If your attacker can either A) hack into the Internet back-end routers; or B) physically colocate on your private network, he can hack your PC during an update check.
If we assume update checks are sufficiently frequent, then your most likely attack is from a PC on your network--a neighbor or white van that's connected to your wifi, assuming it's not encrypted with a non-trivial password ("lemonade_ghost_riders" would keep the NSA out if they had to brute-force your WPA2--don't use that password; it's public knowledge now).
The only reasonable scenario is a targeted attack by an infected machine on coffee-shop wifi. Such an attack would need to connect to the local wifi, spoof ARP packets of the router at your particular device, spoof ARP packets of your device at the router, and interpose itself. Not impossible, but very much not reasonable if two competing devices are attempting to do it.
Exactly. If you're being victimized by a man in the middle attack you have a *lot* more to worry about than your Dell/Lenovo/HP driver update suite being non-encrypted.
If I sign up for a 3 year contract I would fully expect to receive updates until that contract is finished. Providing 1.5-2 years of updates is unacceptable.
I don't agree with how they're doing it, but the simple fact is that Microsoft is totally done supporting Windows 7 for home users.
Windows 7 until 2020, baby, 2020.
.
Microsoft has stated they will support Windows 7 until the year 2020. They cannot renege on that. Otherwise who would believe them when they say they won't make Windows 10 a monthly subscription service?
Security fixes. They haven't released a feature pack or improved any features since Service Pack 1.
It amazes me that people have been so accepting of Microsoft's abuse.
3 ideas:
1) Autopatcher has not begun supporting Windows 10. We need independent control over Windows operating system updates. How can we achieve that?
2) Don't let Windows connect to the internet. Microsoft has a long, long history of releasing very buggy code and fixing it later. After fixing 2,722 vulnerabilities and bugs, Microsoft declared Microsoft Windows XP "end of life".
3) We need international support for a Windows-compatible operating system, like ReactOS.
1. Don't automatically install Recommended updates. Only security updates.
2. If you're a business then run an internal WSUS server. It doesn't take much power at all. Or run it off your domain controller.
3. Every product has buggy code. There's a big difference between stop/break fixes and minor inconveniences.
I've been fighting off this upgrade on my network at work for months now. I deployed a GPO with a template MS provides to stop the forced upgrade of Win7 machines to Win10, but I still see that damned little icon on my user's system tray. I don't condone, but understand their strategy for pushing out Win10 to home users, they don't want another Windows XP, where a popular but mostly out of date OS keeps a small, bug significant chunk of the market long after support ends.
What I don't understand is forcing this update on domain joined machines that are obviously part of a business network and the upgrade should be left up to the sysadmin (me). I know there's little love for MS on this site, but they have gotten worse and those of us working in enterprise/domaine environments shouldn't have to employ registry hacks and GPO templates to keep our client machines from forcefully being upgraded to the latest OS.
Are you using your own internal WSUS server? Because we have over 120k windows machines and other than the first week the white window popped up, it hasn't show on a single computer since. You should be managing updates yourself honestly.
That doesn't make sense. He intentionally is excluding all versions of Windows except for 7 and 8. He also made the decision to exclude a lot of the editions of Windows. I don't know anyone that has a copy of Windows that is allowed to upgrade to 10. My laptop came with 7 Enterprise, so Microsoft doesn't allow me to upgrade. My desktop running Vista isn't allowed to upgrade. Nadella doesn't want people to run Windows. He is embarrassed by it. Why else would he prevent so many people from upgrading?
He excluded enterprise because you'd be a flipping idiot to upgrade your Enterprise copy of Windows 7 automatically. Oh 10 is out, let's upgrade our corporate servers day 1. If you're running enterprise on your desktop to browse the web then you're also doing it wrong and/or probably not licensed properly in the first place.
It's the same reason they invented the GWX application to allow you to opt out. It would be a nightmare if half a company decided to upgrade and found out (due to lack of testing) that their products didn't work with 10 yet. People love to jump the gun on new technology so Microsoft put in protection against it.
Seeing as how they set the price for their OS as "free" that will not work. And if they try and pull that, enough people may opt out of the class and sue individually.
It's only free until July for eligible upgrades. If you buy a new computer with no OS Windows 10 costs the standard $100-150.
Yeah except no. People choose Windows because Linux doesn't run the software they want (at least not without Wine hackery or other such nonsense).
Really? FaceBook, Twitter, and Instagram all seem to work fine. Netflix too with a tiny bit of effort. And my Steam has a backlog of games I bought on sale and have not even downloaded yet! The bigest holdouts I had seen consulting were Exchange (now onliine and works in Linux) and Quickbooks (Which has now gotten just as good with the online version) So which software are you speaking of?
Get angry - but for years idiots like yourself screamed about Microsoft not being security conscious.
Name calling is your argument? OK, poopie head.
Well this is what security is - you FORCE people to take updates, because otherwise idiots (like yourself) don't update and then holler when some malware comes out and exploits security holes that were patched months back.
Because updates and patches never break things, and should never be tested. Like those odd one off applications that are no longer supported but your business needs and you can't make run in WINE.
I'm not being a troll or whatever - I literally think some of you people are freaking morons.
Just read that out loud and see if you can see anything wrong with that statement.
Windows 7/8 is nearing its end of life and instead of updating with a FREE upgrade, you refuse.
So are 2020 and 2023 really that close for you? And do you really think there will be no other options then Windows 10 in the next 4-7 years? And do you refuse to use that MRI machine that is run by Windows XP?
You're worried about Microsoft's anonymous tracking system?
You're not? After all the deceptive things they have done over the years, you trust them to be trustworthy, AND to keep them both anonymous and secure? Are you high?
I hope you run EVERYTHING through an encrypted VPN and that you trust your VPN provider. I hope you trust your ISP. I hope you trust your email provider and I hope you trust you cellular carrier.
I do a lot, and I AM my VPN provider, and hell no I do not trust my ISP, and my carrier is Verizon, so I think that answers the last concern.
Because you don't have privacy when it comes to technology - not without limiting what you do and jumping through a ton of loopholes.
Yes, if you want privacy today, you have to work at it. Also, if you want a nice car today, you have to work at it. Some of us want those things.
Don't do illegal things, dont' download CP, and don't be an asshat and no one will care what you do. You're not that important. You're just stupid.
That is also patently untrue. Do you disagree with any political party? Do you have any feelings about immigration, gun rights, abortion rights, capital punishment, police violence, free trade, or taxation? Do you have any money or viable credit? (We already know you are an asshat, so we have that box checked...) Then, yes, some people have a vested interest in knowing what you are doing.
Windows 10 is moving to the Apple model for operating systems.
They will be releasing 2 service releases a year similar to how Apple gives you El Capitan, Yosemite, etc. That's how the updates to the OS will be going forward. Also if you're more than 2 service releases back you'll no longer receive Windows updates until you upgrade to within 2 service releases.
Actually, a lot of people just do web and email with some light document writing. Once they get used to the different look, Linux works just fine for them. Linux distros have updates as well, and they are safer to use since they don't yank the rug out from under you or add spyware.
Adding dirty tricks to security updates is just another in a long long line of bad security decisions.
Except it's not a security update. It's part of the extra recommended updates. You shouldn't be blindly installing recommended updates without viewing them or having a sysadmin approve them first.
[...] A week later she's telling me how Windows 10 is just as good or perhaps even a bit better and easier to use than Windows 8 and she's glad she upgraded.
Well, going from 8 to 10 is indeed an upgrade. Going from 7 to 10 is better than going from 7 to 8. Better as in "being deported to Siberia instead of Auschwitz" better.
Was the upgrade painful? Did it give you PTSD? Windows 10 runs better on machines made in the past 5 years than Windows 7 did.
and then almost lost her mind when she asked me if there was some easy way to go back to Windows 8 and I had to tell her no.
Why did you lie to her? There is a 30 day grace period during which reverting back from Windows 10 to previous Windows version is roughly 3-4 mouse clicks away.
Start Menu / Settings / Update & Security / Recovery
Because the upgrade is inevitable. Why postpone the upgrade when it's out of fear of the word "change" and not because it's hard to use. Windows 10 is by far the smoothest upgrade.
This is exactly why free software (in the vein of what Richard Stallman calls for) needs to be supported. *YOU*, the user, must own complete control over your computer and the software it runs, not developers (much of the more liberal open source licenses are about developer rights, not user rights -- big difference!) or corporations.
I know many of you would object, "But I bought this computer, it's not Microsoft's!". Well I wholeheartedly agree, but the thing is, Windows being proprietary closed source means that Microsoft has a claim to intellectual property rights. Microsoft believes that you license Windows, not own it. Essentially, they still own the software on your computer. Again, I know that *you* disagree, but it kinda doesn't matter what you think -- Microsoft has money and lawyers and they push for the outcome they want. Which is to own your computer. And if they own it, they're technically allowed to do whatever they want with it, including force upgrades. That is the nature of licensing agreements -- you agree to their licensing rules, which means they can do whatever they want.
If this bothers you, switch to a free software OS. Some flavor of Linux or even BSD. Get involved in the free software community, both the technical community (making more/better free software) and the political community (that lobbies for changes to copyright law, tries to get government to adopt open standards, etc.). We have to fight back, or you can expect more behavior like this from Microsoft, Apple, etc., in the future.
As a end user I do have complete control whether Windows 10 upgrades my system. It's a simple option called let me know when Windows updates are available instead of Automatically install. Please don't confuse ignorance with the lack of choice.
Over the weekend I set up a new Win 10 machine for Dad (store bought HP Envy). Going through updates and installs I found one nasty surprise, Flash was installed by default on this box. I was hoping to wean him over to HTML5 with this upgrade (from Vista !), but HP builds them with Flash already in place. Went ahead and made Firefox64 the default browser, and Chrome as an alternative, but since Cortana and all MS services default to MS Edge no matter what you set, it's going to be a mixed operation from now on
You set it in control panel now. Setting it to default in the browser itself will not work.
I have a headless windows 7 fileserver in my 5 person office (so, no, I'm not going to shell out bullshit money for enterprise windows, thanks). Had, actually. We got in the office this Monday and right away the accountant noticed that quickbooks was down, and thus we noticed the fileserver was offline. Hooked up a monitor and sometime over the weekend it decided to upgrade to windows 10.
No idea why shills like you keep insisting that people must be pushing the wrong button. Is the "X" button the wrong button now? Are you going to tell us we're holding the mouse wrong (cf holding the iPhone wrong)?
Want an easy way
And people tell me that fucking with random system shit means that Linux isn't ready for the desktop
Why would you auto-install updates on a critical server in the first place? You schedule downtime and maintenance and would've caught this had not been lazy.
Unless you have some particularly specific niche software or hardware (that can't run in Win7, therefore, not in Win10, since the drivers are mostly the same)....
Windows 10 auto-installed on a customer's newish Windows 7 computer, hosing the entire installation. I installed Kubuntu 15.10, and now he's a happy camper. He said his computer works better now than it did before.
Windows 10 is a gift to the Linux world.
Windows 10 never auto-installs. If you're too illiterate to read what the screen says then that's not Microsoft's fault.
> So it's our fault// For following years of best practice
No, but it arguably is everyone's fault for trusting Microsoft at all.
Computer administration is an actual job, and OS manufactures and distributors have jumped through hoops to make this vastly better than "please visit our website and download and apply these patches at a command line". But in doing this, you end up trusting both the intentions and the technical competence of those involved. For a mainline Linux distro or a BSD, this is a solid bet. For a less famous Linux distro, the technical competence can be in question- you may end up with a broken patch here or there, or some vulnerability that affects you temporarily. These usually get worked out super fast.
Much more concerning is trusting the INTENTIONS- trusting Apple's intentions has been a safe bet, but there's no guarantees, and if you want to distrust them as many in the free software community do, go ahead. But Microsoft signaled that they were untrustworthy in ever increasing amounts over the years- from strange constant names in leaked code to an unhealthy interest in allowing your BIOS to lock out all Microsoft competitors, to progressively tricky cloud-based tech, to the current state of Windows 10 telemetry being essentially impossible to disable (don't argue with me, check your wireshark!)... and that's just the more recent stuff. Microsoft was busy being odd in the 90s, and now they are being SUPER spooky.
Basically, letting Microsoft push software to your box has ALWAYS been trusting Nedry with your dinosaurs. It just hasn't been overtly hostile until now, but there's been plenty of clues.
If you're a system administrator and you let a single machine upgrade to Windows 10 then you're incompetent. We have 120,000 Windows 7 machines and we pushed the patch to every single machine within a week of it being available. None automatically upgraded...
But incompetence can always be diverted when you can make stuff up and blame the other company instead.
"If a prank starts making people feel uncomfortable, you've completely missed the mark."
You've just banned ALL comedy, especially in the pathetic world we live in where someone is offended by/uncomfortable with everything...
Pranks are comedy, but not all comedy is pranking. If someone is watching a TV show or live standup or whatnot, they know what they're in for; cringe away. If I'm walking down the street minding my own business and someone approaches me and begins acting in a way that sends up red flags, that's not comedy. I did not sign up for that. That is how misunderstandings occur, and people get hurt.
It reminds me of the movie "The Game" with Michael Douglas. Fantastic movie but at the same time it shows how pranks of that nature should be done. Everyone involved was on the payroll of that company. Not a random person from the public.
"If a prank starts making people feel uncomfortable, you've completely missed the mark."
You've just banned ALL comedy, especially in the pathetic world we live in where someone is offended by/uncomfortable with everything...
If you do a prank in a closed setting with people you know it's fine. When you blindly involve the public while performing criminal acts it's not going to be funny anymore. Especially if those people feel threatened. You can choose to roll the dice.
Just like the people who created Borat should have been jailed.
Harassment and abuse are never ok.
There are a lot of other videos like these also. I saw one where a woman went in public deliberately with her ass showing, then filmed guys reacting to it and she confronted them to embarrass them and accuse them of being perverts.
There are a lot of sick creeps out there. I think the movie Borat unleashed a lot of this.
If you think outdoor smoking ban is ridiculous then you don't realize how much air one cigarette can contaminate.
Personally I'd like to see a total ban on all smoking tobacco.
I would rather see a ban on outdoor smoking and make indoor smoking subject to the owner's discretion (provided perhaps that there are air filters. I can't avoid going outside but I don't have to go into any particular person's home, office, retail store or restaurant. Why should my aversion to smoking prevent them from doing what they want on their own property? So long as their behavior isn't attacking me, and it isn't if I don't have to smell the smoke (and I can always choose differents, restaurants, offices and stores to visit), keeping them from their happiness is an infringement on their freedom.
But when they smoke outside they are damaging a publicly shared good - the air.
Indoor is worse. All that smoke compacted into one building and the workers have the choice of quitting or dealing with the damage it causes.
uh no. This billionaire is spending his own money and money of others who approve what he is doing. We wants the country to then spend trillions on improving the life of billions. Commendable and he puts his money where his mouth is. What did you do this year to improve the world for other humans?
I bought a homeless man a twinkie. He died in front of me. I saved the government food stamps.
"Okay, now that we've eliminated your malaria, you need to to come work for us for $2 a day!"
It doesn't work that way. The biggest weapon against malaria is literacy. Literate people can learn how the disease spreads, and can read the instructions on bed nets and cans of insecticide. Once they can read, they are also more productive, and can earn more than $2 per day. In the past decade, Africa has made huge progress against both malaria and illiteracy. If you overlay the maps of malaria reduction and illiteracy reduction, they line up almost exactly. They both line up well with a map of rising incomes.
For the rest of us, it just means fewer middle class jobs.
So reducing malaria and preventing the needless deaths of millions of children is bad? Is there anything that you don't complain about?
Yes. If we were willing to just napalm Africa we'd solve many problems. Malaria, Clean water, Ebola, Poaching, Starvation and Illiteracy rates would drop. Global warming would cease to exist. Hell we might even enter an ice age with all those people no longer generating heat.
Slashdot Mirror
Let's put this into perspective.
If your attacker can either A) hack into the Internet back-end routers; or B) physically colocate on your private network, he can hack your PC during an update check.
If we assume update checks are sufficiently frequent, then your most likely attack is from a PC on your network--a neighbor or white van that's connected to your wifi, assuming it's not encrypted with a non-trivial password ("lemonade_ghost_riders" would keep the NSA out if they had to brute-force your WPA2--don't use that password; it's public knowledge now).
The only reasonable scenario is a targeted attack by an infected machine on coffee-shop wifi. Such an attack would need to connect to the local wifi, spoof ARP packets of the router at your particular device, spoof ARP packets of your device at the router, and interpose itself. Not impossible, but very much not reasonable if two competing devices are attempting to do it.
Exactly. If you're being victimized by a man in the middle attack you have a *lot* more to worry about than your Dell/Lenovo/HP driver update suite being non-encrypted.
If I sign up for a 3 year contract I would fully expect to receive updates until that contract is finished. Providing 1.5-2 years of updates is unacceptable.
I don't agree with how they're doing it, but the simple fact is that Microsoft is totally done supporting Windows 7 for home users.
Windows 7 until 2020, baby, 2020.
. Microsoft has stated they will support Windows 7 until the year 2020. They cannot renege on that. Otherwise who would believe them when they say they won't make Windows 10 a monthly subscription service?
Security fixes. They haven't released a feature pack or improved any features since Service Pack 1.
It amazes me that people have been so accepting of Microsoft's abuse. 3 ideas: 1) Autopatcher has not begun supporting Windows 10. We need independent control over Windows operating system updates. How can we achieve that? 2) Don't let Windows connect to the internet. Microsoft has a long, long history of releasing very buggy code and fixing it later. After fixing 2,722 vulnerabilities and bugs, Microsoft declared Microsoft Windows XP "end of life". 3) We need international support for a Windows-compatible operating system, like ReactOS.
1. Don't automatically install Recommended updates. Only security updates. 2. If you're a business then run an internal WSUS server. It doesn't take much power at all. Or run it off your domain controller. 3. Every product has buggy code. There's a big difference between stop/break fixes and minor inconveniences.
I've been fighting off this upgrade on my network at work for months now. I deployed a GPO with a template MS provides to stop the forced upgrade of Win7 machines to Win10, but I still see that damned little icon on my user's system tray. I don't condone, but understand their strategy for pushing out Win10 to home users, they don't want another Windows XP, where a popular but mostly out of date OS keeps a small, bug significant chunk of the market long after support ends. What I don't understand is forcing this update on domain joined machines that are obviously part of a business network and the upgrade should be left up to the sysadmin (me). I know there's little love for MS on this site, but they have gotten worse and those of us working in enterprise/domaine environments shouldn't have to employ registry hacks and GPO templates to keep our client machines from forcefully being upgraded to the latest OS.
Are you using your own internal WSUS server? Because we have over 120k windows machines and other than the first week the white window popped up, it hasn't show on a single computer since. You should be managing updates yourself honestly.
That doesn't make sense. He intentionally is excluding all versions of Windows except for 7 and 8. He also made the decision to exclude a lot of the editions of Windows. I don't know anyone that has a copy of Windows that is allowed to upgrade to 10. My laptop came with 7 Enterprise, so Microsoft doesn't allow me to upgrade. My desktop running Vista isn't allowed to upgrade. Nadella doesn't want people to run Windows. He is embarrassed by it. Why else would he prevent so many people from upgrading?
He excluded enterprise because you'd be a flipping idiot to upgrade your Enterprise copy of Windows 7 automatically. Oh 10 is out, let's upgrade our corporate servers day 1. If you're running enterprise on your desktop to browse the web then you're also doing it wrong and/or probably not licensed properly in the first place. It's the same reason they invented the GWX application to allow you to opt out. It would be a nightmare if half a company decided to upgrade and found out (due to lack of testing) that their products didn't work with 10 yet. People love to jump the gun on new technology so Microsoft put in protection against it.
Seeing as how they set the price for their OS as "free" that will not work. And if they try and pull that, enough people may opt out of the class and sue individually.
It's only free until July for eligible upgrades. If you buy a new computer with no OS Windows 10 costs the standard $100-150.
Yeah except no. People choose Windows because Linux doesn't run the software they want (at least not without Wine hackery or other such nonsense).
Really? FaceBook, Twitter, and Instagram all seem to work fine. Netflix too with a tiny bit of effort. And my Steam has a backlog of games I bought on sale and have not even downloaded yet! The bigest holdouts I had seen consulting were Exchange (now onliine and works in Linux) and Quickbooks (Which has now gotten just as good with the online version) So which software are you speaking of?
Get angry - but for years idiots like yourself screamed about Microsoft not being security conscious.
Name calling is your argument? OK, poopie head.
Well this is what security is - you FORCE people to take updates, because otherwise idiots (like yourself) don't update and then holler when some malware comes out and exploits security holes that were patched months back.
Because updates and patches never break things, and should never be tested. Like those odd one off applications that are no longer supported but your business needs and you can't make run in WINE.
I'm not being a troll or whatever - I literally think some of you people are freaking morons.
Just read that out loud and see if you can see anything wrong with that statement.
Windows 7/8 is nearing its end of life and instead of updating with a FREE upgrade, you refuse.
So are 2020 and 2023 really that close for you? And do you really think there will be no other options then Windows 10 in the next 4-7 years? And do you refuse to use that MRI machine that is run by Windows XP?
You're worried about Microsoft's anonymous tracking system?
You're not? After all the deceptive things they have done over the years, you trust them to be trustworthy, AND to keep them both anonymous and secure? Are you high?
I hope you run EVERYTHING through an encrypted VPN and that you trust your VPN provider. I hope you trust your ISP. I hope you trust your email provider and I hope you trust you cellular carrier.
I do a lot, and I AM my VPN provider, and hell no I do not trust my ISP, and my carrier is Verizon, so I think that answers the last concern.
Because you don't have privacy when it comes to technology - not without limiting what you do and jumping through a ton of loopholes.
Yes, if you want privacy today, you have to work at it. Also, if you want a nice car today, you have to work at it. Some of us want those things.
Don't do illegal things, dont' download CP, and don't be an asshat and no one will care what you do. You're not that important. You're just stupid.
That is also patently untrue. Do you disagree with any political party? Do you have any feelings about immigration, gun rights, abortion rights, capital punishment, police violence, free trade, or taxation? Do you have any money or viable credit? (We already know you are an asshat, so we have that box checked...) Then, yes, some people have a vested interest in knowing what you are doing.
Windows 10 is moving to the Apple model for operating systems. They will be releasing 2 service releases a year similar to how Apple gives you El Capitan, Yosemite, etc. That's how the updates to the OS will be going forward. Also if you're more than 2 service releases back you'll no longer receive Windows updates until you upgrade to within 2 service releases.
Actually, a lot of people just do web and email with some light document writing. Once they get used to the different look, Linux works just fine for them. Linux distros have updates as well, and they are safer to use since they don't yank the rug out from under you or add spyware.
Adding dirty tricks to security updates is just another in a long long line of bad security decisions.
Except it's not a security update. It's part of the extra recommended updates. You shouldn't be blindly installing recommended updates without viewing them or having a sysadmin approve them first.
[...] A week later she's telling me how Windows 10 is just as good or perhaps even a bit better and easier to use than Windows 8 and she's glad she upgraded.
Well, going from 8 to 10 is indeed an upgrade. Going from 7 to 10 is better than going from 7 to 8. Better as in "being deported to Siberia instead of Auschwitz" better.
Was the upgrade painful? Did it give you PTSD? Windows 10 runs better on machines made in the past 5 years than Windows 7 did.
and then almost lost her mind when she asked me if there was some easy way to go back to Windows 8 and I had to tell her no.
Why did you lie to her? There is a 30 day grace period during which reverting back from Windows 10 to previous Windows version is roughly 3-4 mouse clicks away.
Start Menu / Settings / Update & Security / Recovery
Because the upgrade is inevitable. Why postpone the upgrade when it's out of fear of the word "change" and not because it's hard to use. Windows 10 is by far the smoothest upgrade.
This is exactly why free software (in the vein of what Richard Stallman calls for) needs to be supported. *YOU*, the user, must own complete control over your computer and the software it runs, not developers (much of the more liberal open source licenses are about developer rights, not user rights -- big difference!) or corporations.
I know many of you would object, "But I bought this computer, it's not Microsoft's!". Well I wholeheartedly agree, but the thing is, Windows being proprietary closed source means that Microsoft has a claim to intellectual property rights. Microsoft believes that you license Windows, not own it. Essentially, they still own the software on your computer. Again, I know that *you* disagree, but it kinda doesn't matter what you think -- Microsoft has money and lawyers and they push for the outcome they want. Which is to own your computer. And if they own it, they're technically allowed to do whatever they want with it, including force upgrades. That is the nature of licensing agreements -- you agree to their licensing rules, which means they can do whatever they want.
If this bothers you, switch to a free software OS. Some flavor of Linux or even BSD. Get involved in the free software community, both the technical community (making more/better free software) and the political community (that lobbies for changes to copyright law, tries to get government to adopt open standards, etc.). We have to fight back, or you can expect more behavior like this from Microsoft, Apple, etc., in the future.
As a end user I do have complete control whether Windows 10 upgrades my system. It's a simple option called let me know when Windows updates are available instead of Automatically install. Please don't confuse ignorance with the lack of choice.
Over the weekend I set up a new Win 10 machine for Dad (store bought HP Envy). Going through updates and installs I found one nasty surprise, Flash was installed by default on this box. I was hoping to wean him over to HTML5 with this upgrade (from Vista !), but HP builds them with Flash already in place. Went ahead and made Firefox64 the default browser, and Chrome as an alternative, but since Cortana and all MS services default to MS Edge no matter what you set, it's going to be a mixed operation from now on
You set it in control panel now. Setting it to default in the browser itself will not work.
I have a headless windows 7 fileserver in my 5 person office (so, no, I'm not going to shell out bullshit money for enterprise windows, thanks). Had, actually. We got in the office this Monday and right away the accountant noticed that quickbooks was down, and thus we noticed the fileserver was offline. Hooked up a monitor and sometime over the weekend it decided to upgrade to windows 10.
No idea why shills like you keep insisting that people must be pushing the wrong button. Is the "X" button the wrong button now? Are you going to tell us we're holding the mouse wrong (cf holding the iPhone wrong)?
And people tell me that fucking with random system shit means that Linux isn't ready for the desktop
Why would you auto-install updates on a critical server in the first place? You schedule downtime and maintenance and would've caught this had not been lazy.
Unless you have some particularly specific niche software or hardware (that can't run in Win7, therefore, not in Win10, since the drivers are mostly the same)....
Windows 10 auto-installed on a customer's newish Windows 7 computer, hosing the entire installation. I installed Kubuntu 15.10, and now he's a happy camper. He said his computer works better now than it did before.
Windows 10 is a gift to the Linux world.
Windows 10 never auto-installs. If you're too illiterate to read what the screen says then that's not Microsoft's fault.
The lack of control over updates and when the computer reboots is pretty awful too.
Do you mean the inability to go schedule updates? It's literally the first setting in Control Panel.
> So it's our fault // For following years of best practice
No, but it arguably is everyone's fault for trusting Microsoft at all. Computer administration is an actual job, and OS manufactures and distributors have jumped through hoops to make this vastly better than "please visit our website and download and apply these patches at a command line". But in doing this, you end up trusting both the intentions and the technical competence of those involved. For a mainline Linux distro or a BSD, this is a solid bet. For a less famous Linux distro, the technical competence can be in question- you may end up with a broken patch here or there, or some vulnerability that affects you temporarily. These usually get worked out super fast.
Much more concerning is trusting the INTENTIONS- trusting Apple's intentions has been a safe bet, but there's no guarantees, and if you want to distrust them as many in the free software community do, go ahead. But Microsoft signaled that they were untrustworthy in ever increasing amounts over the years- from strange constant names in leaked code to an unhealthy interest in allowing your BIOS to lock out all Microsoft competitors, to progressively tricky cloud-based tech, to the current state of Windows 10 telemetry being essentially impossible to disable (don't argue with me, check your wireshark!)... and that's just the more recent stuff. Microsoft was busy being odd in the 90s, and now they are being SUPER spooky.
Basically, letting Microsoft push software to your box has ALWAYS been trusting Nedry with your dinosaurs. It just hasn't been overtly hostile until now, but there's been plenty of clues.
If you're a system administrator and you let a single machine upgrade to Windows 10 then you're incompetent. We have 120,000 Windows 7 machines and we pushed the patch to every single machine within a week of it being available. None automatically upgraded... But incompetence can always be diverted when you can make stuff up and blame the other company instead.
"If a prank starts making people feel uncomfortable, you've completely missed the mark."
You've just banned ALL comedy, especially in the pathetic world we live in where someone is offended by/uncomfortable with everything...
Pranks are comedy, but not all comedy is pranking. If someone is watching a TV show or live standup or whatnot, they know what they're in for; cringe away. If I'm walking down the street minding my own business and someone approaches me and begins acting in a way that sends up red flags, that's not comedy. I did not sign up for that. That is how misunderstandings occur, and people get hurt.
It reminds me of the movie "The Game" with Michael Douglas. Fantastic movie but at the same time it shows how pranks of that nature should be done. Everyone involved was on the payroll of that company. Not a random person from the public.
"If a prank starts making people feel uncomfortable, you've completely missed the mark."
You've just banned ALL comedy, especially in the pathetic world we live in where someone is offended by/uncomfortable with everything...
If you do a prank in a closed setting with people you know it's fine. When you blindly involve the public while performing criminal acts it's not going to be funny anymore. Especially if those people feel threatened. You can choose to roll the dice.
Just like the people who created Borat should have been jailed.
Harassment and abuse are never ok.
There are a lot of other videos like these also. I saw one where a woman went in public deliberately with her ass showing, then filmed guys reacting to it and she confronted them to embarrass them and accuse them of being perverts.
There are a lot of sick creeps out there. I think the movie Borat unleashed a lot of this.
Borat was all paid actors and actresses.
Didn't Uber just win a legal case stating the people who drive for them are not their employees but freelancers?
If they're not Uber employees why is Uber trying to compensate these people for an insignificant wait time for someone hailing one of their cabs?
Because there needs to be penalties for making people wait or not showing up at all. Whether the go time is 2 or 5 minutes, the fine part makes sense.
most decline my "tip", i think uber should force them to take my "tip".
You're giving them the wrong tip.
If you think outdoor smoking ban is ridiculous then you don't realize how much air one cigarette can contaminate.
Personally I'd like to see a total ban on all smoking tobacco.
I would rather see a ban on outdoor smoking and make indoor smoking subject to the owner's discretion (provided perhaps that there are air filters. I can't avoid going outside but I don't have to go into any particular person's home, office, retail store or restaurant. Why should my aversion to smoking prevent them from doing what they want on their own property? So long as their behavior isn't attacking me, and it isn't if I don't have to smell the smoke (and I can always choose differents, restaurants, offices and stores to visit), keeping them from their happiness is an infringement on their freedom. But when they smoke outside they are damaging a publicly shared good - the air.
Indoor is worse. All that smoke compacted into one building and the workers have the choice of quitting or dealing with the damage it causes.
uh no. This billionaire is spending his own money and money of others who approve what he is doing. We wants the country to then spend trillions on improving the life of billions. Commendable and he puts his money where his mouth is. What did you do this year to improve the world for other humans?
I bought a homeless man a twinkie. He died in front of me. I saved the government food stamps.
"Okay, now that we've eliminated your malaria, you need to to come work for us for $2 a day!"
It doesn't work that way. The biggest weapon against malaria is literacy. Literate people can learn how the disease spreads, and can read the instructions on bed nets and cans of insecticide. Once they can read, they are also more productive, and can earn more than $2 per day. In the past decade, Africa has made huge progress against both malaria and illiteracy. If you overlay the maps of malaria reduction and illiteracy reduction, they line up almost exactly. They both line up well with a map of rising incomes.
For the rest of us, it just means fewer middle class jobs.
So reducing malaria and preventing the needless deaths of millions of children is bad? Is there anything that you don't complain about?
Yes. If we were willing to just napalm Africa we'd solve many problems. Malaria, Clean water, Ebola, Poaching, Starvation and Illiteracy rates would drop. Global warming would cease to exist. Hell we might even enter an ice age with all those people no longer generating heat.