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Microsoft No Longer Allows Admins To Block Windows Store Access In Windows 10 Pro (zdnet.com)
If you're an administrator, you will no longer be able to block Windows 10 Pro users on your watch from accessing the Windows Store. Mary Jo Foley reports for ZDNet: Up until a month ago, admins could use Group Policy to shut off employees' access to Windows Store if they were running Windows 10 Pro. Controlling this access is a requirement for some businesses. But last month, Microsoft changed that option, claiming that Store access was required for all versions of Windows 10 except Enterprise and Education "by design." Admins still can use AppLocker or Group Policy to block access to the Windows Store if their employees (or students) are running Enterprise or Education.
Basically, if you can pay the Mac tax, consider it. Also consider Linux and BSD.
I've always had a real beef with Microsoft's many shady dealings. If you have followed them closely, they did a lot of really shady stuff, and had legal pushback. Eventually, they settled into a path where they were making plenty of money and were sort of easy to predict- when they screwed up, which was sometimes, they would try to make it right. This long gentle summer of Microsoft had its peak with Windows 7. Windows 8 didn't feature any of the strange drama we see in 10, but we saw the designers essentially say "we want to move casual users away from the old UI". That's why they pretty much did everything they could to ruin it- if it was still there and easy to turn on, power users would run a script for their friends, and everyone would have the old UI. But this decision was ACTIVE and MALICIOUS. Windows 10 is an absolute nest of drama, as you've noticed.
Basically, the reason you weren't a "screw Microsoft" guy is that you weren't paying attention. I was fine with 7- it offers way less freedom than non-Windows OSes, but it ultimately belongs to the user. Windows 10 breaks that totally. Microsoft sometimes briefly releases the coils. That's just to get you to inhale and exhale so it can clamp down tighter next time. Stop falling for it. Use another OS for everything you possibly can. Evaluate carefully each demand from those around you to install a new MS-only thing. Push back where you can. If you really can discard Microsoft completely, good. But you'll never see how hard it is until you try, how thoroughly they have themselves wrapped tight around anything that they can.
Stop living in the 90's.
These days there is a vastly higher chance that 99% of consumer gear 'just works' on Linux without stuffing around with drivers.
Only with Windows can you take a new computer, clean install the OS and have not a single peripherals working out of the box.
Even basic stuff like Ethernet will often not work.
If you're an administrator, you will no longer be able to block Windows 10 Pro users on your watch from accessing the Windows Store.
Works just fine with some firewall rules on the core router in the office.
Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.
I've been using Windows 7 for a long time and i haven't seen much of a compelling reason to upgrade to 10.
Most of the worst bits of windows 10 telemetry etc have been backported to 7 so unless you are spending more than normal amount of time inspecting updates there's no advantage to 7 on that front.
Better and simpler IMO to update to 10 and just install one of the telemetry blockers.
Ok... as for compelling reasons to upgrade..
.
DirectX 11.3 / 12.0 -- whether that's compelling is up to you.
HyperV -- and better virtualization support in general
Multimonitor -- better than 7, better than 7 with 3rd party addons IMO
Sleep / Wake / Reboot -- markedly better/faster than 7
Task Manager -- much improved over what's in 7
Antivirus -- built in good enough to run without more
SystemTray -- much better system tray/notifications setup
Security -- More OS hardening features
Smaller footprint -- smaller on disk, smaller in memory
There's a bunch of features (built in) and addons (like classic shell) you can use to make 10 look more like 7; but IMO sticking with the look of 7 vs 10 really just amounts to "resisting changes" for the sake of "resisting changes". I know people who jumped through hoops to make XP look like 98, then to make 7 look like XP etc... I don't think its productive or worth the effort, and you do miss out on some of the actual improvements by being close minded to the idea that maybe just may the windows 7 really might not be the pinnacle of user interfaces. (Not that windows 10 is... but it took little effort to adjust to it)
As a user of several windows versions 3.1 onward, Mac os7 thru X, and several linux desktops I can say that windows 10 desktop has some flaws (the confusing mix of old control panels and new "settings" to set things is probably the worst; and the a bunch of the defaults are idiotic; -- the default start menu tiles for example; I unpinned all of them; or the default file viewers for a few things being useless "modern apps" but that is all easily and quickly tamed. )
Is 10 a big upgrade from 7? No. But it is an upgrade, and it doesn't cost anything but some time and effort.
Yes it does. If you were to try Linux Mint MP3s will play out of the box, on the assumption you download the international version. Due to legal issues the USA version has mp3 playback removed in the default install, but can be added with 3 clicks after install. The part that is removed is the codec to allow MP3 playback.
At first boot it will be using the opensource drivers for your video card but a box will pop up saying "proprietary drivers are available for some of your hardware" it will list all of them and ask you if you want to install them or not. Hit yes and your machine will install the nVidia / amd drivers and reboot once. From there you are done. I haven't run into any media that won't play on a default install, it comes with LibreOffice which will do 99% of what people use MSOffice for, firefox, DVD burning software, audio recording software and image editing software.
There is always the possibility that you may have an edge case with your hardware that may cause you issues. However I haven't run into any other those in the past 5 years. I am running Mint on Dell latitudes, E6420 i7-2640m, NVS 4200m graphics, as their primary O/S, as well as multiple AMD processor (x2, x4 & x6 AM3 machines) on gigabyte boards with Nvidia graphics. I also have 3 Atom based machines with a mixture of Nvidia Ion and AMD Radeon cards that run without any hitch, including wireless, and ethernet. These are Shuttle XS35 machines and an ASUS EEbox.
All of these machines boot off the live cds with all hardware working. No hacks, grub parameters, hacking, compiling of drivers, downloading of anything weird, touching terminal or anything else required.
I have also installed mint on my MIL's crappy HP laptop which is an AMD Radeon and it worked perfectly. I can't remember any more of its specs though.
"Restrict App Store to MDM installed apps and software updates only": "When this option is on, the App Store can only be used to update apps installed by MDM and Apple software updates. The default is Off."
Really? I think the point is you should be using Enterprise if you want to do things like let admins block apps. That is what Enterprise is for. It sounds like it was a bug in Pro.
...Because Office 365 hasn't colossally fucked ANY organization recently!!!
https://support.microsoft.com/...
under Windows 10 and the spying stuff (which is sadly, mostly true) you're the product.
It's really not much different in OSX.
1) Spotlight has been in OSX forever and can be used to search web so potentially 'local search terms are sent out to the internet'. Same issue as windows search.
2) "Microsoft Accounts" to sign-in; again just retreading a feature OSX *already* has, where OSX prompts you to create an account tied to your AppleID with itunes, appstore, and icloud links.
3) App Store you can't remove... as discussed OSX had it years ago.
4) Telemetry -- ok windows got here first; but honest to goodness telemetry really isn't the bogeyman its made out to be. Yes, its truly irritating microsoft hasn't been transparent enough, and bizarre they won't just let you turn it off. (Most people won't even bother so why not just let that vocal group turn it off and avoid the circus I don't know.)
5) "Spying"; ok... lets stop there and talk Cortana first. Because again OSX did it first, with siri. But so far Siri is only on your phone -- and a TON of the information that is so-called spying (and part of why the EULA is such a wide cast net) is related to the cortana "feature"... to function as designed it "needs" to know who your contacts are, your search terms, your calendar, document meta data, etc, etc. And it needs to be in the 'cloud' so it can be processed and available on other devices you use, etc, etc. And further for Cortana to be be any use she needs to be pretty integrated into the OS... so where am I going with this? Siri is exactly the same, on IOS. All the same problems are there. Microsoft's only 'innovation' is to put it on the desktop.
So what about apple? Watch for the June WWDC where Apple annouces Siri availability for OSX... and then check out the accompanying EULA that has to go with it.
>1) Spotlight has been in OSX forever and can be used to search web so potentially 'local search terms are sent out to the internet'. Same issue as windows search.
When you disable spotlight's web search it stays disabled.
>2) "Microsoft Accounts" to sign-in; again just retreading a feature OSX *already* has, where OSX prompts you to create an account tied to your AppleID with itunes, appstore, and icloud links.
And you can freely ignore this with no real drawbacks.
>3) App Store you can't remove... as discussed OSX had it years ago.
It's not that you can't remove it, you stupid fuck. It's that MS won't let the admin block it. Apple *does* allow MDM to restrict the app store to updating MDM installed apps and the OS only. Which is what MS just removed from their platform.
You don't own your computer. redmond does.
I can name the date we lost control, April 4th, 2015. The update KB3035583 was listed as only to make converting to Win10 easier, more of a description has been added to it since
For seven days my HOSTS file blocked a 600K file collected over a 24 hour time from being to sent to a third party. Every malware protection on the market let it pass.
The captured material which in my case starts:
C:\Program Files (x86)\Opera15\28.0.1750.48\osmesa.dll 2,950.00 KB 4/3/2015 4:16:32 PM
C:\Windows\Temp\CProgram Files (x86)Opera15\installing\osmesa.dll 2,950.00 KB 4/3/2015 4:16:32 PM
Goes on for 4000 more lines ending in
C:\Users\Tone\AppData\Local\Mozilla\Firefox\Profiles\4msw7c4t.default\thumbnails\cdd6f9ceb15e02a0a36b6164ce79484e.png 2.00 KB 4/4/2015 11:48:49 PM
FFFFF
Just today in the event viewer I found error entries saying GWX can't negotiate it's action (I've long ago deleted the X:windows/GWX directory).
When I found it, it had three more config.cfg files so wasn't done, it was the file responsible for installing the icon that let one download and installed Win10 for one; and viewing the GWX errors in the event viewer shows it's not done.
GWX is a pet peeve of mine. While I warned of GWX, the question I was always asked was how come I was the only person in the world to have this so called collected file, and the thread pretty much over, hey I tried. I was regulated to /.'s journal for some badly written attempts.
Because of it none saw why a hosts file is ones main defense from malware and the more one builds on it (hosts file) the better it becomes; and their loss.
Because of it none saw why a hosts file is ones main defense from malware and the more one builds on it (hosts file) the better it becomes; and their loss.
Microsoft (and malware authors) can - and have - simply rolled their own DNS clients to get around hosts-based blocking.
If you trust any solution running on the same machine as the malware itself (whether that means a cryptolocker or GWX), you will eventually lose.
No, millions of small business just buy computers with Windows Professional installed and join them to a small domain. Only big companies pay again for the Enterprise edition. Those small business are being f...ed removing this policy.