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Microsoft: Windows 7 Does Not Meet the Demands of Modern Technology; Recommends Windows 10 (neowin.net)
In a blog post, Microsoft says that continued usage of Windows 7 increases maintenance and operating costs for businesses. Furthermore, time is needlessly wasted on combating malware attacks that could have been avoided by upgrading to Windows 10. A report on Neowin adds: Microsoft also says that many hardware manufacturers do not provide drivers for Windows 7 any longer, and many developers and companies refrain from releasing programs on the outdated operating system. Markus Nitschke, Head of Windows at Microsoft Germany, had the following to say about Windows 7: "Today, it [Windows 7] does not meet the requirements of modern technology, nor the high security requirements of IT departments. As early as in Windows XP, we saw that companies should take early steps to avoid future risks or costs. With Windows 10, we offer our customers the highest level of security and functionality at the cutting edge.
1) Use Windows 7 and maybe get infected with malware.
or
2) Use Windows 10 and definitely have malware built right in.
...Windows 7 does not meet the needs of NSA, and Microsoft's marketing department, and whoever else they're selling all of your Windows 10 "telemetry" to.
Film at 11...
ERROR: Null
They just don't like being spied upon...
Windows 10 DOES have more security for me than windows 7.
An OS that you never load is truly the most secure.
(I'm staing on win 7 and hoping that all my games get ported to linux)
_ _ _ Go for the eyes Boo! GO FOR THE EYES!
"We still REALLY want to get you on Win 10. Our tricks and coercions did not work very well so anything we can do to scare you over is a good thing".
I suspect there is some truth to what they say, but the reality is that Windows 10 has had many unstable updates. Companies can turn these off or defer them, but the home user has no recourse. And for mission critical applications, Windows 10 has shown to be not reliable as you never know when an update that you can't eliminate might break your system.
Furthermore, time is needlessly wasted on combating malware attacks that could have been avoided by upgrading to Windows 10.
I assume that they mean all the time and effort people put into preventing Win10 from installing by hook or by crook.
Time to offend someone
Of course Microsoft is going to criticise their own old versions of Windows and recommend people to upgrade to the latest. Why is this even news? ...).
Also, their incredible insistence in people upgrading to 10 makes it clear they learnt with Windows XP that people don't rush to upgrade to a new OS if they're happy with what they have. Also that they had a plan to make a lot of money off Win 10 even if people upgraded for free (increased used of MS' services (bing, hotmail, their cloud service), data gathering, people buying from the Windows Store
And pretty obvious that "Windows 7 increases maintenance and operating costs for businesses" actually means "we'll make less money if you don't upgrade".
Maybe if you gave people what they want people would willingly update to your latest OS instead of rejecting it even when given away for free.
Make a Windows 7 with the internals of 10 and I'll upgrade.
Or does it still open 400+ connections to pull multi-gigabyte files every time, taking up all available bandwidth, and shutting down everything else on the network?
Windows 10 is literally not usable without an update server to let you control this, since they have apparently removed all controls for who much bandwidth it uses to pull updates. And it makes your entire network unusable, as well.
You mean I can't type out a Word document, read my email or visit a web site using Windows 7 because it's so insecure?
Well now, whose fault is that?
I received Windows 10 updates on my laptop again yesterday. Took me 48 minutes to get my machine back. Booted into Blank screen that would not display anything. The cursor was gone. I finally figured out it was defaulting to a page off screen somewhere. Had to google for a fix on another computer.
It is actually quite simple. From a technical perspective, Windows 10 *IS* more secure than Windows 7 in one very major regard. Edge (Win10 bundled browser) is far superior in both functionality and security compared to Internet Explorer (Win7 bundled browser)
BUT NOBODY FUCKING USES EITHER BROWSER, SO IT IS A MOOT POINT!
So yes, TECHNICALLY speaking, Windows 10 is "more secure", but nobody is using the insecure parts of Windows 7. Simple as that.
How does that work for you for win 10 ? Nuff said.
C. Sagan : A demon haunted world:
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0345409469/
visit randi.org
No one wants to spend support money on two versions of the OS anymore, Including M$, the hardware driver providers, etc.. It would be cheaper for IT departments to only support one as well.
Have you fscked your local propeller head today?
Disagree that it's more secure than Windows 7. Windows 7 has more of its bugs ironed out, and the bugs that ARE there are usually included in Win 10 as well! Microsoft may have designed more security FEATURES into Windows 10, but it takes years of track record to refine those. Windows 10 is much less mature. And then there's the much greater telemetry going back to Microsoft, so that is negative security.
How often have you seen the Blue Ring of Death since Win10?
All your database are belong to U.S.
"Windows 10 makes it easier to spy on you and track your every move."
I remember back in the mid-2000s when, right here on slashdot, people used to say "they (Microsoft) may be crooks, but at least they don't spy on you like Apple and Google". It turns out they had the same amount of respect for your privacy as the others (i.e. zero) -- they were just late to the game.
It doesn't meet the modern demand of reporting everything you do with your computer back to several companies. It doesn't remotely preload ads software you don't.
Such a primitive OS.
Well, now they you can run OpenSUSE or Ubuntu programs under windows 10, why not just skip the middleman and run OpenSUSE or Ubuntu directly on the hardware? After all, if it runs ok under Windows 10, it must mean that it meets their security concerns, right? :-)
"Transparent" is a shit show that trades on every stereotype going. A man in drag is NOT a transsexual.
Microsoft has pledged to provide all necessary security updates until 2020, so either Microsoft is lying and Windows 7 is fine or that you Microsoft can't be trusted with Windows 10's security either. The whole "security" argument for upgrading is a dead end.
Windows 10 does have plenty of little improvements - nobody has ever said otherwise. What's keeping people more than 75% of all desktop users away from 10 isn't a lack of improvements, but all the unresolved problems with 10 that simply aren't present in 7.
Win 10 looks after my many country cousins perfectly well (with 'Anti-Beacon' installed). Back here I still struggle to keep a bootable XP hard drive stable, as there's so much legacy software that still MUST run.
Anyway, I've never had a problem with my windows that couldn't be fixed with a little windex and elbow grease.
Just two simple things will encourage me to upgrade to Windows 10
1) Allow us to disable all your telemetry features without having to air-gap the system.
2) Allow all users ( not just enterprise ) to disable your automatic-updates
Remedy those two issues and I'll move on past Windows 7 for my internet connected systems.
or !
I'll even entertain a third option.
That being Microsoft assumes full financial responsibility for any and all productivity loss due to the release of one of their " forced " updates.
YotLD is still on schedule for 2018, 2019 if video drivers slip.
The security features in Windows/10 provide exploit mitigation. What this means is that Windows/10 may or may not have more bugs, but let's assume that it does have more bugs. The changes in Windows/10 mean that bugs do not become exploitable. Let's assume that there are twice as many bugs but 10% can be successfully exploited vs 30%. You are ahead of the game on Windows 10. The new features are really strong and your assessment is discounting them because you are assuming bug = exploit. That was true on Unix systems in the 1970s but we live in a much different world today.
I like it how people always point out that you can disable telemetry in the Enterprise edition.
Do you even know HOW to get an enterprise edition of Windows (without stealing it, of course)?
First of all, it is only available at volume licensing, which - I'd imagine - is for upward of 1000 units (probably more), so small businesses can kiss that option goodbye. Secondly, it's going to cost you an arm and a leg and a liver (and that's with a bulk discount... without a discount you have to toss in your ears and your hair as well). And finally, you can't just go to a shop and buy it: you'll have to enter some sort of contract with Microsoft and probably be locked into it for a while.
Enterprise edition is for the big dogs, with thousands of users. It is not an option for the average user.
Microsoft believes that our PCs belong to them. They need to lose more market share.
The Windows app store is not something that we all want. It should be an optional add-on for all versions of Windows.
Some of us also like Aero. Windows 8 removed Aero simply because mobile devices could not run it well in Windows RT. We are asked to give up Aero solely because of Microsoft's mobile platform that failed in the market and was essentially discontinued.
Microsoft, we refuse.
If you're using proprietary software, you're subject to the design and implementation choices of your software's owner (because they no longer sell software, they license it). That's why the desktop icon says "My Computer" and not "Joe Sixpack's Computer". Now, get in, sit down, strap in, shut up and hang on!
Microsoft says that continued usage of Windows 78, 8.1 and 10 increases maintenance and operating costs for businesses. Furthermore, time is needlessly wasted on combating malware attacks that could have been avoided by upgrading to macOS. Businesses like IBM save money with each of the 100,000 Macs that they have Deployed this year.
When Windows updates routinely override existing settings and break existing setups, they fit my definition of malware. Windows 10 qualifies fully and I wish I had never applied the update on one machine last summer. I know several people who applied the update and only one of them is happy with it (as of a few months ago, it is not topic number one).
Microsoft seem to think we bought our PCs so we could run Windows Update and glory in its magnificence. No, I bought mine to perform certain functions and installing Windows 10 has broken more than it alleviated. It is not the security features which annoy me, even the telemetry is a lesser irritant. What really annoys me is when an update leaves something utterly broken, and the knowledge that the next update is going to repeat the experience.
Mielipiteet omiani - Opinions personal, facts suspect.
For twenty years we thought "My Computer" meant *my* computer. Now we know it was Bill Gates (and Ballmer, Nadella, et al) claiming *your* computer as *theirs*. (Your computer is my computer!)
Suddenly it all makes sense.
FUCK Micro$oft.
DOS - Install
Windows 3.1 - Skip
Windows 95 - Install
Windows 98 - Wasn't that just an upgrade...?
Windows Workstation - Install but only if you really need to. Wait, skip. I'm confused
Windows 2000 - Install
Windows ME - Skip (Ha ha ha. Ha ha HA. HA HA HA HAAA! HA!)
Windows XP - Install and wait five years
Windows Vista - Skip
Windows 7 - Install under duress and wait seven years
Windows 8 - Skip. This is a joke, right? I mean - this one is just for tablets.
Windows 10 - IT HASN'T BEEN SEVEN YEARS YEST! Wait, has it? Did Windows 8 count? I thought they were just kidding. I'm confused again.
If you disable the "recommended updates" you don't appear to get any of the "old" telemetry - but it may all be back in the rollups and we would never know.
The old telemetry updates could be removed with the following:
wusa /uninstall /kb:Patch# /quiet /norestart
The patches to remove are: 3065988, 3083325,3083324, 2976978, 3075853, 3065987, 3050265, 3050267, 3075851, 2902907, 3068708, 3022345, 2952664, 2990214, 3035583, 971033, 3021917, 3044374, 3046480, 3075249, 3080149.
How can Microsoft claim that "Windows 7 doesn't meet the demands for modern Technology"? Technology hasn't changed enough since the release of Windows 7! We are still using computers that operate on transistor-based digital electronics. Public acceptance of Quantum computers is still at least a decade away.
Microsoft, I propose a new headline: "Windows 10 doesn't meet the demands for customer usability".
Many small businesses buy VL SKUs in small or even single quantities. AFAIK there is no lower quantity limit to VL SKUs, you just have to buy them through a MS Gold or higher partner, of which there are quite a few.
I used to work for a small 3 person (including me) company. We were a Gold level partner. At least at the time, the bar was set at having 2 MS certified technicians and 1 MS certified sales person along with some revenue requirement. So the bar was not high at all.
We would regularly buy single quantity VL products for our customers. Actually, that is all we would buy. We only sold retail products out of the store front.
That said, the Enterprise version of the OS is about 60% more expensive than the Pro version.
To prove my point, here is a link to CDW for a single upgrade license to Windows 10 Enterprise (so, yes, in this case you would need to first buy a Pro version of Windows 7 or 10 first): https://www.cdw.com/shop/produ...
My eyes reflect the stars and a smile lights up my face.
Microsoft has lost all credibility with me, and I'll give up on Windows 7 when I need some third-party software that won't run on Windows 7. I don't expect that to be very soon. Microsoft's greed knows no bounds: I buy my computer...and they want to have sole authority over how I am allowed to use it with their software. I buy my own products, but M$ deems it essential that I be a data source for their sale of information about me, collected without my permission from my computer. They have removed all customer rights from their "agreements," so they now hold all the rights, and I am left without legal protection from further offensive actions on their part.
I am retired now (after 55 years in the computer industry), and they treat me as a bottomless revenue source, without bothering to communicate with me...or, through their lack of competent support, my ability to communicate with them. (Fortunately, I've removed most of the spyware--aka telemetry "updates"--they've foisted of on me, and blocked known harvesting IP addresses from accessing my network.
We, as an industry, allowed Microsoft to become so arrogant and self-serving, by continuing to buy their progressively-more-invasive and bug-laden products, and rewriting all their "license" terms to eliminate any rights I may have had. It took me a full six months to finally resolve all the Windows Update bugs they distributed to their customers over the past two years.
If I am forced to change my operating system and security systems, because they build in "alternate routes" through my defenses, it will be to Linux or Android. At least, then, I'm not PAYING to be abused.
But I'd still rather the telemetry data than other malware
The problem is simple: telemetry is guaranteed, other malware is not.
Would you choose to be sick with a cold every single day of your life, if it meant never getting the flu?
Sure, the flu is a lot worse than a cold, but you can take steps to prevent it, and even if you do get hit with the flu, it's temporary.
This signature is false.
How is this here? It's an obvious marketing statement on a Microsoft blog . No shit they recommend upgrading. I bet there are other MS blogs recommending upgrades for all kinds of products they make. So how the hell does this come close to "news"? Much less news /. should care about?
I browse on +1 so AC's need not respond, I won't see it.
Nobody likes updates that break things, but this isn't unique to Windows/10. The alternative is no updates which is also problematic. If you want minimal updates, many Linux vendors offer LTS distributions that have only the minimum changes needed for security issues and you should consider one of them.
As others have pointed out, Windows 10 is bundled with malware right from Microsoft, in the form of spyware and adware. Forced updates happening at inconvenient times can leave a win 10 almost useless, particular if what you are trying to do is CPU intensive. There is a lot of lost productivity around the way MS has forced updates, even when they don't break something important. I know people that just gave up on the personal win 10 laptops because they just couldn't use them when they wanted. Updates on Win 7 are not entirely painless but you can at least schedule them for a more convenient time.
My workplace is on Win 7 and I cannot see them changing to 10.
I'm writing this on my Linux desktop which does not come bundled with malware and where updates can be run without interfering with using the computer. Win 10 has providest the greatest boost to Linux adoption that I've even seen.
When counting the cost are they counting in all the breakage that windows updates have caused for win 10?
That is a huge number for most people.
I co-own a small IT services company and one part of the business is basic IT support. In that we have just over 500 customer computers under management and during 2016 the on average 147 windows 10 computers have had an average of 3.4 problem tickets each. The on average 304 windows 7 computers have had an average 0.8 problem tickets each. That is a factor of more than 4!! (The numbers do not contain planned maintenance, new software installation/version upgrade, hardware installation or similar events, just the "something is broken fix it!" classified things.)
Windows 7 is starting to run way too smoothly and you may feel like you don't need to upgrade your hardware. To fix that perception you need to upgrade to Windows 10. You'll be swearing at your fucking slow computer again in no time. I mean, imagine if we let people still use Windows 95. The sheer speed would make their heads spin.
The simple problem is that telemetry has been overstated and overblown. Try to find a comprehensive description of what Microsoft captures about users. What you get is things about Windows making DNS lookups against hundreds of domains, some chatter about what Windows 10 could be doing, and some criticisms of ill-thought-out features like Wifi network password sharing. Nobody knows what's happening, but they've all assumed so.
The result is a bunch of people talking about how Microsoft is spying on you by doing such things as identifying all software installed, based on Windows Update removing 6 particular softwares (something that can be done locally, without sending information about them back to Microsoft); meanwhile when you run yum or apt, it sends an HTTP request for each individual piece of software you're updating or installing back to a central server--which actually does what people said Windows 10 does, but doesn't freak anybody out because... reasons. EVERYBODY PANIC!
Every keystroke you enter into your browser's search bar is sent to a remote server, where it's logged in Web server logs. Every domain you look up goes back to a Malware service to block bad sites. Cortana used to search the web if you typed search terms into the Cortana search bar, and people freaked out.
To be fair, people freaked out when Ubuntu started searching Amazon through the Unity bar. It's not that they have legitimate fears; it's that they fear new things, and confusion in groups turns into mass hysteria. You get a few people suggesting folks are just afraid Amazon will see them trying to look for their child porn collection, but that's retarded; the truth is everyone's scared because the next ten people are scared and nobody is inclined to take the time to verify that the next ten people aren't idiots, so they do the reasonable thing and assume (incorrectly) that a million people who have no fucking clue what they're talking about can't be wrong or someone would have told them by now.
Someone like me.
Do you see the problem?
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With Windows 10, we offer our customers the highest level of massive data harvesting.
I agree.
MS was finally on the right track with Windows 7 and released a fine quality OS that was stable. Then they fired the QA team and Windows 10 while has cool features it is a bugfest. If you do not do what grandma does who upgrades from 7 and just does basic things your use case NEVER GETS TESTED. If you do a fresh install of WIndows 10 BAM bugs (finally fixed last summer) as grandma doesn't install the OS. Hyper-V? Crashes for me as grandma or Joe six pack doesn't run it so no bug reports filed etc.
I hope later this or early 2018 MS hires them back before EOL for Windows 7. At least Windows 7 was more stable and reliable than XP was when XP was EOL and businesses still complained and freaked out.
http://saveie6.com/
All proprietary software should be suspected of being malware. Microsoft Windows before version 10 was known to not behave in the user's interest and certainly not in the user's control (as per the definition of proprietary software). Microsoft tried pushing a Windows 10 "upgrade" on users by force, for example. Other "features" in Windows 10 (such as ignoring a user's privacy settings and doing what is in Microsoft's interest) were simply more along this line. Microsoft's aggressive sales tactics pointed to in this /. story are another example. In time there will be an announcement that Windows 7 will no longer receive updates and the hard sell for Windows 10 (or some other Windows variant) will continue. The question for all Windows users is how much more treatment like this they'd like to receive. It's never been easier to switch to a fully free software OS and run nothing but free software on top of that.
Digital Citizen
Try to find a comprehensive description of what Microsoft captures about users.
That's half the fucking problem, Microsoft hasn't published one that I'm aware of, and even if they did, it can't be trusted.
Nobody knows what's happening, but they've all assumed so.
And that's the other half of the fucking problem. All of the telemetry packets are encrypted, so you can't look for yourself to see what's being captured. No one knows, and no one can find out! That makes it entirely a no-go for me and a lot of others.
many developers and companies refrain from releasing programs on the outdated operating system
That's some very nice weasel wording they have there. I'm sure it's so many that they can't even count. Talk about FUD.
Meanwhile, back here in reality, the project I'm on has been around since Windows 3.1. We only just incremented the minimum supported OS from XP to 7 about 1.5 years ago, and that was only after a significant amount of coaxing on our part to get the client to allow it. But to go beyond 7? As if. We're certainly not coaxing them to bump it up to 8, 8.1, or 10, especially so since none of us use anything above 7 for our own development work (we can, since we have licenses for it, but none of us actually do). The developers are using 7, the clients are using 7, and the clients' clients are using 7. Not a chance we're dropping support anytime soon.
In fact, only one piece of software I use or have looked into (1Password) has dropped support for Windows 7...except that it hasn't. They're concurrently supporting two versions of their app on Windows: their old one that still works just fine and is still getting updates, and their complete rewrite for Windows 10 that's been in beta for quite awhile. It has some shiny new features, but not enough to get me to jump to 10. If that's the only example I can think of, Microsoft will be hard-pressed to convince me to update by using this tactic.
(EDIT: Right as I was about to click submit, I fact-checked myself and discovered that the 1Password devs have back-ported their beta to Windows 7 in the last few months. Now I don't have any examples of apps that have dropped support! Time for Microsoft to take a new tack.)
Isn't this just an advertising post that somehow found its way into the 'green' section of slashdot?
There is a definite conflict of interest here, the company is in business to make money, therefore they will suggest only good things about the current product along with reasons why you should stop using the older and put hand in pocket for newer. If MS asked for one payment only, and that allowed you free choice of the OS and future upgrades, sure that would be reasonable. Essentially you can only use MS Windows to browse the web, for everything else you need to buy additional products, and this is what makes the OS a bad choice. It's a bit like having to buy something to enable you to buy a train ticket. I don't like it.
Why UNIX?
You forgot "Microsoft can access your machine and pull anything they want from it at any point in time without your knowledge and/or consent".
You also have zero control of updates. Unless you have a WSUS server, your machine WILL get updates on the schedule Microsoft forces upon you, and if those updates happen to hose your system, then too bad so sad.
I have a small pilot of Windows 10 machines at our company, and the last Anniv. update hosed *all* of them. Some were able to get up and running again by reverting to the previous version. One couldn't even revert, requiring us to re-image the machine.
The problem is that Microsoft wants all the control of your computer, but none of the responsibility. Maybe that's all well and good for home users, since the average home user wouldn't know what to do anyway, but for professional users and administrators who (for whatever reason) don't have the benefit of WSUS, that is *absolutely* unacceptable.
Windows 10 is webscale. It sends all your data to dev null.
This is in part why GNU/Linux hasn't seen much uptake by mostly incompetent technical users trying to sell it. Telling people just what they need to know generally overcomes that concern- but you can't give people who aren't good candidates for it the OS. Somebody whose dependent on Microsoft X for work may not work so well, but grandma and grandpa are no problem. In my experience about half the MS Windows using population is a good candidate and less than 1% switch back in my experience. Most are better served by GNU/Linux and yet until its put in front of them few hear anything about it, or adopt it. I know this because I sold GNU/Linux systems to non-technical users for several years exclusively in the very recent past. Ubuntu 10.04 onward was the hey-day of my selling it to non-technical users and less so in the past 3 years (as I moved from from a sales / support role more into a management role). It actually works really really well as long as users have properly supported hardware (ie the drivers/frimware are all free software and code is available to be integrated and supported by the mainline kernel developers, etc). ThinkPenguin.com is the best source for hardware that actually has such support. After that you see a decline in issues and the support problems people do run into tend to be easy to solve. It tends to be upgrading users from one LTS release to another or installing something like Chrome because Adobe's discontinued flash for Firefox. Ultimately these things are much much much easier to deal with than dealing with the security nightmare that is every version of Microsoft Windows that has ever been released (and yea- I supported Microsoft Windows too- up until 3 years ago).
7 years of time passing shouldn't exclude something from being part of the modern era.
Perhaps we, as consumers, should put our weight behind a platform that is designed from the ground up to be flexible, extensible and maintained. If Microsoft would provide that, then great, if not then we may want to consider alternatives.
Forcing a switch or operating systems every 5-10 years is pretty disruptive to developers, industry and IT.
PS - as a Linux developer I can say that Linux isn't a great choice as a long term platform either. The kernel changes based on pet projects of whichever person is most active on LKML. And binaries tend to break between distros and between distro versions as binary compatibility is rarely considered a desirable features among open source advocates.
PPS - I realize nobody will stop using Windows. Microsoft will have us under their thumb for the rest of our lives.
“Common sense is not so common.” — Voltaire
Perhaps people don't freak out because you are wrong?
I can't comment on systems using apt, but for yum: my CentOS installations use either a local repository or they connect to a mirror. No "central server".
Also, I don't think that they query the yum server for every package installed on the system: instead, they download a single file that lists all the available packages in that particular repository, then they download only the necessary packages.
The real "Libtards" are the Libertarians!
The simple problem is that telemetry has been overstated and overblown.
No, the simple problem is that the telemetry is mandatory. Microsoft could have provided a way to turn it all off, but did not. How much or little about me that is exposed by the telemetry is beside the point.
Linux 18 years ago and haven't worried about Windows malware or Microsoft's intrusions since then.
Microsoft patented "Legal Intercept" and after they bought Skype they killed Skype's P2P server system and installed a bunch of Linux servers (they don't eat their own dog food!) to run Skype networking on, each server running Legal Intercept. Using Skype you have NO security or privacy from anyone Microsoft allow$ to use their intercept software.
Running with Linux for over 20 years!
Windows 7: outdated technology
Windows 10: maniacally up-to-date (as the screw turns) EULA
Windows 10 on a pre-Windows 10 EULA: priceless (aka not available at any price)
Backward compatibility is what made microsoft originally great. I mean seriously MS, planned obsolescence? What the fuck happened to gratious phasing out?
You broke d3d9 in win10, horribly (much worse performance, different behavior leads to rendering artifacts). Reasoning that people would suddenly switch to UWP when everything runs like crap or something. Well thank you, if I wanted shoddy legacy API emulation, I can just run wine.
But the body of software using dx9 is still immense (to be xp compat, you need to use dx9). And this is just one of dozens of such examples. While w10 brings a lot of good innovation - it's generally leaner and faster than win7 - it also irrebarably broke key subsystems making a lot of software made before 2014 unusable on windows 10.
Then the fiasco of Win8, skipped 9, Win10. Finally everyone will be brought to Win10 kicking and screaming. And they all will file bug reports with a vengeance. MS developers will bellyache having to fix bugs in win10, while all the really cool assignment goes Win12 teams. But eventually Win10 will get to be actually much better than Win7. Just in time to declare it dead and annoint Win12 as the new king of the hill.
And the cycle will repeat.
Its turtles all the way down. And bugs all the way up.
sed -e 's/Chuck Norris/Rajnikant/g' joke > fact
I'm waiting for the class action to start in Canada... any day now (;-))
davecb@spamcop.net
Windows 7 is no longer an option for games. largest market share=most potential for profit.
This is my sig, there are many like it but this one is mine
We'll make great pets
CentOS installations use either a local repository or they connect to a mirror. No "central server"
Mine connect to mirrors as well. They tell the mirror, "HTTP GET /distros/ubuntu/yakkety/pool/p/pornview-2.1.3.deb" and so forth. One GET request per file being downloaded.
I don't think that they query the yum server for every package installed on the system: instead, they download a single file that lists all the available packages in that particular repository, then they download only the necessary packages.
So, when you download installation packages beyond what's installed by default--of which they know every single package already--it doesn't transmit to one of the CentOS mirrors a list of some subset of packages, the total from installation to decommission will necessarily detail every single package you install by virtue of telling them what software you install outside the default set--and even by virtue of pointedly not updating software you've since uninstalled?
There's enough going out to archive.ubuntu.com and us.archive.ubuntu.com pools for the Canonical secret NDA conspiracy to track my every software selection and update. This is approximately the same reality as what's going on with Microsoft, aside from that Microsoft doesn't see every piece of software you install--you only get Microsoft software updates through MS, plus anything you installed through the Windows store--yet nobody panics about their distro or some untrusted third-party Government-controlled university (what do you think gatech.edu is in the CentOS mirror list?) getting their IP and the names of arbitrary software applications they update.
You leak information like a sieve, and your best argument about why it's okay sometimes is apparently that you leak that information to more people in those cases.
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So, we are all supposed to use technology with spyware built in and software that could of been implemented years ago but didn't out of foolish pride, i.e. Bash and Linux features? I'll just stick to actual Linux and not be forced into a cloud app controlled nightmare wet dream of Micro$oft's. You build software that runs fine at 1.2Gz and hardly any RAM only because you force people to be connected to the Internet to do anything, just like ChromeOS. If I'm going to spend money on a laptop, it isn't going to be on anyone's "Trapbook." Everyone, just do yourselves a favor and wipe the Windows and use Linux. They have WINE for running office if you're too lazy to get over using LibreOffice. GIMP for Photoshop people. There is honestly no free and opt source alternative that you can't find as a substitute for what you need. Linux is safer, faster, and far more reliable. If you're a millennial "gamer," you have tons of emulation options, otherwise, just buy a console like a sensible person.
There's mandatory telemetry in Firefox, Chrome, IE, Opera, Ubuntu, Fedora, and a whole lot of other stuff. You're leaking data to everyone. Search habits, Web address look-ups, the lot. Some of it can be removed; some of it can be disabled (notably, the malware checks in Firefox); some of it is designed in (the only way to run system updates without sending a random university, ISP, or Canonical- or Redhat-controlled Web server a list of software you have installed which you intend to upgrade today is to make a complete local mirror of the entire repository).
Nobody knows what's in MS telemetry, but they presume it can be any of anything. A lot of what they presume is also what's sent out to random actors through any Linux distribution or other free software you've been using, and the only reason nobody cares is they don't think about it.
Do you know how often I type something into a text box on Reddit or Slashdot, pull up Google to do some research before I post something retarded, and Google immediately suggests exactly what I'm looking for despite me never having searched for that? It's like they can read the text boxes before I even submit the form--or maybe they know I've been on a certain page in some forum where such topic is being discussed, and can guess what I want to know. Either that or the Googlecluster is both self-aware and telepathic.
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That is a huge number for most people.
I co-own a small IT services company and one part of the business is basic IT support. In that we have just over 500 customer computers under management and during 2016 the on average 147 windows 10 computers have had an average of 3.4 problem tickets each. The on average 304 windows 7 computers have had an average 0.8 problem tickets each. That is a factor of more than 4!! (The numbers do not contain planned maintenance, new software installation/version upgrade, hardware installation or similar events, just the "something is broken fix it!" classified things.)
These statistics aren't very useful without context. Did you categorize all the problems so we can see that distribution? Do you know all the root causes for all the problems and can specifically attribute each of those root causes to a Windows 7 specific issue and also explain how Windows 10 would have made the problem not occur? I see IT departments do this all time. You folks have a tendency to put forth very superficial information and make claims about it but not really know all the details to actually substantiate your claim.
We'll make great pets
Breaking News- Company recommends customers buy its product! Film at 11.
"Microsoft also says that many hardware manufacturers do not provide drivers for Windows 7 any longer, and many developers and companies refrain from releasing programs on the outdated operating system."
Who cares? If you've got win7, you probably also have old hardware that already has drivers. That's kind of the whole thing that people like about windows 7.
Thank you so much for this! I did not know this! I'm removing the last four rollups tonight!
The first posts are pretty much what one would have expected. Many people have concerns with Windows/10 telemetry. But it's still a more secure OS than Windows/7. There are an incredible number of security features built-in to thwart malware. Stack sentinels, call graph protection, delayed freeing of memory, et cetera. I'm in no way advocating for the telemetry data. You can disable it in the Enterprise edition of Windows. I don't like this business decision from Microsoft. But I'd still rather the telemetry data than other malware. The snide quips that show up in articles like this add no value to the discussion.
Most malware is *installed* by the end user.
Better tell Nvidia that. GeForce GTX 1080 has drivers for Windows 7.....
Of course it's in beta, that's the modern duct-tape development culture we have. Software can't be released as "stable" or "final" any more, just broken garbage that is in a state of perpetual beta that will get fixed "later".
The fact is Windows 10 will always be in beta.
can i make a comment that is literally just "no shit"? if so that is my comment to this headline.
I've seen several people say that Windows 10 is full of spyware, and stay on Windows 7 or even XP (though the XP proponents seem to finally be falling off).
This sort of argument bothers me, because it is very short-term thinking. Will you continue to use Windows 7 for the next 30 years, as it does not receive security updates, cannot run the latest software including latest browsers, and generally won't include drivers for the latest devices and protocols?
Do you think Microsoft cares about your complaints when they know you will eventually cave in within 5 years because you can't leave Windows for various reasons? Every version of Windows adds more spyware of some kind, started in the browser and has worked its way elsewhere.
The only solution is to reject Windows and proprietary software that does this kind of spying. Switch to your favorite flavor of Linux or BSD. Doesn't matter which, just that its free software. Otherwise, what are you doing? Are you going to continue complaining yet taking it every release of Windows?
There is no analysis done, just raw data from our ticket system. I took the category that translates to about "software problems" that is used for all problems that are found to come from system and or/installed programs(as opposed to hardware problems) and selected "windows 7" and "windows 10" as operating system respectively and 2016 as the period.
Also the average fix time in terms of man hours spent is higher on win 10 problems, but that might be at least partly due to the technicians not being as familiar with windows 10 as windows 7 so I would not make any claim on how hard they are compared to each other on that front, just on the raw number of separate problems.
The thing definitely does not differentiate between things like Windows problems, Software incompatible with windows 10 and so on. But in the end all those are real costs in terms of time spent on the problem regardless of the cause. The windows 10 systems cause a LOT more problems that need fixing.
In time the windows 10 problems will likely lessen as more software companies fix incompatibilities with windows 10 system changes and historically Microsoft tends to get their operating systems stable within a few years of introduction so the relative situation will be interesting to see in a year and two years, but for now the situation with win 10 is bad...
MS: Windows 7 Does Not Meet the Demands of Microsoft's Monetization Goals; MS Recommends Windows 10. Will stoop to damaging Windows 7 to get better adoption numbers. Has army of lawyers to crush any opposition.
The reality is that computers as an industry have come a long way in maturing. Yes, there will still be innovation, but I expect that the disruptions requiring a new OS to be markedly reduced from 20 years ago. I have multiple PCs running Windows 7, and I see no reason to upgrade. MS trying to shat on my systems by sabotaging Windows 7 does not improve my disposition towards MS. My ~6 year old i5 Quad core with 16GB ram and SSD boot and GTX 560 still does everything that I want it to do. I used to upgrade my video card every 6 months and my whole PC every year or so, but the rate of growth and the delta of the improvements in functionality have greatly diminished. Further, with the spyware and crap advertisements loaded into windows 10, when I do get to the point of needing to upgrade, I will probably be going to Apple, who makes stuff that just works without all the hassle of an MS system. If I actually need a windows platform, I can use boot camp or something similar to run Windows software. I might look into Linux, but honestly, for me it is a deal breaker if I have to futz with the OS/drivers for more than 30 minutes to get devices/drivers to work. The last time I played with Linux (admittedly years ago), it was just useless unless you were a software engineer. (From what I understand, Apple is basically a Linux distro that just works with their custom hardware anyway).
If you disagree, please post your argument. (-1, Overrated) isn't your personal censorship tool for views you don't like
White tube socks are modern technology -- they are used by lots of people today, and they haven't been replaced. One of my clients manufactures tube socks in 2017, the same way they did in 1980. They don't need windows 10.
So, my question is very simply this: which businesses/industries need modern technology to operate? Oh, right, computer industries.
Well, computers for computer industries. Not a big surprise. For for everything else, for every business that existed 100 years ago, no need.
The security features in Windows/10 provide exploit mitigation. What this means is that Windows/10 may or may not have more bugs, but let's assume that it does have more bugs. The changes in Windows/10 mean that bugs do not become exploitable. Let's assume that there are twice as many bugs but 10% can be successfully exploited vs 30%.
We heard all this before when ASLR and DEP were introduced. Did it work? Where is the evidence informing your assumptions?
You can disable it in the Enterprise edition of Windows.
But does it really work? I have Windows 10 Enterprise on one of my computers (couldn't get an older version to work correctly, and I am still considering using Linux at least as dual boot). Even after disabling telemetry and updates (using the UI controls), I found that it was still accessing Microsoft servers a lot. After a lot of tweaking (group policies to disable pretty much everything I did not like, adding Microsoft domains to the hosts file) it seems quiet now, but I wonder if it isn't waiting for me to open a browser etc so it can sneak some data to Microsoft while I am opening a web page etc.
I quickly browsed 100 tickets for win 10 in the software category and 43 had a windows update noted as cause or probable cause for the problem. It is of course fully unscientific, but if it is the same for the full range of tickets then that is almost 1.5 problems on average with windows update/computer/year.
(all titles below are approximate translations to English)
Several mentions of things like:
"Computer goes into loop on start after it had restarted itself for windows update" at least 4 of these
"Program X stops working" with a further comment that it had happened after windows update or version update. at least 5 of these with 2 being local file database corruption in some older program.
"Windows update never ends" At at least 3 of these
"Program X no longer works after new windows release" at least 3 of these.
"Printer settings lost after windows 10 version upgrade" at least 6 of these. All of these in the fall update.
(I say at least as I started counting when I noticed the same type of issue reoccur and it was a fairly quick scan so might have missed some of the same)
and the most fun one: :)
"Windows 10 constantly restarts the computer for updates every 10 minutes even if you tell it not to"
Shameless plug: Firefox telemetry and spy removal
https://gist.github.com/MrYar/...
Obvious, but possibly naive. Small businesses in first world economies typically make more money, employ more people, and basically do and contribute more as a group than large businesses. And as the saying goes, every successful large business was once a successful small business. Also, small IT businesses, independent professionals, and "prosumer" geeks are disproportionately influential when it comes to IT decisions. Playing to the huge enterprise customers at the expense of the little guys may be a successful strategy for the short term, but in the longer term, neglecting the little guys will surely come back to haunt them.
If you disagree, post your argument. (-1, Overrated) isn't your personal censorship tool for views you don't like.
You can run the browser and applications in a sandbox in Windows 7 and not have the baked in malware of Windows 10. I'm sorry but there is nothing you can say that can mitigate the fact that Windows 10 takes control away from the user and is sending encrypted data to a party out of your control.
Now where have I seen that before, software that is out of control of the user, hides itself,sends encrypted or obfuscated data, and constantly changes to keep from being disabled or removed? Oh yeah...MALWARE.
ACs don't waste your time replying, your posts are never seen by me.
meanwhile when you run yum or apt, it sends an HTTP request for each individual piece of software you're updating or installing back to a central server
I can download the whole repository and run my own mirror if I want to. Then whatever software I install will only be visible in the logs of my server.
Actually I do not really care about that. What I care about is Microsoft having access to my files. The way the privacy agreement is written it implies that Microsoft does have access to my files and is willing to let others have access too.
This is what I care about. I can disable Cortana, never use the Windows Store or OneDrive, that is not a problem. But Microsoft having access to my files is a problem.
Every keystroke you enter into your browser's search bar is sent to a remote server, where it's logged in Web server logs.
The difference here is that I know I am putting info in the search bar and that it is going to be logged at least by one server. My ISP (and all companies that control the routers between me and the destination server) can find out where I am connecting. That does not matter.
It's the difference between having your phone wiretapped and your room bugged. When I talk over the phone, I know that the conversation is going over insecure channels and I talk accordingly.
Holy smokes, the bashing on Windows 10 is alarmingly prolific here. So I'll just chime in, yet again, with my experiences with Windows 10, and perhaps address some of the bashing I'm seeing, cuz I think it's really excessive and mostly unsubstantiated complaints.
First my experience: It works. That is my basic two word conclusion on Windows 10. It does what I ask it to do, and it doesn't seem to have stability problems on my systems, or any system I've installed it on. For clarity, I refurbish old laptops, and I install Windows 10 on every one of them. As far back as Celeron and Core Duo CPU systems (along with AMD Turion64 X2's.) These are 5-10 year old laptops and Windows 10 runs like a champ on them. It's faster in every use case I've tested (web browsing, watching videos, using LibreOffice applications.) Windows 10 also seems to like Windows 7 and 8 drivers, so finding drivers for old hardware, while challenging at times, is possible. And they work in Windows 10 without issue, from my experience.
Now on to some bashing, we'll start with force updates that everyone complains the most about. Sorry, but this is a necessary evil, because muggles won't f'ing upgrade their systems, leaving them vulnerable and they just don't give a flying f. The only way to address this needless insecurity is to force updates. Personally I don't mind, I like to be running latest and greatest anyway, but just keep in mind, its the idiots who refuse to upgrade their crap that brought this upon us all. Deal with it. For drivers causing PROBLEMS when updated (I've had this too), Microsoft has since day 1 had a tool to disable updates on specific hardware in your machine. So stop whining and use that tool when necessary.
Insecure computers connected to the internet AFFECT ALL OF US, and since that includes way too many non-technical (aka muggles) people, who refuse to update when asked to, we have to force you, to protect ALL OF US from YOUR insecure system.
Next: Spying. Telemetry. Malware. So much accusations. Has anyone actually taken apart the packets being sent to M$ to see what the hell is being sent? I didn't think so, I haven't seen any reporting on precisely what is being sent. But I have a pretty good educated guess. Usage statistics, performance markers, errors that occur, those are the basic things that're sent home. Probably shoved into a giant database along with every other computer that reports back. I highly doubt anyone can successfully take telemetry data out of this database and tie it back to some individual. So who cares? The data they're collecting is almost certainly aggregated and filed into huge DB's, it's helping M$ engineers design better updates to address issues we don't even know about. At the enhanced level of reporting (which you can turn off) it also supposedly sends info on what applications you're using, and how long they're running. Again.. why does this bother anyone? Do you really think you're so important that someone actually cares what you're doing with your PC? Again, probably all shoved into a DB and used to better understand what users do with their computers, not to spy on you. You're not that important, sorry.
Telemetry isn't exclusive to Microsoft. Debian Linux has been doing telemetry since, uh, well since I started using it, in 1999 or 2000. True, it's completely optional and it asks you during installation if you'd like to participate. But somehow, because you can optout easily, its ok that Linux does Telemetry. Talk about double standard.
About the only legitimate complaint about Windows 10 I can agree with is already over with...the overly aggressive upgrade campaign with some underhanded UI choices to trick people into upgrading. That was bad and uncalled for, but it's also over now, so can't really bitch about this anymore.
Network saturation. This is a new complaint I'm seeing posted here. Not sure what people are doing, but I do not experience this problem. I often have 4, 5, sometimes 6, laptops doing u
Win95 had real pre-emptive multi-tasking and memory protection.
It had no such thing.
It also forced a new UI that people hated.
Program manager shell and related goodies were included with Windows 95.
Windows/10 has a lot of exciting new security features.
Which ones protect users from themselves? Most exploits are result of social engineering. Even if Windows worked perfectly nothing would change.
That's pretty common in commercial software.
Most commercial software vendors I know cannot afford to piss off their customers by inserting malware and ignoring widespread unambiguous negative feedback during product development.
The proof that ASLR and DEP work is that when they are enabled, the exploits always require an ASLR leak! Stack sentinels work wonders. It took from 1970 to 2015 to find a solution for buffer-overflows. We now have it and the Slashdot crowd pans it because they hate the telemetry more than they like the features. I personally hate the telemetry too. But if I'm in a position where I have to decide what's better for my company or my customers, the visceral hate cannot be the deciding factor. I have to look at what solution is best. Things like call graph protection are really valuable. That has to be weighted against the telemetry. But in the end, I'd rather M$ have some details on my browsing habits than a competitor have a dump of my databases.
Dear Microsoft,
STFU.
Thank You.
Table-ized A.I.
Okay, seriously. What do you expect MS to say. "Windows 7 is more private so stick with that?". Right. Recently MS released an update that have the option of "send less of your data". but no option to turn it off completely. And it's VERY difficult to turn automatic updates off (you have to basically hack it to bring that to a stop but telling it your network is metered. Would you trust anyone who puts in such lack of user controls and extraction of metadata from every file the OS sees? Those who want to lower cost in maintenance in setting up traps to stop leaking data and stopping auto updates from adding even more stuff you don't want, go to Linix (Mint Linux is the easiest). It's an easy choice world. Ms pushing people so they can collect more data for themselves (and the NSA) is creepy. We all need to say a simple word to MS: "No".
"Imagination is more important than knowledge" - Einstein
The underlying thought here on /. seems to be that we should talk down Windows 10 so that MSFT repents and gives us a Windows/10 without telemetry. This isn't a good strategy. I can't support staying on an older OS as a means of social protest. I'm getting modded into oblivion but don't really care. If you don't like Windows/10, look at a migration to Ubuntu or even MacOS, but staying on Windows/7 is a losing battle.
The part that I have not seen in this discussion is how Windows 10 deals with hardware control issues and specialized interfaces. I have a small personal astronomical observatory -- all of the equipment is plugged into an older PC. Various specialized interfaces convert video and interpret serial communications from a variety of devices. It started out as Win7 and got 'upgraded' to Win10. For a while things worked well -- then I started to get updated device drivers that overwrote the specialized software that runs the observatory. Finally, everything simply stopped working. So I wiped the drive and reinstalled everything under Win7... now it all works. It is nice to get the latest and greatest... provided it simply makes what I am doing more reliable, efficient, etc. To simply wipe it out and substitute stuff that doesn't work is just sabotage. I run win10 on an Intel NUC -- really nice. But my laptop stays at Win7 -- too many things don't work. They may have delusions of adequacy regarding pushing their latest onto everything -- but only if it works. The jury is still out as to whether they are capable of that.
For what I hope are obvious reasons, Microsoft cares the most about those users!
And yet, only half of all employees work for large enterprises (according to the Census Bureau), and just about every employee, and lots and lots of non-employees have their own computers at home. So those users, which even you - a self-verified Microsoft pitch-man (to use a polite term) - readily admit are less "cared" about by Microsoft are the large majority of their total user base, and the source of the large majority of its revenues.
Thanks for confirming that only Big Boys get respect and decent treatment from the Redmond Mafia, all rest of us peons are only here to be "harvested".
Starships were meant to fly, Hands up and touch the sky - Nicky Minaj
Well, I don't think staying on Windows 7 is a losing battle, for reasons I've described in my other comments in this Slashdot discussion. Short version: It works just fine for now and for the near future. I hope Microsoft will change their strategy before the Windows 7 option eventually ceases to be viable, but if they don't, yes, we will look at migrating to some other platform.
Another comment I was writing prompted me to look at how much of the software we use in my small businesses these days is still proprietary native Windows applications, and it's actually a very short list these days. Most of what we run natively on the desktop and literally everything we run on our servers is now freely available and widely portable to different platforms. The rest of what we run is hosted either on those servers or online and accessed via browsers and sometimes also mobile apps. The number of software packages we depend on that are actually Windows-only is trending to zero, and might well reach zero within the useful lifetime of our current Windows 7 systems.
If you disagree, post your argument. (-1, Overrated) isn't your personal censorship tool for views you don't like.
Windows/95 most certainly had pre-emptive multi-tasking. It was only for 32-bit processes. 16-bit processes shared a single thread and use cooperative multi-tasking like Windows 3.1.
I won't tell you to "shut the fuck up", though . . . I can think of no greater endorsement than attention from a troll such as yourself. Now, go back to your game of "Minesweeper" and leave the grown-ups here on Slashdot to talk about grown-up stuff.
Is it just me, or does this this read a lot like an 'official' State News Release from the Chinese Government ?
Really, Microsoft? You're preaching about IT security when you have completely taken some Windows 10 security decisions *OUT* of the hands of IT departments? We can no longer disable the Windows App Store in Windows 10 Pro, thanks to you. But if we still want that feature we have to update our licenses from Pro to Enterprise.....because SECURITY. Right? It's not about money, right?
Go fuck yourselves.
"A plan fiendishly clever in its intricacies"- Homer Simpson
Utter rubbish, crashes without any errors.. (not even a bluescreen). Its constatntly sending data back to Microsoft/NSA. The interface is a joke.. its compatibility with basic applications is utterly shithouse. No thanks.. I'll use Windows 7 until the next OS comes out and you fix all the problems.. failing that I'll probably switch to running a VM of Windows 7 under Linux.
Meanwhile Win 3.11... Is still running fine on test equipment. The manufacturer says do not upgrade to any other version of Windows.
I have a gang-programming-and-testing production tool from one of the top three (or so) manufacturers of BLE systems-on-a-chip. Our startup needs this (or a suitable alternative) to go into volume production of our initial products.
It comes with an application - in source in a build environment. This allows it to be customized, to add tests for the peripherals added to make the final assembly, and to integrate into production processes and databases.
But the build environment is only supported in Windows 7, 7 Pro, 8, and 8.1, using Visual Studio 2012. The executables and DLLs produced run only on those or XP.
The executable/DLLs use .NET, too, and the way they use it breaks the GUI under wine, even with genuine Microsoft .NET installed. They run correctly, but the status display is corrupted in a way that makes it unusable. So at the production site it needs to run on genuine Windows at one of those levels. B-b
As of the last time I checked (a couple months ago), the manufacturer is unwilling to port to another OS or version - even though all of them (except maybe 7 Pro) have been end-of-lifed by Microsoft.
Bantam Dominique roosters crow a four-note song. Once you've heard it as "Happy BIRTHday" you can't NOT hear it that way
I think the larger problem is people are just sick of everything having telemetry in it, even if it's generally benign and possibly even beneficial.
My main beef with Windows 10 is how willing Microsoft is to re-install sample app store apps after I've already "uninstalled" them (which I don't even think actually uninstalls them but just kind of removes them from my profile). There's a perniciousness to push their marketing angle in my user profile configuration that kind of bugs me.
When in doubt, double down. Is that your approach?
Firstly, you apparently didn't read my comment that I wasn't discussing how apt works, only yum.
Secondly, the critical issue that you are missing is that if I install a package from an alternate repository (eg EPEL), my systems don't tell the main CENTOS mirrors about those EPEL packages. This is really the key difference between yum and what Microsoft is doing: Microsoft knows about everything installed on a system, irrespective of origin.
Thirdly, the mirrors only learn about installed packages if they are updated. If I install from a DVD and the package is never updated, no mirror will ever know that I installed it. I can install non-default packages from DVD should I so choose.
Finally, there is no fingerprinting involved in the yum transactions. If I have multiple machines behind a single IP address, the server doesn't have sufficient information to distinguish them. As well has having insufficient information to fingerprint individual systems, no user information is transmitted.
In summary, yes I am leaking some information, but it is benign.
The real "Libtards" are the Libertarians!
There's mandatory telemetry in Firefox, Chrome, IE, Opera, Ubuntu, Fedora, and a whole lot of other stuff.
True, and it's equally objectionable with the other stuff as well. But I was talking about Windows.
That's why I don't use Chrome, IE, Opera, and Ubuntu and also avoid Google. As for all of the rest, it's easy to switch telemetry off. There you go, not so hard.
(Although it's not quite true about Firefox. Using the configuration setting to disable the telemetry there seems to be quite effective.)
It can be turned back down to near the old level simply by setting it to "Basic."
The old telemetry system was opt-in. The new one isn't even opt-out. Setting it to "Basic" only reduces the amount of data being sent, it does not stop it.
But in the end, I'd rather M$ have some details on my browsing habits than a competitor have a dump of my databases.
And isn't it just lovely being stuck between a rock and a hard place? And ain't it great that Microsoft gave you the choice between paying with money up front, and paying with privacy AND money down the road? Oh, wait... they didn't give you that choice, did they?
I get your point about visceral hate versus customer needs. OTOH, although favouring the kinder, gentler extortionist makes your and their lives easier, it still actively encourages extortion rackets.
'The Economy' is a giant Ponzi scheme whose most pitiable suckers are the youngest among us and the yet-unborn.
Microsoft: "Windows 7? why are you still running that pile."
Users: "Well, you said it was the fastest and most secure operating system ever. Besides Windows 10 doesn't really offer any new functionality and I don't really like the UI."
Microsoft: "No no that was old Microsoft. He was a dick. You need to scrap that gnarled bag of bolts and install Windows 10. Its the fastest and most secure operating system ever!"
The UI development platform is called "modern UI", which is an implicit a dig at everything else that was done before.
If it's not ugly as hell and designed for a phone, it's not "modern".
The simple problem is that telemetry has been overstated and overblown. Try to find a comprehensive description of what Microsoft captures about users. What you get is things about Windows making DNS lookups against hundreds of domains, some chatter about what Windows 10 could be doing, and some criticisms of ill-thought-out features like Wifi network password sharing. Nobody knows what's happening, but they've all assumed so.
I'm hopelessly confused... should I believe "telemetry has been overstated and overblown" or should I think "nobody knows what's happening"?
The result is a bunch of people talking about how Microsoft is spying on you by doing such things as identifying all software installed,
I think the reason for this "misunderstanding" is their own documentation describing lowest possible rung of telemetry settings state the following:
"Helps provide understanding about which apps are installed on a device and to help identify potential compatibility problems."
"Some examples are the amount of time a connected standby device was able to full sleep, the number of crashes or hangs, and application state change details, such as how much processor time and memory were used, and the total uptime for an app."
Microsoft not only knows about all of the porn apps on my computer but how long each are used.
meanwhile when you run yum or apt, it sends an HTTP request for each individual piece of software you're updating or installing back to a central server--which actually does what people said Windows 10 does, but doesn't freak anybody out because... reasons. EVERYBODY PANIC!
With most things Linux you are often downloading from independently operated mirrors and you always retain full control over whether and from where to obtain updates. You can also download them somewhere else and update from a CD-ROM if you want.
I find it hard to accept the premise people are upset about downloading software from remote servers. I think they may in fact be concerned about other things such as telemetry, retroactive software removal and both unwanted software installation and execution.
Cortana used to search the web if you typed search terms into the Cortana search bar, and people freaked out.
There is one search bar at the bottom next to start menu intentionally designed to leak local searches to Microsoft. They removed the start menu search functionality and provide no easily accessible option to control scope of search intentionally to cow people to use it unless they understood/figured out how to turn it off.
With not so clever UX design you can trick millions into creating a Microsoft account they might not want or need or leak URLs entered into the URL bar to search engines. You can even make dismissal of a consent form constitute consent.
Every keystroke you enter into your browser's search bar is sent to a remote server, where it's logged in Web server logs.
Extremely creepy.
Every domain you look up goes back to a Malware service to block bad sites.
If you want to help people you use a bloom filter. If you want to spy on them you download every domain and claim it's for their own safety.
To be fair, people freaked out when Ubuntu started searching Amazon through the Unity bar. It's not that they have legitimate fears; it's that they fear new things, and confusion in groups turns into mass hysteria
Privacy invasions and underlying incentives to go there are not "new things". They've been around as long as the social contract.
You get a few people suggesting folks are just afraid Amazon will see them trying to look for their child porn collection, but that's retarded; the truth is
Retarded is an apt description of the third party doctrine in the US.
e
Windows 10 is a pile of stinkin crap. Upgrade now!
My preference is an LTS flavor of Ubuntu. But if you're going to run Windows, you need to run a supported version. Outdated, unpatched operating systems should be a non-starter. There was a time on /. that everybody claimed to run Linux (although most now admit that they posted from Windows computers in their mothers' basements). Now it seems we have Windows 7 fanbois. That's really a shame. There are lots of good, competing options out there. But Win/7 is not a competitor to Windows 10 going forward.
Plus the nag screens in Windows/10 are insane. They even put up an icon encouraging you to switch from Firefox to Edge. And when you buy a new machine, they add apps to your profile and push them down on your existing machines. I can think of a thousand things wrong with Windows 10 that should make people consider moving to Ubuntu, MacOS, or other. Those things are not a good reason to stick with Windows/7 and open yourself to some much more serious problems, but I'm resigned to getting modded into oblivion for saying so.
The underlying thought here on /. seems to be that we should talk down Windows 10 so that MSFT repents and gives us a Windows/10 without telemetry. This isn't a good strategy.
What makes you say that? How would you know the difference? How do I know your not just a paid schill for some Microsoft hired PR firm?
What isn't a good strategy is questioning motives in the first place.
You don't NEED Windows 10 to use a GeForce 1060. It has working Windows 7 drivers, but they just don't have DirectX 12 support.
From what I've heard, AMD has better optimised DirectX 12 drivers right now.
...had the following to say about Windows 7: "Today, it [Windows 7] does not meet the requirements of modern technology, nor the high security requirements of IT departments [such as ours]. As early as in Windows XP, we saw that companies [such as Microsoft] should take early steps to avoid future risks or costs [such as our customers fleeing us in droves]. With Windows 10, we offer our customers [the real ones - Microsoft executives and shareholders] the highest level of security [an ongoing revenue stream] and functionality at the cutting edge.
Well, how about cold hard facts? Not everyone can afford the enterprise version and I laugh at the Windows 10 apologists when every week, I am asked to fix some Windows 10 issue courtesy of non-blockable updates from Microsoft. Last week's fun fix was the result of an update to printer drivers that caused some color printers to default to black and white. The "new" driver had no color option. At least they had a printer. Some of the Windows 10 machines lost all of their printers. The previous month was a problem that broke all networking adapters on some machines. I still have a coworker that has an issue where his laptop freezes for 15 to 30 seconds at a time for a Windows timeout error. Apparently a SSD primary drive and spinning secondary drive causes Windows 10 some problems on certain laptops. It's been broken since August. Funny, it works fine with Windows 7 and Linux. Of course, I can't forget about the two machines that had their dual boot with Linux corrupted. Linux has no issue on updates, but I guess Microsoft doesn't have the technical expertise to support that option.
The update process for Windows 10 is a giant, steaming pile of shit. If you could disable it, you might be able to have a stable or secure OS for more than a month, but every update is a crap-shoot for what got broken this time.
The proof that ASLR and DEP work is that when they are enabled, the exploits always require an ASLR leak!
So what? What effect did this have in the real world? People either go through an extra hoop to find a bypass which exist or they focus on social engineering.
Any data or references you care to offer showing objectively Windows 10 offers substantially better security outcomes? Not extra security features but actual outcomes to real world users?
This what everyone cares about. Nobody gives a crap about alphabet soups of three and four letter acronyms. They care about results.
Stack sentinels work wonders.
It took from 1970 to 2015 to find a solution for buffer-overflows.
Are you talking about VS2015 "CFG" feature that instruments *code* at compile time to add extra stack checks? Otherwise I have no idea what your referring to.. sentinels are as old as the oldest computers and buffer-overflows are still alive and well in 2017.
We now have it and the Slashdot crowd pans it because they hate the telemetry more than they like the features. I personally hate the telemetry too.
Yes absolutely. I hate telemetry to the extent features are irrelevant. I refuse to accept an operating system that is in fact malware.
You are free to make a different value judgment. Some people abandoned RISERFS out of spite just because the developer turned out to be a murderer. Sometimes political considerations and principals trump technical considerations.
At the end of the day I look at windows and I notice they are still using insecure authentication protocols such as Kerberos leaving users at risk of offline credential compromise. I see MS pushing all kinds of unsafe biometric password replacement gimmicks. It is great they are taking the initiative to improve security but to be honest if I really cared deeply about security I would be running BSD or qubes. Probably would only use a browser from a throwaway VM or an isolated computer. I don't care that much and it seems clear neither do most users because if they did they would never accept the status quo.
I personally think the best security features of Windows is Hyper-V virtualization and sandboxing of browsers 'n shit. Hypervisors are simple enough to have a snowballs chance in hell of being defensible which is way more than can be said for the execution environment exposed to applications.
But if I'm in a position where I have to decide what's better for my company or my customers, the visceral hate cannot be the deciding factor.
Visceral hate is your characterization and your opinion. It is a characterization I neither agree with or see happening. You are free to disagree. The issue of importance of telemetry relative to other considerations is political not scientific and everyone has different security requirements. People are entitled to assign a suitable weight and take measures they see fit.
I can't make a statement about any *individual's* state of mind. I can, however, make a statement about the general attitude. I've tried to be fairly objective in my comments here. I've never been modded down before but I've had posts pushed down to zero in this thread even though I've made the case in a very non-alarmist way. If Windows/10 were to cure all diseases, end poverty, and give everybody a pony, people would respond "but it has telemetry" and the post would get modded to -1. That's a problem because it means this isn't an adult discussion.
Also do you have any idea how hard it is to find an ASLR leak? These are the same or similar features to those found in gcc / Ubuntu. You can read about the Ubuntu implementations here. https://wiki.ubuntu.com/Securi... These are features implemented by all modern operating systems / compilers. But they weren't common in the Windows 7 era. Again we could all *prefer* that MSFT back port features to Win/7 and or give up on Windows/10 telemetry. But to instead expose ourselves and/or customers in order to support an ideology achieves nothing and just makes us look silly. Here's another chance for somebody to mod me down. Have fun.
"In a blog post, Microsoft says that continued usage of Windows $X increases maintenance and operating costs for businesses. Furthermore, time is needlessly wasted on combating malware attacks that could have been avoided by upgrading to Windows $Y."
There, a blog post they can keep reusing, forever...makes me think of that Orwell boot...
>> Windows 7 Does Not Meet the Demands of Modern Technology; Recommending Windows 10
Windows 10 Does Not Meet the Privacy and Confidentiality
Recommending Linux.
aaaaaaa
I had the exact same problem with svxhost and the update service and spent a lot of time trying to fix the problem. Once fixed it would come back a few weeks later.
I want my OS to support my productivity. It must never ever start resource intensive work behind my back when Im working. It may leave a notice about some pending updates or task that needs to be done, but it has to stay out of my way when I work. When Im working in my texteditor, listening to music, having an email client open and perhaps a few reasonable browser tabs, I want my computer running silent and cool with very low CPU load.
I actually don't care if it's "hard" to accomplish. We're talking MS. They have the resources to do this right, and they have failed. I paid for my Win7 and Microsoft is not honoring their end of the deal.
Solution:
I installed Debian on my old UX31 laptop. I installed Ubuntu on my new Spectre x360. Dual boot just in case. Everything works like a charm. No special drivers. Haven't used Windows since.
That feeling.
Users: Windows 10 Does Not Meet the Demands of Modern Technology; Recommends Linux.
Free, as in your money being freed from the confines of your account.
It's not just that. Downloading huge updates while connected to a big internet pipe is one thing, but I travel a lot and I can tell you that hotel internet speeds in many countries are just not good enough for massive downloads. How the f*** are you supposed to use Windows 10 while on the road? How often do these high priority updates come out, and what is their average size?
And that's exactly what most users want - to get things done. And if OS don't get in your way of doing things - even better. It perfect and just right if you can't see underlying OS at all. And yes, that the whole point of LTS.
The problem is that win10 is nowhere near being that stable, and that is okay. And everyone would be happy if Microsoft just plain admitted it being too raw for production environment - that would also be okay. They do not, instead they claim that win10 - as ugly as it is now - is still better and more stable than win7, which is, basically, an epitome of what LTS is about as far as Windows products go anyway.
And everyone is *rightfully* bitching about it.
Yes : Your 'Option #2' is vastly more efficient ....
"There are 11 kinds of people: those who know binary, those who don't, and those who could not care less!"
Firstly, you apparently didn't read my comment that I wasn't discussing how apt works, only yum.
When Yum downloads something, it fetches a bunch of repo information (like apt-get update), then it downloads files (like apt-get install). To do this, it does... all the shit I described apt doing.
Secondly, the critical issue that you are missing is that if I install a package from an alternate repository (eg EPEL), my systems don't tell the main CENTOS mirrors about those EPEL packages.
No, of course not. You tell Georgia Tech, the NSA CentOS Mirror, or Microsoft's Redmond CentOS mirror, at random, who you are and what you're downloading.
Multiple distributions and mirror maintainers coordinate in secret to keep security exploit details quiet until a patch is ready from everyone. There's an entire network of quiet discussion that happens, intentionally hidden from everyone, to make sure everyone hits the ground running. If you report a remote exploit in Firefox directly to Mozilla, Debian, RedHat, Slackware, or Gentoo, marked as a security bug, they will keep the details private until everyone has patches ready; then they all release at once.
So you believe Microsoft is doing secret things dealing your data to secret partners in secret; but that Linux distributions might not be secretly collecting your data, or that various Linux mirrors who aren't controlled by those distributions aren't under the influence of others. That is: although AT&T was sucking up your phone data and piping it to the NSA, they apparently won't collect what scraps of OS update telemetry data hits their servers in the same way.
You're basically saying there's no network of bad actors out there, so instead of trusting "Debian", you trust everyone.
Finally, there is no fingerprinting involved in the yum transactions. If I have multiple machines behind a single IP address, the server doesn't have sufficient information to distinguish them. As well has having insufficient information to fingerprint individual systems, no user information is transmitted.
We've been able to identify individuals based on their Internet usage and TV usage, even from the same account, device, and browser. We can tell if your 16 year old daughter or her 17 year old sister is currently using the PC or watching TV.
I might have two x86-64 PCs running the same version of Ubuntu, and a Raspberry pi; you can fingerprint at least three systems out of my usage habits, and identify one distinctly at least.
Through all of that...
In summary, yes I am leaking some information, but it is benign.
The leaking of what Microsoft software you've installed to Microsoft's servers is benign as well. Who fucking cares that Microsoft knows you have Office 2013 installed?
Support my political activism on Patreon.
One important thing to mention here is that those security features also defend you against bugs in third party code. You can independently verify that those security features work.
But that's the key point and that's the point that you keep misrepresenting.
No one outside Microsoft knows exactly what information is being transmitted to Microsoft.
The real "Libtards" are the Libertarians!
Hey Microsuck, Windows 10 doesn't meet MY security needs/concerns. It will never see the inside of my house.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
Casteism
I am an independent thinker. I am open about piracy(books, mostly) and am also open that I will make anyone who comes after me regret it. Since I go after books and not so much the latest blockbusters, that may be part of why they ignore me, but i have friends that are equally open about pirating blockbusters that seem to be left well enough alone. The best way it seems to be left alone for being an independent thinker is to be open on how it is a part of your values and not just something you have no clue what you are doing like the RIAA multimillion dollar supposed decision against who was it again, https://www.bing.com/search?q=... turns up some interesting results, but not the suit I am thinking of. But I suppose no longer sharing after you got yours may help, too.
The minimum is only 5 units.
But yeah, few small buisnesses are going to want to bother with the hassle and expense of setting up a volume license agreement. Especially when for the moment buying machines with win10 pro licenses and downgrading them to win7 pro is a viable option.
note: i'm known as plugwash most places but i screwd up registering that here somehow in the past and now can't register
My old but serviceable laptop has a validity sensor VDS 201 model that is supported in windows 7 and 8 but no longer works in windows 10. the manufacturer doesn't make moden drivers from it. By upgrading to windows 10 I just lost the ability to biometrically secure my laptop. How is that more secure ? Hello windows Hello ... goodbye windows hello.
Linkedin http://in.linkedin.com/in/robinsaikatchatterjee
Thank you for being honest. So you see, you don't really know whether you can attribute the problems specifically to Windows 10. It is entirely possible that your staff is under-trained or perhaps group policy administration is slightly different or whatever. It's like when you moved from User Manager for Domains to Active Directory, would you have made the same type of claims about Windows NT vs Windows 2000? I'd be interested in hearing more about root causes of these problems so that we could really get to the bottom of it. It could be that Windows 10 has issues but without that information, we can't conclusively make a determination.
We'll make great pets
If you are really concerned about privacy you do not run Windows.
I also run my own I.T. business, and I service about 300 small businesses, so about 1,000 computers. I'd say about 1/3 of the computers that upgraded to win10 are now back on win7 because win10 crashed itself. A lot of the users don't even have admin permissions to their own computers, so I KNOW it's not their fault. Windows 10 just crashes itself over time. Windows 7 doesn't. I hope microsoft gets that fixed before win7 goes obsolete in year 2020.
Wow no way Microsoft is half baking a reason to drop all support for every version of windows but the one they are currently Making money on. Are bears still sh*ting in the woods as well.
Really, maybe people would upgrade if Microsoft wouldn't change the fking UI all the dmn time. Nobody I know "wants" Win10 -- they either accept it because they have to or go die-hard on Win 7.
Also do you have any idea how hard it is to find an ASLR leak? These are the same or similar features to those found in gcc / Ubuntu. You can read about the Ubuntu implementations here. https://wiki.ubuntu.com/Securi... These are features implemented by all modern operating systems / compilers. But they weren't common in the Windows 7 era. Again we could all *prefer* that MSFT back port features to Win/7 and or give up on Windows/10 telemetry.
There are things like DEP/NX and ASLR that require varying degrees of buy in from the OS/loader/processor however what you seem to be referring to (stacks) are security checks injected at COMPILE TIME adding various protections with a nominal performance tradeoff. This makes a lot of sense. Once code is compiled information necessary to make any kind of coherent determination is severely diminished to do anything about it later at runtime.
I can use GCC to compile windows programs if I want and take advantage of GCC security features in my app running on Windows XP. Mozilla can follow through with their threat to compile Mozilla in Rust enabling users to become immune from certain classes of security bugs in the subset of code using that language (assuming it actually behaves with advertised constraints).
Numerous security checking features have been available directly in visual studio and as add-on libraries from third parties for as far back as I can remember.
Now you can argue since the operating system itself is not compiled with x, y and z that it is less secure. To which my response is users tend to sit behind stealth mode firewalls anyway in a single user/household environment. If you can protect applications from external compromise this is sufficient in practical terms since the application is the thing sticking its neck out. You can of course still exploit vulnerable OS provided aspects the application relies on. Font processing for example has previously been a successful target but holistically the security of the application is way more important than OS selection for most users.
This obviously is not sufficient in other settings such as multi-user systems/ application servers yet I have never in my life trusted an operating systems ability to fend off privilege escalation from interactive users... It's too unrealistic...too big an ask. Associated stream of CVE's in this regard is hardly surprising.
Control Flow Guard (CFG) is a highly-optimized platform security feature that was created to combat memory corruption vulnerabilities. By placing tight restrictions on where an application can execute code from, it makes it much harder for exploits to execute arbitrary code through vulnerabilities such as buffer overflows. CFG extends previous exploit mitigation technologies such as /GS, DEP, and ASLR.
This feature is available in Microsoft Visual Studio 2015, and runs on "CFG-Aware" versions of Windows—the x86 and x64 releases for Desktop and Server of Windows 10 and Windows 8.1 Update (KB3000850).
We strongly encourage developers to enable CFG for their applications. You don't have to enable CFG for every part of your code, as a mixture of CFG enabled and non-CFG enabled code will execute fine. But failing to enable CFG for all code can open gaps in the protection. Furthermore, CFG enabled code works fine on "CFG-Unaware" versions of Windows and is therefore fully compatible with them.
https://msdn.microsoft.com/en-...
Wildly unpopular as it may be in these parts, Microsoft is correct, and starting to move away from Windows 7 is the appropriate thing to do. Yes there is self interest involved form Microsoft, they want to sell licenses, but that doesn't inherently make their direction wrong. Windows 7 was released nearly 12 years ago, let that sink in.. _12_ years. Snow Leopard was the shiny new OS for Macs and the Linux Kernel version at the time was 2.6.30, SLES11.0 and RHEL 5.3 were released around the same time. I can't speak for all of you but most of the hardcore Linux sysadmins I work with or know would look at you funny if you told them you were going to build a new production server with those as a starting point. If you consider Windows 7, Windows 7 SP1, Windows 8.0, Windows 8.1, Windows 10 RTM and Windows 10 Anniversary to be distinct OS versions, Windows 7 SP1 is 4 generations behind. Even if you only consider Windows 7, Windows 8, and Windows 10 the distinct versions, Windows 7 is still 2 generations behind.
Microsoft is saying that their own SUPPORTED operating system is insecure.Why should we trust that their new one is not? (credit to Dataless on Spiceworks today for this thought).
They just want to force you to pay them money.
-- Tigger warning: This post may contain tiggers! --