Re: If everything is working fine, why do PTF's?

On 05-Dec-2013 07:08 -0800, Paul Nelson wrote:

This is a question I got from a client yesterday. I seem to recall
somebody posting a link here some years ago to justify staying
reasonably current.

He wants more than just the standard arguments about IBM insisting
that one be at a certain level, et cetera, et cetera. It went right
over his head when I asked him if he changes the oil in his car on a
regular basis. He lives in the city and doesn't own a car.

Please chime in.

How about the tautological expression "You do not know what you do not know" and the expression "What you do not know can hurt you" to express an importance for preventive care\maintenance of the system. Effectively, the expression "If it ain't broke, don't fix it" is flawed, because you *can not know* for sure "it ain't broke" if you do not review for the available preventive PTFs.

One might suppose that defects producing Incorrect Output would be obvious and result in an investigation for a fix, but unfortunately that is not always the case; the effects of being /caught unaware/ can be both embarrassing and potentially costly, especially if the preventive fix had been available since ages ago. Oddly most people seem to hate most, the defects that cause a hard-stop\failure-message, but that is only because they are so visible in both effect and the obvious impact to getting a request to complete. Those are my favorite defects, because they /call themselves out/ to me. I hate the defects that I do not notice until long after they have impacted me many times, and thus the recovery is made extremely difficult; just how do I remember every time I *might* have been affected, and then how do I detect the condition even if I do recall!?