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Gesus christ. Do you use this OS? Do you use it regularly? Is it the "Professional" version?

I can set the "Active Hours". The active hours are configured so that within any 24 hour block there will always be a period of time outside the active hours. Microsoft uses this period of time to apply forced updates, some (not all) of which will reboot the system, REGARDLESS OF WHAT IT IS DOING.

How do you not understand this?

Here are some related articles on the topic. Most interest is from users wanting to stop Windows restarting unexpectedly.

https://www.laptopmag.com/articles/stop-windows-automatic-reboots

https://www.maketecheasier.com/stop-windows10-forced-updates/ [Note that Group Policy Editor was later disabled in the "Professional" version]

https://www.windowscentral.com/how-prevent-windows-10-rebooting-after-installing-updates

https://www.makeuseof.com/tag/disable-forced-restarts-windows-update/

If you can be bothered to read them, notice that most of these "solutions" involve disabling updates, or, applying registry hacks that may work for the current version, but could be disabled in the next release.

I don't know about you, but I refuse to fight with my OS. I have much better things to do with my time.

[Cue the "Like Post On Slashdot" rebuttal. He he, this is rec time :)]

However, it seems reasonable that Microsoft would try all updates with commonly-sold hardware before releasing the updates.

Bahahhahahaha

But I'm not one to not provide references to hysterical laughter:
https://www.windowscentral.com...
https://www.digitaltrends.com/...

While I give MS a pass for not testing their updates on Lenovo devices, afterall there's a shitton of custom stuff out there, they deserve to rot in hell for not testing their own.

Are you struggling to follow the conversation? Whether it happens to me or not has nothing to do with your reply just now. In fact I told you the service is executed for a specific reason but you seem to have ignored that, written it off as non-vital (presumably from your very intimate knowledge of Windows's inner workings)

What I said specifically and you failed to understand is that Windows 10 Apps run in the background by default without being launched. "The issue is that these apps are always running in the background, even if you didn't open them, and that will drain battery, bandwidth, and system resources." Please up on what Windows does before you go accuse other people of not knowing what the hell they are talking about because you don't seem to know what you are talking about.

It does nothing of the sort. What you did is called setting up a Strawman Argument. You attempt to distract and legitimise your argument to talking about something completely different. Or do you have a CVE pointing to critical bugs in Microsoft's Store / Licensing system?

Baahahahaha. I linked to an exact article showing how an unnecessary service caused high CPU usage possible slowing down or crashing a Windows system for no reason at all. And you denied it.

If you did, we probably wouldn't be having this conversation.

No the problem is that when you challenge people who seem to have a clue you double down.

Not at all. I installed no such software. But it's running. Who provide assurance to the function? Some paid programmer.

Again you do know that Windows does not allow you to finely control what is installed on your system. By paid programmer are you admitting that you don't actually admin your own systems?

Of course I do, maybe you should actually read my post to the end rather than typing pointless replies. You could have saved yourself an entire paragraph.

Buddy you're the one who tried to mansplain something and utterly failed because I happen to know something about computers.

Apparently, yes

this is.

We're not sure if these are just a few isolated cases and how many users are affected, but this should be taken as a reminder of the importance of creating a backup of your computer before going through any upgrade .

They are going back and forth using the terms "updates" and "upgrades."

Also, there's a reference to an "Update Assistant tool."

Here ya go:

https://www.windowscentral.com...

I used the Group Policy Editor method. Can confirm -- it works. At least on the original build. (Better-behaved than the latest incarnation.) At least so far. We'll see if it remains in effect long-term.

Also, MS is currently downplaying the significance of the ARM systems:
https://www.windowscentral.com...

This together with Qualcomm having to tighten it's belt all around, I wouldn't expect them to last long as a product line... again... (See Surface RT)

you actually can set an internet connection as 'metered' in Windows 10 so that it doesn't go crazy with updates and the like.

I thought the GUI to set media cost in Windows 10 worked only for WLAN connections, not wired Ethernet, and setting the media cost of wired Ethernet (such as with a satellite or cellular upstream) still required poking around in the registry. Has this changed?

Have you looked at:

the GPD Pocket 7.0? It's an atom that can run win10, 8/128gb, 7 in.
https://www.windowscentral.com...

My cousin needs a netbook factor with a real keyboard (and no camera, which kiboshes a lot of options) for use in archival research and was considering one. I never asked her whether she bought one though.

As a lifelong Windows user (and professional designer in the higher education tech support world), my advice is to relax and ignore all the Linux/virtualization/dual boot blather. They're all correct to one degree or another (many are spot on) but unless your son is or plans to be a hardcore geek none of it is useful for you. Lets' talk operating systems first. Despite a well-earned but obsolete reputation for instability, Windows is the preferred OS for gaming and many other pursuits. Windows 10 has a robust firewall, and Windows Defender is excellent virus protection and security. Both are on by default with new software. Defender is so good that it is our recommended solution, so don't pay extra for a third party app. Assuming you purchase a new machine with preloaded software, he will have no problem setting it up and learning the basics if he follows the prompts and takes the tutorials. The documentation is pretty good, some is excellent, and can be consumed in small bites. This is a pretty good round up of advice: https://www.windowscentral.com... Many of our students (we provide tech support to more than 20,000 undergrad and grad students) successfully use a program like Boot Camp to run Windows on their Mac. Generally, though, it's not a serious option for our gamers, whose concern is performance. Our top-end gamersâ(TM) go-to machine is some sort of Windows 10 desktop, with maxed CPU, double clocked, hela RAM, mega cooling (often liquid), large, fast monitor, wired internet connection. I doubt there are any laptops at any price that can perform as well as even a modestly equipped desktop. If a laptop is your preferred route, a cooling stand is an inexpensive and worthwhile addition. There's a good variety of very capable machines at much less than you'd pay for a similarly equipped Mac. The newer high-end MS Surface laptops get good reviews from our students, and so do the Asus and Alienware boxes. Canned air (I.e, DustOff) and a PC cleaning tool (OXO makes a great one) for dust removal are highly recommended). Hope that helps.

Didn't Microsoft move to this model just before the Windows 10 upgrade, uh, issues?

https://www.windowscentral.com...

I've done development and QA work, and QA approaches testing from from a whole different perspective. The problem is context switching. It's difficult for a developer to approach a piece of functionality from the user's perspective (especially if they don't necessarily know all the parameters for how the functionality is going to be used) It takes time to switch out of that mode, and, in an effort to make the code perfect, you can come short of ever making the code good to begin with.

A QA engineer is going into testing with the mindset of an end user. What are they going to expect to have happen? What are they likely to do? What corner cases aren't worth exploring? It's useful for developers to have some experience in this, but I don't think it's reasonable to expect them to be experts.

In general, you want developers to spend time and cognitive effort making sure the code is functional and maintainable. Heaping on the cognitive load of completely switching gears and thinking like an end user isn't always the best use of their resources.

because only 1 in 100,000 devices is returned to Microsoft. Most people just chuck it in the bin and go buy an iPad, to try and avoid the appalling customer support for Surface devices.

https://forums.windowscentral....

Yup, what about them?

Well, in a reasonably quality article (on windows central), linked from the Crappy article linked on the front page of Slashdot (as ussual), they had the info for DD-WRT and LEDE (OpenWRT). It turns out that the Source has been modified already, but no firmware images produced yet.

Now, is just wait and see.

Here is the more decent article:
https://www.windowscentral.com...

I'm not sure why anyone would start speculating based on what Bill Gates uses. Just the other day we learned about Windows Core OS and we also know that Microsoft has been working with Qualcomm on x86 Windows for ARM. So it's obvious the Microsoft does continue to think about a mobile response. But yes, Microsoft has also realised that a lot of the market is elsewhere, and it would help keep more devs on Windows by allowing them to easily develop for Android and Linux. Windows 10 Mobile did have Android emulation planned, it just didn't pan out. So nothing new on that front either. Perhaps MS is still working on it. (All in all, feels like a meaningless 'news item' by someone who has no clue.)

The development of the "Surface Phone" was announced in 2012. Where have you been?

I did understand your silly joke, but you make a stupid joke, while I address a real problem.

You came to Slashdot looking for advice on a real problem. This will end badly.

As such, these machines aren't being patched and are all vulnerable.

The solution is simple: more hardware. One core isn't going to cut it. You need a minimum of two cores and four cores is preferable. I had no problems running Windows Vista through 10 because I don't use the minimum hardware specs. That's just asking for trouble.

Try deleting or renaming the software distribution folder (works on Win7).
http://www.windowscentral.com/how-clear-softwaredistribution-folder-windows-10

Or back up the data and do a clean install. That fixes the Windows Updater and problems between the keyboard and chair.

There are very guilty in this story and they are so mainly because of their greed and arrogance.

Blaming Microsoft for their "greed and arrogance" never gets old on Slashdot.

Right, it is in prerelease builds. Not anything mainstream, and no guarantee that the feature will remain in the final release or if it will work the same.

You do know the final build of creators update was released 4 days ago as manual download and will hit windows update to start being automatically applied on Monday right?

Some lovely setting screenshots. Scroll almost exactly half way down to find your guarantee that this is in build 1703 which most people will get whether they want it or not within the coming few weeks.

I guess you need to set up a wireless network for your dial-up, then. I remember ICS on Windows 98 working well on a small household LAN. You can easily do this with a Linux server.

But it appears you can set LAN connections to metered with a manual registry setting:
http://www.windowscentral.com/...

cant set a wired connection as 'metered' even though many have just that

Such as a home LAN with a satellite upstream or the USB tethering of many smartphones, which appears to the PC as an Ethernet adapter. But there is a registry tweak to set the media cost of Ethernet in Windows 8 and 10. In case that document disappears, here's a summary:

1. In HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows NT\CurrentVersion\NetworkList\DefaultMediaCost, grant ownership and Full Control permission to the local Administrators group.
2. Change the Ethernet value from 1 (meaning unmetered) to 2 (metered).

Apple also only publishes to its own platform, basically pretendin that only theirs exists, so they have at least some excuse. But, I'm curious why Microsoft does this and yet if somebody else wanted to install their services on a Windows lock screen, Microsoft would have none of that.

It's probably a good thing that both consumers and developers are eschewing Microsoft's UWP and mobile platforms to the point that even Microsoft is starting to do the same.

http://arstechnica.com/gaming/...

http://m.windowscentral.com/mi...

Is Samsung being unfairly further beat up here because of the laser of media attention on it now?

Yes.

What do the objective facts say.

The public i don't think is privy to much in the way of real stats.
But anecdotally...

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/new...

http://www.phonearena.com/news...

http://www.windowscentral.com/...

http://gadgets.ndtv.com/mobile...

From which we can objectively say that other phones catch fire too.

And I wouldn't worry about the J5 too much... it looks like a cut down version of the S5. Hardly cutting edge or pushing any boundaries. It came out in June 2015. So 18 months... one handset. People are definitely just attaching it to the samsung hype.

Connect to your satellite modem using wireless instead of wired Ethernet, and Windows 10's settings will let you mark its SSID as metered. You can't change the cost model for wired Ethernet to metered to the GUI, but there's a registry hack to do that.

Windows Media Center... which was free in Windows 7, cost you a bit (if you didn't grab it during the first year) in 8, and is no longer available as part of Windows 10.

Much hope is being held out for the SiliconDust effort to make a working DVR app... however they are a year behind schedule.

http://www.windowscentral.com/...

It took a few tries to get it to work, but I can speak from personal firsthand experience that it works on Win10 the way you remember it, down to the guide data downloads.

With respect to other options, I'm hoping that the PlexDVR app allows for live streaming eventually, if SiliconDust doesn't get their life together.

Microsoft has basically killed Windows Phone at this point with such extreme prejudice, I almost find it hard to believe they did so unintentionally. Not only is the staff skeletal at best now, with 7,800 fired last year even before the release of Windows Phone 10, another 1,850 this May and another 2,850 at the end of last month, they have discontinued the few pre-installed services that were interesting and split the already very weak ecosystem into two.

My last phone was the Lumia 1020, the one before that was the Galaxy S i9000. The two experiences could not have been more different. When I got my i9000, there were few good applications, but progressively their number increased and it became a very nice system to use indeed. The 1020, on the other hand, came with some nifty things out-of-the-box—I really enjoyed Photobeamer and the free 30GB OneDrive option—that Microsoft killed, while third-party support continued to dwindle over time. One got better, the other got worse.

They have a few nice ideas in Windows Phone 10, but none of them makeup for the certain doom the OS has been heading towards the past couple of years. It's a mediocre experience at best and doesn't offer anything worthwhile that iOS and Android cannot do better.

The camera's mega-pixel count did sound high, but those numbers are nearly meaningless w/o the quality optics and image sensors to make those huge images actually look good.

Earlier they made(?) and used sensors with high pixel count even though you could save the pictures at a lower resolution, but it still gave better details (also normal CCD processors doesn't catch all colors per pixel but the colors in a grid even though the final resulting image has all colors in one pixel so the output data doesn't match the input data there and with a higher original resolution you shrink the errors there relative the output pixel / get better averages.)

I don't know if someone else (one?) did use a similar camera solution. I don't know if they actually developed the sensors themselves / had them made for them and if so if they still do.

At-least from a historical perspective it could be the case that their camera was one of the very best / the best used in a device of that kind.

I think I would say the iPhone 5 have a better quality image than the Lumia 1020 here:
http://www.technobuffalo.com/w...
Maybe lower dynamic range here?
https://i.ytimg.com/vi/qaV5N_Z...

5s doing well here too:
http://www.windowscentral.com/...

I remember some images back when were I thought the Nokia phone was better though, was it against iphone 4 and some pre-Lumia phone?

Here, Nokia N8 vs iPhone 4:
http://mynokiablog.com/2010/10...

White balance seem better on the iPhone 4 than the Nokia N8:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?...

Place of origin matter in that if it's a rebranded Chinese phone with Nokia software or so then it can't really beat what it is based on in hardware and differ from what others have access to whereas if it was Nokia made it could be both worse and better. It at-least leave room for the possibility of it being special/different/better (Then again the likelyhood of Nokia releasing a better phone than Apple or Samsung considering R&D funds available ..)

What sucks is how so many people accepted Microsoft spying on everything they do. Most didn't even put up a fight and now we're all lumped with it. http://www.extremetech.com/com...

Corporate media shills told us to swallow and smile http://www.businessinsider.com... http://www.windowscentral.com/... Ed Bott his face covered in Microsoft semen told us it doesn't make you any less a man to be willingfully violated.

Except that UWP supports applications built using native WIN32, but don't let that stop you from fear-mongering your life away.

Windows 7 doesn't access the Windows Store. The Windows 7 install base is HUGE. They want those people off Windows 7 and on an OS that has their store built in. Windows 7 runs on almost 60% of general user PCs, this number includes Macs. https://www.netmarketshare.com... That's a shit ton of potential people buying from your store. Let's face it, most people running W7 won't pay to upgrade, but their logic will be "hey if it's free, why not?!?". There you go, more money extracted from what would otherwise be a zero revenue generating install.

MS takes 30% of sales on their Windows store. MS wants everyone purchasing from their store so they get a 30% cut of every other company's programming work.

How I interpret MS's a long term goal - it's likely that they want to at some point force you go through the "Windows Store" to buy programs, just like Apple does on their "App Store". Hey,if you can't ignore the forced update that makes this change, then too bad for you. Here's how I see it as a general outline:
1. Develop New Windows OS that Data Mines (read new MS agreements @ https://edri.org/microsofts-ne... ), "cloud services", and more importantly includes the windows store and forced OS updates to add/remove features as they see fit. - Check

2. Offer "Free" windows upgrades - Check
3. Gain Installs / market penetration for new windows OS - In Progress
4. Sell / Use mined data for marketing purposes - Check (See above)
5. Leverage "cloud" services as a vendor lock in - Future
6. Sell more "windows services" - Future
7. Use forced Os updates to lock windows program installation down to their store just like Apple does on iOS - More Distant Future
8. Utilize a 90%+ PC device install base to profit massively off the "windows store" ( http://www.windowscentral.com/... ) - More Distant Future

Anyone else remember the cancelled project Astoria to port Android apps to Windows 10? http://www.windowscentral.com/...

Microsoft and Rakuten sign patent licensing agreement (Linux/Android+)

Microsoft signs patent licensing deal with Rakuten covering Android and Linux devices
By John Callaham - Wednesday, Mar 9, 2016 at 4:23 pm EST

"Microsoft has entered yet another patent license agreement with a third-party company. This time, it's with Japan-based Rakuten, and it will cover both company consumer electronic products, including any Linux and Android-based devices."

http://www.windowscentral.com/...

https://archive.is/2VwbO

+++

Microsoft and Rakuten sign patent licensing agreement

"REDMOND, Wash., and TOKYO - March 9, 2016 - Microsoft Technology Licensing LLC and Rakuten Inc. on Wednesday signed a worldwide patent cross-licensing agreement covering each company's respective consumer electronics products, including Linux and Android-based devices."

Hahahahaha: "The terms of the agreement are confidential."

http://news.microsoft.com/2016...

https://archive.is/bnylI

Why do you FP articles about Tor when there's possibly something negative about it but time and time again you don't push FP articles about TBB/Tails releases?

Anyway, Javascript is easily disabled in TBB/Tails.

More importantly, this news should not be ignored:

###

Well... THAT didn't take very long.

Ian Murdock (28 April 1973 - 28 December 2015)

Microsoft Releasing a Debian Linux Networking Distro (Jan/Feb/Mar?? 2016)

damn, that and the donation to OpenBSD is pretty much chess moves, IMO.

All MS should do is buy up Canonical/RedHat and knock over the systemd
distros with some type of patent(s) and/or buy some out and that leaves
a tiny amount of 'fringe' distros. Debian will probably be gobbled up
in the process (what happened with Corel Linux and further down the
line, that party with Novell?) and BSD wouldn't be too difficult to
buy/donate out anyway. WINE could possibly have patent(s) suits
against it...So what's left?

Hurd, my good man, where HAVE you been?

+++

http://www.windowscentral.com/...
https://archive.is/2VwbO

Microsoft signs patent licensing deal with Rakuten covering Android and Linux devices
By John Callaham - Wednesday, Mar 9, 2016 at 4:23 pm EST

"Microsoft has entered yet another patent license agreement with a third-party company. This time, it's with Japan-based Rakuten, and it will cover both company consumer electronic products, including any Linux and Android-based devices."

+++

http://news.microsoft.com/2016...

Microsoft and Rakuten sign patent licensing agreement
https://archive.is/bnylI

"REDMOND, Wash., and TOKYO - March 9, 2016 - Microsoft Technology Licensing LLC and Rakuten Inc. on Wednesday signed a worldwide patent cross-licensing agreement covering each company's respective consumer electronics products, including Linux and Android-based devices."

Hahahahaha: "The terms of the agreement are confidential."

http://www.windowscentral.com/...
https://archive.is/2VwbO

Microsoft signs patent licensing deal with Rakuten covering Android and Linux devices
By John Callaham - Wednesday, Mar 9, 2016 at 4:23 pm EST

"Microsoft has entered yet another patent license agreement with a third-party company. This time, it's with Japan-based Rakuten, and it will cover both company consumer electronic products, including any Linux and Android-based devices."

+++

http://news.microsoft.com/2016...

Microsoft and Rakuten sign patent licensing agreement
https://archive.is/bnylI

"REDMOND, Wash., and TOKYO â" March 9, 2016 â" Microsoft Technology Licensing LLC and Rakuten Inc. on Wednesday signed a worldwide patent cross-licensing agreement covering each companyâ(TM)s respective consumer electronics products, including Linux and Android-based devices."

Hahahahaha: "The terms of the agreement are confidential."

Yep. They have really fucked up with this.

I dont get it either, they were in a great position to refresh, and be the peoples os of choice and then did this shit. It is going to really hurt them, Im already considering mac os because of ms being jerks about this.

Yeah, I'm sure they are really hurt

I've heard that Microsoft is working on a Swift compiler, but I haven't heard what their schedule is supposed to be.

-jcr

Hypocrites.

According to news articles (for example, this one), most of the testers in Microsoft's Windows organization were laid off the job cuts they did in 2014.

This was announced a few months ago at BUILD.

http://www.windowscentral.com/...

Well, it looks like Microsoft is going to try to force these updates on us no matter if we want them or not.

Apparently KB3035583 is a recommended Windows update to 8.1 which suddenly starts nagging you to install Windows 10.

Fuck you, Microsoft. I'm not in your beta program, and I'll stick with the version I bought.

Tonight I'm going to have to uninstall and block this update, because it's not something I want.

Annoyingly, the actual MS aticle on this just says "enable more features in Windows Update". Basically Microsoft is slipping crap into our operating systems which will try to herd us into upgrading.

Sorry, Microsoft, it's my fucking computer, not yours. I'll upgrade it to a new version of the OS if and when I choose.

Bloody assholes.

I think much of the pro side's issues are along the lines of this:

http://www.windowscentral.com/...

Ubisoft forced all the game journalists to not release their reviews of the game until 24 hours after the release of the game, and the game was horribly broken on launch. Holding back the reviews that say essentially "don't buy, horribly broken" is perversion of the review system for pure greed. This is one of the many examples that the people in GG are claiming, but as I know very little of the scandal, I don't know of any others.

There was also apparently harassment on both sides of the issue, from people claiming sexism in games (well yeah, games geared towards boys will likely have a damsel in distress of some kind), to people being harassed and called misogynistic because they happen to enjoy games.

There were also death/rape threats and a school shooting threat, which could be from GG people, but may have just been random trolls that have nothing to do with the conversation but love to stir the controversy.

CNN commentator labels iPad controversy 'false and idiotic', claims he was using both tablets

http://www.windowscentral.com/...

http://www.windowscentral.com/...

Hello Microsoft, why is your watch showing the time at a 90 degree angle from the way we're used to reading our watches?

Man, how did they fuck that up?

Windows phones did not carry your credit card information nor did they have your google wallet password.

Sure they do. First result from Google windows phone password manager