Oracle Re-numbers Java Patch Updates

If Oracle didn’t do a good enough job of confusing users with their patch update identifiers for Java before, this ‘new and improved’ system is pretty much guaranteed to finish the task. Remember Murphy’s Law guys.

"With the recent increase of security releases we have been skipping numbers and have already had to renumber releases," Oracle said. "To avoid confusion caused by renumbering releases, we are adopting a new numbering scheme."

Click to expand...

More from article:

"Limited Update releases will be numbered in multiples of 20," the document said. "We intend for Critical Patch Updates to continue to use odd numbers. The numbers will be calculated by adding multiples of five to the prior Limited Update and when needed adding one to keep the resulting number odd."

What lovely red tape and management they have. I say management because you know that no regular peon came up with that mess of a system.

Aren't all java updates critical?

Anyways just forget the numbers and keep them coming guys, I look forward to patching java every time I visit my dad. That was not a joke, except maybe the look forward part.

Oh boy I would have loved to have sat in on that development meeting when they worked that idea up.

Too much coffee I think.

The number of the beast...

pgaster said:

More from article:

"Limited Update releases will be numbered in multiples of 20," the document said. "We intend for Critical Patch Updates to continue to use odd numbers. The numbers will be calculated by adding multiples of five to the prior Limited Update and when needed adding one to keep the resulting number odd."

What lovely red tape and management they have. I say management because you know that no regular peon came up with that mess of a system.

Click to expand...

yeah, no regular person with any semblance of sanity or competence would have come up with this numbering system. It has to be one of those managers who got their job because they were friends with some other manager or had a relative in some upper level management position or major shareholder.

I once had a migration project, moving from Windows NT 4 and Windows 2000 to Windows XP, where the leading VP had done all the planning. He'd just put up a timeline where each department gets two weeks to migrate, and didn't even bother to count the users in each department or talk to them about any programs that might need to be updated to work with XP. We had many stalls through the project, but one was the worst. Fourteen contractors ended up witting on our butts for 6 weeks doing nothing, getting paid $15 per hour, an 8 hour drive from home, sleeping in a local hotel, because one department had a huge Access 2.1 database that had to be migrated before the project could proceed. Then we had to get that whole department done within two weeks, when they had twice the number of users as the next largest department. We pulled 20 hours of over both weeks. This was a VP who got his job because his dad was on the board of directors. Totally incompetent. I've known other incompetent managers in my 16 year career, but this guy was the absolute worst.

I don't care how they number it. It isn't going to go on any of my machines.

This sounds like the "output" of a Six Sigma session.