Wikipedia offers this explanation:
"The Siphonaptera" is a nursery rhyme, sometimes referred to as Fleas.
Big bugs have little bugs,
Upon their backs to bite 'em,
And little bugs have lesser bugs,
and so, ad infinitum.
Windows Updates are kinda like that. It's mainly because the updates themselves get patched, and you can't patch the update until it's installed and rebooted... As far as administrative users, Windows doesn't have a TRUE "sudo" so the initial user has to be administrative. "Run-As-Administrator" is a false flag operation -- it's not really what it says, because there are system and application programs that in fact require you to log out and then log in as THE ADMINISTRATOR to make them operate correctly -- simply being a member of "Administrators" group doesn't do it, and doing "Run-As" with the Administrator password doesn't do it.
Windows is still, alas, a toy operating system in a few very fundamental ways. It can't escape its past, for reasons of back compatibility.
I think the way Linux packages are managed is smarter by far. Yum and Apt are excellent package management systems, which handle far more than Microsoft can even manage with their clunky update system for just their OS, and whatever MS software you buy. (I don't know if it all can be updated with the update system, as I don't actually have anything other than the OS itself. Since they control all the software, you'd think they could figure out, with their billions of dollars how to tell their update manager, that "this patch superceeds that one. Install it instead".
Windows is still, alas, a toy operating system in a few very fundamental ways. It can't escape its past, for reasons of back compatibility.
I'd have to agree with that. The only reason I even got it, was because there is no Linux package for itunes so I could back up my phone, or get music from it. So, now a I have VM. What's really nice about the VM is that with Workstation, you can snapshot it if you want, then have the VM return to that snapshot every time it boots. That is =nice=. There is nothing you can do to the running VM to completely hose it because you can always return to the snapshot. In fact, it's just as easy to back up the entire virtual computer into a zip or tar archive. If something bad happens in the VM, you just delete the directory that contains it and unzip/untar your archive.
I really wish you could buy an OSX VM from Apple. I understand that Apple wants to keep things easier to manage by limiting the amount of hardware they support. A Virtualized OSX would not deviate from this IMO. From a support standpoint, what can be more controllable than a VM? You have standard hardware emulation built into the entire concept. Oh well. It is unfortunate that they don't listen to me. Maybe they'll reconsider the idea now that Jobs is gone.