MS statement: "For individuals who have chosen to receive automatic updates through Windows Update, we help upgradable devices get ready for Windows 10 by downloading the files they’ll need if they decide to upgrade."
Second, even if they did consent to automatic updates, that obviously applies to updating the current product they purchased. Upgrading to a different model is obviously not what people expect. Most people expect that their car will receive necessary updates (recall notices), which obviously doesn't include exchanging the car for next years model without some sort of additional contract.
Besides, it's obvious why Microsoft is forcing out the download - they are using download numbers in their their marketing strategy. (i.e. the astroturf headlines claiming "{N} Million User Download Windows 10 in {TimePeriod}")
First, I'm confused about how this is considered a default setting. Anytime I've installed a version of Windows that has automatic updates it asks me during the install what my update preferences are. Just because a select menu has something as the default doesn't mean that I'm not consenting when I review that select menu and hit "Next" in the installer.
Windows 8: http://www.eightforums.com/attachments/tutorials/7868d134523...
Windows 7: http://cdn1.alphr.com/sites/alphr/files/styles/insert_main_i...
Windows XP: http://www.dedoimedo.com/images/computers/xp_automatic_updat...
Secondly, this is a commercial product that I am choosing to install. By necessity it has a lot of configuration options that are set to various different values. Is it not implied consent that when I install an operating system that I am agreeing/consenting to all of the different default settings?
Should we call it uninformed consent? tricked consent? non-binding consent?
If we want to use legal terms, is 6G download ordinarily and reasonably to be contemplated by the user?
It's hard enough for the seasoned geek to acquire enough knowledge actually understand how a computer works. But then you throw in cloud services where the source of truth becomes blurred, and the services are constantly changing under your nose. Even assuming the best of intentions from companies building these systems, it's impossible to keep up.
Y'all have been campaigning for users to be automatically updated, often whether they want to or not (c.f. Windows rebooting overnight causing the loss of any open documents) because having them not be makes everyone demonstrably less safe and users will never update if you ask them to.
You can't have it both ways. Which will it be?
Asking first wouldn't hurt, you know!
I did manage to turn off automatically seeding the updates to others, which I also find to be egregious.
I had "Download updates but let me choose whether to install them," selected in Windows Update for this category of update. I did not choose to install this, and I was made aware from a HN thread made a few weeks ago.
The update was visible, at that time, but not installed. Now, a few weeks later, the update is on my computer. I believe the update was actually installed during an unrelated security update which I had allowed.
I'm wondering if I'll have to use external scripts of my own or third party to remove the telemetry bug on my computer.
I really hope steam machines take off (and stay relatively open). As soon as I'm happy with the number of games Linux supports I'm dropping windows like a rock.
My parents in NZ only get 1 or 2 GB a month ... this would have cost them a fortune.
Fortunately I switched them to mac last year.
Microsoft : You suck.
I suppose iOS, Windows, and others all have an opt-out for this feature.
http://windows.microsoft.com/en-US/windows-8/metered-interne...
(Also bear in mind the realities for a New Zealand ISP. I suspect that a large portion of their traffic comes from overseas, and capacity ain't free on whatever undersea cables happen to land in NZ...)
A lot of people have space and bandwidth limitations. We don't all live it the land of huge capacity and unmetered fiber connections.
That being said, Microsoft should use better judgment in terms of checking for available disk space (i.e. don't auto download 6GB worth of updates unless 20GB+ space is available on the drive) and not saturating customer connections since the update is by no means critical (i.e. limit it to 10% of the user's bandwidth)
MS needs to prompt when downloading amounts of data over a few hundred megabytes, period. There are still places in the world where a prompt is required even for amounts measured in megabytes.
Source: Much googling after I found myself on a hotel's low-bandwidth network for a week.
It's great the MS wants everyone on their latest OS. But "latest" doesn't mean "best." Taking away user choice subverts the economic principles that encourage improvement -- that "best" is decided by the consumer, not the producer.
It would be ideal for developers if we all just used one OS. That doesn't mean it's the right thing to do for the customers, the economy, or society.
But I also can't fathom how so many on this thread are willing to conclude that users consented to this by enabling automatic updates. Because, of course, you don't just consent to have Windows download any old "thing" when you enable automatic updates. You only consent to have it download updates!
While the definition of "update" is surely ambiguous and not set in stone, it should surely be guided (I would think) by the sorts of things Microsoft has called "Windows Updates" in the past. And I don't think there is a good argument that this would include a 6 GB download of an entirely new version of the OS.
People in Redmond or Silicon Valley with good internet connections need to remember that a lot of people don't have that luxury. Extremely low bandwidth connections are still very common in the US, and metered connections are an unfortunate reality for many people around the world.
Even just that can be a problem, since it is quite common these days for people to have a small SSD boot drive, and put everything else in a secondary hard drive.
The download could use all remaining space on the SSD, which could cause a variety of problems unless/until the user figured out the problem and deleted the 6 GB download.
It starts a step before that - awareness. Most folks aren't aware of the things that are done, and even of those who are only a minor subset consider these things to be a problem.
Lack of motivation to try to make change winnows out most of those who get past the first two problems. The unfortunate truth is that of the small subset who are aware and offended, most simply have higher priorities.
Anybody that continues to use their products is asking for more of this crap. Some may complain that their business depends on Windows; that's unfortunate, but why didn't they have a second source for all mission critical dependencies?
My stance is... if they use 6gb of my internet to download updates... okay, whatever... i get unlimited(ish). But if I turn it off and it still does it... that sounds more like a bug in their software. It's still not a big enough deal for me not go with Windows for an OS... it's too good of an OS. I don't think it warrants boycotting MS.
P.S. I didn't pay for Win10. They gave me the upgrade for free.
This also glosses over the rather enormous difference in sheer size between this "update" and others, which is, as far as I understand it, the focus of people's concern here.
Is that a better design? Especially considering Apple routinely automatically downloads updates that are also in the gigabyte range.
I totally disagree. With today's media most people are hyper aware, disproportionately, of everything that goes on. Perhaps even desensitized by their over-awareness.
The people who make the software you use don't do that? Don't use their software.
Oh, you paid for it; the price tag simply wasn't in dollars. You should probably see Aral Balkan's explanation[1] of the concept.
[1] https://projectbullrun.org/surveillance/2015/video-2015.html...
https://www.asc.upenn.edu/news-events/publications/tradeoff-...
edit: fixed URL I copied from the wrong tab
You're trying to tie the concepts together to create false dichotomy, which you use as a rhetorical tactic. This usually involves specifically ignoring the people you're replying to and many other posts in the thread that already answered this subject.
Finally, nothing on those screens says anything about automatically downloading a different OS. There's zero consent to that.
In the always connected world that we live in, automatic updates are a very necessary fact of life.
I never claimed this.
> I don't have a 2gb cap.
Good. That doesn't mean everybody else does. Stop projecting your situation onto everybody else.
> I certainly wouldn't enable automatic updates
As you're posting to HN, I can assume you are very familiar with computers and understand how to do that. Everybody else just wanted the small security patches that Windows Update provided for years, with minimal impact on data caps.
If nothing else, supporting fewer active versions would make MS more responsive to any security issues that do arise.
In fact, I'd say it's less secure since it hasn't been as well tested in the wild as Win 7/8.
But it hardly matters, since it's well known that storage needs always exceed available capacity, and 500gb is tiny compared with with today's needs, which may be represented by a reasonable hard disk capacity of 3TB or so.
So even a 500 GB drive won't fit all of the desired 3 TB in the first place, so it's already under pressure even before Microsoft randomly decides it's ok to use up over 1% of it.
And for the much more common 64 GB SSDs, this is 10% of their total capacity.
Which means that 6 GB can never just be assumed to be so trivially small that it won't have a really negative effect on anyone.
You picked a terribly contrafactual way to be a Microsoft apologist.
1. continue fixing bugs in their prior products. 2. create new features in new products.
People who buy something, e.g. an original iPad, no longer get OS updates even though the item was advertised as being safe to use to access content on the internet. This is provably false and while EULA shenanigans provide a fig leaf of propriety, the reality is what was sold was defective and if it's possible to fix it they should.
Opting out of updates means that you don't get fixes. The argument that you agree to these kinds of changes in fundamental behavior because you are receiving new features is B.S. The company sold me a defective product and certain documented behaviors. I'm ok with those behaviors but I want the product to work for the features advertised. I should have to tolerate excessive data collection simply to get a functional product.
It's like how putting "this EULA can change at any time" doesn't allow you to change the EULA to do subversive things. People agree to them under reasonable expectations. Using the terms and settings as a Trojan Horse is not respectful of those expectations.
It should be possible to fix bugs without having to add in new features. E.g. I shouldn't need to upgrade to floating icons with a parallax background to get a fix for PDF parsing problems.
