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Microsoft Resumes Rollout of Windows 10 Version 1809, Promises Quality Changes (zdnet.com)
Microsoft on Wednesday resumed the rollout of Windows 10 version 1809. The re-release of the so-called October 2018 Update comes more than five weeks after the company pulled the original installation files from its download servers and stopped its scheduled delivery through Windows Update. From a report: In a blog post, Microsoft's John Cable, the director of Program Management for Windows Servicing and Delivery, says the data-destroying bug that triggered that unprecedented decision, as well as other quality issues that emerged during the unscheduled hiatus, have been "thoroughly investigated and resolved."
As I sit here 4 or 5 days in my Windows 10 Professional version, bought, paid for, came on high end laptop from day one, is indicating that it is not a valid license and that I need to activate it.
Are they promising lower quality?
Caution: Contents under pressure
This
Microsoft "Promises Quality Changes".
It seems to me that the fundamental issue is that Microsoft managers don't have the social ability to be good managers.
The huge number of major problems with Windows 10 have damaged Microsoft's reputation.
Not to sound the hater, but MS has been promising quality since Windows 3.1 and has instead delivered a pretty veneer draped over a pile of compiled sludge. Any time I've programmed Windows apps, admittedly not since Windows 7, I've stumbled into shortcuts, hacks, slovenly cruft, and a general non-adherence to their own stated best practices. At this point, the onus of proof is on Microsoft to **demonstrate** quality rather than talk about it. Three or four updates in a row that that don't trigger showstopper bugs would be a good start. The world doesn't need another MS PowerPoint explaining the greatness of Windows 10: it needs a working Windows 10.
"Man is nothing without the works of man" -- Helvetius
I really need an explanation for how they justify saying they've made revisions while keeping it as Version 1809. That isn't how it works. That isn't how any of this works.
:::The Spear in the heart of the Other is the Spear in the heart of You; You are He - Surak of Vulcan:::
The Marines are looking for a few good men.
What? It was far better than DOS 4.0. I couldn't wait to upgrade.
This is why I keep my version frozen at 1703. It works and I don't want to mess with problems as I've got plenty to do without being my own IT manager.
Now you're regretting it.
Nope. DOS 5.0 was the last great OS from Microsoft. It's been downhill ever since.
Slow down, cowboy! It has been 4 hours since you last posted. You must wait another few hours.
My Win7 has never made contact with Windows Update and never will. Still going fine.
So, we don't have version control anymore; the "fixed" version number is the same
version number as the broken version. Great... Indian engineers... Just sayin'.
"Hey, did you install the 1809 update yet?"
"Which one?"
CAP === 'rubble'
My Chinese knock-off laptop is still running just fine.
Maybe I'm being antediluvian, and this may be a bit off topic, but it seems to me an OS should allow one to run applications manage memory and storage, etc., and not have applications built into the software which is so tied to the OS that a misbehaving app can brick a computer. If you try out some app and it seems either not to your liking or seems to disrupt the OS then generally would be easy to remove and find something else that does what you wont. Look at the browser space or search apps: you've got many choices and it's the same with other types of needs. The result is the developers of apps become responsible for making sure things work with the OS. It would become clear very early to folks who pay attention if an app hosed an OS or computer.
In a time of universal deceit, telling the truth is a revolutionary act. George Orwell
A quality change would be service packs each year, and new versions of Windows each three years, which you could also upgrade to instead of wiping clean your disk but I guess it's too much for Microsoft. Also, having a good internal QA/QC team would be great instead of relying on "insiders" (what a stupid misnomer), sorry, external beta testers who Microsoft don't really listen to (the data wiping bug in Windows 10 1809 was reported months before it was made official but Microsoft didn't pay attention to it).
Oh, wait, we had exactly that up to Windows 7.
I still don't understand what their excuse is, as they successfully introduced new features in Windows NT/2000/XP/Vista service packs.
Windows Server 2019 is back as well!
I don't think that's necessarily it -- the issue is one of the fundamental flaw of DevOps.
Let's look at the statement from TFA: We shifted the responsibility for base functional testing to our development teams in order to deliver higher quality code from the start.
Well, allow me to retort: Your devs can't find bugs in your own damn code because if they knew what was broken, they'd have already fixed it before it shipped. (The reason is similar to the reason as a writer should never proofread their own work. A complete stranger off the street is more likely to spot a typo than the author.)
Continuing on, the MS suit says: We also changed the focus of the teams that still report to me who are responsible for end to end validation, and added a fundamentally new capability to our approach to quality: The use of data and feedback to better understand and intensely focus on the experiences our customers were having with our products across the spectrum of real-world hardware and software combinations.
And I'll translate that too: The "data driven" (telemetry) "new capability to your approach to quality" would never have been necessary if you'd, you know, actually kept a QA department who knew how to look for shit that devs miss. By the time you're getting telemetry, it's already too late, the users are already losing their data.
This isn't QA (quality assurance, the engineering of processes to ensure that showstopper bugs don't ship in the first place), this isn't even 1940s-style QC (quality control, getting an order for 100 widgets and building a run of 120 because you know 20 of them will be discarded at the end of the assembly line.) This is literally "throw your shit over the wall and see if it runs."
Devs throwing shit over the wall to a QA/QC/Testing department was a bad business practice because it wasted the testers' time and the developers' time -- testers said "Fuck, it doesn't work" and devs had to figure out why. The only difference between throwing shit over the wall back then and today's shit-as-a-service is that the testers are the unpaid end users. It makes sense from a quarter-by-quarter accounting viewpoint, but it's still a waste of developer time, and in the long term (2-5 years) results in a revenue drop due to the erosion of consumer confidence in the product.
We ARE the QA.
I don't believe in karma, I just call it like I see it.
The critical situation of the small Windows 10 machine is not fully stable, so perhaps it's trying to heal itself. Always the optimist.
It's also possible that part of the problem was the not-yet-updated state of the middle-sized Windows 10 machine. Maybe OneDrive is just confused by the transitional state and updating that machine will bring everything back to normal.
It's increasingly hard to be optimistic whenever I notice the flying pigs. Smartphones with 512 GB of memory? Whatever for?
So let me propose a new metric of storage: "What year did the Library of Congress first get that large?"
By that metric, my little Windows 10 machine is much "older" than the big smartphone and my biggest Windows 10 machine is only one or two Moore's-Laws younger.
Freedom = (Meaningful - Coerced) Choice != (Speech | Beer^2), and sad sock puppets' bad mods avail them naught.
Maybe, the fault is with the end user, perhaps they do not realise they are a crash test dummy for the business users with corporate licences. The crash test dummy method of product testing, get the retail dummies to test it for you and then gaslight them that you care, yep, uh huh, sure. M$ is practically screaming in everyone's face that they do not give one fuck about how they screw over retail customers and the morons keep sucking it up with Windows anal probe 10, just weak wimpers as M$ bends them over the desk and pounds into them, over and over and over again. Windows anal probe 10 has become a parody of itself.
Chaos - everything, everywhere, everywhen
Pay for the regular consumer version and than install that from the usual sites for personal sanity. You probably don't want to try Office, or OneDrive or Skype. You just want to play your Steam games without excessive junk and nagware. I wish that option was provided to consumers, even for an extra fee.
You mean Tuesday November 13: https://blogs.windows.com/wind...
Best thing is when they can't even communicate with each other.
Here is a funny story that happened about 5 years ago at work. We had an Indian guy that worked for us, he was a security tech. He had to contact Honeywell support because we were having a problem programming one of their security panels. He gets an Indian tech support worker. They rambled back and forth for an hour and about every 5th sentence was "can you repeat that I can not understand what you are saying". Then the guy hangs up and complained about the tech support people not being able to speak proper English. Now I'm no linguist but from what I heard of the conversation they sounded damn near identical.
Anecdotal sure, but was funny as hell from my view and I will probably never forget that day.
When any time anybody says anything bad about somebody that isn't white is considered racist... These things happen.
HOORAH!!! Ow I broke a nail! Where's my file...
Correction YOU are the QA, people who care about control of their computers jumped ship long ago. What's worse is Windows 10 wasn't even that bad to start until they started forcing installs and updates and reboots. I liked it because it was more stable than Windows 7 until that. Now I run Debian on my main machine and haven't had an issue in 2 years.
Well, that could finally explain the free upgrades to Windows 10. The funny part is that they actually sort of convinced me that Microsoft had begun to understand their cancerous reputation was hurting them. Memories are already a bit fuzzy, but I think I had two reach-out-and-touch-a-sucker communications from Microsoft in connection with Windows 10.
One was before my first upgrade, and there was another contact from an engineer after an earlier major upgrade. Amusingly enough, my recollection is that the second contact was actually mediated through Slashdot. The Microsoftian in question was following up on a question that I'd posed on Slashdot. Don't recollect that he was able to do anything about the actual problem, but I almost felt like someone over there cared about the consequences of their incompetence. (Given their motivations, is it even conceivable that Microsoft can make an honest mistake?)
In conclusion, I have become EXTREMELY resistant to the idea of ever again buying anything that I associate with the Microsoft brand. Hmm... The word "resistant" seems a bit weak. How about "abhorrent"? About 5 machines since I bought anything with Windows. Not a real solution. It just means I'm smoking the other corporate cancers.
And today's sick machine remains sick. Mysterious reboot is just the latest symptom.
Anyway, I still think the real solution is to fight the cancers at their roots. However time has already ticked away on this story, and my time counts, too, so I'll just bid you ADSAuPR, atAJG.
Freedom = (Meaningful - Coerced) Choice != (Speech | Beer^2), and sad sock puppets' bad mods avail them naught.