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Samsung Cripples Windows Update To Prevent Incompatible Drivers
jones_supa writes: A file called Disable_Windowsupdate.exe — probably malware, right? It's actually a "helper" utility from Samsung, for which their reasoning is: "When you enable Windows updates, it will install the Default Drivers for all the hardware no laptop which may or may not work. For example if there is USB 3.0 on laptop, the ports may not work with the installation of updates. So to prevent this, SW Update tool will prevent the Windows updates." Too bad that the solution means disabling all critical security updates as well. This isn't the first time an OEM has compromised the security of its users. From earlier this year, we remember the Superfish adware from Lenovo, and system security being compromised by the LG split screen software.
*cough*
I've lost track of how many times I've been burned by a driver update from Microsoft that turned out to be incompatible with my hardware, likely because Windows Update misidentified my hardware as compatible with the driver. I no longer install any drivers through Windows Update, but instead go to the vendors sites and get them straight from the source.
Fortunately, the drivers are always optional updates, so you can just flag them as hidden and ignore them.
I do not fail; I succeed at finding out what does not work.
Years ago at work, we got some new desktops.
The desktops had 4GB of RAM, but the Windows XP Pro on them could only see 3GB. One of the guys decided to put Windows 2003 on the machines to get access to all the RAM.
It turns out there were NO drivers for that hardware which existed for Windows 2003, and even getting back to XP Pro proved exceedingly difficult because ... it was almost impossible to find the drivers again as they basically weren't published anywhere. Essentially this machine could only work with the OEM image made up of drivers and other custom crap which were almost impossible to find.
To add insult to injury, whatever idiot had ordered them got us some new-fangled wide screen monitors. The problem was that while the actual resolution of the monitor was a 4:3 aspect ratio ... the actual pixels were flattened so that in its native resolution the screen drew circles as flattened ovals.
I 100% agree with you. Because non-standard crap from vendors makes for utter garbage machines.
I get the feeling that maybe you have no idea what you are doing....
Linux might have some slight incompatiblity with an ever shrinking list of now obscure hardware. But when it works, it works. There is nothing this fucked up about linux drives. At worst, a few of them simply don't have the features we'd like, but nothing catastrophic.
Ya, it did, at least the unencrypted part.
http://www.theguardian.com/tec...
Ya, it did, at least the recording private conversations part.
http://www.cnet.com/news/samsu...
There are two types of people in the world: Those who crave closure
Look at the Vista fiasco. OEMs had to be dragged, kicking and screaming, to the privilege model (which has been in the UNIX world for decades, and was in the Mac world for at least five years) where they don't have all their stuff run with admin rights. Then, when MS added some fundamental security features like ASLR, forcing drivers to be rewritten, OEMs shipped alpha-quality code, then blamed the crashes on MS.
Yeah, I'm rather sympathetic with Samsung here. The actual problem is with idiotic updates that break all the stuff you've finally got fixed from the last time an update broke it.
An update should fix the stuff that's broken, not break the stuff that's fixed.
http://www.geoffreylandis.com
I'm trying to calculate just how much cheap moonshine you have to drink until a prompt where the computer asks if you want to reboot now, or not counts as "the OS decided to reboot all on its own".
Microsoft update WILL reboot on its own. It'll pester you for a few days then it literally reboots your computer without giving you a choice.
In the free world the media isn't government run; the government is media run.
Windows Updates only installs drivers if "Recommended updates" is enabled. It will never try to update drivers if you are only receiving critical/important updates.
Samsung are a bunch of liars.
and has never been done for EULAs.
The terms for click through EULAs that you don't see until AFTER you've made your purchase and unpacked the goods are mostly ignored by the courts as well.
I don't read AC A human right
I am not, in fact, a lawyer, but I do know how to use Google (unlike so many here). For instance, I can, without any adult help, open up my web browser, and type in http://www.google.com/ and go to a convenient search engine. In the search box for that search engine, I can type in "eula struck down as unconscionable" and click on the button labeled "Search." And get results such as
this, which talks about Bragg v. Linden Research, Inc., in which Linden's TOS (specifically, the arbitration clause) is struck down as unconscionable not once, not twice, but at least three or four different times and ways ("procedural unconscionability" and "substantive unconscionability" in two different ways, and then again on the latter after Linden amended it).
Wired also covers Gatton v. T-Mobile, again on an arbitration clause, and ruled unconscionable both procedurally and substantively. Also unconscionable for prohibiting class action lawsuits, because "that form of litigation is often the only means of stopping and punishing corporate wrongdoing." It also discusses Douglas v. U.S. District Court, which is about changing the terms of a contact after it has been signed, and which was ruled unconscionable. Gatton is often cited as recognizing that all click-wrap license have an element of unconscionability that must be considered by the court.
This has a link to this", which is a ruling on McKee v. AT&T, ruing their arbitration clause unconscionable.
Note that these are the first three results on the search, and the fourth is on McKee v. AT&T again.
Also note that these are all different courts, state and federal, all over the country.
Unconscionability is an affirmative defense - the defendant has to demonstrate why the contract is unconscionable, but it does, in fact, happen, and more importantly, it took me, literally, less than ten seconds to find example (and five of that was waiting for the browser to open.)
To quote the third link, you may now feed my cats for a week.