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Even In Remotest Africa, Windows 10 Nagware Ruins Your Day (theregister.co.uk)
Iain Thomson, writing for The Register: When you're stuck in the middle of the Central African Republic (CAR) trying to protect the wildlife from armed poachers and the Lord's Resistance Army, then life's pretty tough. And now Microsoft has made it tougher with Windows 10 upgrades. The Chinko Project manages roughly 17,600 square kilometres (6,795 square miles) of rainforest and savannah in the east of the CAR, near the border with South Sudan. Money is tight, and so is internet bandwidth. So the staff was more than a little displeased when one of the donated laptops the team uses began upgrading to Windows 10 automatically, pulling in gigabytes of data over a radio link. And it's not just bandwidth bills they have to worry about. "If a forced upgrade happened and crashed our PCs while in the middle of coordinating rangers under fire from armed militarized poachers, blood could literally be on Microsoft's hands," said one member of the team.This is not a one-off case. We're reading about similar incidents everyday. Automatic updates, accidental automatic update, and the humongous data that these updates eat are ruining user experience for many. These are real issues. It's been roughly a year since Windows 10 has been officially available to consumers, and Microsoft is yet to address the issue.
Why won't somebody donate some consulting help for the people using inappropriate operating systems in life-critical conditions?
We keep hearing about this... it's clear that Microsoft doesn't care. I don't understand why people are so shocked by that concept.
--Hired Net Grunt
and a patient is dead as a result, then this issue will get noticed. Not until then.
"If a forced upgrade happened and crashed our PCs while in the middle of coordinating rangers under fire from armed militarized poachers, blood could literally be on Microsoft's hands," said one member of the team.
Sorry, it's your fault, pal. Didn't you know that Windows was an ancient American word meaning "I can't configure Ubuntu"?
Ezekiel 23:20
Now can we PLEASE stop seeing the same goddamned story posted every goddamned day?
I'm guessing this concept is way too difficult for people like you, but you don't HAVE to read these stories and you don't HAVE to comment on them
Or maybe you can get a refund from Slashdot for all the money that you've paid to them
Set the connection as a metered connection. Windows Update will not pull updates over the connection.
The pushy upgrade was a stupid idea for more than one reason, and this was well known before Microsoft did it. There's the old saw "don't fix it if it ain't broke". Some hardware would quit working. The upgrades were most cavalierly programmed to happen without regard to the customer's needs, able to take a computer out of service for hours, and that could be just when the owner had scheduled some important work. And of course for those with limited, expensive bandwidth, it's damned rude of Microsoft to pig out on such a precious resource without asking. That's stooping to the level of online advertisers, who deserve to be blocked because they just can't lay off the obnoxious loud, flashing animated video advertising that eats gobs of bandwidth and CPU time. Not that Microsoft was ever much above that level.
Speaking from my experience as a system administrator, doing a major upgrade on production systems for the heck of it was a major no-no. We only upgraded if we had to, for some crucial new functionality, and we'd spend at least a week preparing for it with tests on identical equipment if available, dry runs, and the like. We'd document how long it was going to take, and if too long we might set up a temporary system. We were not going to risk taking down the website of our company. Uptime is critically important. Stunts like this pushy, opt out upgrade assure that Windows will stay permanently banned from the server room.
That Microsoft apparently can't grasp any of this or just doesn't care shows, again, how stupid their leadership is. Meh, they've been unbelievably stupid for 15 years now. Getting in bed with the MAFIAA of all people, and deferring to those idiots on technical matters around DRM, wow, just wow. MS doesn't deserve to be regarded as a tech company, not while they're willing to defer to tech morons on the areas they're supposed to be the experts on.
Intellectual Property is a monopolistic, selfish, and defective concept. It is "tyranny over the mind of man"
"...rangers under fire from armed militarized poachers, blood could literally be on Microsoft's hands,"
Guns don't kill people, Microsoft kills people.
There is no issue.
There is nothing to address.
Windows 10 upgrade is doing what Microsoft wants it to do: maximizing the number of machines running Windows 10.
Think about it this way.
If you pay a vendor for something, then--at some level--that vendor will serve you.
If you do not pay a vendor for their product, then that vendor does not serve you. They may serve some other revenue stream, like advertising, or some kind of big-data analytics that they hope to sell, but they definitely do not serve you. If you are not paying for the product, then you are collateral damage, or prey, or fodder: something to be harvested and packaged for resale.
Somewhere in Microsoft is a VP who is in charge of the Windows 10 upgrade.
This VP has been told that his bonus, or stock options, or possibly his job is dependent on getting X million Windows 10 installs, or X million installs per month, or something. He doesn't care how many people are inconvenienced, or lose data, or have their machines bricked. He doesn't care how much bad PR Microsoft gets, or how much bad trade press, or how many outraged Slashdot comments there are. All he cares about is making his number. And this is going to continue until the CEO goes to this VP and changes his performance objectives.
Deal with it.
(Linux works for me. YMMV.)
Not meaning to troll, .. that I got away from M$ products SO many years ago.
but articles like this always leave me with a smile, not out of malice, but out of relief
Not even a twitch, only condolences to the poor bastards having their lives literally ruined by M$ Abortionware and the reasoning of the assholes at the M$ helm. From TFA, et al.
For the record:
% uname -a
FreeBSD Krypton42 10.2-RELEASE-p14 FreeBSD 10.2-RELEASE-p14 #0: Wed Mar 16 20:46:12 UTC 2016 root@amd64-builder.daemonology.net:/usr/obj/usr/src/sys/GENERIC amd64
"Suppose you were an idiot...and suppose you were a member of Congress...but I repeat myself." Mark Twain
I'm guessing this concept is way too difficult for people like you, but you don't HAVE to read these stories and you don't HAVE to comment on them
But if you don't, the story will install itself permanently.
Ezekiel 23:20
Where the hell is the class action lawsuit or anti-trust suit?
These incidents need to be kept in mind until legal action is spawned.
Where are all the hero Lawyers??
~ People that think they are better than anyone else for any reason are the cause of all the strife in the world.
Okay, we get it: Windows 10 updates are annoying and pushy, most users are too stupid to avoid them, and Microsoft doesn't give a crap how the users feel. Now can we PLEASE stop seeing the same goddamned story posted every goddamned day?
You're looking at it all wrong. The way Slashdot is battering us daily with "Windows 10 Upgrade Horror Stories" is exactly like the way the Get Windows 10 nagware update screens batter the Windows 7 owners. This is just a sympathy posting.
As a matter of fact, there's been so much battering of Windows 7 users that they've opened a shelter for them over on Second Street. When you walk in the door a counselor meets you to help you get over the abuse. But it turns out it's the Shuttleworth Shelter, and the counselors install Ubuntu and systemd on the poor peoples' machines! Oh, the irony!!
John
Wrong plural. "Malware" like software, hardware, firmware, and information, is a mass noun. You do not have "two informations" nor do you have "two malwares" or "two softwares" or "two firmwares" -- you have two pieces of information, two pieces of malware, two pieces of software, and two pieces of firmware.
.... is warranted or even recommended for use in fields where lives *literally* depend on the software operating correctly.
File under 'M' for 'Manic ranting'
I do agree with your point about skipping stories you aren't interested in. I also agree that Slashdot *should* heavily cover this story so other companies don't get the idea they should follow MS's example.
That said, Slashdot is most certainly *not* free. It is ad-supported. For that reason he does actually have a right to bitch.
"I like to lick butts!" by MobileTatsu-NJG (#32700246) (Score:5, Informative)
so your surgeries are done while Windows can update
That depends a lot on the surgery. The anesthesia machine is usually too low tech to warrant a centralized computer and that's about the most vulnerable part. Still a competent anesthesiologist can live without one. S/He won't be happy, but s/he can manage. Most of the important stuff is mechanical. Unless you're going in for cardiac catheterization - usually they have a PC hooked up to the fluoroscope/EKG readout. Apart from other very specialized equipment (intravascular ultrasound for instance) there's not all that many computers involved in surgery. Certainly appendectomies (appendices) and colecystectomies (gall bladders) and all sorts of other common surgeries can be done without any computers at all.
Seven puppies were harmed during the making of this post.
Of course the machine that goes ping will be fucked.
Seven puppies were harmed during the making of this post.
Alanis Morrisette called this usage very ironic.
Microsoft is fucking evil.
This tearjerking little story is actually in Microsoft's interest.
The message here is that Microsoft can do whatever they want and we are all helpless.
This is the pattern of narrative we are subjected to again and again and again. "We are helpless".
We are NOT. Militarize. Get angry. Let the rage fly. If enough people do this simultaneously there cannot be consequences from any authority because they need us all to work. Once the "powers the be" start listening we can demand referendums and codify economic justice.