Slashdot Mirror
Microsoft To Make Saying No To Windows 10 Update Easier (zdnet.com)
Less than a week after a California-based woman won $10,000 lawsuit against Microsoft over Windows 10 upgrades, the Redmond-based company has announced it will make it easier for users to say no to Windows 10 updates. The company plans to change the Windows 10 update prompt to make it clearer and easier for Windows 7 and Windows 8.x users to schedule or reject upgrading to Windows 10. ZDNet reports:Microsoft officials said late on June 27 that the new update experience -- with clearer "upgrade now, schedule a time, or decline the free offer" -- will start rolling out this week. Microsoft also will revert to making clicking on the Red X at the corner of the Windows 10 update box dismiss the update, rather than initiate it, as it has done for the past several weeks. Microsoft officials said they are making the change "in response to customer feedback."
I have no doubt that this was all planned by Microsoft. Perhaps they didn't anticipate the backlash, but making it easier to deny the update without manually removing KB3035583 or installing a third-party program (GWX Control Panel, Never10, etc.) in the eleventh hour is too little, too late. There's only another month of the "free" "upgrade", so who's left to take it? The people who intentionally waited for the last possible moment in order to get the most stable upgrade, but they've already decided to go to Windows 10 anyway.
In other words, the damage is already done. Now's the time to cry for your government to begin imposing criminal penalties to Microsoft and cancel their contracts with them, or MSFT will get away with it.
>>>"upgrade now, schedule a time, or decline the free offer"
Based on past performance, clicking decline the free offer would lead to Win10 update and the bill in the mail.
Basically, everybody and their dog, who heard about that woman's court case, will rush to enable recommended updates in order to screw up their system and go claim their $10000.
They could have done this months ago and not taken a single bit of negative PR.
[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Policies\Microsoft\Windows\Gwx] "DisableGwx"=dword:00000001
[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Policies\Microsoft\Windows\WindowsUpdate] "DisableOSUpgrade"=dword:00000001
Although granted, one shouldn't have to do this...
I don't respond to AC's.
There are two Boolean flag vars in the Registry which turn off the automatic update and free-offer notifications. Using the builtin registry editor ("regedit") drill down to [HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Policies\Microsoft\Windows] and look for key entries 'WindowsUpdate' and 'GWX'. If they're not present then use the editor to create new key names WindowsUpdate and GWX in the Windows key list.
Then to disable auto-update add a dword named DisableOSUpgrade under WindowsUpdate and set it to 1 (true)
"DisableOSUpgrade"=dword:00000001
To disable the freeWin10 upgrade offer notification add a dword named DisableGWX under GWX and set it to 1 (true)
[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Policies\Microsoft\Windows\GWX]
"DisableGWX"=dword:00000001
That's it. Now you can turn the automatic Windows-update back and not worry about Win10 being installed. Also you won't be nagged about the free Win10 offer.
You are probably already hosed.
This site had the old school way to block it all if you did the other manual steps using the hosts file.
https://github.com/WindowsLies/BlockWindows/
A slashdot commenter had made a video of "wiresharking" his Windows 10 and posted it on YouTube. For those unfamiliar it is a packet sniffer and detects and displays the nature of each incoming and outgoing network packet. By nature I mean IP address, protocol as in TCP, UDP, RDP, etc name it.
That video was pulled from YouTube nearly immediately, and obviously there was no moral reason to pull a video showing how your OS connects to Microsoft and Markmonitor servers. (among other tracking hosts)
Then there were many articles and they are still around about how to do it manually, and even grc.com has a small portable app called Never10 that is reckoned to block installing Windows 10 over 7/8/8.1 etc.
The problem and pertinent factors are thus. They snuck new server lists in other "security updates" and never disclosed the change. I haven't checked recently but there was a period (maybe still is) that Microsoft decided to not disclose what is actually in their so-called security updates.
What I mean by problem AND pertinent factor is why they even force spyware on you at all. Bill doesn't need the money and it is not for anybody's protection that they track everything you do on your PC. The lies are asinine. The deceit shameful. The employees and Bill himself are forced by the US spy agencies to incorporate every possible tracking you can imagine. This is the same with Google and Facebook and others. The higher the traffic, the higher the priority to force tracking on you. Slashdot connects to myriad CA Cert servers that change on a daily basis it seems. Sometimes more than once a day.
You should use NoScript (and remove the XSS default-to-allow permissions under advanced, and uncheck all boxes on the ABE tab). You should also use Adblock Plus or similar. Ghostery is no good any more because it's settings rely on remote server to change and it chats with it. BetterPrivacy for flash cookies is the 4th I would recommend to run on Firefox.
Now this is important. Spy agencies and Google (gstatic, google-analytics, etc) track you all over the Internet and yes it is cross-reference-able. From your porn likes to your Facebook profile to your bank account to your SMS log on your cell phone to your shopping history at Walmart if you use a card. By face recognition too if you already have their special attention. It is accessible by any US government spy agency at will in the name of "security" but like Microsoft, it is the same lie.
They know all about browser parameters and whatnot but blocking works. THIS IS THE BIG TIP OF THE DAY.
Ready? Set your PC time to an inaccurate time. Change time zones. Make it as screwy as possible unless you need to sync implicitly for something. They rely on time logging and IP addresses as a failsafe tracking mechanism. This totally messes up their monitoring ability. Better than that is to use Tor, but you will notice you bump into Google captcha after Google captcha. I don't intend this to be a long tutorial but just set a wrist watch or your phone next to your monitor and keep your clock on your laptop/desktop coming from Liberia or whatever. That little clock is a itsy bitsy little teeny weeny convenience for you.. and night/day for the monitoring ability of US spy agencies.
Also, your data is shared internationally especially Facebook profiling because the FBI has an unconscionable amount of moles.
I think you dismiss the alternatives too easily. I haven't used Windows for about 10 years now and I can't say that I miss the malware and high maintenance experience.
Excuse me, but please get off my Pennisetum Clandestinum, eh!
The problem goes far beyond systemd and GNOME. Linux is great for servers, not so much for the desktop. When Linux Torvalds first created Linux it wasn't designed to be a mass-market operating system. It was designed by geeks for geeks. A bunch of fucktarded neckbeards who don't give two shits about usability, only blind adherence to an Orwellian mindset of "the only way to be free is to do exactly what I say."
Yes, when it was first designed, it was a school hobby project by a kernel hacker. But that was over 20 years ago. And assuredly you're not going to say that anything that begun as a hobby must be a toy for its entire lifespan?
But you don't need to list all the ways that Linux sucks and is horrendously inferior on the desktop. Just one simple fact says it all. When you put everything on a level playing field -- Linux is free and so is a pirated copy of Windows -- people always choose Windows.
Really? I didn't choose Windows. Nor did the millions of people that use desktop Linux.
People only use (and pirate) Windows because billions of dollars of legacy x86 apps that were written when Microsoft had a monopoly on the OS market due to their lucky deal with IBM. Don't believe me?--how much money has Microsoft written off for Windows Mobile and Windows RT, again?
Even when Windows isn't free (i.e., businesses who need to keep things legal so they don't get shaken down by the BSA Mafia) they still choose Windows. The only place you're seeing any adoption of Linux on the desktop is a few European companies, and that's due to anti-American sentiment more than any technical superiority.
Instead of verifying that you don't know what you're talking about and/or are lying, why don't you do some simple research? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...