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That stopped in July 2016, because now you have to pay for it. https://support.microsoft.com/...

They think people would pay for that garbage... nah.

There are monthly, non-cumulative updates available with only the security updates, if you download them directly from the Microsoft Update Catalog and install them manually with the wusa command line tool. Go to https://www.catalog.update.mic... and search for (as an example) KB3212642.

Windows is trying to avoid conflicts that arise from a "mixed binary" situation, where different running processes are linking to different versions of a system library. It's the same reason Ubuntu got a bunch of "reboot-required" notifications a few years back, when OpenSSL was being updated rapidly to fix a whole bunch of newly discovered vulnerabilities.

Some of the *sole* reasons gamers are running Windows 10:

* Typical MS bullshit about not supporting DirectX 12 on Windows 7, They did the same shit when they tried to force gamers to migrate from XP to Vista via DirectX 10.
* MS artificially not supporting newer CPUs even though AMD officially has drivers for Threadripper

Ask gamers to tell you ANY _new_ features that are DirectX 12 only and not available in DirectX 10? You'll get *crickets.* Gamers don't fucking care. They just want to play the latest shiny.

They obviously don't care about Windows Spyware

How many of those running Windows 10 were forced upgrades?

---
Only children censor.
Adults discuss, and even laugh about "taboo" subjects.

Considering MS just started to list their 79+ endpoints, I doubt they care about users knowing what data they actually send:

https://docs.microsoft.com/en-...

--
--
Only children censor.
Adults discuss, and even laugh about "taboo" subjects.

Oh?

0.0.0.0 vps11240.hyperhost.name
0.0.0.0 data28.somee.com
0.0.0.0 carma666.byethost12.com
0.0.0.0 hyperhost.name
0.0.0.0 somee.com
0.0.0.0 byethost12.com

* Place those entries into your hosts file to NULLIFY this exploit!

(SOURCE = https://cloudblogs.microsoft.c... )

APK

P.S.=> For the BEST possible hosts file vs. this & other .exploits/threat? Accept NO substitute for APK Hosts File Engine 2.0++ 64-bit for Linux h t t p : / / a p k . i t - m a t e . c o . u k / A P K H o s t s F i l e E n g i n e F o r L i n u x . z i p (remove spaces between characters & download) OR APK Hosts File Engine 9.0++ SR-1 32/64-bit for Windows https://www.google.com/search?... ... apk

Microsoft has had SQL Server running on Linux for over a year now. Here's the install instructions. https://docs.microsoft.com/en-...

And their product page: https://www.microsoft.com/en-c...

Microsoft has had SQL Server running on Linux for over a year now. Here's the install instructions. https://docs.microsoft.com/en-...

And their product page: https://www.microsoft.com/en-c...

If you really wanted to work on performance in the server room, you'd be ssh'ing into Linux boxes

Though ASP.NET is ported to Linux, as of July 2018, Microsoft SQL Server is still exclusive to the Windows® operating system. So if your existing application is designed for ASP.NET and Microsoft SQL Server, and you lack the time==money to migrate the application's database layer to PostgreSQL, you'd still be running Windows in a virtual machine on those Linux boxes. When you do use SSH, you'll probably end up tunneling RDP inside it.

If you really wanted to work on performance in the server room, you'd be ssh'ing into Linux boxes

Though ASP.NET is ported to Linux, as of July 2018, Microsoft SQL Server is still exclusive to the Windows® operating system. So if your existing application is designed for ASP.NET and Microsoft SQL Server, and you lack the time==money to migrate the application's database layer to PostgreSQL, you'd still be running Windows in a virtual machine on those Linux boxes. When you do use SSH, you'll probably end up tunneling RDP inside it.

I got caught up in the idea of "learning a language for free", think about that for a moment. Learning for free, so basically as far as M$ is concerned my time is free, my effort is free, my worth is zero. This stuff is getting annoying, corporations thinking your time, your work, your efforts are worth nothing and to be exploited for free.

I don't learn for free, it takes real time and real effort. A really funny thing when you think about it, "we ran the first Q# coding contest and the response was tremendous. More than 650 participants from all over the world joined the contest", so with 131,000 employees https://news.microsoft.com/fac... only 650 could be fucked entering the competition, fuck M$'s own staff hate it.

You, DO you realize that 33% of Azure is running Linux, right?
* http://www.zdnet.com/article/l...

And they even support Linux hosting!
* https://azure.microsoft.com/en...

What you're referring to is journaling filesystems (ext3, ext4, NTFS) versus non-journaled filesystems (ext2, FAT).

There's a good write-up on this Microsoft blog on what journaling gets you and what it doesn't with respect to removable drives.

continuing to harvest user data without limits, no bounds, without transparency..

Without transparency? It's all detailed very specifically right here:
Basic Level
Full Level

It details what data and what events get sent. Personally I use macOS for all of my personal computing but for a lot of my professional work I need Windows applications. After reading through those pages and considering what I use my Windows system for (mainly Photoshop, Maya and a variety of other content creation applications) I don't see any significant issues.

continuing to harvest user data without limits, no bounds, without transparency..

Without transparency? It's all detailed very specifically right here:
Basic Level
Full Level

It details what data and what events get sent. Personally I use macOS for all of my personal computing but for a lot of my professional work I need Windows applications. After reading through those pages and considering what I use my Windows system for (mainly Photoshop, Maya and a variety of other content creation applications) I don't see any significant issues.

What Surface in any way tries to be a MacBook?

Are you kidding me?

Next I would like to see Microsoft make CLI versions of all the traditional windows management tools, and then for legacy GUI tools

Your wish has been granted.... like.... nine years ago. Where've you been, dude and/or dudette? As a random example: Microsoft added Managed Service Accounts in 2008 R2, and you can see a "Managed Service Accounts" folder in AD Users and Computers, but you cannot create or edit them there. You -must- do it through Powershell using New-ADServiceAccount. Here's a blog post from 2009 on the subject.

Pretty much the only parts of Windows you can't configure through the command prompt, are some of the GUI elements. For example, there is no way to change what is pinned to the taskbar, nor can you programmatically set whether a tray icon will always be visible or not. Folks at Microsoft have said that this limitation is intended to protect the user from app installers that inject themselves all over the place. Setting crucial visual things like display resolution is also disallowed (except on Server Core, where there is no GUI to do this).

Year of Linux on Desktop! (Seriously.)

A hard link (similar to a shortcut for you Windows users) was created.

Windows has hard links, most users just don't know how to make or use them. I'll bet for the same reason (lack of knowledge of command lines), most Mac users don't know how to do this either.

Heck, that's even an Azure service these days:
https://azure.microsoft.com/en-us/services/cognitive-services/emotion/

Do you have evidence to back this up?

Checking Microsoft's own stats they claim that 56% of their workers are caucasion, which is what I presume you mean when you say "white": https://www.microsoft.com/en-u...

The EEO-1 report is here: https://query.prod.cms.rt.micr...

Of course that is for the whole company, but it would be quite incredible if somehow at their main HQ "white workers have been all but eliminated" and yet all other locations put the overall figure at 56%.

Unfortunately it's hard to say how many of their employees are Indian because the EEO-1 form lumps them in with a lot of other nationalities and ethnicities: "A person having origins in any of the original peoples of the Far East, Southeast Asia, or the Indian Subcontinent, including, for example, Cambodia, China, India, Japan, Korea, Malaysia, Pakistan, the Philippine Islands, Thailand, and Vietnam." But it's certainly less than 31% which is the total for all of those, and of course that number includes all Americans who are "Asian" but not foreign nationals.

Do you have evidence to back this up?

Checking Microsoft's own stats they claim that 56% of their workers are caucasion, which is what I presume you mean when you say "white": https://www.microsoft.com/en-u...

The EEO-1 report is here: https://query.prod.cms.rt.micr...

Of course that is for the whole company, but it would be quite incredible if somehow at their main HQ "white workers have been all but eliminated" and yet all other locations put the overall figure at 56%.

Unfortunately it's hard to say how many of their employees are Indian because the EEO-1 form lumps them in with a lot of other nationalities and ethnicities: "A person having origins in any of the original peoples of the Far East, Southeast Asia, or the Indian Subcontinent, including, for example, Cambodia, China, India, Japan, Korea, Malaysia, Pakistan, the Philippine Islands, Thailand, and Vietnam." But it's certainly less than 31% which is the total for all of those, and of course that number includes all Americans who are "Asian" but not foreign nationals.

I asked them about that 2 months ago https://blogs.msdn.microsoft.c... to which the reply was "You are right but we needed to keep it simple.".

So they know, and they forge on ahead regardless. I predict many future files will be sent to Mac users with CR EOL.

features a 10-inch display, integrated kickstand, and Windows 10

I guess the foam helmet is extra? :P

p.s. When you're ready to remove the training wheels, Linux will be waiting.

It's actually a well documented problem.

This caused issues for a lot of corporate users (who usually aren't broke). Also, we're in an iPhone updates discussion thread, which is a healthy indicator that the last thing we are is broke.

The new 'Classic Intell[i]Mouse' for 2018

The FA mentions at the end that the mouse is available direct from Microsoft, and the MS page gives the part number as HDQ-00001. But that part number is also available from Amazon, which says, "Date First Available: October 16, 2017".

In fact, I have one of them; Amazon tells me that I "purchased this item on March 11, 2018". I like the mouse a lot: it's corded, the BlueTrack sensor works well, and I like the shape. It's a good mouse, but it's not all that new.

P.S. I also like the Microsoft Sculpt Comfort Bluetooth Mouse for a Bluetooth mouse. It's not a miniature "laptop" mouse, but I use it with my laptop... I had a small laptop mouse for a while, but prefer the feel of the larger mouse. Gotta say, MS still makes good mice (and keyboards).

"I've been using the Microsoft ergonomic split keyboards for 30 years"

Very interesting for a keyboard that's only been around for 24 years, you loose-lipped bovine fibber.

https://blogs.msdn.microsoft.c...

Looking at the Microsoft spec page for this mouse - https://www.microsoft.com/acce...

I can see that it's only compatible with Windows 7 and up (although the way they say it's not customizable with Windows 10S is pretty awkward) so why would I buy it? I suspect that "compatibility" means "customizable" in terms of buttons and dots per inch and, somewhat ironically, it will work like the original Intellimouse on other systems.

Personally, I demand that I go between systems with a minimum of mechanical transition; that means I use the same keyboard and mouse whenever possible for all my systems. OSX is always going to be problematic, but I think it's reasonable to expect to be able to have identical human interfaces on my Windows Linux systems.

Yes, and in my opinion, they are doing it for one purpose and one purpose only... profit!

I am not trying to ditch Apple here, I am trying to be fair and realistic.

This is what I think:

* They are moving fast towards ARM.

* They need to shun power users, since ARM will not be sufficiently powerfull for that user segment.

* They already have had a reputation for being something that only stupid or ignorant people use (dating back all the way to the one button mouse), so they might aswell boost that image.

* They want to use ARM in everything and by everything I mean laptops, phones, "smart speakers" and tablets

* They do not wish to continue making Macs, unless they can sell them as ARM netbooks, no more stationary workstations

* OSX, MacOS etc.. have changed platform before, "just like that" because they have been very cunning about seperation of layers and they use many genius tricks to do this very smoothly, something they should be proud of.. it is very impressive how they handle that

* When everything they sell is ARM, then they control everything, own CPU's, own OS's, own everything... brilliant for Apple, not so much for consumers (they go from a technical prison cell to a complete technical isolation), because it would most like mean less options for users... once again... for example.. an ARM Apple netbook will not run Windows 10, unless MS decides to go all in on Windows 10 ARM...

I don't know why I am indulging an AC; but here I go:

Considering Intel's complete lack of a game-plan, I think that anyone NOT considering alternative CPUs at this point is headed for deep disappointment.

You haven't seen what Apple can do with a 16-core ARM of their own design. I think that compute-power isn't going to be an issue. And for the price they are likely paying for that Intel detritus, they could likely afford to have a 1 sq. ft. piece of silicon, with 100 cores of their own design!

If Apple was interested in "Shedding Pro Customers", you wouldn't have seen an 18-core Xeon iMac Pro, eGPU support in macOS, a promise of a new Mac Pro (yes, I realize it's still vaporware), continuous improvements in Final Cut Pro X and Logic Pro X, etc.

If they are so stupid in their ARM developments, how come they have the hands-down most powerful ARM-based SoCs in the mobile space? You do realize, of course, that they have more ARM hardware and software development experience than nearly anyone on the planet, right?

They ARE very cunning in their ability to painlessly switch platforms, on that we wholeheartedly agree.

MS is going all-out on their ARM port of Windows 10. In fact, I think they actually released it in May:

https://docs.microsoft.com/en-...

Oh, and since they already HAVE x86 Emulation (actually, JIT cross-compiling, which is exactly how Apple did their seamless 68k emulation on PPC) baked-in, it's now a no-brainer for Apple to build ARM-based laptops and desktops, and still provide Windows compatibility.

https://docs.microsoft.com/en-...

So, this really isn't as hare-brained an idea as it would first seem, given Apple's mastery of all things ARM.

Yes, and in my opinion, they are doing it for one purpose and one purpose only... profit!

I am not trying to ditch Apple here, I am trying to be fair and realistic.

This is what I think:

* They are moving fast towards ARM.

* They need to shun power users, since ARM will not be sufficiently powerfull for that user segment.

* They already have had a reputation for being something that only stupid or ignorant people use (dating back all the way to the one button mouse), so they might aswell boost that image.

* They want to use ARM in everything and by everything I mean laptops, phones, "smart speakers" and tablets

* They do not wish to continue making Macs, unless they can sell them as ARM netbooks, no more stationary workstations

* OSX, MacOS etc.. have changed platform before, "just like that" because they have been very cunning about seperation of layers and they use many genius tricks to do this very smoothly, something they should be proud of.. it is very impressive how they handle that

* When everything they sell is ARM, then they control everything, own CPU's, own OS's, own everything... brilliant for Apple, not so much for consumers (they go from a technical prison cell to a complete technical isolation), because it would most like mean less options for users... once again... for example.. an ARM Apple netbook will not run Windows 10, unless MS decides to go all in on Windows 10 ARM...

I don't know why I am indulging an AC; but here I go:

Considering Intel's complete lack of a game-plan, I think that anyone NOT considering alternative CPUs at this point is headed for deep disappointment.

You haven't seen what Apple can do with a 16-core ARM of their own design. I think that compute-power isn't going to be an issue. And for the price they are likely paying for that Intel detritus, they could likely afford to have a 1 sq. ft. piece of silicon, with 100 cores of their own design!

If Apple was interested in "Shedding Pro Customers", you wouldn't have seen an 18-core Xeon iMac Pro, eGPU support in macOS, a promise of a new Mac Pro (yes, I realize it's still vaporware), continuous improvements in Final Cut Pro X and Logic Pro X, etc.

If they are so stupid in their ARM developments, how come they have the hands-down most powerful ARM-based SoCs in the mobile space? You do realize, of course, that they have more ARM hardware and software development experience than nearly anyone on the planet, right?

They ARE very cunning in their ability to painlessly switch platforms, on that we wholeheartedly agree.

MS is going all-out on their ARM port of Windows 10. In fact, I think they actually released it in May:

https://docs.microsoft.com/en-...

Oh, and since they already HAVE x86 Emulation (actually, JIT cross-compiling, which is exactly how Apple did their seamless 68k emulation on PPC) baked-in, it's now a no-brainer for Apple to build ARM-based laptops and desktops, and still provide Windows compatibility.

https://docs.microsoft.com/en-...

So, this really isn't as hare-brained an idea as it would first seem, given Apple's mastery of all things ARM.

Some viruses are hard to remove

Spending one day looking into something is now called "researching heavily".

On the serious side, I've often been annoyed by Windows 10 aggressively pushing updates, but there have been some interesting security features added to recent builds. Microsoft has a demo website with some good information, along with some tools for testing your configuration.

There is also a video online that details the new features.

from the post:

Someone has managed to install Windows 7 onto a 266 MHz Pentium II processor, 96 MB of SDRAM memory, and a 4 MB video card. But even a Pentium III system took 17 hours to install Windows 7, and it takes 17 minutes to boot the machine. Someone else claims to have... "installed Win 7 RC on a Pentium III 850 MHz notebook with 512 MB RAM and 100 MHz FSB in slightly less than 1 hour and it works exceptionally well." Monday, July 06, 2009 7:49 AM

https://social.technet.microso...

They also failed to update their minimum requirements. On https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/help/10737/windows-7-system-requirements, there is no reference to SSE2 or SIMD at all.

Windows has IFS interface allowing new files systems to be plugged in without permission.

In what way? I thought developing to the IFS interface, or any other Windows kernel-level interface for that matter, required paid permission from one of the Extended Validation (EV) code signing certificate authorities trusted by Microsoft. An ordinary $15 open source developer certificate from Certum won't work; it has to be specifically EV for Windows 10 (source), and last I checked, EV certificates were available only to a corporation or LLC, not an individual developer.

Microsoft specifically announced the L series as INTEL XEON E5 v3's. So either they got their own announcement wrong or you got your information confused.

L Series yes, L Series v2 uses EPYC

Exactly -- and Xcode requires an apple computer. That indicates more of the same monopoly.

OK, let's skip past the question of why TF it shouldn't require an Apple computer. No, Xcode is only one option. E.g. Visual Studio, etc.

Also, Apple's walled garden is vastly different than the majority of corporate private networks because it's not a private network.

English comprehension not a strong suit, then? Which bit didn't you understand of "verify applications before allowing them onto the network" being a parallel to verify applications before allowing them onto the App Store?

Oh, hang on, the bit that you didn't understand was the bit that contradicted the opinion you pulled out of your arse, wasn't it?

> I find it HARD TO BELIEVE that they have the tools necessary to even get hack tools like debuggers, etc

So your theory is that a company which can build nukes can't download these debuggers from Microsoft?

https://docs.microsoft.com/en-...

Are they also unable to download https://x64dbg.com/

And all of these?

https://www.concise-courses.co...

> As someone who works in the cyber industry;

Vernon? There's a reason we fired you.

You are wrong. Win7 x64 didn't have this bug. There was people running Skyrim mods on Win7 just because of that.

No, I'm actually not. Because directx9 is the same build on Win7x32 and Win7x64. You're likely thinking ram, not vram. This was the function fixed. This bug existed in every version of windows right up until it was fixed and still exists in Vista x32/64, Win7 x32/64, Win8.0 x32/64 patched Win8.1 x32/64 last rollup in Nov2017, Win10 x32/64 prior to build 16232.

Microsoft is not in the business of data mining. Google, Amazon, Facebook, Apple, all ISP's, and all credit card companies are. You don't know what you're talking about.

So all those ads they have on Bing are just served up at random? Pro-Tip: Everyone is data mining.

How to Uninstall and remove the MS A.I. Node key logging spyware known as Cortana :

https://winaero.com/blog/how-to-uninstall-and-remove-cortana-in-windows-10/

Running Process Explorer https://docs.microsoft.com/en-... if searchUI is listed Cortana is running

I dual boot Linux Mint, from there I rename the file X:\Windows\SystemApps\Microsoft.Windows.Cortana_cw5n1h2txyewy by adding -something to the end of it.
I don't uninstall it as each update reinstalls it (last one did).

The article and embedded links talk about how bad Excel's algorithm is, but never states the Excel version that Canada's IRCC uses. In this case it matters because recent versions of Excel are OK.

Excel 2010 and later uses Mersenne Twister for the PRNG. This is good.
https://support.office.com/en-...

Excel versions before Excel 2010 use an implementation of the Wichman-Hill that provides not-so-good pseudorandom numbers.
https://support.microsoft.com/...

"How do you centralize update downloads and approval/deployment?
I know you excepted it but that's not acceptable." - You buy enterprise or you use intune

"How do you publish or deploy applications based on group policy?" - GPO software deploy has existed for a long long time. On top of that there are other tools to meet this need that are better than GPO (SCCM, intune, 3rd party tools, etc) This is again no different than any other version of windows.

"Once manually deployed, how do you keep them that way and not get uninstalled during the next quarterly service pack update?" - Again, solved in the first two quite easily.

"How do you standardize or even create a default profile?" - https://docs.microsoft.com/en-...

"How do you standardize a default start menu layout?" - See that link above
"Are you pushing admin owned and locked folders to each desktop after the fact?" - Folders do not belong on a desktop. Why do people still do this?
" How do users add their own panels and shortcuts to it then?" - The same way they did on literally every other version of windows.

Again with the exception of patch management without enterprise (which is annoying for small companies). Nothing about how you manage windows has changed. The only real difference is more powershell functionality to improve remote management. I manage thousands of endpoints for a living including OSX, Windows, and a few different varieties of linux. This kind of work is trivial in all instances.

There's some more information here

Yeah. People don't get that Microsoft have changed and they keep looking for 'malice' when there really isn't. I'm sure the Microsoft developer that built this thing had literally never heard of Gnome when they designed/built it. After all, it was initially designed to cope with the largest git repository on the planet for a team of EMPLOYEES working on a corporate owned project. They were probably thinking of one thing alone: how to make the lives of their fellow developers easier.

THAT'S IT.

(Interestingly, the other big companies out there -- Google and Facebook -- use a similar 'single repository' approach; just neither use Git source control for their main repository. Google uses Piper which is an internal-to-Google-only-tool. Facebook (at at 2014 anyway) uses Mercurial.

Remember it's coping with a 100GB pack file, 3.5M file, 4000 user repository. The Linux kernel is (at 1.5GB), by Microsoft standards, doesn't even count as a medium scale repository!

So, yeah. Lets assume that developers are developers and actually want to solve TECHNICAL problems, not this sort of argument. Even if they're in Microsoft, Facebook, Google, or even, shock horror, Oracle.

And the Slashdot crowd needs to have a good, fucking, hard look at themselves. Microsoft have used this GVFS name for this project for over a year now. It has been announced on Slashdot more than once. It took some dweeb THIS long to notice?

And that shows you how irrelevant Slashdot is - because if Slashdot was relevant, they would have triggered this reaction THE FIRST TIME.

If you read Microsoft's news article on this, the point of this project isn't to cool a datacenter using the ocean as a heat sink. It's to build a self-contained datacenter which can be customized to order, is easily shipped (fits on the back of a truck), then deployed at the bottom of the ocean where it operates for years without human intervention. All you need to do is plug in the power and data cables to something onshore.

I suspect putting it at the bottom of the ocean is more about preventing people from breaking in and stealing the equipment inside, rather than cooling it. It's got a built-in self-destruct mechanism which triggers if anyone tries to break in while it's on the seabed, thus eliminating any incentive for thieves. This goes along with the self-contained theme (no need to hire security guards).

No, that's Windows Resource Protection. Windows Defender might show a notice, but you don't have to use it to prevent this at the OS level.

so are they doing x86 emulation?

Yes

The traditional "WoW" 32-bit x86 on 64-bit x86 engine (which has existed since 64 bit Windows has) is augmented with a x86->arm transcompilation system. (There's also some advanced stuff where various windows-standard user-mode DLLs are (specially) compiled to have the same struct layout in 32-bit x86 and ARM, so the x86 implementation becomes 'thunk to ARM code.)

Video of it all in action (on real hardware). x86 32 bit code will run.

As a matter of fact, they currently do.

It's quite recent, yes. Since last week their linux version no longer works: https://answers.microsoft.com/...

Though they botched that up as well, since it seems to still work for some people...