No this is not a post to kick McAfee while they are down. Well, not totally. The bad update McAfee sent out yesterday, crashing computers around the world, gave teach a teachable moment. No, it is not we should chuck all the computers in the trashcan.
The lesson teachers should pass on to students is proofreading is critical to good work. McAfee allowed some bad code to go out in the update that caused Windows XP computers to show a false positive and go into an endless cycle of restarts. I understand that if someone at Quality Assurance had paid attention to the update the bad code could have been stopped before it went out the door.
Because someone did not rake the time to proofread the update, McAfee could potentially lose millions of dollars to correct the problem and customers who will leave because of the problem. Again, because someone did not take the time to proofread, untold billions of dollars in lost productivity has happened.
The next time a student wants to rush through his or her's classwork you can remind them of the McAfee disaster.