Forced Windows 10 Upgrade Shuts Down PC Used by Anti-Poaching Rangers in Africa(news.softpedia.com) |
Forced Windows 10 Upgrade Shuts Down PC Used by Anti-Poaching Rangers in Africa(news.softpedia.com) |
I was quite disgusted when I saw that Windows 10's start menu contains adverts; maybe Microsoft realised that the average user would likely install adware themselves anyway, so they wanted to get into that industry too... all the evidence certainly supports that, including the now-well-known closing the upgrade window indicates consent shady behaviour common amongst malware/adware. It's clear that MS is really, really desperate to get as much users onto Win10 as they can.
To adopt a phrase MS originally used against Linux, "Windows 10 is a free upgrade only if your freedom and privacy are worth nothing."
I am not familiar with the technical details of XP, so these are mostly observations from a user and not developer perspective:
1. On my old Pentium 4 box with 256 MB of RAM any release after XP hardly met the OS requirements. Yes, hardware has come a long way since then, but IMHO there is no technical reason why a kernel with a bare bones desktop needs more than this amount. I never understood why Microsoft's recommendations for RAM went up to 1 GB and beyond. My pretty standard Arch Linux setup in 2016 does not take more than this right after boot.
2. XP had a rather long lifespan as an OS. It was only later that Microsoft got into the 2-4 year upgrade cycle, hoping customers would purchase a lot of the upgrades. What happened actually in many cases was a simple skip of alternate upgrades, concretely Vista and 8.
XP definitely had some pretty bad problems, like the fact that it was not really ready for the 64-bit era, manifested in things like the 2 GB limit on memory per process. I don't know about what they did with the 64 bit XP version; it looked a lot like a stop gap solution.
I used the EOL announced for Windows XP support as a nice excuse to get myself to use a GNU/Linux system. I have not looked back since then.
As an aside, there are still some holdouts of XP usage, such as some lab equipment software written many years back. In fact, Windows XP embedded was supported all the way till January 2016.
Maybe they got the idea from Ubuntu's funneling local search queries to online search engines?
There are hundreds[1] of distributions built around the Linux kernel, and Ubuntu was the only one to try (and be immediately condemned for) including Amazon results in local searches, which anyone who didn't want was free to disable or else try any of the many, many Debian or Ubuntu based distros without.
I don't know of another version of Windows 10 that I can install if I don't like some aspect of how it collects data or prevents me from administrating my system, but even if there were, how many users would know to set up WSUS servers to prevent errant update behaviors?
http://superuser.com/questions/958562/how-do-i-remove-candy-...
You will jump through these hoops every upgrade unless you go through and disable certain updates, which you will need to keep up with for the rest of your life.
You now have to pay a monthly fee to avoid 30 second videos in Solitaire.
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11167964
http://betanews.com/2015/10/15/microsoft-now-uses-windows-10...
http://www.wired.co.uk/news/archive/2015-07/30/windows-10-pa...
I would be surprised to hear of Microsoft doing such a thing, and equally surprised to hear of a consumer OEM not doing it.
Are you sure it was Microsoft and not the manufacturer?
They don't really bother me enough to bother removing them but I can easily see how they'd be annoying to some.
+ another link: http://hexus.net/tech/news/software/92849-windows-10-anniver...
This is bullshit.
There have been many huge behind the scenes efficiency improvements plus security improvements.
Seriously, Microsoft has issues but this sort of tripe doesn't help the anti-Microsoft cause.
Are changes in tracking behavior detailed in patches?
It's one thing to read about and discuss the issues with Microsoft's overt push to migrate the world to Win10. It's admittedly a completely different experience to see it happen right before your eyes. Some time ago, I half-committed to never owning another computer with a Microsoft OS beyond Win7, reasoning that you just never know if a useful tool may pop up that's only available for Windows. After last night's surprise, that commitment became unwavering.
OP is having an AMA[1].
0.https://www.reddit.com/r/technology/comments/4mcdon/i_live_i...
1.https://www.reddit.com/r/IAmA/comments/4mirin/i_am_the_accid...
The one in the meeting room decided to upgrade and then break in the middle of a client presentation I was leading. I got my Mac and continued on, but it was embarrassing.
My colleague's machine upgraded itself overnight, and in the process deleted a bunch of files and corrupted creative suite.
I know having as many people as possible on the latest version is a good thing from a platform perspective, but in reality it's such an irresponsible thing to do. It just lets people know that Microsoft are quite happy to reach in and break their stuff at any point.
If anything it's persuaded the last few Windows holdouts in the office to switch to the Mac or Linux in short order.
It might be acceptable if Microsoft gave their product away for free: many free products (e.g. Sublime or Skype) include annoying autoupdate popups for non-paying users. But Windows is quite expensive software.
Microsoft's motives are just getting more paid services, getting more telemetry (for free! they do not pay for it) and maybe adding some kind of subscription in future. Recent Windows versions like 7 or 8 seem to be 'good enough' for most customers so they do not want to upgrade for free let alone buy newer versions.
And subscription is as bad as DRM.
I disagree. Linux is great as a desktop system precisely because you're in control, not some third-party. And in terms of desktop functionality there is no meaningful difference anymore.
https://www.reddit.com/r/technology/comments/4mcdon/i_live_i...
> if a forced upgrade happened and crashed our pc's while in the middle of coordinating rangers...
Our accounting team used Quickbooks Pro 2014 which worked on Windows 7. Then all our machines went to Windows 10, and Quickbooks no longer worked. Our accounting team basically did no work for a week while they did a combo of trying to figure out which software to migrate to (went with Quickbooks Online), recover any missing data, and make sure the data migrated successfully to the new accounting package.
The nice part of this forced migration is that Quickbooks online does not require Windows, so three less Windows boxes to support at our shop as we have moved the acct dept to Linux boxes.
The rule of unintended consequences in full effect.
What about "Unpatched Windows PC shuts down N instances of x,y or z due to worm/virus/malware," which is a headline far more common than this completely ridiculous headline.
This is the technological equivalent of that one person pontificating and whining on about someone who once knew someone who died in a car crash BECAUSE they WERE wearing their seat belt.
Back before updates were forced, users have proven themselves too clueless to manage their own PCs. I don't care what people do as long as they are not connected to the internet. It's a shared resource.
Updates or upgrades should only be forced when backwards compatibility is preserved.
Even my tech-savvy coworker who didn't want to upgrade got caught out by this. Anyway, you can still roll back, and then install never10.
--
They didn't change it, it was always that way. People only realized just now that it does that.
Also, please do take a look at the window people X out of and then are surprised about: http://i.imgur.com/aWFX0vc.png It states clearly that it is going to happen, and when it is going happen, and how to cancel it. The only way a user would be surprised about that is if they didn't read the message in the first place.
Now with the moment coming closer and seeing what they do there, I'm pretty sure I'll play the win2k game one more time with my win7 and see what comes up next. Even if I'd have to pay for it.
2. Upgrade to Windows 10 (this associates your machine with a permanent license)
3. Restore your backup
If/when time comes to actually upgrade, you should be able to do so (or install from scratch) using the license you acquired in step 2.
In fact, I have to wonder if the reason why Ballmer was finally handed his walking papers by the board was that he was unwilling to greenlight these frog-marched upgrades to Windows 10.
Somebody very powerful at Microsoft, or perhaps elsewhere, wants everybody to accept this free update way, way too badly, and it's not clear why.
I mean, I'm already playing Skyrim natively on an AMD GPU thanks to Gallium Nine. And that is only because there has been a lot of internal pressure in the community to have the best Windows only games running here. The more people we get to switch, the more market for businesses to make the process of switching easier.
Of course, we still need Ubuntu (or SteamOS) computers in stores. That would be a nice start. It is hard to get people to switch when they need someone with technical know-how to violate their warranties and give them no commercial support unless you have a small business IT shop like what I run in the evenings that will do it.
There are plenty of people being force-upgraded to 10 who never consented.
I just don't see how that makes it OK for microsoft to do the same.
And the BSD guys, and the GNU/Hurd guys, and the ReactOS guys, and the Haiku guys, etc, etc ;) More things in heaven and earth and all that...
PATENTLY false. Yes they shove the upgrade down your throat metaphorically pretty hard, it's going to appear on top of the App Store on OS X and all over the iOS one, and it will put a notification on your Settings app, but to my knowledge there is no way for iOS or OS X to initiate a system update on it's own. And we've looked into having our monitor box at work do that so we have one less thing to maintain, it isn't easy.
Know that the upgrade is not unavoidable, and if you have friends who don't want it, tell them how they can avoid it.
> The windows boxes in our office have been upgrading themselves, much to everyone's dismay
Go around and ask which of your colleagues closed this window without actually reading it: http://i.imgur.com/aWFX0vc.png
Realistically, who reads and reasons about every line of code that their system runs? For the most part, people don't ever really consider software beyond just installing it. In that case, maintainers have control.
In 2015 a lot of new (green) sock puppet and corporate accounts appeared that down vote comments and flag stories that share not their "nice vision". The worse situation around MS all started when Gates (who is apparently still a driving force) replaced Ballmer with Nadella, a marionette. I am viewing HN using a third party front end, and every time a unfavorable MS story appears it doesn't last long on HN until it gets flagged - no other company story is handled that negatively or flagged in any way that often. So there is a clear pattern behind it. To make my point clear, also this story quickly vanished from the HN frontpage. And I would have no chance to even know about it. HN used to be a better site :(
There have been a lot of unfavorable stories about MS on HN, including recently. We don't do anything special to penalize them, nor do we let users abuse flagging in the way you suggest. In fact the Windows 10 update nagware saga has appeared numerous times on HN's front page, including multiple stories about clicking 'x' on the dialog box, how it screwed some African satellite operators, etc. The current one fell suddenly off the front page because of software (it set off the flamewar detector).
If MS "infiltrated" HN, it's news to me and I'd like to know about it. It's our job to protect the integrity of this place for the community and we take it seriously. When we see gaming and manipulation we crack down on it hard. But actually the BigCos aren't the ones who do such things. They're (rightly) too risk-averse.
If you think you see evidence of manipulation you should email us at hn@ycombinator.com. When we get emails like that we always look into it.
(this is my experience, and the experience of many on the Windows 10 forums)
The problem here being that such an opt-in happened in the first place.
Technicaly true.
Practically, it will sneakily get a human to eventually let the upgrade in. Just as we've been seeing all around.
"It's a shame if something were to happen with all that time you got here."Indeed, their ever-changing "Get Windows 10" dialog is appalling. It's like a real life version of Cat Facts[1], or those stupid Best Buy emails I started getting after I bought a memory card from them and made absolutely sure I wasn't sharing my email address or signing up for anything. Hitting the "unsubscribe" link in the email resulted in more frequent spam from them, rather than actually unsubbing me.
Multi-monitor setups not working on windows 10:
http://www.neowin.net/forum/topic/1255544-windows-10-10074-n...
answers.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/forum/windows_10-start/win-10-wont-recognize-multiple-monitors/fb5c5f33-b9e7-4158-ab82-833a9595e466
https://www.displayfusion.com/Discussions/View/windows-10-do...
http://superuser.com/questions/947819/multiple-monitors-brok...
So yeah we can go on all day about the driver issues in Linux or we can go on all decade about the driver problems on Windows.
I my self bought a brand new laptop from dell with Windows 10, the laptop would not wake from sleep the first time I opened the lid, I had to close it again and re-open it every time. When it did wake up the wifi wouldn't work.
Driver issues are a common occurrence on Windows and in my experience more common on Windows than Linux.
But for all of that, it won't actually start the update without getting consent. I guess that makes a big difference.
> In that case, maintainers have control.
And if they change the software in a way that I dislike, I can fetch a previous version of the program and use it that way forever, or disable the changes in the new version. Thankfully, I don't usually have to do that. There's almost always another piece of software that can be reconfigured to do what I want.
Unless it is a web browser because modern frontend developers tend to make their web apps compatible only with the latest version of a browser they use on their Mac.
This MS story from today also vanished from the frontpage quickly.
I contacted HN (you), I highlighted several vanished posts. You mentioned you see no pattern or unusual activities.
Also this one vanished: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11846199
Even if an automatic penalty hadn't kicked in, moderators would have penalized that first link (even if we personally agree with what it says). First, it's a duplicate that adds no new information over previous incarnations of the story (which have already appeared more than once on the front page, already an indulgence and certainly not a pro-MS one). Second, it's a garden-variety riler-upper, and those aren't a good fit for HN, as should be well known by now.
None of these mechanisms has anything to do with Microsoft. I'm pretty sure that the bias you're arguing for doesn't exist at our end. How sure are you that you're not simply noticing things because they fit your interpretation?
That's all I can think of. In open source software where this is more transparent, computer security is hard. Backporting fixes is harder, and expensive, and has its own risks. Microsoft can't be immune to the same problem.
The low-level 'attack surface' is mostly unchanged. Windows 10 is not a total rewrite of Windows Vista/7/8, or anything close to it. As proof of this assertion, you'll note that most security patches that apply to Windows 10 will correspond to equivalent patches for earlier versions.
The distinction between “windows is upgrading on its own and there was nothing I could to to stop it [once it started]” and “microsoft used a bunch of shifty tricks to fool me into pressing a button that supposedly gave my consent, and then there was nothing I could do to stop it” becomes pretty moot, pretty fast.
Yes, the latter is technically correct, and should be the main focus. But for the victims who are wondering what the fuck just happened, a snide, “did you read the dialogue before closing it?” isn’t helpful. It comes off as smug because because you consider yourself superior.
If there was more nuance to your original comment, you probably should have made it in the first place. Your one-liner only came across as snark.
I vehemently disagree, since by identifying the actual issue you can, instead of frightening other people into fearing an automatic upgrade at any time, inform them about what is actually happening and better prepare them to prevent the same happening to them.
That said, yes, my previous comment was snide snark. At that point it was all i had upon realizing how badly the whole discourse was fucked up towards not being useful to anyone.
That would not have helped in this situation OP stated what hurt them was the huge amount bandwidth (6GB) used on an account where they pay per MB.
Please read about him before dismissing him out of hand because you've not heard of him. There's more to the world than what's inside your box.
It basically does what Microsoft would do in order to keep Windows from upgrading.
I've gotten by for SOOO long with samba + OSS, and our main stack is OSS, and have remained on the up + up with licensing. But with CAL's, Domain Controllers, File servers, etc, etc -- It seems to get so obnoxiously expensive fast --- for the only benefit of entrenching yourself to Microsoft tech?
Given that I have to maintain a fleet of 40-50 Windows devices, Along with Samba 4, is there any good tech stack OSS or otherwise for managing all that?
If you buy a business machine with Professional edition, it already services all the business needs.
I used to have good reason to push volume licensing when Enterprise was necessary to get Bitlocker.. but now there's very little business reason to do so.
> I vehemently disagree, since by identifying the actual issue you can
I understand where you’re coming from. And I already agreed that what actually happened – the shifty practice to supposedly gain consent – should be the discussion. My entire sentence about the distinction is with regard to giving consent, which is what your original one-liner alluded to. Microsoft tricked people so they would have the excuse after the fact that you gave consent, when they really do no such thing.
So in most ways we probably agree on the actual issue – but your original one-liner came across as blaming the victim for being human – my reaction to it was to blame microsoft for intentional manipulation of human nature to achieve their objective, without the person’s consent, against the person’s desire, in a way that tries to make it look like their own fault.
If nothing else though, the snark comment prompted us both to elucidate our viewpoints and (I hope) find common ground.
If the common ground is that we're somehow in a situation where both Windows users, and MS are being harmed, and the only people benefiting are news websites who get clicks for sensationalist headlines that do nothing to help the users, then i think we've reached it. :)
:( vvvv
Yeah, and then it asks again, and again, and again, and again, and again, and again.. and again....
Now if I plug it into my computer and run iTunes, iTunes does ask. But I don't do that very often, as there's no reason to plug your phone into a computer these days.
[These links are for others viewing this thread, who don't have iPhones and haven't seen it]
http://osxdaily.com/2016/01/04/stop-ios-software-update-noti...
http://apple.stackexchange.com/questions/209498/is-there-a-w...
Yeah, sure buddy.. I learnt my lesson when my 4S turned into a laggy POS after updating the OS. I was forced to sell it off because it became super slow. Never going to trust Apple again.
Which is why not having the option to turn down upgrade after having been upgraded to windows 10 is problematic.
In Zero to One there is an excellent chapter about the dark side of competition and how it makes you cargo cult your competitors instead of thinking creatively. This is an example.
Don't compete. Innovate and focus on the user and the problem domain, not the others. Otherwise you just become an inferior copy.
Windows 10 Spyware Edition is a misstep like Google Plus.
If Microsoft cared about its users, that option would be way bigger than it is.
Edit: They purposely put in all that information because they know people won't want to read through all that. That dialog is purposely designed to trick users because they've been taught that if they want to cancel, hit the "X" button, not find the tiny link to change the scheduling of this thing you don't understand.
The lesson Microsoft should have learned is that if they come out with a genuinely-improved version of Windows, the user base will adopt it in good time without being herded like sheep.
> all that
I don't know about you, but to me and most anyone i know the amount of text in that window is miniscule. Difference in perspective i guess.
As for what users are taught to: What i and everyone else i know have been taught to is "Read everything the computer prints on the screen unless you know exactly what it is."
the dialog is purposely built to trick users into clicking on the X, something users have been taught to do and what has always by default been, "cancel, don't do whatever this dialog box tried asking you to do."
also, when is the last time you saw a dialog box with that much text? which dialog boxes have you been reading exactly? even so, it's not as though the amount of text telling the user absolves them from their dark design patterns to trick users. microsoft did the bare minimum to let users know and changed the way the ui works by having the close button _agree_ to the changes rather than canceling them.
As parent (+1'ed) notes, the message itself is quite clear in its intent. I would not for a second think that closing the window would infer the "cancel path" as the result.
Yes, they are being too forceful, and Microsoft ought to have given users a clear "I do not want to upgrade, ever" option, yet at the same time Windows 10 represents a significant increase in security, and in these days of massive botnets and what not that is a good thing on a big scale. In a roundabout way, I'm picturing this as forced immunisation for the greater good.
Is that really so? It seems that last 20 years Microsoft just plays whack-a-mole game closing endless vulnerabilities instead of designing a better architecture that would not allow such things.
For example in Windows any app has full access to a device. The user can run any app written by anyone just by clicking a link on a web page or mail message. In Android these problems are partially fixed and in iOS the user is unable to run malicious applications at all.
Users don't read anything. They take whatever action is the quickest way to get rid of the dialog box they aren't interested in so they can do what they actually wanted to do with the computer.
“A major system update is available for your computer; for more information on Windows 10, please go [here]. IMPORTANT: In addition to changing Windows, this update could also require you to find and install updates for other programs on your computer.
What would you like to do?
[Upgrade Now] [Upgrade Later] [Do Not Upgrade]”
No marketing-speak, no crap about how many other people have been affected by the virus-er I mean upgraded, all they needed was to be straightforward with users. Why was that so hard for Microsoft to do?
Microsoft is committed to security updates on Win 8.1 until 2023.
Edit: *Especially for Windows 7.
https://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/itpro/windows/whats-new/...
I don't think they would like windows 10. :p
And to be fair, the misreporting and misrepresentation of the reality in the discourse about windows upgrades caused my pendulum to swing too far in the other direction.
MS is engaging in dark patterns, and that is what needs to be stated clearly, and directly, not the sensationalist, and wrong "windows updated automatically and there was nothing i could do".
> having the close button _agree_ to the changes rather than canceling them.
See that kind of thing is wrong. No such thing happens, period. The window tells you that at the date a change was scheduled, and gives you the options of "change", "cancel", "do now" or "dismiss the information". Closing it does not agree to anything, the agreement was taken implicitly before the window even opened. You're opted in, and given an option to opt out. And that is the dark pattern here.
Bingo, nailed it.
http://www.pcworld.com/article/3078663/windows/microsoft-den...
That's definitely a textbook case of a dark pattern.
Note the very nice video in there.
