[ale] AAAARRRRG! #@$%#$%$%^$% Don't upgrade K9 Mail!

[Jim Kinney]

On Mon, Jul 8, 2013 at 8:04 AM, Michael B. Trausch
<mbt at naunetcorp.com>wrote: a bunch of stuff I deleted...

OMG! Someone on the interwebs has an OPINION!?!?!?!

Mine is:


As I see it both OP and MT are correct. Nicely working tool is now broken
because of developers design change. But not upgrading leaves system open
to security vulnerabilities. Especially in the Android realm, app updates
often come with onerous new changes; some are UI design changes that break
hearts while others are access changes that privacy.

It's a toss-up on what to do.

I've learned from painful experience to try and get some info about the
upgrade BEFORE I punt a system to "there goes _that_ week cleaning up after
a messy upgrade" status. But on my phone, which must "JustWork", I avoid
upgrades like the plague. Does that increase my security risk? Yes. But a
non-working phone is just a $500 brick. Might as well been cracked and made
useless.

I, for one, am happy to learn that K9 did a Ui change before I upgraded. I
like K9.  One thing I've learned over the past number of years is how to
work with stuff that can't be constantly upgraded to latest-greatest.
Scientific equipment that was designed to run on Win98 that still works
perfectly and will cost another $250k to upgrade to newer version (hardware
change) or a specialty application that ONLY runs on RedHat 5.2 (yep -
finally closed that one about 2 years ago!).

Those are the challenges that make being a sysadmin worthwhile from the
puzzle-solving perspective. Those are also the challenges that tend
sysadmins to heaving drinking.

-- 
-- 
James P. Kinney III
*
*Every time you stop a school, you will have to build a jail. What you gain
at one end you lose at the other. It's like feeding a dog on his own tail.
It won't fatten the dog.
- Speech 11/23/1900 Mark Twain
*
http://electjimkinney.org
http://heretothereideas.blogspot.com/
*
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