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Microsoft Forces Desktop Search On Windows Update
An anonymous reader writes "The Register is reporting that the blogosphere is alight with accusations of Microsoft forcing Windows Desktop Search on networks via the 'automatic install' feature of Windows Update — even if they had configured their systems not to use the program. Once installed, the search program began diligently indexing C drives and entire networks slowed to a crawl."
Since when did Microsoft care about pissing off its users? What realistic alternative do they have?
This is getting ludicrous already.
It's not even a friggin' security update either.
Desktop search is NOT required on the desktop. It's a gimmick application (albeit a useful one for some people).
Microsoft is abusing it's position as the sole control point of Windows Update to push more of their crap into the market.
Additionally, Google may have a legit antitrust complaint here, as Microsoft looks to be trying to "IE vs Netscape" them on the desktop search. Unlike browsers, which can be opted not to be used, this desktop search is being auto-pushed, can't be refused, and it's detrimental to system performance to run two desktop search apps in parallel.
Fuck the Storm botnet. We have bigger problems with a piece of malware called "Windows Update".
Chas - The one, the only.
THANK GOD!!!
Critics cried foul on the principle that users should have absolute control over their machines.... The revelation that Microsoft is pushing yet more installations not explicitly agreed to by administrators is not likely to sit well with this same vocal contingent.
It makes me ask: What kind of administrator is using automatic updates on their machines anyway?
Let's face facts, while Microsoft should take much of the blame on this any admin should know at this point that automatic updates is opening yourself up to all types of undesirable installs.
This is nothing new and it's sad to see "professionals" in the field are still leaving security updates and other installs to go through without even sending a glance it's way first.
Dedicated Cthulhu Cultist since 4523 BC.
No they are merely testing, how far they can push their flock. One has periodically test these things to know how much you can get away with. Without precise knowledge of how much the users will put up with, they might be a little conservative and lose money they would have otherwise made. Further this will also raise the pain threshold of the users, once they get used to this level of pain, they will not see anything wrong with Vista.
sed -e 's/Chuck Norris/Rajnikant/g' joke > fact
But they benefit from deliberately installing stuff on the computers of users who don't get pissed off.
Don't want people to download Firefox or Opera? Push IE7 as a critical update.
Don't want people to download Google Desktop? Push Windows Desktop Search as a critical update.
Probably the balance between pissed-off users and non-pissed-off users makes it worthwhile in the end.
Unless someone is doing a lost of posting, it seems real enough alright.
Also, lets face it. It smells true. MS ain't that smart, it truly seems like they would think it a good idea to install indexing software on every desktop in a network and have it index all the shares.
Because slashdot ain't what it used to be, I shall now explain why this is bad. It would be like EVERY computer, trying to be its own internet search engine and spidering the net for itself.
You don't do that. You index your own files, and use a central index for everything else.
However MS ain't that smart and thinks that you should index locally everything on the network. This is really a fundemental flaw in their design of this tool. It really shouldn't be allowed to index the network without explicit permission.
So why the forced update? It seems to have given itself extra permission so that it was installed without admins having thecapacity to block it. Well, remember who we are dealing with. This is MS. The company that knows best. Their may be an evil plot, or it may simply be that the Desktop Search constained a serious security hole that needed to be patched, so they even installed it on non-desktop machines.
Frankly trying to explain MS is like explaing the actions of a mad man.
We will never know why MS truly did this, stupid blunder, evil plot, insanity?
And no, it won't drive people to linux. This is just another anecdote in the long miserable live of a windows admin. I suppose, I don't do windows, and gladly take a lesser paycheck for that (although oddly enough I get payed more then all the windows admins I know, but hey, life ain't fair). Linux, for the money and the babes. Oh okay, not the babes, but the free beer is nice.
MMO Quests are like orgasms:
You may solo them, I prefer them in a group.
Fabulous - my first Troll mod :) I actually felt I was making a serious point, although I guess I put it rather briefly.
People don't have a realistic alternative to Windows yet. It's not just a technology issue either. Microsoft only improve products when they face competition, and ensuring they don't have to do that is one of their principal business strategies.
Since Microsoft is (a) in the game of making money, (b) has a monopoly position in the market place and (c) continues to shut out competitors, then I contend that Microsoft don't care whether they piss off their users or not, and never really did care, except in those areas in which they are yet to dominate.
Pleasing users is not Microsoft's game. That's what their competitors have to do.
Isn't this effectively a virus?
http://monkeynesianeconomics.blogspot.com/
QA of patches is very difficult. Lots of time pressure. Lots of things to check. Easy to overlook things. It's not like Windows and other modern Megasoftware have any coherent set of specifications that can be tested against. Or that test procedures would be perfect if there were specificiations. Or that a thorough test could be run in a realistic amount of time. This looks like yet another QA screwup.
Better to defer installing updates for a few days I think and let others Beta test the fixes. There's some risk to that also of course. But not as much. At least not in my estimation.
You can't see ANYTHING from a car, You've got to get out of the goddamned contraption and walk...Edward Abbey
Here they go and make linux MORE secure by adding code to it, opensource code so it is known to be safe, while spying on windows users.
This proofs it, Linux users are true patriots who love their country and will defend it with their lives and therefore can be trusted with their freedoms, while windows users are all terrorists who hate our freedom and way of live and need to be spyed upon.
Makes sense. If you see someone using windows, report them to the proper authorities, the freedom of the world depends on it.
Friends do not let friends use Windows.
This is a message will auto-destroy a windows box in 10 seconds.
MMO Quests are like orgasms:
You may solo them, I prefer them in a group.
As MSIE and WMP have shown this is a battle which third parties cannot win (at least in the consumer space).
Ya you're right; that's why FF isn't gaining any ground, and third party video players don't come pre-installed on dells and others!
No, the real issue is that you shouldn't be forced to get an update you didn't consent to.
The article refers to windows update services and not windows update.
Thanks for playing though
Ya, I'm gonna go ahead and call bullshit. Our company has a WSUS server that I manage, and the update came in as Not Approved. So either he approved it, or set the server to auto-approve anything, which would be his doing as well. Or maybe he doesn't realize that its not an Installed % that it shows, its an Installed / NOT APPLICABLE % that the column indicates. In other words, I have 39% in that column, because the update doesn't apply at all to 39% of computers in our company. No computers to which the update applies have it installed.
For many of us, it died long LONG ago. For many, there's still a great deal of blind trust in Microsoft. Many people are losing trust in Microsoft yet at the same time cannot see an alternative. (For example, at an architectural firm... there's just NOT a Linux desktop alternative ... there's AutoCAD and Revit and that's pretty much *it*. I know there are Macintosh CAD packages, but they are not AutoCAD and/or Revit.)
:) Sure, Microsoft, go ahead and force your updates. Some people can roll them back because they don't trust your software any longer... even if they still use it.
So for those who don't trust Microsoft and use it anyway, there's stuff like Deep Freeze.
This sounds like a dumb mistake
Assuming that this is just a dumb mistake, I don't know what's worse:
Oh, but to err is human!, I hear you saying.
Bollocks. When it comes to the operating system that runs the vaaaaaaast majority of desktops worldwide, quality counts. Or should.
I'm here EdgeKeep Inc.
What is important is that it is there forcefully
For business users, it's one more unacceptable risk. Now that M$ has a means to carry out the more obnoxious clauses in their EULA, you can no longer ignore those clauses as ineffective. Even if you do trust M$ to respect your secrets, others can and will take advantage of this mechanism to root them out. Universal indexing is more than a business risk to Mozilla and friends, it's a business risk to everyone. Business users should be headed for the exits.
People who value their privacy should have left long ago.
DMCA, Hollings, Palladium. What might have sounded like paranoia is now common sense.
...and I also manage our WSUS server.. This one came in as "Install" here.. I know that I do *NOT* have my server set up to auto-approve everything - it's only set to auto-approve revisions to already approved updates..
So YMMV, but it came in that way here..
One of the nice things about this update is that you *CANNOT* change it to "Remove" after it's already gone out - WSUS errors out and tells you that remove isn't supported for this update.. How nice of them..
You can't turn anything off. Try killing lsass.exe in task manager and see how long your Windows PC remains running...
Every time I start to have faith in humanity, I ruin it by driving to work between 7 and 8 am.
I guess I would wonder how this was able to happen at all. The admins configured the service so that the update wouldn't happen, and it happened anyway. Why was the software built in such a way that an outside party could even have the option of pushing an update against the configured settings?
That's my point, and probably why I got modded troll. The basis of the article is that MS is forcing this, and used to indicate further evil on Microsoft's part. No, the problem is the sysadmin who has their WSUS and user profiles set to blindly accept and push the updates, or the users who have thier home systems to blindly accept and install updates. Just because MS put it in up for update doesn't mean you have to use.
But, pardon me for pointing out that this isn't an MS issue, its a USER issue and points out the knee-jerk anti-MS bashing that goes on here. Sure, there are things to bash MS about, but this isn't one of them.
Politics is the art of looking for trouble, finding it everywhere, diagnosing it incorrectly and applying the wrong fix.
No, the real issue is that you shouldn't be forced to get an update you didn't consent to.
And I have to wonder what problem everyone else is having, because my PC duly popped up an automatic update notification for this earlier today, and I told it to go away and not come back, with no trouble and no observable adverse consequences.
Why do I get the feeling that this story is caused by a lot of people who don't know how to configure automatic updates properly, and a lot of FUD because of the PR cock-up a few weeks ago? You can argue about how they classified the update, but certainly nothing has been "forced" onto my PC today as a result of the update going out.
If you disagree, post your argument. (-1, Overrated) isn't your personal censorship tool for views you don't like.
Another "defective by design" product. Same as "We can't take Internet Exploder out because its integrated into the OS."
Its not loke previous versions of programs didn't have their own search capabilities ... but Microsoft just loves to force the "Microsoft Way" on people.
B.O.G.U.S., as in "Bend Over, Grease Up, Sucker."
Contrast that to the "Free as in freedom as well as beer" of F/LOSS.
Firstly, Vista isn't painful. I've tried it, I use it, it's fine. I even have UAC on, because it isn't as annoying as everyone makes it out to be. Although I must say as a disclaimer that I, like many people, haven't tried to set up a HD home cinema setup, so perhaps I'm not experiencing the worst of it.
Secondly, the thing that's really slowing Vista adoption is not the alleged pain, but the fact that most people don't trust Windows until at least one service pack. This is a critical time for Microsoft. If Microsoft really want to make money (and trust me, they do), they would be focussing on rushing out a service pack, and concentrate on lessening the waves of FUD that are circulating around the web.
In short, I think the GP is right, and the theory of a demonic Microsoft playing with its market like they were pawns in a chess game is absolutely absurd.
You know, there is a difference between trolling and pointing out the flaws in your reasoning. Just saying.
How many dumb mistakes are the public going to take before they get to a point were they wont use windows anymore? That point for me was last week when I installed ubuntu 7.10 and guess what. I don't have this problem or any other windows related silly things. I HAVE BEEN SET FREE! THANKS UBUNTU!!!!!!!
Name me *one* popular OS that doesn't include the ability to watch vids and listen to music,
(Most) free Linux distros don't include an mp3 decoder anymore. To my knowledge, you have to install it separately.
Yes, I recall MSIE had an extremely difficult uphill battle against the heavily entrenched Netscape. Anytime you're dealing with something even remotely complex in the consumer space that requires a reasonable amount of knowledge/effort to change, the default is going to win by a large margin every time. I talked somebody through installing Firefox over instant messaging two days ago and wanted to stick a fork in my eye... and that was with somebody telling them exactly what to do.
Likewise, Silverlight is almost guaranteed to be a massively adopted technology simply because MS can stick it in a Windows Service Pack or update and in a month get nearly as much penetration as it has taken Flash near a decade to achieve. Should this be considered a hindrance to competition? Absolutely. This is essentially the same scenario as the browser wars... Microsoft used its dominance and influence with OEMs to prevent Netscape from being the default installed browser and usurped it with IE (which I think has done an excellent job at proving its harm to consumers).
The entire process is fubared. After it auto-installed on all our desktops despite our WSUS server, we went in and specifically set it to declined. It is still reinstalling itself on some (but not all) of our user desktops. This is an incredible nightmare.
I'm administaer WSUS 3.0 in my company and the desktop search app was not auto approved or autoinstalled. As I've said in other posts, if WSUS released the patch, it's the admins fault, pure and simple.
I would say that if there are a lot of admins who have been using WSUS successfully for a long time and yet saw this problem, AND if their WSUS installations would have done the right thing if configured correctly, AND if they were in fact incorrectly configured, THEN the problem might be one of faulty documentation and/or training on Microsoft's part.
We are so quick to say that the "RTFM newb!" attitude from Unix gurus is the fault of the gurus and not the new users, shouldn't the same standard prevent us from blaming these Windows admins who got burned?
Consider this, and yes I know it's now being said a lot!
The answer to slower than desired uptake of Vista, is to break XP. It's just that simple.
I DON'T use Auto update, and never have. I want to KNOW what is going on to my 'puter. It is simply the ONLY way to put yourself in a position to troubleshoot problems or avoid unpleasant and productivity sucking downtime.
I am conscientious about checking the Window Update site (home systems) and applying what I believe are relevant and useful updates. Even applying this methodology however I've been bitten.
Relevant to the current discussion are the recent additions to Windows update of Critical and (mostly) Optional updates for "Vista compatibility". IE7, PNRP, Remote Desktop Connection, and others.
As an example of the "hurt XP" theory, and after a reasonably careful review of the PNRP update I elected to install it across my network. WHAT A MISTAKE! Network performance plummeted, and the stability of the network went from rock solid to barely functional.
To quote the Technet article on PNRP "PNRP is an efficient, protected, low cost, dynamic protocol that uses an iterative, serverless method for name resolution.". In my environment it was anything but any of these. My network was killed with PNRP traffic, and using Wireshark I found PNRP continually trying to get out of my LAN.
Any of the foregoing would have been enough to drive PNRP off my systems. After thinking about the experience however, and working a short time with a Vista machine, I'm becoming suspicious that the "works with Vista" claims are in reality a will break XP warning.
Worth considering, and passing along to your XP using friends.
Never ascribe to malice or conspiracy that which can be adequately explained by ignorance or stupidity.
I believe that all of us should do what ever we can to block and or uninstall anything that is forced down our throats. Think Ubuntu. Get away from Bill Gates and his cronies. Linux is getting much easier to deal with now than it was. Much more user friendly and understandable even for the laymen. OpenSource. The only way to fly.
Check your facts: US antitrust laws apply to using market force to enter into other markets with an unfair advantage. Name me *one* popular OS that doesn't include the ability to watch vids and listen to music, much less browse the net and *gasp* Search.
These are defacto "parts" of the OS now, and have been for quite some time.
Curb your Windows Enthusiasm. It doesn't matter how "defacto" a practice is when a company holds monopoly control over what should be an open market. For a number of reasons, all significant PC makers HAVE to license Windows from Microsoft in order to sell PCs. There are major barriers to Linux on the desktop for consumers (despite it's being free), and developing a business model like Apple requires the ability to coast along under constant attack from Microsoft for a decade or so while developing your own OS. IBM, the Amiga, NeXT, and Be couldn't, and it appears clear nobody else ever could in the future.
The PC is not an open market, but only because of artificial barriers created by Microsoft to prevent competition. Unlike utility monopolies, it does not serve the public. We don't benefit from having to pay the Microsoft tax for every PC sold, and Microsoft has proven that without competition, it refuses to innovate (which is why development of IE suddenly stopped in 2001 and didn't resume until the threat posted by Firefox and Safari motivated it to poop out IE 7 five years later.)
The PC market was also not a product of choice. People didn't decide to use Windows over other alternatives; Microsoft simple ensured there were no other alternatives. While Windows Enthusiasts like to complain that Apple has "monopolized" music with iTunes and the iPod, the situation isn't even similar: no other manufacturers have to license Apple's tech (or even can) in order to sell their products. In reality, Microsoft monopolized music, because its pretty much impossible to get any kind of DRM music or player without it being involved. Apple just beat Microsoft in the marketplace by offering a better product before Microsoft could lock it all up. Without iTunes, we'd have the "choice" of various Windows Media stores and various Windows Media players, just as PC buyers only have the "choice" of buying Windows PCs from various makers.
In a similarly monopolized business, say the old phone market, or in the case of newspaper/broadcasting markets, there are laws that prevent companies with a certain position from acquiring other companies to extend their control over the market or leverage their control over one market to obliterate another. The fact that other smaller companies are not similarly restricted is not a defense against antitrust laws, and it makes no sense to bring up as if it were.
Saying that Apple bundles Safari or that Nokia bundles its own browser on its phones or that Nintendo offers Opera for the Wii is completely immaterial to the fact that Microsoft used its PC monopoly position to destroy Netscape, Sun, and every other rival in the desktop/web/API space to entrench Windows and tie all web development to its own proprietary browser. It just makes you look really stupid to repeat such absurd comments. What has Microsoft done for you lately?
How Microsoft Got Its Office Monopoly