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Microsoft Announces 'Cumulative' Updates Will Become Mandatory For Windows 7 and 8.1 (microsoft.com)
Microsoft's now changing the way updates are delivered for Windows 7 and 8.1. Slashdot reader JustAnotherOldGuy writes: Microsoft's Senior Product Marketing Manager Nathan Mercer just announced that, "From October 2016 onwards, Windows will release a single Monthly Rollup that addresses both security issues and reliability issues in a single update... Each month's rollup will supersede the previous month's rollup, so there will always be only one update required for your Windows PCs to get current."
What this means is that individual patches will no longer be available after October 2016, and Windows 7 and Windows 8 users will now only have two choices: stop updating completely and leave your computers vulnerable to security holes, or accept everything single thing Microsoft sends you whether you want it or not.
Microsoft says their new approach "increases Windows operating system reliability, by eliminating update fragmentation and providing more proactive patches for known issues." They added that "Several update types aren't included in a rollup, such as those for Servicing Stack and Adobe Flash," and that "the .NET Framework will also follow the Monthly Rollup model." According to Microsoft's blog post, they'll also be releasing a monthly "security-only" update, but again, "individual patches will no longer be available".
What this means is that individual patches will no longer be available after October 2016, and Windows 7 and Windows 8 users will now only have two choices: stop updating completely and leave your computers vulnerable to security holes, or accept everything single thing Microsoft sends you whether you want it or not.
Microsoft says their new approach "increases Windows operating system reliability, by eliminating update fragmentation and providing more proactive patches for known issues." They added that "Several update types aren't included in a rollup, such as those for Servicing Stack and Adobe Flash," and that "the .NET Framework will also follow the Monthly Rollup model." According to Microsoft's blog post, they'll also be releasing a monthly "security-only" update, but again, "individual patches will no longer be available".
easy. thanks.
I guess they really didn't like people removing telemetry KB updates.
ksudoku is also fun
Microsoft has decided they own your computer, so (&*#^%$ em...
Been using Windows desktop since 3.1, mostly for work and gaming, helped move the games industry off DOS4GW to Windows a long time ago. And this sort of crap has moved me from Win 10 to dual boot Win10/Linux Mint, soon to remove the Win10 partition. I've moved almost my work onto Mint, only use Win10 when I have to run a Windows app, and the few left there I'll be exploring Wine or relocating into a Win10 VM. Steam provided great Linux versions of enough of my games I no longer need Windows, and my job is moving from C++ on Windows + Linux to JS on Azure & AWS, so no longer need Windows desktop for anything bur work corporate apps and have throwaway laptop for that. Good riddance.
Will be helping all interested friends make the same transition.
Great, now users can't block telemetry and other unwanted updates without disabling updates altogether.
Do they think that everyone is stupid?
I don't know if you've seen any national news int he past 6 months or so...
I don't respond to AC's.
Stop using Windows.
This is just the kick in the pants I needed to repave the last of my non-MS computers and take them to a non-MS platform. Thanks, Satya!
I'll be even safer on a Mac
People bought Windows 7/8/8.1 with certain expectations, including the ability to opt out of a given update.
Having a monthly roll-up is generally a good idea for most customers, at least in those months with no "bad patches" (grrr). After all, that's how Apple has been doing things for its iOS and MacOS (formerly MacOXS) updates for years. If I recall, that's how they handled updates for the original MacOS (1980s-1990s) as well, except that it wasn't on a monthly cycle.
However, to suddenly change the rules mid-stream is bad PR when it comes to business customers.
At the very least, they should have a registry-key or group-policy that you can put in to "go back to doing things the old way," at least for "Enterprise," "Pro," and "Ultimate" editions.
Oh, to make things worse, they didn't announce this until AFTER the free Windows 10 upgrade period is over. Users who kept Windows 7/8/8.1 specifically so they could manage updates individually are going to be calling "foul" over this.
Knowledge is how to play a game, intelligence is how to win, wisdom is knowing what game to play.
I have no complaints, my computers work flawlessly.
I look over at the Windows 10 folks, and feel a bit of pity and a bit of indirect embarrassment. But only for a second or two - then I get back to my work. Because that's what my PCs are for.
"The agriculture ministry is not in charge of Gundam" - Japanese ministry official.
I've been a Msft user since the earliest versions of MS-DOS, which means that I've put up with a lot of crap but kept on as things slowly improved. I have been burned by a number of updates over the years, so I install them manually after checking them out one by one. It's a pain, and some destructive stuff has slipped through from time to time, but I could always uninstall or fall back to a restore point if necessary. It would be nice if I could just trust Msft not to screw up my machine, but sadly, they haven't earned that trust. The choices are rather grim, as I don't want to forego security updates. I'm hoping there will be a large enough outcry that they back off before I have to move to another platform.
we have certain patches that cause issues on our systems and others that are fine?
Even if patches are all installed as a single block, there's going to be problems if users aren't remove individual KBs as needed.
Microsoft Update Catalog about time it's no longer IE only.
Microsoft wants to make using older versions of Windows as annoying as possible for IT departments, to try to push us to move to Windows 10.
Corporate IT departments tend to be the biggest holdouts for moving to new versions of Windows. If a business is running fine on Windows 7, there is ZERO reason beyond security updates to move to Windows 10. Now they're giving us an artificial reason: If a rolled up update breaks something, we have to roll back the ENTIRE batch. Even any included security updates.
Microsoft wants their licensing revenue, and they want fewer versions of Windows to support. This is their play.
Microsoft says their new approach "increases Windows operating system's ability to send telemetry data by pushing such functionality even on those users who up to now were able to avoid them by not installing the corresponding patches."
FTFY
Does anyone know if there's a site out there that lists all of the KBs required to bring a bog-standard fresh Windows 7 install up to "Current As Of August 2016" minus the telemetry and GWX updates? I'd like to prepare for this change by downloading ALL of the necessary updates as offline installers, and keeping them archived locally. So that going forward, I can reinstall Windows 7 and patch it up to "Current As Of August 2016" levels.
Alternately if there's a Windows 7 Ultimate image with all of this shit slipstreamed, that would be even better. My image is from 2013 from Digital River.
Sokoban please.
If builders built buildings the way programmers wrote programs, then the first woodpecker would destroy civilization.
I really wonder if this would go well with major corporations since they usually pick only individual updates and exclude some that may cause interference with other systems.
If builders built buildings the way programmers wrote programs, then the first woodpecker would destroy civilization.
With the number of absolutely fucking BROKEN updates that brick machines that have been pushed down the pipes, this is just going to send machines into a fucking nightmarish hell of instability.
From when they announced cumulative updates:
But I don't see Microsoft going back to redo a patching system they've thrown out in Win10 to do us a favor, it seems far more likely they want to bundle it all from security patching to ads to telemetry to nagware.
Still hoping there will be separate KBs that you can install/uninstall for corporate/expert users and that the cumulative update is just what they push on the update site but since they've become plain evil lately it's hard to say.
Live today, because you never know what tomorrow brings
they are saying - that none of their users are smart enough to pick and choose which updates they want
It's not an issue of being smart enough... The problem is that most users who say "I will pick my own updates" never actually do so. They end up picking a handful of patches to deploy, before they lose interest and stop patching altogether.
Just wait until they screw up an update and cripple a large portion of their user base - or subject their user base to significant new security vulnerabilities in the process of trying to fix an existing vulnerability.
That happens already, and it's not nearly as big a deal as it seems. The first reports come in, and the update is halted and fixed.
I find it really hard to believe that their testing process is comprehensive enough to cover all hardware and software configurations
Believe what you will, but testing doesn't actually need to cover all configurations. Compatibility needs to be tested thoroughly according to documented interfaces, and as long as those documented interfaces don't change, it's not Microsoft's fault if something breaks. If your webcam driver relies on some undocumented quirk, and that changes, then the onus is on the webcam vendor to release a driver that follows better practices.
This is 2016, not 1970. Your user applications don't need to have direct access to the hardware, not even "for better performance", just like your software doesn't actually need administrator privileges, not even "to access shared data". APIs are complete enough that you can do what you need following the defined and documented interfaces, without concern for the implementation behind them. If software vendors* would aim for "sustainable" more than "clever", 90% of Microsoft's problematic patches wouldn't have been problems.
The other 10% are times when Microsoft changes functionality, like a recent patch where the details of Group Policy filtering changed. Those details are reported in the bulletins released with each patch... and of course your sysadmins are reading those, right?
I think that they lose a lot when they disallow users to selectively install (or roll-back) updates
I think we've lost more in the relentless pursuit of backwards-compatibility with obsolete (and arguably broken-by-design) equipment.
* Perhaps not surprisingly, the worst offender I can name for using undocumented APIs has been Microsoft for most of the last two decades. Recently, they've improved somewhat with the push to make their APIs accessible to PowerShell (and therefore documented and public), but that's a rant in itself.
You do not have a moral or legal right to do absolutely anything you want.
#1: Updates will always be available.
#2: We could put that on paper, but we won't.
MS does have a testing community, but it's a smaller shanty town than what you might expect.
This broken company with its broken software can't do anything right.
will be jumping of joy with this.
Lets break all our business applications due to an update that can't be tested before hand and that is mandatory.
Just great.
They deserve it, at least this time. I generally like the direction Microsoft is going, except their update policy. The cumulative updates for Windows 7 since June have screwed up Bluetooth and they even acknowledge it in their KB article. I would like to just uninstall the piece that has the bug, but I have to uninstall the whole rollup update.
Why can't Microsoft just open source everything and play nice with the development community without making me cringe every time their update policy changes?
All my liberal friends think I'm a conservative, all my conservative friends think I'm a liberal.
As a sysadmin for mixed Windows/Linux environments with strict patching policies, here's what I expect:
#1 What if I install a brand new copy of Win7 (either because of a wipe and reinstall, or brand new install) I can't get updates at all because it won't have the current update?
The current update will be pushed automatically from the Windows Update server. Like you do now, you'll install vanilla Windows, and tell it to check for updates, and it will download the latest monthly patch. That patch will just include the fixes from previous months.
Think of it as being very similar to how most Linux distros handle package updates. Only the latest versions are automatically pulled. Older versions may still be available, but they won't be delivered by default.
Can you put, on paper, that your once a month update will not totally bork the windows system it's used on, and if I have to reinstall it, do I have to accept this bad update /again/ or else not have any updates at all?
I expect Microsoft will promise, once a month, that the updates won't break anything too badly, or they'll fix it real soon. I'd estimate 99.99% of patch installations are harmless. On the rare chance you happen to have a hardware configuration that doesn't work, there are already channels (through your MS support rep) to properly report it and get a fix.
If an update works fine except that it makes your fine-tuned software configuration need a bit more configuration, that's your problem.
Meanwhile, if you do have a problem with a particular fix, I expect that previous monthly patches will be available for download and manual installation, just like current superseded patches.
This year I had to clean out systems 30 times because of malware
Roughly one infection every 12 days? I don't think patching is going to help you. At that rate, I'd be suspicious of your users. Do they have any admin capability? Is software controlled? Do you forbid personal devices from touching company networks? Do you run a firewall and proxy to restrict web access? Do you monitor those things to make sure they're actually doing their job?
Patching workstations can only reduce your attack surface, but it cannot cure user stupidity. There are always users who will execute email attachments, or download "free new emoticons" or plug their phone into every available USB port.
I'll stick with linux, thank you.
I'm inclined to agree, but let's not get complacent. Just because Linux isn't under as heavy an attack doesn't mean it isn't also vulnerable. My favorite exploit happens to be a Linux-based permission elevation.
You do not have a moral or legal right to do absolutely anything you want.
It would have been nice if the submitter and Slashdot editor would have taken the time to actually read/report the rest of the blog posting:
"Security-only updates
Also from October 2016 onwards, Windows will release a single Security-only update. This update collects all of the security patches for that month into a single update. Unlike the Monthly Rollup, the Security-only update will only include new security patches that are released for that month"
That sounds like a good solution for the rest of us who don't want all of the other "performance improvement" patches.
If your webcam driver relies on some undocumented quirk, and that changes, then the onus is on the webcam vendor to release a driver that follows better practices.
What if my webcam driver requires that the video be mpeg compressed?
I am literally amazed that you brought up webcams given that Microsoft literally just broke a million of them for windows 10 users several days ago
"His name was James Damore."
Except that I have no use for the trash that Microsoft produces Once again, consider yourself middle-fingered, Microsoft.
I absolutely understand why you'd say that. I've done that. However, the first thing the bad guys do when they want to break into a system is check for unpatched software. If you're running versions with known vulnerabilities, that makes things really easy for the bad guys.
So what can you do? For me, I use Linux and OS X. Yeah, if you're the type of person who enjoys fiddling with the registry, there's a learning curve. On the other hand, if you normally open browser when you sit down at your computer, Firefox, Chrome, and Opera are pretty much the same on any desktop OS.
Supported, but the normal way. Not this crap.
Enterprise customers will still get to pick and choose updates, so likely it is only the "Windows Update" that will be the cumulative only package. You can still manually download individual patches (at least if you have paid support.)
Well, I never cared too much about those. But I did disable all updates about a month ago on my Windows7 and my GF Windows10 laptops. Why? They repeatedly fail to installed. Causing a loop of "using 100% CPU for about an hour, reboot, fail to install, reboot to roll back, and then using 100% CPU again the next day trying to install the update again."
After repeatedly fixing those updates, I gave up and just disabled all updates. (which was easy on Windows 7 and a pain in the ass on Windows 10)
I ask myself if Microsoft realizes that a coupe of million users still logs in via UMTS and connections not larger than 300 MB per month in total transfer volume?
I have such a case in my family and bring updates for windows via USB stick every once in a while (once per year) as there is no other way updating my mothers PC and she refuses to accept that i pay for her internet flat rate.
BTW, this is German 2016 and the reason is that internet of higher quality and volume is unattainable for a reasonable amount of money in her city which is the 10th largest in Germany as of March 2016. I need to add she is poor by international standards as roughly another 20% in Germany, but such news don't spread over the borders anyway, I guess America can sing a similar song.
I explained her that next time i come she will switch to Linux and we will have a Linux training session all over Christmas. Ye!
Why can't Microsoft just open source everything and play nice with the development community without making me cringe every time their update policy changes?
Because Microsoft is not in the business of giving anything away free (as in freedom or beer). The only reason it didn't cost you money to "upgrade" from win 7/8 to win10 is because win10 isn't the product, *you* are. Microsoft is in the business of wringing every spare dime out of every source they can get. Everything they do is with an eye towards that end. They gave up on selling an operating system to get money from you because as a target of advertising, you are worth far more to them than a measly hundred and fifty bucks every few years. The advertising revenue per person for targeted advertising like that provided by search and by those who control the OS, are worth several hundred dollars a year per computer in ad revenue.
TANSTAAFL
I wish I had a good sig, but all the good ones are copyrighted
Thats all well and good that those who took advantage of the "free" Windows 10 are the "product" for MS to milk.. BUT.. Now that you actually have to *buy* Windows 10, these copies of Windows 10 are like the old versions, either you get it on a new machine or you buy a boxed retail disk or perhaps, for system builders, an OEM copy of it... People who have had to *buy* Windows 10 since the end of July have a seriously valid greivance against MS, and I'd be surprised if some very hungry lawfirm (or group of lawfirms) don't spin up a class action suit against MS for "double-dipping", namely datamining both "free" copies AND purchased copies... I'm sooo glad I gave up using MS products about 6 years ago, after using/supporting said products as a sysadmin for close to 20 years...
THANK YOU, Edward Snowden!! Americans owe you a debt of gratitude (whether they know it or not..)
There are companies that sell and support GNU/Linux hardware today. It's not terribly hard to go and find hardware. ThinkPenguin's got hundreds of computers and peripherals that all work out of the box and unlike the majority of hardware on the market come with proper support so you don't have to worry about losing it during an upgrade.
There are also efforts to free us from the treachery of the few proprietary components that remain, but it's a bigger uphill battle. Intel and AMD are working against us instituting proprietary components on core components (ie the CPU). These components contain malicious software including remote control functionality. It's sold as being for corporations, but you can't disable it, you can't remove it, and even if there was a feasible means of reverse engineering it replacement firmware won't load as Intel/AMD are signing these components. We know for a fact that backdoors are being inserted into peripherals and computers alike. Where the US is forcing it into CPUs designed by American companies that ship with all modern laptop and desktop systems the Chinese are incorporating it into keyboard controller firmware (home grown ARM laptops, though there is a OS level component needed as well).
If you want NSA-free computers check out the effort to do that here: https://www.crowdsupply.com/eo... (there are already finished prototypes, the campaign is to bring a small number, 250-500 units into production, before a larger roll out, mass production can happen).
I'm a Linux user and abuser since the 90s and I've watched all these shenanigans happen over the decades.
My smug cloud is even thicker than an Amiga user's from the 80s.
--
BMO
So much for trying to blacklist just the telemetry updates then...
http://spamdecoy.net - free throwaway anonymous email - avoid spam!
I sure the hell think you forgot the /s there, Sparky.. You seem to have forgotten that those computers fucked up by updates are NOT MS's computers, they belong to the USER (or his company).. Microsoft has every right to go right out and FUCK ITSELF.... Of course, you're an AC.. I shouldn't be surprised that you're a shill for MS...
THANK YOU, Edward Snowden!! Americans owe you a debt of gratitude (whether they know it or not..)
Germany might be a special case because of Störerhaftung, its presumption of liabilty of operators of open Wi-Fi hotspots for their users' infringing or otherwise illegal activity. In any other country, users who rely on UMTS, LTE, or satellite can take their laptops to a restaurant or public library to use unmetered Wi-Fi.
ANYbody who uses that brain-dead piece of shit called PowerHell on Linux needs to have his head examined, or better yet committed to an insane asylum...
THANK YOU, Edward Snowden!! Americans owe you a debt of gratitude (whether they know it or not..)
Their collected telemetry shows yes. Except that it's not stupidity, it's just that most people don't give a shit.
On the rare chance you happen to have a hardware configuration that doesn't work, there are already channels (through your MS support rep) to properly report it and get a fix.
Whatever they're paying you, it's not enough.
Take that however you wish.
I suspect that you'll find it was the webcam driver that was at fault for not following the documented interfaces, and that mpeg compressed video was not explicitly allowed in that context.
</sarcasm><!-- I wish this tag was unnecessary -->
Quoting the parent comment, with modifications: We've seen Microsoft's continuous stream of lies and incompetence... including a number of "bugs" and "mistakes" that appear deliberate.
An article I wrote last year, Microsoft Windows XP "end of life", makes the point that Microsoft fixed 319+828+459=1,606 bugs in Windows XP since Windows XP SP1 was released. Now Microsoft says Windows XP is still too buggy to use. We have 16 computers running Windows XP and haven't had any problems. And software does not have an "end of life", it continues to do what it always did.
Why do Adobe Flash and the Windows operating system have so many vulnerabilities? Do Adobe Systems and Microsoft sell vulnerabilities to secret government agencies and fix them when they are publicly discovered?
Ideas:
1) Use Autopatcher until Microsoft's begins its new system of hiding even more completely what it is doing with its updates.
2) Don't allow any Microsoft operating system to have a connection to the internet. Use Linux on a separate computer on a separate network for internet connections. Use Bluetooth to communicate between the Windows OS network and the Linux network.
I hate to break it to you, but Telemetry was backported to Windows 7 as well.
Yeah? So how do you feel about systemd? ;-)
-- Alastair
Actually, there does appear to be a somewhat reasonable third choice: Microsoft will apparently also be offering a security-only bundle each month, though it looks like you'll have to install it manually if you're not using WSUS as it won't be fetched via Windows Update. You still won't be able to cherry-pick individual updates, but at least it won't come with all the other stuff you probably don't want -- unless they decide to call some of that "security".
(There's a specific question about this, and a response from the Microsoft guy confirming that a monthly security bundle will be available for all of the different Windows 7 variants, in the questions below the blog post itself.)
If you disagree, post your argument. (-1, Overrated) isn't your personal censorship tool for views you don't like.
my friend Mr. firewall would like to have a discussion with you.
Non sequitur: Your facts are uncoordinated.
With this kind of attitude, I think its probably a good time for a non-microsoft influenced operating system to make its move into microsoft's bread and butter.
Non sequitur: Your facts are uncoordinated.
Some of our Windows systems that run proprietary software are only allowed to have updates approved by the respective vendors or our service contract for that system can be voided.
Pain is merely failure leaving the body
Yeah? So how do you feel about systemd? ;-)
As a Debian user, there's still a choice to install another init system, so I'm mostly fine with it. Old sysv? Possible. runit? Possible. Plus some others in the repos I'm not thinking of, and Upstart's even still in stable, though it's not in testing/unstable anymore. Even if you want to use something with systemd dependency (desktop crap) you can install systemd-shim and the desktop-oriented bits work without requiring the init/logger/etc. parts.
Do I love systemd? Nah. But for all the bad shit you can say about systemd's adoption, I still have more choice than Microsoft is giving Windows users lately.
1. The problem is forced updates that impose user-hostile changes to TOS. MS has broken whatever limited trust they had from users. A decade ago, they would've labeled such user-hostile software as malware. Just because they document their changes doesn't mean they're magically ok either.
2. The problem is that microsoft isn't a fan of 'sustainable' either, so sticking to documented interfaces doesn't guarantee a thing. Many times, the 'undocumented' approach is the only solution that works at all.
3. Backwards compatibility is what keeps windows relevant. Maybe you're used to working for a fortune 100 that can bankroll brand new equipment every five years, but the average sysadmin or individual does not have the funds for that. Throwing out perfectly good hardware (or software) because of a shitty software update is unacceptable. So is slowly removing sane ways to manage/roll back these problematic updates.
You can avoid it if you choose to not install the individual updates,
Microsoft fired a huge number of their testers about a year ago. They probably finally figured out that they can't do reliable compatibility testing with their current manpower so now they are trying to reduce their costs by reducing the number if in-the-field configurations that they have to support. Unfortunately this will really hit 3rd party business app developers who were able to disable individual updates when they unexpectedly killed their app until they found a fix. In the end this may actually backfire if. Given a choice between killing a critical line of business app or disabling updates guess what most businesses will do. To reduce outage potential from MS updates I suspect many more developers (I already have a few) will now release their own (delayed) update schedule in order to make sure that nothing MS did will kill their programs. And that will leave businesses unprotected for longer period of times until each of their critical software venders give them the go-ahead for the next update.
1. Promises != reality. Their patch engine is broken if it can't scale from a machine up to date 24hours ago to fresh RTM installs.
2. End users don't have a "support rep". They just get the patched shoved onto their machines breaking their workflows. Again, you're talking as someone working at a large company. You're big enough to get concessions. Most MS users are not. Having the ability to rollback problematic patches is necessary so these people can use their machines as intended.
Roughly one infection every 12 days? I don't think patching is going to help you. At that rate, I'd be suspicious of your users. Do they have any admin capability? Is software controlled? Do you forbid personal devices from touching company networks? Do you run a firewall and proxy to restrict web access? Do you monitor those things to make sure they're actually doing their job?
most of these policies became SOP because of these inherent flaws in windows going back to the 90s. If patching isn't going to help this, then what's the point of patching at all? Assuming the machines are admin'd properly (users not running as admin should be enough for sane systems), such malware would have to abuse vulnerabilities to escalate.
If Ford promised to replace your tires when they wear out, don't complain if the standard tires don't fit your aftermarket wheels.
You do not have a moral or legal right to do absolutely anything you want.
Then you raise a complaint through the official channels, and Microsoft fixes it... Which is exactly what's happening right now.
You do not have a moral or legal right to do absolutely anything you want.
Yes, yes... I disagree with the hivemind, so I must be a shill. I've danced that tune before, and since you can't form an argument apart from a personal attack, I am forced to conclude you are an imbecile. Take that however you wish.
You do not have a moral or legal right to do absolutely anything you want.
I think you dropped your mic.
1. Promises != reality. Their patch engine is broken if it can't scale from a machine up to date 24hours ago to fresh RTM installs.
I never mentioned scaling. What doesn't scale is the idea of testing a factorial number of patch combinations.
2. End users don't have a "support rep".
Actually, they can. Microsoft has online and phone support for end users. Companies do have more thorough (and more expensive) options, but most users have options as well.
most of these policies became SOP because of these inherent flaws in windows going back to the 90s. If patching isn't going to help this, then what's the point of patching at all? Assuming the machines are admin'd properly (users not running as admin should be enough for sane systems), such malware would have to abuse vulnerabilities to escalate.
Patches are still a last line of defense. The first defense should be a firewall/proxy to stop threats from reaching your users. Then your users should be educated, preventing the malware from being executed. Then you have antivirus and active scanning to prevent the malware from doing anything bad, followed by restricted admin rights to reduce the damage the malware can cause. Then finally, you have patches, which prevent malware from working around the admin restrictions and permission checks that are already designed into the system.
You do not have a moral or legal right to do absolutely anything you want.
the monthly patch includes Windows 10 - whether you want it or not?
the entire win 10 OS is a virus why the hell would i ever want that.....EVER you could make 7 slower then windows 1 , id still never want it....9 or 8
Being that the precise reason they are slowly turning Win7 into Win10. Patch after patch.
Lisias@Earth.SolarSystem.OrionArm.MilkyWay.Local.Virgo.Universe.org
Do you realize how much testing must go in to checking that all possible combinations of patches work correctly together? This is clearly just cutting the costs of supporting older systems. Now there are no combinations, since each patch gets Windows to the same state, so they only have to test one thing a month. This also means they can test it properly, so you have lower probability that installing a patch breaks your system, which means lower support costs as well.
This is consistent with their effort to move everyone to the latest Windows version, so they don't have to support Windows 7 for 15 years like they had to with Windows XP. They have clearly checked their accounting and found how much money is being spent because of the complicated way they support old versions, and now they are decreasing those costs.
Also, this is the exact same way most other companies release updates. You don't see Adobe giving you the option of selecting which individual DLLs you want to patch in Photoshop. Microsoft is just moving towards the same patching plan other companies already use.
Sometimes I wonder if any Slashdot readers work in actual software companies. Because if you have real world experience with software development, you understand why this is done.
(I am not assiciated with Microsoft in any way)
I think you missed my point. I did that, and all the other hoops you need to go trough when updates fail. It's the frequency and the amount of different hoops I had to jump trough that caused me to say "screw this".
I have seen that too. Cannot be installed via Windows Update, but can be downloaded. Apparently they still have some misgivings and will not start to rape Win7/8 users regularly as they do Win10 users.
Most ACs are not even worth the keystrokes to insult them. Be generically insulted by this and ignored otherwise.
The man who coined that acronym also wrote stories in which the hero typically was on a quest to find a new planet or other venue, or some new subversive or revolutionary paradigm to evade the grasp of the exchange brokers, beancounters, bureaucrats, and the marketers (collectively, the Borg) and the Usurians pulling the strings behind the scenes. Furthermore, the lost time and productivity to keep these parasites in control and selling your eyeballs costs us, individually and collectively, much more than several hundred per year per seat, I'd wager.
There may be no such thing as a free lunch, but you can avoid the worst of the hidden costs by using systems and software freely and collaboratively developed.
I shouldn't have to point this out on /.
The most annoying thing to me is that it *doesn't* sit at 100% for hours. I have a 6-core CPU, and it sits at 16% for hours because the update process, whatever it is doing, is doing it as a single thread. Obviously it can't take advantage of multiple cores.
I always equivocate. Well, almost always.
Then you raise a complaint through the official channels, and Microsoft fixes it... Which is exactly what's happening right now.
Does this mean that the webcam works, or doesnt work?
Its the later, right? Currently millions of webcams do not work anymore, yet they did less than 7 days ago.
Will raising a complain on official support channels retroactively give people this week/month/year of use of their hardware back?
Look, I have been accused of being a microsoft shill here because I have a rational bent on things. You however, don't have such a rational bent.
Forced updates, rollups, and so on, is exactly whats being discussed... these things have literally turned hundreds of millions of dollars of existing hardware into bricks. Go fuck yourself for defending it.
"His name was James Damore."
Not noted in the Slashdot entry is that after the October takeover of PC ownership via Windows Update is that Microsoft is going to backport the hotfixes into the mass monthly updates (and presumably remove those hotfixes from availability afterwards).
The consequence of this is that soon you will not be able to do a fresh install of 7 or 8.x and install only the hotfixes you want to get them up to (pre Oct 2016) as the old hot-fixes are going away too. If you're stuck using Windows better get your all your systems that you want to use imaged with all versions of pre Win 10 and updated (with the bad data monitoring hotfixes kept out) prior to the October updated. Windows 7 security updates were to go through 2020 and 8.1 through 2023.
It also appears there might be a method going forward for the true nutwads (like myself - I want the gaming - Linux partitions now though) and that will be to turn off Windows Update and use the Windows Update catalog site (a horrible MS site - at this point its a screen with a search window in it) to get security only updates...no details on how that will work, other than its mentioned in Microsoft's official announcement. For the general public though, Microsoft takes over control of their computers and will install user monitoring in the next months if they use Windows Update.
If you read the announcement you'll see that the old hotfixes (including the user data monitoring ones, if they aren't in the October push already) will get backported, over time, into the massive monthly update. The obvious consequence of this is that those old hotfixes will go away as they are backported and no longer be available to users.
I wouldn't count on those hotfixes being around, better create reference Win 7 / 8 images with updates prior to the October takeover for all your machines, turn off WU and back them up. As we've seen Microsoft's condensed Windows 7 up to date patch includes the user data monitoring updates, no reason to expect they'll stop that after they make everyone's PC's their 8itches next month.
This avenue won't be available via Windows Update & us a PR cover - most folks won't be able to do it. You have to go to a Microsoft website that consists of an empty page and a search bar and enter the security only patch you want to download. I'll do this, but most users would never what to put in to start with.
While Microsoft's PR group would agree with what you said, if you look at most other PC OS's it doesn't work this way. Over on Apple in Mac OS X, they separate their security updates out from their other patches (and they don't have back ported data monitoring patches from Windows 10 in there). Over in OS X there isn't data monitoring to begin with. And the stuff that goes up to the cloud can be turned off with 2 checkboxes. Over in Linux you can do whatever you want.
The other side of this is that Microsoft will still have to test each fix individually prior to them going into a monthly lump - this is why they got rid of the service pack because of the double testing - in the end there will be little reduction in testing costs.
This is all about turning personal PC's into Microsoft's data monitoring tool which is worth alot of money to Microsoft for each personal PC every year - giving them control over your PC's data like an Android smartphone. As someone else noted the user data monitoring in Windows 10 and backported to Windows 7 & 8 in prior hotfixes (which could be avoided) is worth alot of money every year and after the October takeover Microsoft is gradually going to roll in the old hotfixes into the monthly updates over time and eliminate them. Microsoft's recent history requires no paranoia at all - they actively choose this for their customers:
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2...
https://www.theguardian.com/wo...
One day, this "cumulative update" will leave the PC as a win10 machine.
Well, that news is a bit of satisfaction to me.
For I still run Windows XP.
just use "wsus offline client" and make yourself an archive of KB's and installation script.
Good idea! Autopatcher saves Windows updates, also.
Nowhere in your post did you even mention the telemetry that everyone else is complaining about.
Why should I? That's a popular topic for discussion elsewhere under this story, but not in this thread.
Personally I find the objection to telemetry to be ridiculous, as it's based on the paradoxical trust in Microsoft's software, but not Microsoft's corporate governance. Frankly, if Microsoft was intending to do something nefarious, they wouldn't label it "telemetry" in the changelog. If a government wanted to spy on you, they wouldn't seek Microsoft's overt help. On the other hand, if you want your systems to improve based on the collective experiences of others, data collection is essentially necessary now. Better controls would be nice, but that just opens the door to still more paranoia.
You conveniently avoid it at all that microsoft has lied [w]hen they called somethnig a security update and it was actually spyware/telemetry.
Why not both? Offhand, a good example of this would be the SmartScreen filtering. To a security-focused person like me, having a hash check on files from the Internet is a good thing, because it's an additional layer of defense against malware, and that's worth the incredibly-minor loss of privacy. To a more paranoid observer, any usage information sent to Microsoft is spying for ulterior motives, and the loss of privacy is unforgivable, no matter the possible security improvements.
So either you are having a different conversation that the rest of the people here or you are trying to spin somethnig.
There's a third option that you're neglecting to acknowledge: that the conversation isn't as one-sided as you seem to prefer. My motivations are apparently different from yours. I prefer system security over user preferences, while you appear to prefer privacy over data-driven management. As a result of those different preferences, we want different things from the same product.
Ive seen many shills come through here and not a single one has ever admitted to it. Not saying you are but circumstantial evidence is pretty compelling.
Alternatively, you've seen people with different perspectives, and you stubbornly refuse to believe that they might know a bit better than you. Not saying you're an ignorant buffoon, but the circumstantial evidence is pretty compelling.
Mockery and derision aside, you should go look through my comment history. Some of the more scathing anti-Microsoft posts are rather far back, but they're there. As far as "circumstantial evidence" goes, I suspect you're looking at this one single opinion on one single issue, and using that to infer my opinions on all matters. You don't even know my circumstances at all.
You do not have a moral or legal right to do absolutely anything you want.
God I wish I could give it up. Every month it seems Microsoft/Windows are becoming more and more like a disease. I'm stuck with too much software that simply doesn't run on anything else.. A huge amount of money to throw away .. a choice between Linux and OSX in the near future maybe.. Used Linus years ago at uni - gritting my teeth already. :)
Below the speed of light Special Relativity is one of the most accurate theories in physics - above the speed of light..
If you apply IQ derating then about 90% of all people are below 'average' intelligence. (Derating reduces the peak value produced by IQ tests by 10 to 20 points putting the average man as having a general IQ of 80 - moron level.)
Below the speed of light Special Relativity is one of the most accurate theories in physics - above the speed of light..
".. If software vendors* would aim for "sustainable" more than "clever", 90% of Microsoft's problematic patches wouldn't have been problems. .."
Shakes head. The reason that so many Microsoft patches have problems ultimately resolves to the fact that most of their competent programmers have reached retirement and most of what they have left are half arsed incompetents, most of them working on Win10. Why aren't they hiring better programmers? - incompetent ones are cheaper and much easier to find. Would you want to work at Microsoft, Google, Facebook, or Apple? Microsoft stopped caring about the product and as a company are now simply waiting to die. Once the customer becomes the product everything tends (strongly) to turn to shit.
Below the speed of light Special Relativity is one of the most accurate theories in physics - above the speed of light..
Astrology -- what a bullshit myth. You must be gullible.
Any large publicly traded corporation has HUGE incentive to get it right, and keep your PC and data safe from malicious actors. With media markets driven by clicks, and an army of lawyers itching to use the words, "class action". I understand and agree with the FOSS communities, and am grateful they are there, but I am also pleased with the MS platforms I manage single-handedly with over 400 users. MS is the least of my problems.