Microsoft installed an app in users’ system trays advertising
the free upgrade to Windows 10.
Not satisfied, the company eventually made Windows 10 a
recommended update so users receiving critical security updates
were now also downloading an entirely new operating system onto
their machines without their knowledge.
This is essentially equivalent to saying: You've been running whatever version of Windows, but we'll trick you into installing Windows 10.
Specifically, when prompted with a Windows 10 update, if the
user chose to decline it by hitting the ‘X’ in the upper right
hand corner, Microsoft interpreted that as consent to download
Windows 10.
The previous trick didn't work on all of you, so we'll go on to change the default behavior of our dialog boxes in order to trick you into installing Windows 10.
By default, Windows 10 sends an unprecedented amount of usage
data back to Microsoft, and the company claims most of it is to
“personalize” the software by feeding it to the OS assistant
called Cortana.
And while users can opt-out of some of these settings, it is
not a guarantee that your computer will stop talking to
Microsoft’s servers.
This probably explains it all.
--
Microsoft appears to have learnt a lot from LinkedIn [0].
I think this slightly understates just how sleazy Microsoft were about it, if anything. Before the dialog that interpreted closing it with the X in the corner as agreement to install Windows 10, they rolled out a similar-looking dialog where that was the only way to avoid install Windows 10 - clicking on any of the buttons in the dialog would cause it to be installed.
But no, it's not a good anti-lawyer method, a comment says, regarding children and cats "The child is an instrument of your will. Note - they are not acting as your agent, as a child cannot be an agent. Instead, they are your instrument, much like a pen signing your name or a cat clicking a button for you is an instrument. "
That seems to imply that you pick up your cat and have him press the button so you can say "it wasnt me!"... whereas in your case, you did not coerce the cat to press the button for you, so was it truly your instrument, or random occurence.
I feel like you would be responsible for any key presses on your laptop, regardless if made by the cat or not. Maybe someone can give an expert opinion.
I don't think that's entirely true. If an acquaintance used your laptop in front of you to hack into a bank, you might be responsible.
But if Microsoft automatically downloaded BankHacker 3.11 to your machine and set it to pop up a dialogue box so that hacking into a bank was so simple your cat could do it — and if then your cat "used your laptop to hack into a bank", then common sense says that Microsoft would be responsible.
Intent figures greatly in legal circumstances. If you intended for your cat to accept a EULA by installing special hardware to enable it, you're almost certainly responsible. If the cat did it accidentally, maybe not - the hard part would be proving it was the cat and not yourself.
Over the past year I've noticed a lot of things mysteriously getting installed, things moving around, etc. I don't mind automatic updates so long as there's a separation from the new features and bug fixes. There should be a base core of apps that are necessary and a set of opt-in add-on features.
It's time to move to Linux on laptop/desktop/tablet I think. While I love my surface pro 3 and the Windows 10 experience is overall a good one, I don't like them changing undisclosed stuff on me.
On the flip side, I run Ubuntu on my htpc, and have for several years now... there have been a couple times where the updates broke audio, and the fix took on average 2 days, though I can imagine some people having worse experiences...
Getting an MCE remote (arguably the most common PC remote type) working with Kodi (formerly xbmc and very popular full screen media player) took some cumbersome steps.
On average one app breaks every 6 months or so after updating.
By comparison, omitting the privacy issues, MS has a much better track record with updates.
My point was that anecdotes are pretty useless. Some installations run brilliantly, others are a huge pain. After all, we're not talking about a single distro on identical hardware.
To answer your questions- Linux is my primary OS, at work and at home. I don't recall every single issue, especially way-back, but traditionally, I create problems by doing something stupid.
Maybe I'm just lucky with updates, but I stick to popular distros, and I specifically seek out Linux-friendly hardware. Others surely have a different experience. It just felt like OP was painting with too broad a stroke; their statement was valid in 2003, but not so much these days.
Both are subpar (and osx or whatever Apple call their offering is no better).
I've been stuck in an update hell with windows where security updates simply would not install the only solution I could find was a full re-install. I've been in a similar situation with Ubuntu and was able to fix it - but only because I understood it - otherwise I would have had to do a re-install.
The key with Ubuntu updates is to stick to LTS versions and to do a clean re-install (keeping /home as a separate partition makes this painless).
Both have rubbish audio systems. Windows breaks on my laptop every few suspend resumes (fixed by restart). Ubuntu every few months (fixed by restart).
At this point I'm disappointed by every system I use.
USB used to just work. Now it stops working after you connect ten or so devices - which is not a common thing, but not unusual in music studios. And external USB hubs only work if they have a specific generic name in the firmware ID.
Apparently if you hack your own kexts you can get it working again, kind of.
>At this point I'm disappointed by every system I use.
This. The Win 10 situation is beyond horrific. I would never have imagined that MS would set itself up for a class action suit like this. I know people who have had their PCs trashed by this forced upgrade, and they're really not happy about it.
But the alternatives are not great. Linux and OS X are both in similar "kind of works, mostly, except when not" states.
Consumer OS reliability and design has become an embarrassment for the entire industry.
At least, as of a few years ago, Apple figured out that incremental updates are not such a bad thing. There is only so much “damage” they can do with an update; and although they do screw up stuff, you can at least figure out what happened.
Where do you start though when W10 changes the entire damned UI, replaces a bunch of apps, moves stuff around, creates two versions of some control panels, etc.? That is just a special level of “don’t give a crap” that is embarrassing for any company making billions of dollars.
That reminds me of another one... (Ubuntu htpc) I can "shut-down" and the remote startup works, but if it actually goes into suspend, I have to hit the actual power button in the cabinet. And more often than not the audio is broken on resume from suspend and I have to completely shut down to fix it (reboot doesn't work)... this is with a core i3-5010u, which is a relatively common intel audio chipset.
I agree there are aspects of every OS that I don't like... I just wouldn't single out Windows (again other than privacy) as particularly bad on updates... updating my mbp to el capitan took a wipe as the upgrade broke half way through.
TIP: Never update when you're tethered to your phone on vacation, always update a week before leaving for vacation by the way. lol
Remote startup and wakeup is actually handled by firmware of your mainboard. (or Intel ME) Ubuntu cannot fix hardware problems most of the time.
Drivers still breaking in S3 is often a result of lack of Windows driver workarounds for this case. And Ubuntu using slightly outdated kernel versions.
Considering it's Intel hardware (nuc), I'm not sure what the point is, since Intel tends to have some of the best Linux support. In any case, shouldn't linux receive a signal that it's recovered from sleep and that should allow it to re-initialize problem hardware/drivers?
I keep running it, my point was that it's not exactly rosey with Linux all of the time either.
I work with hardware devs who work with Intel NUCs professionally (I do software). The NUCs have some really crazy firmware/hardware bugs. In fact, just yesterday I had to suggest to them to get the OS (Linux) to power cycle a hung hardware, and they said "Yeah ... the PMIC doesn't shut off power to that bus, the only way is to shut down the entire system. We asked Intel, that's what they said."
It could be that fdgdasfadsf's point was a sarcastic observation about the upcoming switch of the name from 'Mac OS' [0] to 'macOS'.
[0] Or 'OS X', which, technically, is just the tenth version of Mac OS rather than an OS name in its own right (despite what I think is the fact that most people think of it as the latter).
As someone who's had the misfortune of encountering and then tracking down PulseAudio bugs, it probably doesn't help that it's a code quality disaster. Few comments, close coupling between different parts, no stable bugfix-only releases, and even the developers have trouble understanding what size buffers functions should expect.
I was running Ubuntu 14.04 on a small PC with XBMC and proprietary Nvidia drivers. The standard `apt-get update` would never rebuild the nvidia drivers so inevitably on reboot, X couldn't start and I had to figure out why, then rebuild the nvidia drivers manually, and try again.
I'm much more scared of Ubuntu aptitude updates than I am of Microsoft updates.
Win10 broke safe mode, it can be re-enabled, but still... Reboot into safe more, or via recovery disk... restore the to restore point set before updates, reboot.
Most updates in Ubuntu can be recovered from. That doesn't make it better/easier than recovery in Windows... as it depends on what got updated, how it got updated, and what all came with it.
I have had the same experience, especially with broken mythtv updates (specifically the mythtv web interface), and also sound.
Plus for some reason every time I update I have to manually edit the grub file to boot the correct kernel and run the nvidia installer. I think it's because I'm still on an older version of grub or something.
I'm still much happier running ubuntu on my server/htpc than Windows. I'd be ecstatic to use ubuntu exclusively if I didn't need to run Ableton Live on Windows, which I can't run in a Windows VM.
Debian used to be quite good at not stuffing things up. Even on testing/unstable.
For the past few months, my laptop pointer controls -- this is PS/2 mouse emulation, folks, what, 20+ years old? -- has broken thanks apparently to libinput.
Middle mouse button is only partially functional. Not that I use that ever....
Making increasingly complex things, and failing to keep an eye on the ball, ends up bolluxing stuff.
Happens on Microsoft (a lot), OS X (see Walt Mossberg's rant). Android, all the fucking time. And Debian.
I've had lots of Debian updates breaking my sound system. And twice when they pushed NetworkManager into the KDE dependencies, and when they pushed idmapd into NFSv4, it broke my network shares.
I can't remember anything else breaking on stable. It's been a much experience than updating Windows.
Sound has always been utterly fucked though. Well, more fucked than most shit. (I've actually had suprisingly good experiences with it, though my expectations are also scaled low.)
NetworkMangler joins a long list of other FooMangler tools which are best destroyed with extreme prejudice. I manage WiFi with an /etc/network/interfaces stanza, and it mostly works. Static wired interfaces are, of course, vastly simpler.
I agree that the Linux experience is hugely better than Windows, and the Debian experience hugely better than RPM-based distros. This is why having the mouse, THE FUCKING MOUSE!!!!!! fail is .... I'm beyond words.
But libinput is a vital part of the new, improved Wayland future, so obviously it must be better. Because of this development of the existing touchpad driver has even been dropped in favour of it.
No doubt that it never penetrated the desktop market as many of us had hoped it might.
It did, however, serve the needs and wants of those of us who'd experienced Unix and wanted that for ourselves. Doing a vastly superior job than the Unixes that started us off in the first place. Speaking for myself, 3.4BSD, Ultrix, SunOS, Solaris, HPUX, DGUX, Irix, AIX, and probably a few others. Plus some other platforms.
The rot started to show with the GNOME Project and PulseAudio. Both introduced a tremendous amount of complexity and gratuitous change with little benefit by way of utility or ease-of-management. Systemd has largely sealed the deal.
The lack of setting on a standard desktop offering has also hurt, and for fairly complex reasons. Red Hat is a commercial success (like Microsoft before it) because of its technical shortcomings, not in spite of them -- they directly feed its revenue model. This is quite unfortunate.
I think Ubutnu made missteps, but was (and may yet be) a superior option.
OTOH, building tools for the billions is hard. I'm willing to admit that. Microsoft only barely manages, as does Apple, and both have had quite notable failures.
It seems you're suffering symptoms of Poettering Syndrome.
The key is to remove all applications he has touched (logind/systemd/NetworkManager/PulseAudio/Avahi), and you'll find yourself with a stable system.
Good distros, such as Calculate Linux or Gentoo, help a lot with this.
However, should you continue to use Red Hat-based distributions (of which Debian, Arch, and Ubuntu should be considered, post-systemd; package managers notwithstanding), you will constantly experience these pain points.
As a Microsoft employee, this W10 force upgrade things is the single thing that pisses me off the most by far...
It goes against everything that we are trying to promote/change.
Sometimes I'm really wondering if we work for the same company (I'm not in the Windows division).
I feel like all the effort we put in investing in open source, being more open, and just generally a more empathic company is totally destroyed by this w10 fiasco.
I feel like all the effort we put in investing in open source, being more open, and just generally a more empathic company is totally destroyed by this w10 fiasco.
I'd like to sympathise, but I'm afraid this is looking like a general trend for modern Microsoft, and if your group isn't doing similar shady things then it's the exception.
Some other examples:
I was going to try a bit of C++ programming on Windows for the first time on a new PC a little while back, so I looked into what is now called Visual Studio Community. Whereas Microsoft used to make the basic Express tools to develop on its platform free and readily available, I now have to sign in with a Microsoft account to use Community. I don't know exactly what that does, but after probably half an hour of reading on Microsoft's site, I do know that it seems to involve uploading data to Microsoft, multiple very long privacy policies, and no guarantee that I could find that potentially sensitive things like the actual code I'm working on wouldn't be included.
We were looking at getting some office software for that PC as well. I thought MS Office still came as a standalone desktop application as well as the online service-y thing, but I couldn't find anything in more than 20 minutes of looking around Microsoft's site that even mentioned the former any more. Again, it's all online-this and subscription-service-that now, and I have no interest in renting important software or sharing whatever I do with it with Microsoft.
Obviously the new PC itself, which we specifically ordered with Windows 7 because we didn't want any of the more recent versions, also needed lots of updates immediately uninstalling just to clean out all the spyware, adware, and so on.
There have been related concerns with other MS products, such as the gaming and console line, in the more recent generations as well.
For many years, I have generally been positive about Microsoft, and considered Windows, Office and Visual Studio the gold standards for useful software. I'm sorry to say that none of that is true any more, and I'm now actively hostile toward and distrustful of anything associated with Microsoft. It's a great pity.
I've been in this business a long time, and sadly the whole episode is entirely in line with the general level of competence and empathy that I've come to expect from the Windows division. SQL Server is really good, hugely impressed by .NET Core, but I can say nothing good about Windows today, and haven't been able to for an age.
Disclosure: I was one of the people that signed the petition to ask the EFF to get involved. The stories from people whose computers were taken out by upgrades that they were tricked into just got too much. If you think that this kind of thing is totally surprising, though, I'll refer you to the disaster that was the Windows 8 UI changes, and the swamp that has been the Windows Update experience lo these many years.
Windows updates have been so bad about bricking randomly your machines that I've been using slipstreamed installs and completely disabling updates at all.
That'd be in line with Conway's law ("organizations which design systems ... are constrained to produce designs which are copies of the communication structures of these organizations").
As an anecdotal reply from a totally random person on the internet: Your feelings are spot on. I was really impressed with the clear shift in Microsoft. They were on their way to becoming the cool tech company I could kind of get behind (as much as one can have loyalty to any corporation), but then....Windows 10. The worst part of it, to me, is that MS seems to understand why it wants a new version of Windows, but hasn't done anything to convince me why I would want it. And sadly, Windows is the most visible part of the company for many, many people.
Microsoft announced a free upgrade to Windows 10, saying users can opt-in now to prepare their systems for the upgrade.
IT professionals wanted control over this upgrade.
Microsoft responds by providing registry settings to block the upgrade process, which Microsoft later chose to ignore.
As I observed on my system, Microsoft had also pushed out some preparation updates that reset some telemetry settings I had opted out of at one time, like the customer improvement program.
Microsoft obviously has their head in the clouds now.
And yet the game Overwatch doesn't have an OSX port so I have windows 10 setup as a dual-boot option. It seems that Microsoft has correctly deduced that users don't really give a fuck. They'll throw a hissy fit, they'll make all sorts of blog posts, but at the end of the day the majority are still staring at a windows 10 installation screen and dealing with it.
Anything regarded as "industry standard" in some quasi-niche engineering field.
I guess that doesn't count as home use. Personally, I've been on Linux for over a decade. I don't feel like I'm missing out on any "killer apps", but there's always some odd bit of software that only works on Windows - like the freeware RC helicopter simulator I use. Wine's great.
It's just the path of least resistance for most people.
It's a program that's a combination of a universal file sharer, screenshotter, image editor, screen recorder (which can output gif) and a seriously unbelievable suite of tools like OCR, image combiners, a QR generator, etc.
When I say universal file sharer, I mean everything. It uploads to different sites based on the filetype, be it drive for files, gifycat for .mp4's, pastebin for text, whatever. And there isn't a linux equivalent. Which sucks.
Unfortunately I need to stay with Windows for the moment only for Ableton Live, which is IMO the best Pro Audio/Music creation tool. I can't run it in a VM because only basic sound features work in a VM (I'm using a PCI soundcard, actually thinking about it now, maybe USB3 soundcards could work well in a VM?).
Also Photoshop is pretty much the gold standard for image editing, but I could be happy running that in a VM.
I would add VS to that, and potentially Unity/Unreal? Also I imagine corporate and government environments that use windows might also hamstring their developers into using it.
> As for VS - that was never really a consideration to stay on the platform for a lot of developers.
By what means are you measuring these considerations? Do you have some sort of citation?
As a developer, the biggest reasons for me to stay on Windows are Office, IIS, SQL Server and Visual Studio. Nothing on any other platform comes close the the usability of these.
Furthermore, knowing these products really well gets you a lot of easy work...because almost every business on the planet runs Windows.
Anyway there's no reason to single out Microsoft here since both Apple and Google are some mixture of anti-choice, anti-freedom and anti-privacy. And the EFF wants you to quit all of them too. They recommend moving to the equivalent of a hippie commune where you'll enjoy spending time milking your own cows instead of feeding other companies' cash cows.
Office is also on the Mac. As for the other apps you mentioned, well, that's very subjective because I completely disagree with your assessment that nothing even comes close on any other platform. To imply that IIS and SQL Server are best of breed is ridiculous.
Also, VS isn't exactly a compelling reason to stay on Windows. Last time I installed VS 2015 it sprayed 30+ GB's of files all over my SSD and installed about 30-40 apps in the process. To say VS 2015 is a bloated pig would be an insult to bloated pigs everywhere.
OK well reality backs up my point of view because every small, medium and large business in the world is running Windows so that they can use all of the business software that was written with VS to run on Windows, IIS and SQL Server.
We're not talking about best of breed for "the cloud" either. SQL Server and IIS are absolutely best of breed for in-house, self-hosted business apps.
And your big complaint about VS 2015 is lacking any kind of substance. Do you measure the quality of all software solely on how much disk space it takes up or is that one you just reserve for Microsoft? I run 6 or 8 instances of VS2015 at a time and my Windows machine stays lightning fast. Meanwhile, I run one instance of Xcode (all I'm allowed on OS X, on my Mac Pro) and it's dog slow.
You didn't name anything you think is better either. Says a lot.
Do you think it will ever reach parity with the Windows version though?
Microsoft is acutely targeting devs who build cloud apps for the public or for very large organizations with the Linux version of SQL Server. Devs like me who build apps that are self-hosted (almost always in-house) for small and medium sized businesses. My customers need all that Windows integration including (among many, many other considerations) Windows authentication, Windows file sharing and security, SQL Server Integration Services (none of which are probably available on Linux...SSIS for sure) and they need it running on Windows because that's all they know or want to know.
There are certainly more developers like me than their are of the other type.
Changing the default behavior of the dialog boxes to trick people into installing their software was pure malware level tactics. They knowingly crossed the line with that stunt. These unethical tactics are the kind you consult psychologists for with the intent of confusing people into thinking one thing and doing the other.
If Microsoft forces a new version on your computer, and you refuse the EULA, what happens?
Second thought - if you can't undo the install upon refusing the EULA, has Microsoft committed a crime of computer vandalism by (in effect) bricking your computer?
Something tells me that some smart lawyers are going to blast some holes in this. Especially from a trade secret perspective where some smart hacker gets his computer bricked (just go with me for a second :) ) and then has to reverse engineer something to access his data, but because he didn't accept the EULA, and MSFT took over his computer without explicit permission, he can't be sued for violating the EULA.
Now obviously IANAL, but you can see where this could go.
> Specifically, when prompted with a Windows 10 update, if the user chose to decline it by hitting the ‘X’ in the upper right hand corner, Microsoft interpreted that as consent to download Windows 10.
Ah, that brings back memories. Back in the DOS days, when you ran "format", it replied something like "Ready to format disk X. Press any key to continue:" (with X being the drive letter). And it really meant press any key to continue. Escape would continue. Control-C would continue. Even control-alt-delete would continue. The only way to not continue was to turn power off.
I feel bad about what Windows has become. I really thought that Microsoft had turned a corner with Windows 7, which I really liked, but every release since has been disappointing.
The "new" Microsoft was a change in business model, not a sudden thawing of the heart.
Windows used to be the product, now Windows users are. This is similar to Google and Facebook's offerings. Very few companies still strictly sell software anymore.
The open sourcing of tools is marketing and a consequence of prioritizing adoption over exclusivity. Like Android, Windows isn't going to be the bare foundation you build on, but the cushy, fully furnished condominium... complete with cameras and microphones.
The business model hasn't changed. Windows is an always has been a paid product (with some minor variations) and Microsoft is not a significant player in the advertising business. (AOL does sell Bing ads, I think.)
Of course, if you have any factual evidence that Windows users are a product, then I'd be interested to hear it.
I've been watching like a hawk for the past couple of weeks and not found anything that does it, so I assumed it was just made up. However, the only app I use is Microsoft Health.
The "new Microsoft" thing only seems to apply to how developers are treated as they are the bread and butter that provide the apps to keep the platform afloat, not home users who are just cattle.
The new Microsoft picked up a lot of habits from Google and other newer companies.
1. Open sourcing crud.
2. Taking away your rights and violating your privacy.
We need to communicate clearly to Microsoft what types of new behavior are good, and what types of new behavior are bad. It's just like raising a child. :)
It's probably no coincidence that they pulled out of the EU investigations of Google after starting it. They probably see the financial upside in becoming more like Google.
Realistically, it was practical to get the goodwill of saying they were stepping out, because all the cases were far enough along. The EU's going to pursue it with or without Microsoft's present interest. So they get better PR by saying "oh, yeah, we're no longer doing this".
I think DevDiv (Developer Division) is much more in line with Open-Source as a movement, with the business eye towards making Azure the prefered PaaS/IaaS option with their tools.
Windows, and a lot of other bits are more consumer space, and moving closer to Google/Facebook model of customers being the product. I don't necessarily think it's entirely a bad proposition. From a web application developer standpoint, old windows versions, tied to old IE versions have held things back over and over again. Even given some of the privacy concerns, I'd rather most people were on a frequently updated operating system with a frequently updated browser.
That's not to say I think it needs to be windows. Also, if privacy is a concern, one can upgrade to the pro version, or use enterprise skus in offices to disable those bits.
All of that said, I upgraded pretty early (tech preview) and use Pro, so didn't see a lot of the restrictions, or very sleazy upgrade push. My parents/grandparents are mostly on Chromebook devices, and one Grandmother has an Ubuntu desktop. My sister and her family have all bought into the Apple ecosystem... so I'm the most heavy windows user in the bunch and I spend more time on my macbook, ubuntu htpc or in a Linux ssh shell from windows than using windows exclusive software.
I think people retaining control of their machines, in spirit as well as in practice, is more important long-term than security (and more conducive to it). Techno-dystopia scares me more than the odd bit of fraud.
Privacy without security is like a hut in the wilderness. Security without privacy is like prison. Where would you rather live?
> Specifically, when prompted with a Windows 10 update, if the
> user chose to decline it by hitting the ‘X’ in the upper right
> hand corner, Microsoft interpreted that as consent to download
> Windows 10.
So what? I clicked that X multiple times and it didn't _install_. It may have _downloaded_, I'm not sure, but did not install.
They changed this behavior after huge public outcry. It used to install the update too. Microsoft was even ordered to pay $10k in a civil suit[1] because of this.
I don't believe this. That article nor the article it links did not state that Windows forced the install at any point.
Rather the Washington Times article states that: "The company denies wrongdoing, and a spokeswoman said Microsoft halted its appeal to avoid the expense of further litigation."
And: "Microsoft says it offers users a choice to update, not a requirement. People have to acknowledge a dialogue box before the installation, and agree to a license agreement afterward, to receive Windows 10, the company says."
I've experienced the process on multiple PCs starting from day 1 when Microsoft started the campaign at it never _forced_ me to install. Specifically, the Close button never started the installation. There _always_ was a specific button to accept the start of the installation.
An anecdata point for the "did force" - what it did to me was schedule the upgrade for a specific time, and the dialog let me know that's when it was scheduled. You had to change the scheduled time to "do not upgrade" to avoid the upgrade; simply closing the dialog left the scheduled update in place.
I had the same experience -- I have numerous PCs and no evidence of any attempt at a forced installation. Not even on my wife's PC, and she's as non-technical as people get.
I've generally assumed that people either don't actually read what's in front of their faces (probably pretty common among the non-computerate), or don't understand what they read (ditto), or they panic and do something stupid. Of course, I have no evidence for any of these assumptions in Windows 10's case, but I've seen them in other situations.
I know people who apparently can't tell the difference between an operating system, a web browser and an email service -- or else they just don't have the vocabulary to express such distinctions. It takes some time to find out what they've actually done, and why. The idea that they know which party is at fault is generally not one that fits reality.
Note: this is not a defense of "dark patterns" or whatever. I'd assume Microsoft has a good idea of the technical level of much of its audience, and that it should therefore have been extra extra careful to communicate the Windows 10 upgrade in a far clearer manner than it did.
All the drive-by installs bundled into freeware/floss installers is enough proof that people don't read... I had to stop my mom mid-install after she clicked next pretty quickly, back before she had a chromebook... It was only chance that I was there with her... She almost installed 3 drive-bys with the one app she actually wanted... until switching one of my grandmothers to a chromebook, I'd have to remotely clean all the crap off her PC remotely twice a year... that wasn't at all fun.
I entirely believe there's a lot of people that just click on everything that comes up.
Was it bright enough to reliably detect metered connections (did it even try at all?). If not then just this could have cost people money.
And consuming a couple of Gb of space could be a noticeable inconvenience on a small system (say one of the many tables and laptops with nothing more than a 64 or 32gb solid state drive).
>If you marked your connection as metered, I believe it respected that and wouldn't download it.
I don't recall windows 7 having any way to explicitly mark your connection as metered.
As for Windows 8 (I believe it's the same as Windows 10), you can't mark a wired connection (ethernet) as metered if I recall correctly, even though you might be on a satellite internet connection for instance which most definitely is heavily metered.
Yea, I'm not sure this article is completely accurate either. I waited until the very last day of the free upgrade, only clicking the "X", and never had a surprise Win10 install.
I upgraded willingly so the deceptive upgrade practices, while deplorable, didn't really affect me. What does affect me is that Microsoft refuses to let me control my computer.
- If you turn off Windows Defender Real Time Protection it explicitly tells you "You can turn this off, but if it's off for a while we'll turn it back on". It turns itself on upon next reboot, it seems.
- You can't turn off Windows Update. It will always end up downloading new updates.
- Once an update is scheduled for a restart you can only delay a few times and it will then force the restart.
- You can't remove worthless apps like Microsoft Groove and OneDrive integration.
- They are continuing to try to weasel the Windows Store into my life by buying up or forcing exclusives (games), with all the drawbacks of UWP.
Microsoft, I promise I know what I'm doing and the risks and benefits of each action I want to perform. I own my hardware, I'd like to control the software I licensed. I am well aware of other OS options and I use Linux & OS X often, but neither can compare to the gaming library available on Windows which is my primary use case for my desktop.
I'm in a similar boat. I bought my child a cheap PC, it came with Windows 10, and it took a lot of careful configuration to turn off all the tracking and advertising. Then it kept nagging to update Windows 10 (what we used to call a service pack), never mind that it kept scheduling to do it overnight, would reboot and fail. Finally, I got it to download and install the latest win10, and as noted by others, it was essentially an entire re-install of the OS.
But here's where it got nasty: the user data was kept, but all of the privacy settings and default apps were reset. Actually not reset, it made you go through the OS configuration screens where it always suggests the default (share all user and browsing information with MS). The configuration was so full of dark patterns: the default is a single button on the screen, but the non default settings are accessed through an underlined link that is not very descriptive. Or turning off tracking is labeled advanced and opens another window.
This was the real scary part to me: if you are not a savvy user and know to turn off these things, Win 10 defaults will track everything you do, including your browsing activity ("to provide suggestions"). These basic privacy settings should not be hiding behind dark patterns.
> - They are continuing to try to weasel the Windows Store into my life by buying up or forcing exclusives (games), with all the drawbacks of UWP.
A neat trick is if you download something from the Windows App store and sign in for the first time without using an MSN account to log into your PC, it will ask you something like "Do you want to use this login with all Microsoft services?" And if you say yes then your login is converted to the MSN account, which you won't realize until you next need to log in.
Learned that the hard way on my primary development machine. Have a crazy long randomly generated password for my Microsoft account. Had to reset password on a different machine.
With the latest update... many of my settings for existing features were changed. My desktop background was reset to default, my choice of browser was switched back to Edge, and my taskbar icons were reset...
"Oh, cool, I was wondering where I put Edge... now I'm so happy it's back!" Wait, that's not what I said at all.
I assume all the privacy settings I tried to change to be in my favor were reset as well, and there's about 8 GB of random "Windows.old" crap cluttering my my SSD.
The update took 30 minutes on a modern computer and no less than 3 restarts to get up onto "Anniversary Edition" -- mind you there was very little to no warning it was coming, just "You have an update."
I've stood up for Microsoft numerous times with friends, but man... I don't trust them, they don't respect my settings, or my intelligence, and they are treating my hardware like they own it. I'm done with their crap... Made the decision to just deal with Apple's crap now and Ubuntu's crap now.
Couldn't tell anyone what the benefits of Windows 10 Anniversary Edition are; so the ROI just isn't there for me in putting up with Microsoft any more.
Next step: In the OEM license, include a provision that the ownership of the hardware is transferred to Microsoft and you're granted a license to plug a screen and use devices.
1 is the reason I'll never use Win10. I don't trust Linux, even in a VM. Too many people have access and I am forced to assume it's insecure by default. My assumption will never change.
2 is inconsequential. I can use a "dark theme" in Win7; all I did was disable Aero and set up my desktop the same way I had since Win95.
3 Firefox
4 Okay, good reason.
5 The Win10 (actually, WinVista+) start menu is pointless.
You trust a closed source OS from a developer already proven to be willing to engineer backdoors and lie about it over an open-source OS? Can you explain your reasoning?
I don't actually _trust_ either one, but I would certainly rank Windows below Linux.
Also note that the linux runtime in Win10 is not installed or activated by default; you need to put the OS in developer mode and install it yourself. If an attacker can do that externally, he already owns your system.
Everything you've listed is addressable by enterprise users in an AD environment. I.E., Microsoft's real customers. Using a copy of Windows 10 with no Cortana, Auto-updates, Groove, or Windows Defender right now.
Yes. If you want that control, all you have to do is buy a subscription [0]. $7 per month isn't that much to be able to control your own computer is it? That's only $84 per year or $252 every 3 years -- it's practically a discount for buying an upgrade every 3 years!
It comes with Office365 too! I'd totally buy this for the added control over home edition, but it looks like Microsoft only sells this license in bulk to big businesses in my region. Then again...it turns out that you can upgrade to enterprise without a valid key [1] and that there are no real penalties for doing this [2]. So, shrug, I guess they don't want my money - and I'm not going to use an OS that turns me into a mineable dataset.
I don't unfortunately and I haven't got around to trying it yet. If you (or anyone else on HN) finds something that works, could you post the link here?
What is "AD environment"? Sounds like maybe what I want.
I want no updates or changes of any kind without my knowledge. Indeed, before any change, I want to backup the relevant boot partition so that I can restore it if any changes are harmful or doubtful.
For Cortana, when I looked at it, everything it has I have a lot better with just my favorite programmable text editor and a few simple macros.
Uh, to reply, I have to edit my post! So, here is my reply!
My now very old and crude understanding is that Active Directory is a standard part of Windows Server and plays the role of essentially the old MIT system Kerberos for authentication.
My concern is that ASAP I need to take my Web site software currently in alpha test and have it go live. For that, for maybe just a few, first users, I could use just my development computer running Windows 7 Professional. But, also on that computer I intend to have at least one bootable partition with Windows Server.
So, with Windows Server, I could be running Microsoft's Active Directory. Fine with me.
Then that means that somehow all my bootable partitions with Windows 7 or Windows Server will not get updates or changes without my explicit permission? Hope so.
Or maybe your point is just that the automatic updates don't apply to Windows Server? I would believe so.
If you weren't familiar enough with Microsoft's products to immediately recognize that the acronym "AD" within the context of Microsoft anything, means Active Directory, then you are thousands of dollars, and possibly multiple years away from moving in that direction.
I know a lot of the fundamental concepts in computing, many from when they were nearly new. I knew nearly all the concepts long before Windows, 10, 8.1, 8, 7, Vista, XP, 2000, or NT. I didn't learn the concepts in the context of Microsoft or Windows. So, I learned the concepts before I ever saw any Microsoft acronyms.
E.g., I first learned about Kerberos from one of the first papers about it, an article in Scientific American. I learned about RSA and public keys, of course, usable with Kerberos, near the beginning. I still have the source code for an early version of Kerberos. And I learned about and used authentication, capabilities, and access control lists back not too far from their origins in Multics. Sure, later IBM called some of that Resource Access Control Facility (RACF) -- saw some of that, too.
So, at one point Microsoft in Windows Server wanted some authentication, capabilities, with encryption, etc. so borrowed Kerberos and got Active Directory. Fine. So far I've never seen even a single word of Microsoft's Active Directory documentation but likely already understand nearly all the main purposes and core ideas. For working with the actual code, I suspect that I can get the dozen or so operations I need with examples and documentation and, then, be okay on Active Directory.
Uh, in a very significant sense, Microsoft and Windows are an example of the old biology ontogeny recapitulates phylogeny. That is, each organism as it develops from fertilization goes through stages that closely repeat how the species evolved. Well, as Windows grew from Windows 95 to Windows 10, it stayed close to the development of the core ideas in computing, e.g., multiple virtual memory, demand paged, protected, with gate segments, etc., embedded operating systems with an hierarchical file system. They stayed close to the ideas in the Mach kernel. And they are staying close to the ideas in virtual machine. Some of the hardware ideas include instruction caches, data caches, multi-way set associative caches, cache invalidates, page-segment tables, address translation look aside buffers, micro-code, instruction pipelines, speculative execution, out of order execution, parallel execution, etc. I understood all of those well long before I ever touched a PC.
I have a friend with a background a little less than mine who got good with Windows Server, Active Directory, Exchange, running an e-mail server, etc. all fairly quickly. So can I.
There is an issue: I'm trying to be successful with my startup. For that, I need to learn some about computing. Okay. But I'm not trying to be a broadly competent computer professional. The difference is, I just want to know enough for my startup and am not trying to know enough for everything everyone else might encounter. So, a good computer professional can be eager to learn everything in sight (early in my career, I did a lot of that). But as a startup entrepreneur, I want to minimize how much I learn. Significant difference.
Okie doke, well, the main point being that Microsoft usually doesn't just want you to buy one thing and call it a day.
Ya gotta buy the server-class license for the OS. And then ya gotta buy a quantity of client licenses for the Professional/Business version of the OS. And then they all need some applications, and then those applications need some non-OS-application server software. And then those application servers need isolation, so each one needs a server OS license of its own, and then, and then, and then...
Setting up windows servers takes time. Not because it's particularly difficult, or technical, but because you are not in control of the process. The software distribution is in control, and will try to phone home. You will wait while the software tries to contact the Microsoft mothership, and the software will not ask you whether such activities are even possible. It will time-out network connections, and possibly refuse to work, before even prompting you about skipping steps. You may need to make phone calls. These are facts about using Microsoft as part of enterprise infrastructure in a business environment.
The entry-level prices for what you seek are here:
You will spend more than that. By the time you feel comfortable with your configuration, it will be time to upgrade, introducing forced changes to your process, and you will spend more money. You will spend more money on more Microsoft products, and also on peripheral costs which may not be expected but will likely be driven by compatibility choices.
And by the way, Windows 7? They will not even sell you that anymore. Mocrosoft's goal in life is to retire that version of their operating system, and require migration to newer versions.
More to the point, though, all of this was their old business model, more than a decade ago. They are no long interested in this sort of sales pitch, unless you are The Government, or a Financial Institution. Nowadays, they want your servers on their cloud (Azure). It may be cheaper doing that. If you are an addict, already hooked on Microsoft, and there's no going back, consider exploring those options.
If you must be in possession of physical hardware, and if you must run stand-alone systems for the purposes of testing and developing your latest thing, Microsoft gets very expensive very fast, in terms of both time and money.
I see so many people stuck in the gaming situation and there are no practical solutions, the only way out involves an entire industry changing direction together. I'd like to see a video card manufacturer (probably AMD since they seem to be the underdog in a 2 dog fight) start a Linux-first campaign, even if it's only for select cards.
AMD already is making a good open source driver for Linux, and both AMD and nVidia has been making proprietary drivers for Linux for a while.
Also AMD seemly releases some "Pro" features for workstation on Linux first.
The problem of Linux gaming is not the graphics drivers, in fact this part has been working "ok" for a while now.
The problem with Linux gaming is:
1. Audio is still a mess, the fastest audio library still is OSS4 (not 3), that won't ever get in the mainstream distributions (sometimes it is even explicitly banned and will get you banned from forums and irc servers if you ask about it), JACK still is finnicky to work with, PA is still buggy and slow, and ALSA although much better now, is also too slow and has terrible API (while coding for OSS, any version, is very easy).
2. Desktop is still a pain to setup, even the most "GUI-happy" distros still have problems here and there, when I asked some random people about it, I got outright hostile replies, people telling me they deliberately don't want to make Linux easier, because they don't want "dumb people using something they are not worth using", mind you, this wasn't once, or in one community, more than one person shared this view with me.
3. Some people in the community are outright hostile to games, and even sabotage efforts to make games work better, I saw a flamewar where one guy was claiming games were purely dumb entertainment, and that people that played games weren't not only inferior humans, but people that deserved Windows, as punishment. This guy was of the opinion that no GUI server should ever support exclusive fullscreen properly, that instead they should have all features focused on "Work" features always.
4. Lots of other random hardware is a pain to setup on Linux, even things that usually don't cross people minds, for example I couldn't figure how to make Linux properly support my motherboard Super I/O chip, that is even a common one, I even convinced the manufacturer to give me the chip datasheet, but I couldn't even figure to what project I would need to contribute code. (as for what the Super I/O chip does: control the motherboard sensors, fans and power distribution, including voltage values and regulation commands on my motherboard)
The only way this is going to work, is if some company with a lot invested in the gaming ecosystem (e.g. Valve) spends some of those billions of dollars to make a ground up OS from the Linux kernel, similar to Android.
The ONLY usable Linux "distros" at the moment are hobbyist projects. This includes Ubuntu, Debian, Mint, etc. etc.
No serious company or individual that relies on a predictable and reliable user experience is going to use any of the modern flavors of Linux. Someone has to spend the money to do this right, and do it right once and for all.
Obviously, Stallman was right and every closed source OS is going the way of 1984 by making the users the product and gathering every single keystroke and mouse click in order to monetize you. As a convenient side effect, they are creating a perfect turn-key totalitarian system that could be used to devastating effect with the necessary political will.
Greed is good? Apparently it isn't good enough, because Gabe Newel would rather hoard his billions than spend on critical infrastructure for his company's future.
A Linux OS needs to be built from the kernel by professional and well paid developers who don't fork every single repo if they don't like tab spacing.
Democracy doesn't work in engineering, it doesn't work in business, and it probably doesn't work in politics. Linux works because Linus is a "benevolent" dictator. That's why the kernel is such a marvel of engineering. Because he oversees every commit. The same needs to happen downstream.
I would love to use Linux for gaming, but the vast majority of the games I play and plan to play are Windows only despite the advances made in Linux gaming systems. I ran Steam OS for a while and I play some games in Ubuntu but Linux Gaming just isn't there yet, at least for me.
This likely won't change (again, for me) because not only would more games need to be released on Linux into the future, but a significant portion of my existing gaming library would need to be ported. I have spent years and considerable money building my gaming library and with minor hiccups almost all of them can be run on modern Windows due to its focus on backwards compatibility along with the efforts of the community.
I suppose there is a breaking point where there are enough newer games being released, older ones ported, and continuing annoyances from Microsoft that I would use Linux as my main gaming OS. I wonder how long that will take? It's frustrating to say the least as gaming is far and away my favorite hobby.
Keep Win 7 for your Windows games library and buy new stuff only if it has announced SteamOS/Linux support? That's what I am doing now. The more of us behaving like that, the sooner we can make Linux more attractive and profitable to game makers. Many game engines already have a Linux support, so it should be easier to port/test games to Linux.
I am running SteamOS on Zotac NEN with currently 39 AAA games and frankly barely spend any time on Windows for gaming, and prefer buying games that have announced SteamOS support. I also have Win 7 & Win 10 on that computer just in case I need it for Uplay/Origin stuff or DX12-only (1TB M.2 SSD with 500GB for SteamOS, 250GB for either Win 7 and Win 10 and 2TB HDD for storage). Surprisingly, everything works just fine (I had one complete freeze in the past few months). It can work nicely even in 4K in Tomb Raider, GRID Autosport or Metro, though on lower details. Frankly, I know I can get 25% more fps on Windows, but what difference would it make for me to run GRID at 120fps when it runs on 90fps already? And Linux can only get better so why sticking to Windows?
With a few word substitutions I could use this to describe my experience on Android.
Background: highly experience Linux user. On a budget, and move, needed something for basic connectivity. Wanted a larger tablet.
9-10" Nexus devices nowhere to be found in brick-and-mortar stores (and hard to come by online as well). Almost always crippled by pathetically small storage.
My Samsung Tab A isn't rootable, flashable, had an absolutely useless userland installed (Termux has helped some with that), and now insists that the tools I've used to try enforcing my will are malware, and won't stop nagging me over this.
The default featureset is so pathetically poor that I could neither figure out where disk space was being used, or address moving things elsewhere, necessary for an OS upgrade. Which now fails on account of rooting attempts.
I'm pretty fucking pissed at Google, Android, and Samsung at this point.
And that's before getting to hardware issues.
Offering computers to the public at large is apparently an intractable problem.
(There's another set of gripes I could write about OS X. And I just commented on Debian's fucking up 20 year old mouse drivers.)
You're trying to root Android to get what you want, and Samsung doesn't want you to do that.
Unfortunately there's no better option out there. If you had an iphone you'd have even less control over your phone.
I'm in the same boat, I have a Samsung at the moment because the hardware is nice, but I'm pretty dissatisfied with the bloatware and IMO Android in general is getting further and further away from satisfying the power users.
The default Gallery app is a UI abomination, and you can't completely replace it with something better (the Camera app will always use the Samsung Gallery App to review photos, there's no way to change it).
I'm aware iOS isn't a better option. There's a reason I've not gone that route.
I'm absolutely irate at Samsung and Google/Android. Once again, the latter company is absolutely burning up goodwill it's engendered among technical users.
I'm keeping my eye on alternatives. There's a Spanish-made Ubuntu phone which might be suitable.
Otherwise, a small ultralight notebook could be useful, but from whom? I've run Thinkpads for nearly 20 years, but find current offerings abominable. I don't care for Apple hardware precisely because of keyboards and mouse/trackpad options.
Samsung's iron fist over apps is similarly pathological.
> You can't remove worthless apps like Microsoft Groove and OneDrive integration.
You can, it's just not super-easy. I've done both. Groove was pretty easy but OneDrive took a few steps.
I almost have file explorer configured in a good way for me -- it actually seems much more flexible than previous versions even if half that flexibility is only available in regedit.
OneDrive comes back to the File Explorer after each Windows 10 big update, even if you disable its icon with the registry editor. The same happens to the library folders (Videos, Pictures etc.).
Yes, many customizations are lost with the "big" updates, including disabling telemetry and cortana as well as tons of settings. That's because they aren't _really_ updates; they are complete OS installs. Your old windows directory is literally renamed to windows.OLD.
This is my largest complaint with Windows 10. In particular, it resets file associations on every major patch. Supposedly this is because applications are no longer supposed to set associations themselves, the user is supposed to do it individually for a file of each type through the Windows interface, and Win10 is "fixing broken associations".
Seeing more negative news about Win 10 on HN interests me. HN, what I regard, a big developer news site - I wonder if Microsoft cares.
I am sure and probably stating the obvious here. Developers are a group Microsoft does care about - devs eventually drives some of the cogs in their grand scheme. Making noise here will get their attention, more than making noise on some consumer forum.
Most of it seems completely misguided if you ask me. I'm no fan of all the tracking stuff, but lets be real. Everyone in here with an iPhone or an Android phone has the same experience yet i don't see them complaining that their iphone/android device updates itself, has tracking info and locks them into stores and such. It only seems unfair when MS does it.
I remember the day when people used to be enthusiastic about their computer and saw updates not just as things getting in the way. For example, the recent win10 update for anniversary update. Are people really bitching their finally getting a native browser with extensions that is fast and has gesture/touch capability second to none on the tablet form facter? are people really pissed they're getting linux subsystem with Ubuntu 14.04 built in? are people really pissed that the store experience has improved drastically that the apps you buy work on xbox, pc, phone, tablet and hololens?
I don't get it. Groove is awesome. Its updated biweekly now and the developers are on twitter accepting feedback. OneDrive works well.. the nagging of onedrive can be uninstalled by not using the desktop app..
i won't go into every detail, but the experience of windows 10 is only as good as you make it out to be. I think most people are just largely misguided at what MS is trying to achieve and if they honestly don't like it, they don't have to buy it.
BTW, the upgrade stuff was pretty hoaky too but again, i for the life of me can't find a reason not to upgrade if the upgrade was offered. It's like having an ios device and swearing to stay on iOS 8 just because or having a linux PC and sticking to debian 6 just because.
> i don't see them complaining that their iphone/android device updates itself
You can choose not to update in both of these cases.
> people used to be enthusiastic about their computer ...
I'm not upset at those features being available. I am upset about them being added without any input from me and without a chance to stop them from being installed. I have no use for most of what you mention, I don't want them installed, and if they are installed without my consent I want to be able to remove them. I own my computer, not Microsoft.
> the nagging of onedrive can be uninstalled by not using the desktop app
You have to regedit to remove OneDrive from Explorer.
> if they honestly don't like it, they don't have to buy it.
Many people didn't buy it and were upgraded unknowingly. I did buy it, but that doesn't mean I cannot be upset at the current situation.
> for the life of me can't find a reason not to upgrade if the upgrade was offered
That's your choice, and many others. Neither you nor Microsoft should override those choices. If someone does choose to upgrade to 10 that also doesn't mean they must further consent to every other new decision Microsoft makes for Windows.
Hoaky? I'd go with deceptive, misleading, shady or dishonest instead of hoaky.
So you really think it's even in the ballpark of ok to force an update on people?
Personally, I don't have a need to update just so my OS is called Win 10 instead of Win 7. Plus I hate the Win 10 interface. I don't need touch enabled interfaces for my desktop OS.
There are many reasons why not to upgrade. Compatibility is a major one, unsupported hardware is another. The forced tracking is another. Need I go on? That's enough reasons for me.
> Most of it seems completely misguided if you ask me. I'm no fan of all the tracking stuff, but lets be real. Everyone in here with an iPhone or an Android phone has the same experience yet i don't see them complaining that their iphone/android device updates itself, has tracking info and locks them into stores and such. It only seems unfair when MS does it.
That may sadly be true. Microsoft is following Google and Apple here but you hear surprisingly few complaints about them.
I wish that were true, but I think MS is more interested in tricking users into being locked in to their software and selling their data than caring about power users/developers.
I think it will bite them in the ass eventually. Non-techie people will follow the recommendations of power users, and they are really doing a good job of pissing off all the power users.
Your last few points are annoying for sure, but the first 3 are the result of 20+ years of Microsoft's poor reputation for security due to its prominence and numerous flaws.
I completely sympathize with Microsoft's plight here, and while you might not be among those who are constantly infected, the number of people who do end up having problems is so high that they're willing to lose you as a cost of keeping the other folks safe.
We're all safer for this, too, because fewer infected computers on the Internet means fewer proxies for spam and other malignant behavior.
I completely understand why this is the default behavior, but there should be an "I'm not a normie" switch somewhere that allows me to control my experience. The Pro edition was originally that way, but as I understand it this is no longer the case and is similarly controlling.
I wish I could upvote this about 30 times. For every real Windows security expert slash power user in the wild, there's about 30 pimple-encrusted besotted teenagers out there who just want to run some warez on their parent's computer and will click whatever setting, run whatever software and make whatever Registry edits are necessary to get the game their parents won't buy them up and running.
The typical home user is not a sysadmin, doesn't want to be a sysadmin and will not put in the effort to be a sysadmin. Microsoft is building Windows to be safe for them. This is a net good for all of us. And underneith it all, Windows is still Windows, which puts it miles ahead of its real competitors (Android, iOS and I guess ChromeOS) in terms of allowing users to really own their device.
This is all great, but I am not a typical home user and there is no option for me on the Windows Edition Menu. I can buy Home or Pro, that's it. Pro used to be the "I know what I'm doing" version but this is no longer the case. Enterprise let's you do whatever you want but requires far more investment and effort to run just so that I can control my computer.
Edit to reply to cwyers below me as I cannot reply further:
Do you honestly think that running your own Active Directory system, calling Microsoft Enterprise Sales, arguing with them and probably failing to buy a single Enterprise license, and ultimately buying a pack of Enterprise licenses I do not need is required of me to be "on the same Internet as you"? All I want is close to the level of control I can get on previous versions of Windows which pale in comparison to any Linux distribution. Does this mean that anyone using a Linux distro that doesn't automatically update shouldn't be allowed on your internet? Surely if your computer is always up to date you have nothing to fear?
I am unsure how you are equating me to an anti-vaxxer simply because I want to control how and when my computer updates. I don't believe I ever said I do not ever want an update, I want to know what they are and control when they are applied as is standard on every other OS I know of.
I am also not making any ideological argument to privacy. In fact, I don't care too awful much about the telemetry in Windows 10. I don't really like it but I almost exclusive use my Windows machine for gaming so there isn't much I'm scared of MS finding out about there. I simply want to control how my computer works.
That's a spurious argument. What's important is that the OS forces updates _by default_.
Sure, some of the people that turn it off overestimate their own capabilities, and that will lead to infection. But that's a very small portion of the total population, the vast majority of which will leave everything set to default.
Long story, but my Surface Pro 2 wound up with Win10 Pro. The Pro version is slightly more configurable for privacy than Home, but only the Enterprise version can completely turn off the telemetry and so on. Of course Enterprise is not easily available to end-users and it is expensive.
There are some utilities available that are supposed to improve the privacy/security of Win10 installations, e.g., [0].
My wife kept asking me if she should upgrade to Win10 and I said "don't do it". Since Win8.1 will be supported until 2023 or so, it really didn't matter. Now, thankfully, the "free upgrade" period is over and she won't be nagged to do the upgrade.
After all the years in the game, we'd think MS should know better than pulling all this crap on its users.
> Note: Windows Defender may report the EXE as a trojan (Win32/Pocyx.C!cl), and may therefore prevent you from extracting the EXE to anywhere on your computer. Set up an exclusion in Settings > Update & Security > Windows Defender > Exclusions by adding the folder you intend to extract the EXE to.
I swear, it seems like people are okay with the idea of everyone BUT Microsoft have access to all their personal information on their PCs. Why would anyone install software that has this kind of recklessness in the official documentation?
Not quite sure what recklessness you are referring to. If necessary, the exception is only for the one directory the EXE is in. IIRC the program isn't really installed, it just needs to run once to make changes in firewall rules, etc., that prevent MS telemetry. AFAIK it doesn't increase external access to the computer being configured.
After making modifications, the exclusion can be deleted if desired. If you have more info about risks of using the dwt utility, I'd be real interested to hear about it.
No, uh, look, running an EXE one finds hosted on GitHub, deliberately disabling the virus-checking on that EXE file and running the EXE is the reckless behavior. Even assuming that the person who made the EXE didn't mean so maliciously, any kind of a MitM attack or other way of sureptuously putting a payload in that EXE is an attack vector.
Why is it particularly worse than downloading a binary hosted anywhere else, upstream binaries being the standard way of obtaining software on Windows?
As for the virus checker, their program's raison d'etre is making registry changes. It's not difficult to imagine that being flagged by Windows Defender is unavoidable.
I think the recent situation with SourceForge, where binaries were changed to add a malware-ridden installer[1] shows why GitHub is potentially worse than trusting some other provider. I think it's a low likelihood that something like that happens with GitHub ever, much less soon, and SourceForge has reversed that action already. But it is one reason to potentially trust binaries from a third party like that less.
But that's not really the thrust of the point. It's software from an unknown provenance, and yes, that's pretty standard for Windows but it's not great and it's getting worse all the time. Virus scanners are not a great solution, but not having them are worse. Without any kind of a checksum on that page, it's impossible to verify that the binary you have is the one that you should have. (Not that it's guaranteed that you can do so if there is a checksum.) So you're already in a bad situation, and you're turning off one of the few safeguards you have.
As for registry changes getting flagged by Defender... programs that change the registry aren't rare.[2] They do not universally share this problem. I imagine it's probably a false positive and I don't know how it could be avoided, but the proposed remedy is reckless.
Yes I'm strongly considering downgrading to 8.1. It's time for a fresh install anyways. I dread when that goes EOL because I'll have no where else to turn but whatever Windows is out at the time.
Honestly, I do not know. Telemetry isn't my biggest gripe with Windows 10, but besides that at some point the only version of Windows with security support will be Windows 10 or some descendant of it and I have no reason to believe my issues with 10 will be fixed by then.
As I said elsewhere, I'd love to be *nix only but my gaming preferences will not allow it.
I think requiring the user to boot a Linux live CD and do some voodoo would be enough. Computer would have to self destruct if you failed the steps tho.
They don't need illusions about their basic computing skills. They need a drive-by installer, malware, or "tips'n'tricks" guide that gets them to do this.
People don't need to understand tools and systems to use them. Hell, they'll use things for millennia without knowing how they work (quite literally).
If they're running malware with administrator rights, they're already lost by definition.
The kind of people that would leave settings like this at the default generally don't read tips n' tricks guides to tweaking windows. They simply don't care about that sort of thing. Of course _some_ do, as you would no doubt reply, but again it comes down to numbers-- that volume doesn't justify locking it down.
They aren't clueful users so they could be socially engineered to turn off updates, but once you get to that point why wouldn't you just get them to run a RAT as administrator? That is the end goal, after all. And once you own their system you can turn off updates yourself.
Lastly, we're talking about a switch in the GUI here-- it is already possible to completely disable telemetry and automatic updates on Windows 10. You just need to hack through the registry and group policy or use a third party tool to do it. Anyone who takes control of your computer can do it remotely.
My point was: create an easily bypassed system, and the black hats will come up with ways for people to easily bypass the system.
All the children aren't above average. Your average computer user -- even those who are otherwise intelligent and capable of handling Shit The World Throws Them -- isn't particularly tech savvy.
It's like anti-terrorism defenses. The terrorist has to get lucky once. The defender has to be lucky always. Microsoft here are the defender, and they're trying to keep idiots from fucking up their systems. No slander intended, it's just reality.
Disabling safety systems (which is what we're talking about) is simply one of many ways to make larger-scale compromises of the system far more easy to do.
I'm not saying that it's impossible for Microsoft to offer this, or that they shouldn't. And I'd be hugely frustrated myself if I had to deal with this stuff (I don't run Windows, and won't. Hell these days I barely use computers if I can possibly help it, other than my own. And I hate those increasingly as well.)
But dealing with the public at billion-plus user scale is hard.
No. The same security patches that are applied to 10 also apply all the way back to 7, and even earlier. To the extent they don't, it's because Microsoft no longer wants them to apply to 7 after the end of its support life. (Which, last I checked, hasn't happened yet.)
Do you think they rewrote the whole kernel in 10, or even a big chunk of it?
I upgraded willingly, got annoyed by that kind of stuff and downgraded again back to 7 which I'm happy with. There was nothing terrible about 10 it's probably better overall, I just didn't want the weird extras.
> You can't turn off Windows Update. It will always end up downloading new updates.
Just an idea, I don't know if it would work: there's a setting where you can tell Windows that you are on a "metered connection", which supposedly makes Windows postpone various background tasks until you tell it that you are ready for bandwidth abuse (which never happens). I doubt that this would influence any connections by third party applications, so it should do little or no harm. The question is, would Windows let itself get fooled so easily?
You can set ethernet as a metered connection in the registry and the Winaero Tweaker tool can do it for you. However, when I did it, I found manually initiated windows updates stalling on "Downloading Updates 0%" so I don't recommend that solution.
Instead, configure a group policy as documented below.
Note that Windows respects the "download only" policy but does NOT respect the "no reboot after updates" policy. To stop Windows from rebooting after installing updates, follow steps labeled #2 at the link below.
> There is probably a registry value you can change to do so though.
Thanks, but with "probably" I sense that I'm about to get into what I call "mud wrestling" or hours or days of just throwing wild guesses against a wall to see if any appear to stick. I've only got 365 days a year, and I've given away far too many of them to such mud wrestling. GOD knows I do NOT want to do more of that.
For physical things, say, an alarm clock that won't quit making a noise, often can use a big hammer or an axe to solve the problem. Too often in mud wrestling with sick-o software, I wanted such a hammer or axe.
The EFF OP and this thread have me literally just TERRIFIED that my work with Windows will have me spending a huge fraction of my time that I do NOT have mud wrestling with some version of Windows. Again, GOD knows well I do NOT want mud wrestling.
To Microsoft: I am trying, desperately trying, 12 hours a day, 7 days a week, to the limits of strength of my body, to get my software written for my Web site startup. For my software, I have 80,000 lines of typing for the real-time parts and another 20,000 for the off-line parts. I want, desperately NEED, to do the rest of the work of my startup. NO WAY do I have in addition the time, money, strength, and energy to fight Microsoft software for no good reason. I want NO updates, NO changes, without my well informed, explicit permission. I want NO data sent from my computer elsewhere without my well informed, explicit permission.
Cortana or whatever it is called? I wouldn't hit a hog in the butt with all the copies of Cortana on the planet. To me the work and objectives of Cortana are insulting, outrageous, patronizing, demeaning, intrusive, and worse. I don't want it.
What do I want from Microsoft? (1) Fix the outrageous security problems Microsoft has been struggling with back at least to XP. (2) Do much better technical writing in technical documentation of Microsoft software.
Then I want to finish my startup with no more attention to anything from Microsoft.
Speaking as a veteran Microsoft administrator, in total seriousness: buy a Mac. If you have a corporate network complete with good administrators, Windows can be made to work well enough. If you are a lone professional, Macs are secure, low-maintenance and have an OS designed by people that care about your privacy. Windows is probably not worth your time or energy right now unless there a specific piece of Windows-only software that you must use.
Okay, and when my Web site software, with several special back end servers, is all working well, what platform do I use to keep, say, an 8 core AMD processor at 4.0 GHz busy?
On Windows, I'm aiming at Windows Server (WS). My initial usage of WS will be just dirt simple. As I get revenue, for more I will pick up a phone, call an expert, maybe you, pay for an hour to walk me through the most recent issue, take notes, and then move on until the next issue.
For Windows, I have used the .NET Framework, Visual Basic .NET, ASP.NET, ADO.NET, a little of platform invoke to call some C code, etc. and, of course, Microsoft's Internet Information Server (IIS) to sit between my Web pages and the users. I wish the .NET documentation had better technical writing, but otherwise I'm from happy enough to thrilled with .NET. If I am to use .NET heavily, then I sense that to minimize mud wrestling with weak documentation and too many bugs (e.g., from trying to get .NET to run well on iOS or Linux) I should stay on Windows.
Maybe implicit in your suggestion is that I would deploy for production on some Linux system? Okay, which one? And how many loose ends, third party, open source, do it yourself issues would I encounter?
Roughly I get the impression that for high end production use of Linux, I would be nearly rolling my own operating system -- this could be wrong. I'm eager to have good information on any operating system I use, but really I want to draw a line at the operating system, compilers, etc. and not cross that line.
At this point, I about have to go ahead with Windows. Maybe I'll get some books Windows Server 101 for Dummies or some such.
As no-one else seems to have replied to the parent as I write this, let me just reassure you that if you do ever want to look into using a Linux platform for the server side of your system, it's not so big and scary.
There are lots of Linux distributions. For general purpose server work, something big and well-supported like Debian would be a sensible starting point. You can install a relatively bare bones system to start with, and then use Debian's package manager to install and keep up-to-date most other software you're likely to need without having to build anything manually yourself.
You have several decent web servers available. Apache is the 800lb gorilla, huge but does just about everything and very thoroughly documented. There are some good alternatives like Nginx and Lighttpd as well.
There are also plenty of tools that you can add to do things like load balancing and caching if you need them.
You have several decent database servers available. Postgres is a solid choice for most things if you want a traditional relational database. Again, there are plausible alternatives such as MariaDB if your needs are slightly different. The main "NoSQL" databases also tend to run on Linux if that's what you're looking for.
Almost every major programming language has tools available to run back end code in that language on a Linux system.
Basically, the only thing you give up by moving to Linux on the back end is the Microsoft-specific technologies like IIS, SQL Server, .Net and C#. (There have even been some efforts to get .Net and C# supported usefully on non-Windows platforms, but I have no experience with those so won't comment further here.)
There is obviously a learning curve to configure these things if you haven't used Linux before, so I wouldn't necessarily recommend jumping ship if you're already set up on Windows servers and comfortable administering them. But if you do ever decide to switch, there are plenty of tutorials and HOWTO guides for setting up things like web servers and databases on Linux as well, and it's the kind of thing where you could probably get up to speed on the basics within a week or two of homework and experimentation.
Nice. Thanks. I needed that. I was hoping for something like that.
Okay, if my startup becomes a big thing, then maybe I'll have the servers all on some version of Linux. For the conversion, if I could consider doing it now, then it would be easy enough for a team of a dozen if my company gets to 100+ people.
As it is, except for nonsense interruptions not due to Windows or Microsoft but would be much the same for Linux, I am a few weeks of good work from going live. I shouldn't jump ship now.
Your original post just specified "Web site", so I assumed that you'd be using an Open Source stack - mea culpa.
Without writing a long reply - I sympathize with where you are coming from. I spent 5 years as a .NET developer between admin jobs, and the apparently all-encompassing, answer-for-everything nature of the Microsoft stack was attractive. If we could have stayed inside the lines of what Microsoft wanted to provide at the time, it would have been pleasant.
One of the advantages of switching to an Open Source platform was being able to access a much wider range of options for things, including hosting. One of these is the full-service Heroku platform - there are Web developers that only deploy to Heroku, and never set up servers.
Why don't you just put a firewall between the machine you want to stay untouched and the Internet. Block all outgoing connection attempts to Microsoft servers. "Firewall block windows update" seems to return relevant results.
That seems like a good "big hammer" sort of solution to me.
Why don't you want security updates? Personally, on all OSes I use I just want security updates to happen. My time is too valuable for me to go reading about every minor security update, when I will just install it anyway.
Unfortunately, Microsoft of recent times has demonstrated that they are even willing to bundle things they want to force on you within "security" updates. Many commentators at the time suggested that this was a line they should never have crossed and will pay for in loss of trust later.
So, in this tread I mentioned that I
wanted to select when to have updates and
didn't want automatic updates and that
because of my concern that at least in
principle updates could break existing
development tools or running production
code.
So, if I'm not ready to take the time,
money, and effort to respond to such
breakage, then I want to delay updates
until I am.
In particular for my development and
production systems, an automatic update
that breaks crucial tools or working code
could be a disaster for my startup.
Okay, now we have a current example of
where a Microsoft Windows 10 update broke
old code that was working.
My main interest is my startup. So, what I really care about is my development system and, then, my production system. Since the development seems nearly done and is in alpha test, soon I will be highly interested in my production system.
One of my concerns is a standard, old one: On a system used for development or production, don't change any of the tools until are ready to accept the extra work of fixing any new problems the changes cause.
So, just delay changes to fit my work schedule. E.g., I don't want some change, intended to be good, break something in my tools or my production software. Such things have been known to happen; I haven't seen such in Windows, but at one point I was around some high end production systems where one hour of outage in a year meant that the CIO lost his bonus and two hours, his job. No joke. Walk around the raised floor? Not a chance! They were uptight. A change or update? Fine: Run it on the side for no less than six months. Well, the fundamentals of that situation have not changed.
Really, soon into production, I will want a test system on the side, put any changes on that system first, run it with the best test workload I can, and after some weeks usually implement the changes on the production systems.
On Windows, I've gotten good at using the old NTBACKUP to backup a copy of a boot partition and, later restore it. I have several such backups for my current, main boot partition.
When I get closer to production, if some automatic updates were applied to a production boot partition, I might save the partition but I definitely would restore back to the version before the updates.
My main interest is not as a consumer user but as a developer of a startup that could become serious, maybe an average of an hour a week of 75% of the people with access to the Internet -- IMHO my software has by a wide margin the best solution for a problem serious for nearly every user of the Internet. That's my main interest.
While not defending Microsoft (my first advice would be: don't use Windows), there's a free app called "ShutUp10" that allows you to fix almost everything in your list above.
Jury is not out, shutup10 turns off "official' telemetry services. Problem is MS build in telemetry into everything now, explorer, cortana, edge, crypto service or dnscache, _everything_ calls home regularly ~once per hour during ordinary use.
Only way to 99.9% block telemetry is to switch blocking all outgoing by default in firewall and whitelist what you use. This still leaves DNS exfiltration route :(
Did you read the comments where, if you do block the standard ports, the telemetry system in Win10 goes all subversive botnet-like and starts connecting on random ports to random hosts in order to get out of the firewall?
I think he talks about W10 ignoring hosts file and calling home using raw IPs if you block usual domains. This still gets blocked with firewall.
DNS is a problem tho, I dont know of any dns clients with per application whitelist functionality :( This means every program on the system can make dns queries.
afaik Windows firewall is not able to block loopback communications, can komodo?.
I dont want to give up dns caching, and since I dont know of any way to firewall localhost traffic in windows I figured only way would be in dns caching program itself.
So far only way to prevent dns tunneling I can come up with involves giving up dnscache :(. To make up lost performance you could maybe run dnsmasq on the router, or in a virtual machine? or somehow force dnscache to listen on virtual network adapter?
Why would an app developer NOT embrace a technology that would allow them to write once and run anyware from phone to tablet to desktop to tv and hololens?
Most of these people are projecting their perceived issues with the platform, not the reality thereof.
Steam still runs great on Windows 10 and Windows 10 is steams largest OS base already.
UWP solves a lot of problems with win32.. a lot. It was premature in windows 8 but has matured well with anniversary update. (being sandboxed is probably the best consumer feature ever..)
> ...from phone to tablet to desktop to tv and hololens...
You mean the Microsoft phone, Microsoft tablet, to Microsoft desktop, Microsoft (XBOX) TV and Microsoft Hololens?
Well, nobody uses Windows Phone and hardly anybody uses Windows tablets or Hololens...so that leaves XBOX and Windows desktop. I don't make games for a living, I make business apps - and no businesses are using XBOX....so there's literally no reason for me as a developer to go out of my way to build UWP apps for these business customers. Also, Win32 apps work fine on my Windows tablets.
> Most of these people are projecting their perceived issues with the platform, not the reality thereof.
Not at all. The reality is that UWP is a sandbox and I don't want to program in a sandbox. I also refuse to make programs that can only be sold through the Microsoft app store (and asking customers to enable a developer feature in order to side-load my app is out of the question.)
> UWP solves a lot of problems with win32...
It also threw away a lot of win32. A lot. But it doesn't matter to me because I'm not touching it until they loosen it up. And they will, because nobody else is touching it either.
Surface sells a lot of devices.. a few billion dollars worth a year. THere are lots of tablets out there. Pretty silly to ignore them all and be willfully ignorant about it.
Sandboxing is a good thing, it protects systems from developers. It's why even on operational tooling, a lot of teams are moving to containers to "sandbox" apps through cgroups and contain them in a re-usable fashion.
A lot of win32 apps are even being packaged for the store so they too are sandboxed having the luxury of knowing what state your app is in at all times is an awesome thing thing to developers that care about knowing that state.
I own multiple Windows tablets, so I'm certainly not being willfully ignorant.
You're being willfully ignorant that A) anybody is buying them to use UWP apps. They're not. Microsoft's app store isn't doing shit compared to Apple's or Google's. And B) that the sales numbers are anything to cheer about. They're not. Last quarter Apple did 7 billion dollars in iPads vs Microsoft's 1 billion in Surface.
Universal Windows Platform. A development platform for making apps that work similarly on regular desktop Windows as well as the touch interfaces of Surface/Windows Phone, etc.
> If you turn off Windows Defender Real Time Protection it explicitly tells you "You can turn this off, but if it's off for a while we'll turn it back on". It turns itself on upon next reboot, it seems.
I don't really see this as a negative but to each his own. You're probably better off just using Windows Defender than some third-party A/V solution anyway since they're all pretty useless.
> You can't turn off Windows Update. It will always end up downloading new updates.
While this is true prior to the AU where you could at least change it to not automatically check for updates. You would then have to explicitly check for updates but yes it would then automatically download and install them when you did.
I believe since the group policy no longer works in RS1 it will wind up always checking for updates now. You can thankfully still disable getting driver updates through Windows Update using registry tweaks.
> You can't remove worthless apps like Microsoft Groove and OneDrive integration.
No but you can disable/not use them. You can disable OneDrive in the Startup tab of the task manager.
> They are continuing to try to weasel the Windows Store into my life by buying up or forcing exclusives (games), with all the drawbacks of UWP.
I think they pushed games on UWP too early. After the AU (RS1) I'm not sure if there are any game breaking issues for UWP games anymore other than the fact that they're on the Windows Store if you consider that to be a negative.
But there's an obvious solution to this and it's simply to vote with your wallet. Don't like games using the Windows Store? Don't buy them. It's that simple.
Honest question here: Why tech community is so hard with Windows mandatory updates, and kind of flexible with other companies? Maybe its just me, but the ratio of posts and articles blaming Microsoft for this practice seems to be disproportional. I mean, my Mac asked me 875 times about accepting something about iTunes. No matter how many times i click on decline, it keeps appearing there all the time. Same thing with Chrome: It got silently updated (just figured it with last update that brought Material Design to the interface). If avoiding updates to a system is kind of a user right, then it would be fair to have an option to stop updates in cloud based systems as well (IE: My email service).
Your Mac updates are indefinitely truly avoidable despite the constant nagging. You declined 875 times, and you can decline 875 times more, and forever after that.
Windows 10, in home edition, only lets you delay a limited time. There is a finite amount of possible total time before windows will no longer operate without applying the update. It will apply the updates on restart, or forcibly restart your computer to apply them. This is not the case on any other OS that I am aware of.
You are correct that Chrome applies updates when it is restarted, which is similar, but subtly different behavior. Chrome does not destroy my running context to forcibly restart. I've had the "red" about tag indicating critically out of date for a few weeks on a laptop, with no issues.
IMO it does not matter what other people are doing. I'm paying for this software so I want control (over my own hardware). Mobile is a lost cause but I literally can't afford to fight my desktop OS. It must work and be reliable.
Maybe I would accept forced security updates if they allowed live updates. Having to restart your computer is awful.
But that's not even the worse problem. It reset settings, install things you removed, services you don't want, remove features you had before for no reason. Not to mention drivers and all the update problems people are reporting. If there's a chance to break, I must be able to choose when I want to upgrade.
I'm willing to pay more for not having to worry about telemetry, MS account and all that bs.
Right? That's something about Windows that I hate; having to restart for an update.
Microsoft, with it's endless supply of money, is somehow completely incapable of live OS updates?
Hell, Linux has live updates; I don't even have to restart to update my kernel! I would expect Microsoft to somehow take this existing technology, cater it to their system and call it a brand new feature like they did with the resizable command prompt. "Look at this revolutionary thing we're doing in Windows 10!"
Obviously I'm generalizing or assuming that they would be able to do it; I know nothing of how Windows works. It could be impossible without completely rewriting the entire thing. It's just my ultimate pet peeve about Windows.
Restarting a modern windows PC these days just takes a few seconds, its not a big problem. Updating my mac still requires restarts and hell, even ubuntu requires reboots. Not everyone ksplices their system and even ksplice warns you a reboot is the best option.
If you think the resizable window is all they did with windows10, you're sorely mistaken :) Windows is moving to a shared kernel (minwin) that works on servers, pcs, desktops, phones, consoles and hololens. If you write an app for UWP it can be installed on all of these devices and has interfaces to operate natively on them. UWP is sandboxed too so its more secure than Win32.
MS is moving to a quick release cadence where the patches aren't just bug fixes, but they're actually pumping out feature after feature and fixing bugs / requests submitted through the insider program.
They're adding / fixing html issues in edge, plugins for edge, increasing features to UWP apis, adding support for devices/cpus, streamlining gaming support.
It takes my surface pro 4 about 3 seconds to go from off to logged in using my face. Each update has improved the experience from what was "Cool" but barely worked to now just working all the time and now supporting biometric authentication for web apps and other features - because they have updated and patched the OS to integrate such.
anywho.. i love computers.. i run windows, i'm typing this on my macbook and i'm playking pokemon on my iphone and my day job is running thousands of centos and ubuntu workstations.
tired of this misguided rage and jumping to assumptions. we as a community should be better than this.
> Restarting a modern windows PC these days just takes a few seconds, its not a big problem
> It takes my surface pro 4 about 3 seconds to go from off to logged in using my face
And what proportion of Windows users in the world have SSDs, latest-gen Intel processors, and Intel RealSense cameras?
And even being okay with the time it takes to reboot, it is not okay to have all of one's work suddenly interrupted by an insolent piece of software (that is supposed to be working for the user).
>"MS is moving to a quick release cadence where the patches aren't just bug fixes, but they're actually pumping out feature after feature and fixing bugs"
Since when did actually knowing what you're talking about become shilling?
MS has moved to a release cadence that pushes out new features annually in major updates (anniversary updates) - and on patch tuesdays for other updates.
These other updates can include new drivers, new firmwares, fixes to windows runtime, new windows runtime apis (they're always adding to the bluetooth stack so on and so forth), updates to browser, updates to store, updates to services/tooling.
They've been working on docker support, built in linux support (ubuntu bash is awesome), they have been optimizing how store apps are packages/compiled/distributed/updated..
if shilling means calling you out as an ignorant hater, i'll happily shill away.
>I know nothing of how Windows works. It could be impossible without completely rewriting the entire thing. It's just my ultimate pet peeve about Windows.
I imagine the Windows sourcecode to be a total clusterfuck shitshow, with all the ancient code and exception cases.
I doubt you could make live updates work without a major redesign, which would inevitably break a lot of stuff that people actually use.
I think comparing OS updates to something like browser updates isn't really fair. My Mac does the same but I still have control. More control than Windows 10's new reality.
I think it is a combination of both the reputation that Microsoft has in tech community and also the fact that unlike other softwares you noted, Windows OS is used by a lot of people, even those who don't like using it (you'll see lot of posts where people have installed it for their family members because those family members find it easier to use it)
Framed this way, I cant believe there is no class action lawsuit. I remember my mother in law said she was being asked to upgrade from 8.1. She said she didn't want to. I actually willingly installed win 10, and was across the country. She then called me one day and said "windows 10 installed anyway and I clicked the X to get out of it". At the time I just chalked it up to user error, but thanks MS, now I owe my mother in law an apology.
IANAL, but it looks like when you agree to the Microsoft TOS you waive your right to bring a Class Action suit against Microsoft
>Class action lawsuits, class-wide arbitrations, private attorney-general actions, and any other proceeding where someone acts in a representative capacity aren’t allowed. Nor is combining individual proceedings without the consent of all parties.
I believe that's why companies are taking MS to small claims for $10,000 despite losing way more than that in downtime.
SCOTUS seems to disagree with you[0][1]. I try to read or at least skim what I agree to. Some companies have an opt-out of their binding arbitration (eg. Ting), which I try to make use of, but most don't allow you to opt out of the class action waiver.
If you don't like the terms, email them and tell the company why you won't sign up. I rarely get a response, but someone on their staff knows there's at least some push back.
Not shocking. I'm writing this out of my Ubuntu partition and I'm running Windows 10, forced down my throat to begin with, and it just does what it wants when it wants to. I've had times when I've gone for a break and my laptop has rebooted and installing some updates I wasn't even aware of. And I'm running Windows out of sheer necessity for the time being because I need Illustrator, Photoshop, etc.. But Microsoft has really never cared for the user, more like you'll get what we give you and like it.
I was thinking of dual booting and relegating Windows to gaming, have you had any trouble with your setup? Especially with Windows updates messing up the boot settings or wiping partitions that they shouldn't?
Seems particularly risky now that MS is pushing out regular "major updates" like the anniversary update, which get handled like a system reinstall.
The only issue I had so far was that Mint wouldn't boot because Windows didn't actually shut down as instructed but went into default quick-boot mode, which made the Windows partition unmountable, which by default causes the Mint boot to fail. No other problems so far.
I had some issues with UEFI during install as well, but it worked out somehow.
Also, it seems that you can still feed the Windows 10 installer a Windows 7 key. I wanted Windows 7 initially, but the computer wouldn't have it.
Did you set the Windows partition to automount in `/etc/fstab` in Mint?
That would make Mint think that that mount is part of the system, and since the system isn't entirely available, the boot cannot proceed.
I suggest you add `nofail` to the mount options, and `nobootwait` on older that Ubuntu-16.04-derived Mint (doesn't run systemd) and `x-systemd.device-timeout=1` on Ubuntu-16.04+-derived Mint (should run systemd)
I haven't had any issues at all. The only minor inconvenience I have is needing to hit Esc immediately when my laptop is booting up so I can change what I want to boot into, the default being Windows. Now I'm running all this from an HP laptop that came with UEFI and not BIOS so I had to jump through a few hoops before it worked out.
Until the known good session does a small check over the internet and re-downloads and force reboots.
I wouldn't be surprised if Microsoft put in code in Win10 that silently waits for an external condition (say, an HTTP response) such that the system seems "good" until then, and upon the condition renders your system unusable (at least in the way you want it).
The saddest part about it for me is that Windows 10 made some of my friends cynical regarding privacy. If you asked them before they would have at least acknowledged the value of privacy, but now it's just "Why not upgrade to Windows 10? Everything you use is already data-mining you." They see all the bad news about privacy in Windows 10 and I guess that's the only way you can rationalize using it.
After the crap associated with the Anniversary Update, I decided to stop threatening to move to Linux every time Microsoft made a consumer-hostile move and just do it, in order to see how feasible the shift would be. Fedora has been fine so far, sans a few hardware-specific issues I've run into. The laptop is certainly better optimized for Windows, which is not surprising. I'm trying to document all of the problems I've run into along the way and the steps to remedy them, in case they are of value to anyone else. The Arch Linux wiki has been great for this sort of thing, even without using Arch.
Congratulations on the switch. Ubuntu might be slightly superior to Fedora (you'll outgrow it eventually), but again, congratulations on finally doing so. If you get a whim to tinker, try a KDE-based distribution; it'll feel the most like windows, just with more options to tweak.
I dual boot on my PC, Ubuntu and Windows. I'm writing this from my Arch laptop. I only drop into Windows if I want to play a Windows-only game, but thankfully that's happening less and less. I've stopped buying games for Windows entirely so I won't have this problem in the future.
When I installed Windows10, I did the hour long dance of trying to find all the places where I could turn off tracking, even temporarily. Then I ran this[0] which does a pretty good job in a magic black box kind of way. It's a patch job, I don't recommend using Windows10 as a daily driver or putting too much faith into any gui setting or external patch.
Also updates are important. Software developers know maintaining multiple old versions and backporting fixes is more art than science and even with the best intentions is prone to incompleteness. Update your software. If you find you can't because upstream is consistently invasive/lacking/gross, chose a different project or you know... fork.
Maybe this can be read as a cautionary tale about how easy it is to convince yourself to cut ethical corners when money is involved.
In an honest moment, I suspect that many Microsoft executives would acknowledge that the behavior described here is morally dubious. Yet they've allowed it to happen.
This reminds me that it's a daily challenge to avoid temptation and do the right thing. I hope that at least a few people in Redmond are thinking the same thing.
I think that Microsoft could fix this fairly easily: make an easy opt out for Cortana and telemetry, offer more control over security options.
I totally sympathize with Microsoft for wanting everyone to be on Windows 10, with continuous updates (security and otherwise). Better for them and long term probably better for users.
I don't use OS X anymore but when I did, I liked always being at the latest update.
Except for my iPad, I use Ubuntu Linux laptops and like keeping every device up to date.
Pardon a tangent, but: society as a whole really needs a "going to the moon" level global project to harden computing devices. As an end user of technology I am willing to keep my devices up to date and I try to be understanding of Apple, Microsft, and Ubuntu (and other Linud distros).
I wouldn't mind paying twice the price of Windows 10 Pro if I could select what I want installed and the OS respected that. No telemetry, no Cortana, no Windows Stores apps if I need to have a MS account. No missclick-based features (you click yes and suddenly your local account is now an online account).
Since I'm stuck with this crap forever (Adobe, Office, games, etc) at least let me pay you not spy on me and install your crapware. And let ME control MY PC.
I bought a really cheap Windows machine a year ago, curious about Windows 10 (I have Linux on it now). I bought it directly from Microsoft's store, and as a 'signature edition', it had no 3rd party crapware installed.
You do know that both Adobe apps and Office apps are natively available for Mac? Games are still a problem though, but you can dual-boot just for games.
The saddest part is that no one cares and no one does anything.
No protests, no rotten tomatoes into MS manager faces, no uproars or boycotts, not even pathetic stuff like lawsuits.
At best a few educated people complain on the internet or brag about moving to Linux.
All this does is the evaporative cooling that hardens the cold death grip of a blind company whose moral compass doesn't even point north around the necks of the common folk that notice nothing and wonder why it's getting harder to breath every other year.
And no, i'm not smart enough to come up with a solution either...
Microsoft paid $10k [1] to one single count of this deceiving practice and decided to settle not to pursue further.
Me and my young children see Transvaginal Mesh Implants class action lawsuit invitation few times a day for probably a year now on multitude of national TV stations. When will some tech-literate lawyer start gathering evidence to file a class action lawsuit over what MS just did??
Is it really an End User License Agreement when Microsoft worked hard to circumvent your desire not to have Windows 10 in the first place. I would think that the change to the red close this box X would be somewhere in exhibit A to F in any class action.
I support some computers that auto-updated to 10, and everyone with access to them swears they never hit "OK" in the week leading up to that auto-update. Did the EULA just flash up on the screen at 2 AM?
I guess it reboots to Windows 10, but keeps the old installation in "C:\Windows.old". If you then do not agree to the EULA in the Windows 10 setup wizard it rolls back to your old Windows installation.
Definitely a dark pattern, because most users may feel that going back is not possible.
It took me a little while to identify which shared folders were necessary for various programs used by this business. Having figured out how to re-share those folders and confirmed that everything else was still working, however, there wasn't a chance in hell I was going to roll the dice on a "restore" operation. They had work to do that day.
This is the reason why i moved to linux.
The path this "new" microsoft have choosen, if they continue to do this, they will certainly lose their market share on PCs in near future and I hope when users will start caring about their rights and privacy, they will move to other OSes.
ChromeOS is just as bad with spying as Windows 10 (or worse considering how much other information Google has to tie to you. Apple is well on their way to making their upcoming OS similar as well. We live in a world now where most people are conditioned NOT to pay for software, and don't mind being "the product" for free services. For those that do mind being data mined there are fewer and fewer options every day.
No shit. I was just trying to avoid the year of the linux desktop meme, since I gave up on that already, while also doubting that "they" are going to ditch Windows.
I hate to say it, but a lot of this stuff was advocated by Butler Lampson (one of heroes)[1].
Basically, he advocated for having at least two computers (which could be virtual machines) labeled “red” and “green”. The red machine is promiscuous, and accepts inputs from anything; whereas the green machine only accepts inputs from “accountable” sources (n.b. this means it wouldn’t accept input from the red machine).
Crucially, he says that the green machine, which might have access to sensitive information such as your financial records, would ”require professional management”. The user might be able to make course grain adjustments to qualify what it means to be an accountable source, but in this scheme, the system’s integrity is only assured by allowing the professional administrator to preempt the user.
I don’t like it (Win 8 will probably be the last version I use), but since it’s Butler, I have to at least consider that he might be right.
I had to install Windows 8.1 from scratch recently, for the first time in my life I had to review update-per-update what the f%$k did they do, it is depressing that too many updates had something to do with Windows 10 or an increase in telemetry...
Win7, 8, and 8.1 updates are moving to cumulative patches next month. Assuming you still patch at all, you will be unable to avoid installing the telemetry on older MS operating systems too.
I assume that like Win10, there will be ways to hack around and disable the telemetry there. But you can't avoid installing it in the first place for long.
I guess people shouldn't be speaking while debating if <INSERT-CURRENT-YEAR> is the year of the Linux desktop or not. The choices in life are usually (and i emphasize usually) simple, and this case is no exception.
You either discard your privacy and maybe your security and go Windows, or you discard your usability (for some) and go Linux. Or go Mac, FreeBSD, hell, even BeOS or Hurd or whatever floats your boat.
But seeing people still bitching about how they can't go over Windows "because I have to play games" well ... it hurts. It really hurts.
Gaming is my passion, my hobby, and by far my largest expense save mandatory things such as my mortgage. I don't understand why this means that I cannot say that Windows 10 is upsetting to me unless I give up a huge part of my identity. It is an unfortunate situation from which there is little recourse for people like me.
I'm not saying people shouldn't play games, hell, I'm a gamer myself. But we have to compromise in life, and when I fire up my Windows VM, I understand all the implications that come out of it: I might get malware, I might get my personal information sent to various sites, my OS might be upgraded to NewWinOs or downgraded to OldCrappyOs automatically and so on.
And this is freaking unfortunate for everybody involved, except the big companies like Microsoft, Google, FB, Apple, etc.
The solution is two separate machines. One Linux machine for all personal computing and dev work, and a Windows machine with Steam on it, and anything else game-related.
I have lost work on Windows 10 because it doesnt seem possible to not have it restart after an update. This behavior being a default from the Windows "Professional Edition" boggles my mind.
Option 1 on that link stops updates from running on their own, but once you update you are forced to reboot. Also I had problems with that solution causing stalling forever on "Installing updates 0%".
Option 2 is for hiding specific updates, like broken drivers. Doesn't really apply.
Option 3 again will stop updates from installing in the first place, but will not stop reboots once they're installed. Windows 10 completely ignores the "No auto-restart with logged on users" policy from that same group.
The only way I have found to stop my computer from rebooting after installing an update is #2 in the link below. This works, 100%.
And to think that before this, people were angry at Microsoft for not providing updates to new versions of Windows free of charge, and free of hastle.
Damned if they do. Damned if they don't.
But now at least, they'll have a much smaller install base for ancient versions of Windows, so my guess is that even with all this bad PR, it's going to pay off.
If you're a computer "Enthusiast" most of the time you know what's coming (sites like winbeta and neowin post the news) or you would have known how to set the restart time, accept/reject the action center notifications or gracefully finished work to reboot because rebooting in windows only takes about 5 seconds these days.
I recently had to install windows 10 on one of my computers. I remember getting to a menu which asked me if I wanted to install the recommended way vs customizing, selected custom and the number of options that could seriously undermine my privacy were insane, a special ID to help 3rd parties (ms certified partners or something they called it) WHAT THE HELL!!
Microsoft seriously sucks. Yes I know, the options to turn these things off are there, but the fact that 90% of the people who use ms windows are not even aware of these options is insane.
And couple that with the soul sucking updates,Jesus Christ windows 10 is just a big no no.
As for the updates, you should seriously consider disabling the windows update service using the admin privileges. Especially if you are using a rate limited internet connection or hate having to wait 10-15 mins for your computer to shutdown or startup.
They aren't doing the free upgrade to 10 offer anymore so you're probably fine. I've been running a 7 instance in a VM for a long time and never had a problem with it upgrading to 10.
Do not assume that the "Free" expiration stops them from loading 10 in all but name & fugly menu on your back-end through 40+ supposed updates & patches. The telemetry is what they are after, the telemetry is what they will go to almost any length to collect and telemetry is all you are good for... at the moment.
Honestly, having two computers has been the only way I can sanely function at work. We have to use Windows for at least one application. My solution has been to setup a second desktop (these are small towers), install Linux on it, and remote into the Windows from the Linux machine. Oddly enough, I can actually play some video games on the Windows machine through that remote session.
We replace computers two to three times per year; I get to pick from generally four-year old computers. I assume that a second computer is not an option for most at work.
Because of their (Microsoft's) bullshit with Windows 10 I had to switch my family to Ubuntu and myself to OS X. Bye bye Microsoft, you won't have any more of mine or my family's data...
I certainly agree that Microsoft have been very underhanded in some of their approaches.
What really grinds my gears though is the lack of interest people have in maintaining their tools.
If your computer is central to running your business you should be informed about upcoming updates as computer downtime is a threat to your business.
Just for the record if you disabled the Windows 10 update properly[1] I'm pretty sure it would never bother you and you could never accidentally install it.
I'm not saying I approve of what Microsoft did with the W10 upgrade but if you were technically competent to change a few registry/group policy options it was never a problem for you.
That assumes you believe Microsoft, that they are not deliberately lying to their customers. Not plausible? Microsoft claimed Skype has end-to-end encryption, too.
By default, Windows 10 sends an unprecedented amount of
usage data back to Microsoft... location data, text
input, voice input, touch input, webpages you visit, and
telemetry data regarding your general usage of your
computer, including which programs you run and for how long.
Unprecedented for Microsoft or everyone? This is inline with what Google collects on Android.
...the fact remains that many users would much prefer to
opt out of these features in exchange for maintaining
their privacy.
Which they can do at any time, the initial setup permits opting out of almost all of this.
A significant issue is the telemetry data the company
receives. While Microsoft insists that it aggregates and
anonymizes this data, it hasn’t explained just how it
does so. Microsoft also won’t say how long this data is
retained, instead providing only general timeframes.
Microsoft has been doing this since Windows XP as do Apple, Google, and Amazon for their respective OSes.
Microsoft has tried to explain this lack of choice by
saying that Windows Update won’t function properly on
copies of the operating system with telemetry reporting
turned to its lowest level.
This is interesting because Windows 10 won't let you disable telemetry data entirely which upsets people. But most people probably want updates and the data necessary to determine which updates you've got installed on your computer are considered telemetry data by Microsoft and that information is essential in order to determine which updates are applicable or available. So does the minimum setting in Windows 10 collect more telemetry data than is necessary for Windows Update to function or not?
But this is a false choice that is entirely of
Microsoft’s own creation. There’s no good reason why the
types of data Microsoft collects at each telemetry level
couldn’t be adjusted so that even at the lowest level of
telemetry collection, users could still benefit from
Windows Update and secure their machines from
vulnerabilities, without having to send back things like
app usage data or unique IDs like an IMEI number.
Did Microsoft actually say that the lowest level of telemetry data collection includes that information? That sounds like an assumption.
And if this wasn’t bad enough, Microsoft’s questionable
upgrade tactics of bundling Windows 10 into various
levels of security updates have also managed to lower
users’ trust in the necessity of security updates. Sadly,
this has led some people to forego security updates
entirely, meaning that there are users whose machines are
at risk of being attacked.
Right or wrong, this is what Apple, Google, and Amazon currently. Sure it's nice to be able to look at each and every update to scrutinize what's going in but very few people do that. If you've every looked at the updates in earlier versions of Windows they're usually just KB numbers that you have to copy/paste into a browser to see what they actually fix.
> But most people probably want updates and the data necessary to determine which updates you've got installed on your computer are considered telemetry data by Microsoft and that information is essential in order to determine which updates are applicable or available.
Unix systems download a list of all available upgrades and then calculate on the client which upgrades to apply. This is compatible with performing automatic and unattended upgrades. (It's probably also useful as part of current and future software transparency efforts to make sure that different users aren't deliberately given different updates, some of which contain malware.)
The dependency tracking model is preferred but unfortunately Windows doesn't do this and can just start. Win32 apps are allowed to walk all over everything as if it's theirs and Windows is full of registry and file system hacks to compensate.
So in your world 2 wrongs make a right... because "everyone else" is doing it is a justification for you?
See I was taught from a young age that just because my friends did something incredibly stupid, illegal, or immoral that dis not give me license to commit the offense.
Put simply, Apple and Google allow users to opt-out.
You can run Android and not send Google a single byte of information. You can't run google's _apps_ and do that-- gmail, google calendar, the google play store, and so on. But it isn't mandatory. Telemetry is in the apps, not the OS.
Even if I set telemetry to "basic" (the lowest it will go), turn off Cortana, and don't use IE or Edge (or any other MS app), Windows 10 sends telemetry to Microsoft. That's not OK.
Even if you opt out, you're still sending telemetry. Unless your telling me your buying a smart phone and never installing an app. It takes telemetry for apple store to check your system and see if your apps need updating. it takes telemetry to check if your icloud is backed up. it takes telemetry to say "it will take you 20 minutes to drive home" notifications that popup..
I wouldn't say it's ridiculous. The number of people who do what you do is minuscule. The people with the technical ability and knowledge to do that is also a very small subset of the population.
You can stand on your high horse and tell everyone they have a choice and to not stand for such things but it's disingenuous at best. There are people out there without the technical expertise or fundamental ability to obtain such knowledge. There are people who are financially incapable of doing it as well. You can spout off about how affordable it is but your phone probably cost them a month's salary.
My statement was that the telemetry wasn't baked into the OS itself-- and it isn't. It's in the programs you _run_ on the OS, so the user has agency. How many users opt for the extreme inconvenience of turning off Google Play Services and all the Google apps isn't really the point-- they _could_.
Windows telemetry is baked in the OS. I believe that is a fundamental difference.
Also, I don't think it's disingenuous to say that users have different expectations of mobile and desktop operating systems. Apple's iOS has always sent basic telemetry; until recently Windows didn't.
Apple doesn't have a history of compromising users' privacy then lying about it, unlike Microsoft with Skype.
And finally, while Apple is sending some telemetry, they are actually serious about their users' privacy and are collecting data with a technical solution that truly does guarantee anonymity.
What constitutes being baked in? Various components of Windows gather telemetry data, the basic stuff is pulled by the Diagnostics Tracking Service which can simple be disabled. Other things such as Office and Contana gather in their own ways. That's no more baked in than Google Play Services is baked into Android. The fundamental difference is that Windows isn't Open Source so you can't go to a repo and pull down a clean version of it.
Windows has been sending telemetry data since XP.
Until recently Apple hasn't had much market share or scrutiny. We're starting to see that change happening with new malware targeting MacOS showing up and plenty of buggy software.
You can't uninstall the telemetry and tracking stuff. You need to disable services, make changes to the registry, remove task scheduler entries, and block access in your firewall to truly secure Win10.
Telemetry, previously called "Windows Customer Experience" or something similar, in versions of windows earlier than 10 could easily be turned off. Recently MS added the full-on Win10 style telemetry to Win7 and 8 too, but that is a very recent development.
>Even if I set telemetry to "basic" (the lowest it will go), turn off Cortana, and don't use IE or Edge (or any other MS app), Windows 10 sends telemetry to Microsoft. That's not OK.
It doesn't on my setup. I have neutered that shit completely.
This comment makes you sound like a very biased MS fan. Saying this is ok bwcause some mobile OS providers do similar things is absurd. This is an entirely separate class of device and should be treated as such. Apple absolutely collects nowhere near this much data on their desktop OS, so that is also misleading.
>But most people probably want updates and the data
necessary to determine which updates you've got installed
on your computer are considered telemetry data by
Microsoft and that information is essential in order to
determine which updates are applicable or available
I have telemetry completely disabled and Win10 updates work fine. This is completely false. It is not required for normal operation.
I am not saying that they deserve a pass but if the practice is objectionable then why is everyone only complaining about MS? I don't here anyone saying it's time to address this industry problem, it's just "MS is evil, quick switch to Apple/Linux".
Folks, Microsoft blatantly disregarding user choice and privacy is not news. What else do you expect from a company that ships at least one backdoor in every software they've ever made?
If you understand the true nature of Bill Gates and Steve Ballmer, this should never come as a surprise. It's going to take several generations for the culture to change, that is, if ever...
"But it’s a shame that Microsoft made users choose between having privacy and security."
Great article, but this part is simply wrong. Microsoft chose to remove both. You now have an operating system without security that is known to steal data and install things on its own (malware). How can EFF say this OS is more secure when Microsoft can and does access any data on the system at any time without asking for permissions? When even the permissions dialogs are fake? To classify this as anything but malware would be willful stupidity at this point.
It's not that the OS has less security, now it has none. In fact, users running Windows 10 might want to question whether they even own their machines anymore. Physical possession aside, when one no longer controls the software or data on a machine can one be said to own said machine? Can one be held responsible for what it does? What if Microsoft decides to download child porn on everyone's machine? Considering what they've done in the last year, I wouldn't put it past them.
Gb abbreviates gigabit or gigabyte? What does GB abbreviate?
=====================
In update:
PLEASE stop down voting me for my simple, nice, courteous reminder to the person who wrote the post I replied to.
I was NOT, NOT, NOT, NOT ignorant of the meanings of Gb versus GB and was NOT, NOT, NOT, NOT asking for a tutorial on the difference. I am not an ignorant newby on HN knowing too little to be posting here. Just what I did wrong is beyond all
obvious criteria.
These attacks are personal, based on my user name and some earlier posts of mine?
I did NOTHING, NOTHING, NOTHING wrong.
Instead, I was suggesting that maybe the post I responded to was not using Gb versus GB correctly -- MAYBE. I was trying to be subtle and suggesting that the person just review the meanings of Gb versus GB. I DO know very, very well the correct, accepted meanings the two abbreviations.
So, for trying to be nice, I get attacked? What kind of hostility is that?
MOD, please get involved and correct this.
Right, I'm a newby? I've published several peer-revewed papers of original research in computer science and artificial intelligence and taught computer science in graduate school at Ohio State University. I DO know quite a lot of computing. Early in my career I designed and wrote the software that scheduled the fleet at FedEx and literally saved the company -- pleased the BoD and enabled crucial financing. My Ph.D. dissertation in engineering was in software.
For one of my contributions in artificial intelligence at the IBM Watson lab, I received an award from IBM. For some other research I did at IBM, I reinvented k-D trees -- a few years earlier, and k-D trees would have been mine.
MOD: I've done NOTHING, NOTHING, NOTHING wrong, but I've been severely attacked. The attacks look personal, by paid propagandists attacking me for some old post on some topic the propagandists are paid to fight about.
A downvote or even a hundred downvotes on HN is hardly worth getting upset over. Remember how there's this whole world out there with women in it and sunsets and grass and beer and stuff?
Can somebody please explain why is this comment being downvoted so low? I understand that the edits don't look nice, but why was it downovoted in the first place?
It didn't add to the discussion and the clarification graycat was getting at was hardly necessary. The overreaction edit added afterwards also probably did not help their cause.
Some people have connections with download limits. I.e. You can only download 4 gigabytes of data before having your connection throttled or being charged. Some people also tether to mobile internet, which very definitely has download limits. Case in point, I was working on the road a lot this Summer and was using my 4G hotspot. Automatic downloads can very rapidly eat your download limit up whereas browsing and email is unlikely to do so.
I have a small laptop I seldom use, and when I powered it up in a meeting, it downloaded vast numbers of updates. Then I couldn't shut it down for 15 minutes while it installed updates. I was stuck in a conference room alone while the thing updated.
Actually that is the meaning of K, as in Kb or KB. Giga is not for "1000 units" but for 1 bilion "units" or, for the power of 2 approximation 2^30 = 1,073,741,824.
I was just trying to be nice to the person who wrote the post I responded to.
It seemed to me that their post needed to distinguish between Gb, gigabit, and GB, gigabyte. Not strictly, of course, because in principle the post could have been correct with either Gb or GB. But usually communications speeds are in terms of bits, and file sizes in terms of bytes. So, monthly download limits are commonly in terms of bits or bytes -- i can't say. But the file sizes downloaded for Windows 10 are likely usually in terms of bytes. So, if Windows 10 needs 10 billion bytes, then that is 10 GB. Then that would need communications of about 80 Gb (less in case of data compression; more for overhead for TCP/IP, etc.). Or 10 Gb would be only 1.25 GB which seems small for copy or full update of Windows 10.
So, net, I was guessing that the Windows 10 size would be about 10 GB, not 10 Gb. Then for the communications limit, that could be in Gb or GB.
That is, I was responding to
> My 4Gb per month download limit doesn't like secret 10Gb downloads, that's what.
So, for Windows 10, the 10Gb should likely be 10 GB? Right? For the 4Gb, that might be correct but then it is only about 0.5 GB.
Yes, currently and at least back to IBM System/360, on systems from IBM, DEC VAX, Prime, Data General, Intel, and AMD, nearly always a byte has been 8 bits.
Yes, the original ASCII character set needed only 7 bits; the DEC PDP 10 had 36 bit words, and DEC commonly stored 5 ASCII characters in each word.
Communications speeds are commonly in terms of bits per second, and maybe communications data limits are also in terms of bits. File sizes are commonly in terms of bytes. So, maybe for communications, say Gb, and for file sizes, say GB.
Giga abbreviates 1 billion or 2^30 = 1,073,741,824.
Apparently some reader got totally torqued at me for trying to be nice. I was not asking for a tutorial on Gb versus GB but was trying nicely to suggest to the writer of the post I responded to that maybe they were not fully careful in using Gb versus GB.
MOD: I'm being attacked for no good reason. Please intervene and clean up these attacks.
No, byte simply meant the number of bits needed to represent a single character in a fixed width encoding.
From Wikipedia: The byte (/ˈbaɪt/) is a unit of digital information that most commonly consists of eight bits. Historically, the byte was the number of bits used to encode a single character of text in a computer[1][2] and for this reason it is the smallest addressable unit of memory in many computer architectures. The size of the byte has historically been hardware dependent and no definitive standards existed that mandated the size.
PS: 16 bit bytes are now common with UTF-16 with fits a large chunk of Unicode. On the other hand UCS-2 is not a fixed width encoding so different rules apply. However, we stuck with 8 bit bytes for long enough it's become a viable alternative definition, until we byte the bullet and go back to a fixed 32 bit format.
If I buy a computer and/or pay Microsoft money, I think it's reasonable for me to expect my computer to do what I'd like it to do (and only what I'd like it to do). The problem isn't data-driven design, it's how the data is being collected.
I'd be annoyed if my home builder occasionally came through my house while I was gone in an attempt to analyze how I was arranging furniture and using my space. They could, undoubtedly, use that data to better their future work - but I'd still feel violated.
I'm not saying that I'm entitled to an exception (and do use desktop Linux and macOS in any situation that allows me such a choice, gaming and Office usage being my primary barriers - and I'll leave aside whatever Apple may be doing with my usage statistics there, which probabally isn't great).
Rather, the comment that I'm replying to infers that there is nothing wrong with what Microsoft is doing because they are using all of this data for some sort of Good Reason, and I personally think that their methods of data collection are shady enough to make whatever good they may be doing with that data irrelevant.
My guess is you disagree with the notion that it's a legitimate role of government to set and enforce standards for various market products. That's fine, but if you truly don't understand why someone might hold that position (distinct from agreeing with it) then frankly the kind of reading you need to do to gain that understanding isn't likely to materialize in response to barbed comments on Internet message boards.
>I'd be annoyed if my home builder occasionally came through my house while I was gone in an attempt to analyze how I was arranging furniture and using my space. They could, undoubtedly, use that data to better their future work - but I'd still feel violated.
Too bad. If you sign a contract with your builder allowing him to do this, or you sign a contract allowing him to change your agreement and force new terms on you whenever he wants, then you brought this on yourself. Worse yet, if you willingly buy from a builder who is infamous for a decades-long history of horrible customer service and shoddy house designs and construction, I have zero sympathy for you.
Customers have a responsibility to research their purchases beforehand, and avoid patronizing vendors with poor reputations.
While true, this also gets into the ethical, moral and legal obligation a company has when for all practical purposes they have a monopoly on a market segment.
This type of action is what got MS is legal trouble in the EU and US in the 90's
>While true, this also gets into the ethical, moral and legal obligation a company has when for all practical purposes they have a monopoly on a market segment.
First off, companies do not have ethical or moral obligations at all. Corporations are purely amoral. It's up to customers to penalize them for unethical or immoral actions by refusing to support them. If the customers refuse to stop throwing money at them, it's the customers that are to blame.
Secondly, MS does not have a monopoly, except for having an OS that runs software designed to run on Windows, just like Apple has a monopoly for the market of "OSes that run software designed to run on iOS or OSX". Lots of people run Macs rather than Windows-based PCs, and some run Linux. If you're not happy with Windows, it's your job to look for alternatives, just like if you're not happy driving a Chevy, it's your job to look at Hondas and Subarus instead of whining that Chevy isn't living up to your expectations.
MS didn't have any legal trouble in the US, ever. They "lost" an antitrust trial in the 90s and the penalty was absolutely nothing, and that trial was all about their OS forcing the bundling of their browser. Their OS still forces the bundling of their browser, except these days, only clueless morons actually use IE/Edge, and everyone else uses either Firefox or Chrome or some variant (while some use Safari). In fact, last I heard, Chrome had the largest marketshare of all browsers.
The lesson here is that if you're hoping for the government to step in and save you, you're hopelessly naïve, as proven by history. The US government in particular is never, ever going to do anything to rein in MS, and really, why should they at this point? As I pointed out above, if you don't like Windows, there are viable alternatives now (the alternatives were much worse in the late 90s, now they're actually much better). If your 3rd-party software vendor doesn't support non-Windows platforms, then maybe you should find a better one.
>>First off, companies do not have ethical or moral obligations at all. Corporations are purely amoral. It's up to customers to penalize them for unethical or immoral actions by refusing to support them. If the customers refuse to stop throwing money at them, it's the customers that are to blame.
I completely disagree with this, and believe this type of belief is one of the core problems in society. Corporations are just a social organization of people, and the people of that organization absolutely have ethical and moral obligations. Choosing to join a social organization like a corporation does not absolve you of those obligations.
>Secondly, MS does not have a monopoly, except for having an OS that runs software designed to run on Windows, just like Apple has a monopoly for the market of "OSes that run software designed to run on iOS or OSX". Lots of people run Macs rather than Windows-based PCs, and some run Linux.
This goes to how you define Monopoly, For most government regulating entities a monopoly is created when a company reaches over 80/90% market share in a given product category, in the 1990's Microsoft was a clear monopoly in the personal computing market. Today that is debatable if you include Smartphones, Tablets and other devices in the Category of "Personal Computers"
However simply saying "There is an alternative" does not in fact legally mean there is not a monopoly. For example when Standard Oil was broken up as a Monopoly there were other Oil refinement companies, however their market share was such that they were still considered a monopoly under the legal statues governing monopolies
Your analogy to cars is just absurd, Most people do not actively seek an Operating System, they use what ever operating system is supplied by the manufacturer of the devices, one of the MAJOR anti-trust violations MS was charged with was using Vertical Conclusions to lock out alternative operating systems like Linux. Intel was also charged with Anti-Trust violations for attempting use their market dominance to lock out AMD from OEM channels. Car makers did similar things in the early day with Maintenance, accessories and parts. this resulted in MASSIVE regulation of the Automotive manufacturing industry and passage of the Magnuson–Moss Warranty Act which electronics companies today like to pretend does not exist
>MS didn't have any legal trouble in the US, ever. They "lost" an antitrust trial in the 90s and the penalty was absolutely nothing, and that trial was all about their OS forcing the bundling of their browser.
While it is true that the FTC, as is usual, failed in their duty to the American people, there was much more to the case than simply IE, that however was the most reported on in the Media, and what MS focused on in the PR efforts after the settlement was announced.
Sadly with Windows 10, they have back peddled even on these provisions, no longer are browsers able to automatically set themselves as default, a user must navigate to the Default Applications Settings and manually change these. Even when doing so it asks "are you sure" at least 1 time before actually changing the default. Further users report often updates will revert these settings.
>>The lesson here is that if you're hoping for the government to step in and save you, you're hopelessly naïve, as proven by history.
I am expecting no such thing, I am a libertarian. Geo-Libertarian to be exact. At no point did I say anything about the government saving anyone. The fact I believe corporations have legal and moral obligations have nothing at all do with government. Having said that, given that corporations are government created entries that can not exist with out the legal framework the government created that allows for their existence, I do believe any evil a corporation does can and should be directly attributed to government as they are ultimately the creators and protectors of ever corporation to have ever existed and ever will exist
>As I pointed out above, if you don't like Windows, there are viable alternatives now (the alternatives were much worse in the late 90s, now they're actually much better).
I have been using Linux since 1999.
> If your 3rd-party software vendor doesn't support non-Windows platforms, then maybe you should find a better one.
>I completely disagree with this, and believe this type of belief is one of the core problems in society.
That's a perfectly valid opinion, however the law states otherwise; our society and legal system both reward amoral thinking in corporations.
>Corporations are just a social organization of people, and the people of that organization absolutely have ethical and moral obligations.
You can believe this all you want, but the people who run the largest corporations disagree, and have no ethics or morals; they're sociopaths. As a society, we reward this by continuing to support companies run by sociopaths, and also by voting for sociopaths to lead our governments. So you can believe whatever you want about how corporations and the people who run them should act, but most people disagree with you implicitly, based on their voting and buying decisions.
>Choosing to join a social organization like a corporation does not absolve you of those obligations.
You can claim this, but you have absolutely no way of enforcing your belief. Similarly, I could claim that you are personally obligated to buy me a house, and that I think it's the moral thing to do, but I have absolutely no way to enforce this opinion.
>For most government regulating entities a monopoly is created when a company reaches over 80/90% market share in a given product category, in the 1990's Microsoft was a clear monopoly in the personal computing market. Today that is debatable if you include Smartphones, Tablets and other devices in the Category of "Personal Computers"
If you include those, then MS is nowhere near a monopoly. Windows Phone is a joke. But if you narrow things down to PCs, then it's murkier, but even here last I heard they had less than 90% thanks to the rise of Apple mainly.
>However simply saying "There is an alternative" does not in fact legally mean there is not a monopoly.
That's true, but the other thing you're missing, just as you missed with your stuff about ethics above, is enforcement: how exactly do you propose to enforce your opinion? You have no way to; all you can do is hope the government will agree with you and act accordingly. There is zero evidence of this, and instead plenty of evidence that MS will be able to do whatever they want, within reason. So your only choices are to suffer and whine, or switch.
>Most people do not actively seek an Operating System, they use what ever operating system is supplied by the manufacturer of the devices
Then why are people actively seeking out Macs and iPhones? People who shop for Macbooks don't even bother looking at alternatives, because they do NOT want to run Windows.
>MS was charged with was using Vertical Conclusions to lock out alternative operating systems like Linux
They were charged, but what happened? Nothing.
> Car makers did similar things in the early day with Maintenance, accessories and parts. this resulted in MASSIVE regulation of the Automotive manufacturing industry and passage of the Magnuson–Moss Warranty Act which electronics companies today like to pretend does not exist
A lot of car dealerships pretend that doesn't exist too, but at least there's some legal teeth there. But M-M has almost nothing to do with MS or operating systems or the topic at hand. There is zero evidence that the government is going to pass any legislation to deal with MS's market dominance, so you can either suck it up or find an alternative.
>Sadly with Windows 10, they have back peddled even on these provisions, no longer are browsers able to automatically set themselves as default, a user must navigate to the Default Applications Settings and manually change these.
Ok, so what are you going to do about it? This just proves my point: hoping for any kind of relief from the government is foolish in the extreme. You can either remain a victim, or you can leave.
So basically your defeatist attitude is simply never to discuss these topics because it is likely impossible to change.
Why do you come to places like this to discuss things if you do not actually want to discuss anything.
As to what I am going to do about it... as I already stated several times, you seem to keep skipping that parts, I have already left the Microsoft Ecosystem, did many decades ago.
that does not mean however I will not continue to address their bad actions publicly when ever I can. You see it as pointless, maybe it is, but silently going into the night is just as pointless
And one other thing, Simply choosing other software is pointless unless you can get the majority of users to follow you or get enough users to make a large enough PR problem for the offending company they must react. (as MS has done several times when complaints have reached critical mass)
one way to do that is Continue to bring up this issues in public forums, to educate the users of these software products.
One way not to do that is to continue to be a defeatist and say "well the world sucks and is run by sociopaths so i give up" which is what your posts are about
No, you completely misunderstand. My advice doesn't even apply to you really, because apparently you took my advice years ago, since you said you already left the MS ecosystem. I'm not being defeatist, I'm pushing people to look for alternatives, because MS is not going to turn into a good corporate citizen, nor is the government going to force them to. If people don't like getting screwed over, it's their responsibility to find a vendor that won't. Apparently, you even agree with me, because you've done just that. I'm just pushing for everyone else to do the same. But sitting around waiting for everyone else to follow you isn't going to work; if everyone has that mentality, then nothing will change.
There's some lawsuits over MS forcing/tricking people into "upgrading" to Windows 10. This is something entirely different; this is MS not providing software updates in the way that some people would prefer. Customers don't have a right to tell their vendors exactly how to provide ongoing services. If you don't like it, find a better vendor.
Also, the only successful lawsuit I've heard of against MS recently was the one where some woman sued them in small-claims court over the forced upgrade. $5k or $10k or whatever is a nice little chunk of money for some middle-class person who runs Windows Home for looking at Facebook and cat videos, but it's nothing to some company with dozens of employees or more that relies on their computing systems for running the business. MS just let that one slide because the cost to send a lawyer out wasn't even worth it, and the forced upgrades are pretty much all over at this point anyway; they're making more money now with people "upgraded" than they lost in a few piddly small-claims lawsuits. For a larger company that tries to sue because one of the bundled updates screws up their ERP system, MS isn't going to just pay out millions on that, they're going to crush that company in litigation costs, using their EULA which has been proven in court.
Relying on the threat of a lawsuit against MS to keep your business alive is suicide; MS will win and your company will lose. If you don't like the way their software works, get different software.
There will be a class action over windows 10, and it not assured that MS will win as you seem to think. Sorry that is just not how any of this works.
Further your continued instance that MS can literately do anything it wants and if you do not like it "get different software" is less than useless and not relevant.
I'd love to see MS force a showdown over this: since the EU is dumb enough to run all their computers on Windows, MS could force them to make an exception for them, or else. What's the EU going to do when all their government computers suddenly shut down? Toss Satya in jail? He's in the US. You don't make yourself completely and utterly dependent on someone and then tell them how to behave.
In the past, Microsoft has caved in to every single government demand yet. IE-free Windows, encryption-free Windows NT, … you name it, Microsoft did it and wagged their tail happily.
That's too bad; hopefully under Satya's leadership they'll stop this pathetic capitulation, and show the EU government who's really boss. It would be a great lesson on the dangers of outsourcing your critical infrastructure to a foreign corporation.
Everyone understands the merits of data-driven design. There is heaps of merit. No point to further discussion.
Everyone does NOT agree on the ethics of force-feeding this model on non-technical users without meaningful and informed consent. Toss in lack of transparent or comprehensive opt-out and misleading adoption strategy and you have a real problem.
Microsoft's market share in consumer computing is still massive and what they decide to do matters. It is worth talking about.
I would argue that no, it's not an assumption of malicious intent, it's an assumption that Microsoft will not keep this data private and contained. It will leak, either to governments (which Microsoft has time and time again helped without a question of whether they should) or to other non-scrupulous actors.
> These discussions always avoid talking about the merits of data-driven design and always assume malicious intent.
Perhaps because most of the time the implementations do some harm, the doing of that harm is by design, there are ulterior motives, it is forced upon users, and the representations made to users are intentionally vague and misleading.
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Microsoft appears to have learnt a lot from LinkedIn [0].
[0] https://twitter.com/darylginn/status/590664399041519617