windows Update team, said "[But] If there is only a throttled update, they shouldn't be notified. If there are any other available updates, they should be notified. The presence of a throttled update does not prevent Automatic Updates from notifying users about other not-throttled updates. Furthermore, this behavior has been the same for a long time and hasn't even been touched for more than 9 months." This problem of updating without permission is not something new and the same kind of problem had happened on 2007. In the article there are some notes on how to control windows updates. I believe since windows had that update, their teams should be familiar with this kind of bug and try to avoid having that bug in the patches.

Source:
http://www.pcworld.com/article/167352/is_windows_installing_updates_without_permission.html

Other Sources:
http://windowssecrets.com/2009/06/25/01-Windows-may-install-updates-without-asking
http://blogs.pcmag.com/securitywatch/2009/06/is_windows_installing_updates.php

Week 5 Blog 1: Speeding Genome Sequencing by Using Sudoku Method

Scientists at the Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory have discovered a new method of pooling a multitude of DNA samples for sequencing. DNA sequencing is the process of deterring the exact order of the billions of chemical building blocks called bases that make up DNA. The new method, scientists come up with, called DNA Sudoku. This method named like this because of the math game; also, it is using the same algorithm to speed up sequencing DNA. The DNA Sudoku method allows short combinations of polynucleotide with bases, T, C, A, G, to be combined and sequenced simultaneously. The sequencing is done by comparing the letter order to the correct order of known human genome. The last methods, algorithms, were not able to analyze genome sequences in a short amount of time and actually they were only able to do one sequence of DNA at a time. The Sudoku method is a big improvement on current techniques and algorithms that can ideally only combine hundreds of samples. Hannon, a genomic expert and leader of the team for Sudoku approach, said that “the technique can be used to analyze specific regions of genomes form a large population to identify those who carry genetic mutations that may cause genetic disease.” These days, the new methods that are coming out are concerning two approaches for genome sequencing speed and the cost. This method as the team leader, Hannon mentioned is cost effective. He exampled a project for other researchers that cost $10 million, for his researcher group the same size of project will cost between $50,000 to $80,000. One of the reasons that are getting done faster and cheaper is that each pool of samples needs to be tagged with barcode versus the traditional method for sequencing high number of DNA samples, each sample had to be first tagged with a barcode. “The Sudoku method is currently ideally used on genotype analyses that need only short segments of an individual's genome. Clinical applications for the new method could be for HLA typing, which is a diagnostic tool for predicting the risk of organ transplant, cancer, and autoimmune disease.” As the other article mentioned, researcher’s competition are based on how to analyze human genomes faster and cheaper. Therefore, this group of researcher made a lot of competitions for themselves. If the researchers use this method, Sudoku, to sequence genomes, I believe the number of gene sequences, that has been discovered till now, will be increased much faster.

Source:
http://www.dailytech.com/Scientists+Use+Sudoku+to+Speed+Genome+Sequencing/article15526.htm

Other Source:
http://venturebeat.com/2008/02/10/pacific-bio-lifts-the-veil-on-its-high-speed-genome-sequencing-effort/
http://www.ornl.gov/sci/techresources/Human_Genome/faq/seqfacts.shtml