I updated my Java runtime the other day, and now every time I open a new tab in Internet Explorer, I get this message box:

It looks like somebody at Sun forgot to sign their update agent. At least, I think this control came from Sun.  But there’s no way to be sure, is there? Do I blindly assume that this really is from Sun and that they made a mistake in generating the build, or do I do the prudent thing and permanently disallow it?

In a security conscious world, there’s no excuse for a major player like Sun to have released something with this error. One wonders, if an obvious bug like this makes it through their quality control, what other less obvious nasties are lurking in the code.

To heck with it. If Sun wants to push their software on me, they’ll have to get it right. I’m going to disallow the update agent. If I ever need to update my Java runtime, I guess I’ll just have to do it manually.