I just wish, just once, Microsoft could put out a version of something that is only better in every way and not compromised by things like the new update/reboot policy.
I feel the same way. We were holding off on buying some new machines until Windows 10 came out, because we had no interest in the touch screen focus of 8 and, somewhat, 8.1. We were really hoping 10 would be the better every-other-release version that fixed that but kept the various minor technical improvements. In reality, the privacy and lack of control with Windows 10 mean we can't install it on any work machine (instant compliance violations on several counts) and we won't install it at home (because I value my privacy and I like to control my own PC, thanks). That's too bad, because other than those deal breakers, it does seem to have a few modest but useful improvements.
Personally, I'm expecting to see a lot of Schadenfreude on the one year anniversary when, as now seems inevitable, Microsoft's senior management have to concede that they haven't been able to convert most Windows 7 users to 10 despite literally giving it away and actively trying to trick many customers into installing it. They had their shot chasing the cloud, but the strategy failed, and it's time for Nadella and Myerson to let someone with a different vision take over.
I take it you don't use software RAID? Monthly resyncs (or every few weeks on systems you turn off at night) will significantly reduce your storage system performance for a few hours on a decent workstation-class machine or server.
Obviously it's still nowhere near as annoying as what Windows 10 routinely does. I'm just pointing out that Linux isn't magically immune to system maintenance tasks that consume significant resources.
You do understand that Microsoft has previously been fined literally billions of dollars by the EU authorities and has been forced to release alternative versions of its products? And that Microsoft tried, repeatedly, to appeal and avoid the initial rulings against them, and just got slapped down even harder for non-compliance? They went to court. They lost. They paid some of the largest fines in legal history. How much more proof do you need?
Of course nothing has happened about Windows 10 yet. For legal action on that scale, brought by the authorities representing an entire continent with hundreds of millions of citizens and resulting in fines of billions of dollars, you don't just turn up to your local court with a couple of guys in suits.
I don't know where you're from, but as with your other post, this idea that EULAs are some unassailable way to trump the law certainly is not universal and global, nor is the idea that governments won't intervene when big tech companies cross the line. The EU has issued substantial fines to big tech companies for much less than this. National regulators have acted against some of the biggest firms in tech as well. And if Microsoft couldn't prove they had real authorisation for any actions they took that adversely affected their customers' computers, they would be at risk of violating criminal computer misuse laws as well.
As far as I can see, I wouldn't have standing to sue, since although various computers I have do use Windows, I have so far managed to avoid any of them upgrading to Windows 10 against my will.
But if anyone did want to take action, EULAs don't automatically win just because there is something in them. Some aspects of some EULAs have been upheld in some courts, and others have not. We've had some rulings against big IT companies on much less significant matters than the ability to arbitrarily change or replace the purchased product, where they appear to have relied on arguments based on licensing terms and EULAs and lost.
As a relevant aside, here in Europe there were some quite recent changes to consumer protection legislation that were pretty obviously intended to remove any loopholes and ambiguity about whether the various rules that already covered contracts also covered other formal documents like EULAs, whatever their legal status might be otherwise. Most people who have Windows 7/8/8.1 will have bought it before those laws came into effect, but any recent customers would be covered.
Either way, though, it seems extremely unlikely that most European courts would uphold a condition hidden deep in an EULA that said Microsoft could do anything up to and including completely replacing the product someone bought.
Because of a pop-up with no highly visible way to cancel it, or because of some sneaky wording several pages into an EULA no-one read? Good luck using either of those as a defence. You'll need it.
Yes, at first sight, this story does look like an anti-competition lawsuit just waiting to happen.
Or yet more desperation from Microsoft to lock customers into their ecosystem so they can figure out how to make more money from them later. Take your pick.
If you're on a tablet, windows 10 sucks. However, for every other case, there are clear security advantages to get everyone updated.
And clear security, privacy/data protection, and reliability concerns if you update.
For example, none of my businesses could reasonably update to Windows 10 even if we wanted to. We're not big enough to use Enterprise, and the ability of another party (Microsoft) to install arbitrary software onto computers running any other version of Windows 10 would be an instant deal-breaker for all kinds of regulatory and contractual reasons.
Even without the legality and regulatory issues, if anything important that your business does relies on systems that someone else can arbitrarily change or even remove at any time, you're a fool.
Companies have *every right* to treat their customers like total shit.
If that were actually true, there would be no consumer protection laws on the books, no cases where clauses in contracts of adhesion between a small business customer and a big business supplier have been struck down as unconscionable by a court, and so on.
Your entire argument here seems a little contrived to me. Even if there are alternatives to Microsoft Windows in general, a customer who already bought Windows because it met their requirements and functioned acceptably at the time should not subsequently find that Windows no longer meets their requirements or functions the same way because it has been artificially damaged by Microsoft after the fact.
If the customers refuse to do this, and insist on supporting sociopathic and abusive (but completely legal) behavior, what can you do?
Personally these things don't tend to affect me or my businesses, as we long since disabled Windows updates that would cause this kind of problem. However, if (and I stress the "if", because I haven't verified this) some reports I've seen of the default behaviour were even close to accurate, I'm not sure whether Microsoft's behaviour would still completely legal.
For example, if a Windows user had authorised Microsoft to install security updates -- which are in themselves remedies for defects in the original product, almost by definition -- and Microsoft had in fact used the same technical mechanism to replace the entire OS, I can't immediately see how that wouldn't infringe the same computer misuse laws as any other hacker breaking into a system and changing things without authorisation. Our legal system may be lagging rather awkwardly behind modern technology, particularly in areas like software updates and cloud services, but the letter of the law here (I'm in England) is relatively simple in the case of unauthorised access.
I'm actually a little surprised that no-one yet seems to have acted in connection with this. I wonder whether it's because the laws I'm thinking of are criminal matters, so someone would actually have to make a formal complaint against Microsoft to the relevant authorities in order to trigger any sort of investigation. It seems quite plausible that no-one has actually done that, even if the reports are correct and someone did get Windows 10 installed without their consent.
Yes, but in this case approximately 100% of the rest of the Windows-using world agrees with the good captain. Microsoft screwed this one up big time, and their reputation has rightly suffered for it. Many of us will continue to mock them for it, and to refuse to install Windows 10, and to change our earlier Windows systems to turn off the nag screen -- because unlike Windows 10, in those earlier versions we still can.
They need to just integrate some of the already available cloud calendars.
Why would I want to share the details of where I'm going and who I'm seeing with anyone else?
A client-based calendar is exactly what I want. The only thing better would be a trivially installed calendar server I can host on my own systems with negligible effort, so multiple devices could more easily share the same details.
If I didn't want that sort of independence and control, for both calendar and mail, why would I still be using a product like Thunderbird in the first place?
I am just saying it's flawed to think it should be free because you pay your ISP.
I understand that. I am just saying it's not necessary to write the games like that in many cases, because an Internet connection suffices to co-ordinate the multiple players. That is, it's not that I think the centralised subscription services should be free, it's that I think they shouldn't exist at all in those cases.
The 20 player FPS was just an example, to demonstrate that the scale of many of today's games that rely on these centralised control systems isn't particularly different to what we were doing a long time ago without that dependency.
As far as I can see, you still haven't identified any specific benefit that any particular game derives from being built that way instead of co-ordinating via community servers or P2P so you're independent of any particular service from the game developers or hosting networks. You just wrote "offer much more", without giving any detail about what "much more" means or why it needs the remote control.
In particular, you still haven't identified any reason beyond the two I mentioned in my original post for a game developer to write their games this way and why users should then have to pay for these subscription services just to play the game they already bought.
It seems you missed the sarcasm in the GP post there. I think the AC's point was that Apple have allegedly been using similar telemetry techniques for a long time on their devices and don't seem to get the same negative reaction. Of course, whether Apple actually are phoning home from OS X to the same extent that Microsoft are now known to be doing from Windows 10 is a different question.
The underlying needs to communicate and synchronize state in, say, a 20-player FPS arena haven't changed very much in two decades. That's the point.
If you believe otherwise, let's talk about specifics. Please give some examples of things you think are necessarily qualitatively different about how such a game is implemented today vs. 10 or 20 years ago and require the presence of a central server run by the game developer instead of the community-hosted servers or P2P techniques we used to use.
Sorry again, but I just don't see how any of this is relevant.
It is perfectly possible to write games that deal with multiplayer aspects like many of today's games, but without requiring a centralised server run by the game developer or their proxy as so many modern titles do. We proved this 20 years ago, and we've proved it many more times since.
I really don't see how an awkward car analogy changes those facts.
Sorry, whatever analogy you're trying to make there, I'm not seeing it. It's more like, you pay for your own car and its gas, and so do the other drivers on the road, and you can all drive together and share the road sensibly. You also all pay your taxes, which pay for the roads and lights and so on. Then your car dealer says that with their new deluxe model for 2016 actually you all need a subscription to their official Lane Change Management System as well if you want to go anywhere, even though you'd been changing lanes just fine for years before.
The central point of the post you replied to was that even with the technology of 20 years ago we could run a 10-20 player Quake level just fine without needing expensive centralised infrastructure. What exactly do you think is different about today's multiplayer games that requires centralised infrastructure to be provided by the games companies now when it wasn't before, except for the two reasons I gave in my previous post?
Slashdot Mirror
I just wish, just once, Microsoft could put out a version of something that is only better in every way and not compromised by things like the new update/reboot policy.
I feel the same way. We were holding off on buying some new machines until Windows 10 came out, because we had no interest in the touch screen focus of 8 and, somewhat, 8.1. We were really hoping 10 would be the better every-other-release version that fixed that but kept the various minor technical improvements. In reality, the privacy and lack of control with Windows 10 mean we can't install it on any work machine (instant compliance violations on several counts) and we won't install it at home (because I value my privacy and I like to control my own PC, thanks). That's too bad, because other than those deal breakers, it does seem to have a few modest but useful improvements.
Personally, I'm expecting to see a lot of Schadenfreude on the one year anniversary when, as now seems inevitable, Microsoft's senior management have to concede that they haven't been able to convert most Windows 7 users to 10 despite literally giving it away and actively trying to trick many customers into installing it. They had their shot chasing the cloud, but the strategy failed, and it's time for Nadella and Myerson to let someone with a different vision take over.
I take it you don't use software RAID? Monthly resyncs (or every few weeks on systems you turn off at night) will significantly reduce your storage system performance for a few hours on a decent workstation-class machine or server.
Obviously it's still nowhere near as annoying as what Windows 10 routinely does. I'm just pointing out that Linux isn't magically immune to system maintenance tasks that consume significant resources.
It's the Eric Cartman school of business, and it seems to be very popular these days.
And it's all fun and games until some bastard kills Kenny, but this time he doesn't come back in the next episode.
You do understand that Microsoft has previously been fined literally billions of dollars by the EU authorities and has been forced to release alternative versions of its products? And that Microsoft tried, repeatedly, to appeal and avoid the initial rulings against them, and just got slapped down even harder for non-compliance? They went to court. They lost. They paid some of the largest fines in legal history. How much more proof do you need?
Of course nothing has happened about Windows 10 yet. For legal action on that scale, brought by the authorities representing an entire continent with hundreds of millions of citizens and resulting in fines of billions of dollars, you don't just turn up to your local court with a couple of guys in suits.
I don't know where you're from, but as with your other post, this idea that EULAs are some unassailable way to trump the law certainly is not universal and global, nor is the idea that governments won't intervene when big tech companies cross the line. The EU has issued substantial fines to big tech companies for much less than this. National regulators have acted against some of the biggest firms in tech as well. And if Microsoft couldn't prove they had real authorisation for any actions they took that adversely affected their customers' computers, they would be at risk of violating criminal computer misuse laws as well.
As far as I can see, I wouldn't have standing to sue, since although various computers I have do use Windows, I have so far managed to avoid any of them upgrading to Windows 10 against my will.
But if anyone did want to take action, EULAs don't automatically win just because there is something in them. Some aspects of some EULAs have been upheld in some courts, and others have not. We've had some rulings against big IT companies on much less significant matters than the ability to arbitrarily change or replace the purchased product, where they appear to have relied on arguments based on licensing terms and EULAs and lost.
As a relevant aside, here in Europe there were some quite recent changes to consumer protection legislation that were pretty obviously intended to remove any loopholes and ambiguity about whether the various rules that already covered contracts also covered other formal documents like EULAs, whatever their legal status might be otherwise. Most people who have Windows 7/8/8.1 will have bought it before those laws came into effect, but any recent customers would be covered.
Either way, though, it seems extremely unlikely that most European courts would uphold a condition hidden deep in an EULA that said Microsoft could do anything up to and including completely replacing the product someone bought.
Because of a pop-up with no highly visible way to cancel it, or because of some sneaky wording several pages into an EULA no-one read? Good luck using either of those as a defence. You'll need it.
Yes, at first sight, this story does look like an anti-competition lawsuit just waiting to happen.
Or yet more desperation from Microsoft to lock customers into their ecosystem so they can figure out how to make more money from them later. Take your pick.
If you're on a tablet, windows 10 sucks. However, for every other case, there are clear security advantages to get everyone updated.
And clear security, privacy/data protection, and reliability concerns if you update.
For example, none of my businesses could reasonably update to Windows 10 even if we wanted to. We're not big enough to use Enterprise, and the ability of another party (Microsoft) to install arbitrary software onto computers running any other version of Windows 10 would be an instant deal-breaker for all kinds of regulatory and contractual reasons.
Even without the legality and regulatory issues, if anything important that your business does relies on systems that someone else can arbitrarily change or even remove at any time, you're a fool.
Companies have *every right* to treat their customers like total shit.
If that were actually true, there would be no consumer protection laws on the books, no cases where clauses in contracts of adhesion between a small business customer and a big business supplier have been struck down as unconscionable by a court, and so on.
Your entire argument here seems a little contrived to me. Even if there are alternatives to Microsoft Windows in general, a customer who already bought Windows because it met their requirements and functioned acceptably at the time should not subsequently find that Windows no longer meets their requirements or functions the same way because it has been artificially damaged by Microsoft after the fact.
If the customers refuse to do this, and insist on supporting sociopathic and abusive (but completely legal) behavior, what can you do?
Personally these things don't tend to affect me or my businesses, as we long since disabled Windows updates that would cause this kind of problem. However, if (and I stress the "if", because I haven't verified this) some reports I've seen of the default behaviour were even close to accurate, I'm not sure whether Microsoft's behaviour would still completely legal.
For example, if a Windows user had authorised Microsoft to install security updates -- which are in themselves remedies for defects in the original product, almost by definition -- and Microsoft had in fact used the same technical mechanism to replace the entire OS, I can't immediately see how that wouldn't infringe the same computer misuse laws as any other hacker breaking into a system and changing things without authorisation. Our legal system may be lagging rather awkwardly behind modern technology, particularly in areas like software updates and cloud services, but the letter of the law here (I'm in England) is relatively simple in the case of unauthorised access.
I'm actually a little surprised that no-one yet seems to have acted in connection with this. I wonder whether it's because the laws I'm thinking of are criminal matters, so someone would actually have to make a formal complaint against Microsoft to the relevant authorities in order to trigger any sort of investigation. It seems quite plausible that no-one has actually done that, even if the reports are correct and someone did get Windows 10 installed without their consent.
Captain Slashdot Has Spoken
Yes, but in this case approximately 100% of the rest of the Windows-using world agrees with the good captain. Microsoft screwed this one up big time, and their reputation has rightly suffered for it. Many of us will continue to mock them for it, and to refuse to install Windows 10, and to change our earlier Windows systems to turn off the nag screen -- because unlike Windows 10, in those earlier versions we still can.
Thanks, I hadn't seen that one before.
Yes, ownCloud is the sort of thing I was talking about, though that particular example is a little heavyweight for my current needs.
I'm naturally quite a private person, and I am very careful about what I do and say with other technology as well.
They need to just integrate some of the already available cloud calendars.
Why would I want to share the details of where I'm going and who I'm seeing with anyone else?
A client-based calendar is exactly what I want. The only thing better would be a trivially installed calendar server I can host on my own systems with negligible effort, so multiple devices could more easily share the same details.
If I didn't want that sort of independence and control, for both calendar and mail, why would I still be using a product like Thunderbird in the first place?
Why bother site specifics?
Erm... Because so far nothing in this thread actually contradicts my original post with any sort of evidence or logic?
I am just saying it's flawed to think it should be free because you pay your ISP.
I understand that. I am just saying it's not necessary to write the games like that in many cases, because an Internet connection suffices to co-ordinate the multiple players. That is, it's not that I think the centralised subscription services should be free, it's that I think they shouldn't exist at all in those cases.
The 20 player FPS was just an example, to demonstrate that the scale of many of today's games that rely on these centralised control systems isn't particularly different to what we were doing a long time ago without that dependency.
As far as I can see, you still haven't identified any specific benefit that any particular game derives from being built that way instead of co-ordinating via community servers or P2P so you're independent of any particular service from the game developers or hosting networks. You just wrote "offer much more", without giving any detail about what "much more" means or why it needs the remote control.
In particular, you still haven't identified any reason beyond the two I mentioned in my original post for a game developer to write their games this way and why users should then have to pay for these subscription services just to play the game they already bought.
It seems you missed the sarcasm in the GP post there. I think the AC's point was that Apple have allegedly been using similar telemetry techniques for a long time on their devices and don't seem to get the same negative reaction. Of course, whether Apple actually are phoning home from OS X to the same extent that Microsoft are now known to be doing from Windows 10 is a different question.
The underlying needs to communicate and synchronize state in, say, a 20-player FPS arena haven't changed very much in two decades. That's the point.
If you believe otherwise, let's talk about specifics. Please give some examples of things you think are necessarily qualitatively different about how such a game is implemented today vs. 10 or 20 years ago and require the presence of a central server run by the game developer instead of the community-hosted servers or P2P techniques we used to use.
Sorry again, but I just don't see how any of this is relevant.
It is perfectly possible to write games that deal with multiplayer aspects like many of today's games, but without requiring a centralised server run by the game developer or their proxy as so many modern titles do. We proved this 20 years ago, and we've proved it many more times since.
I really don't see how an awkward car analogy changes those facts.
Sorry, whatever analogy you're trying to make there, I'm not seeing it. It's more like, you pay for your own car and its gas, and so do the other drivers on the road, and you can all drive together and share the road sensibly. You also all pay your taxes, which pay for the roads and lights and so on. Then your car dealer says that with their new deluxe model for 2016 actually you all need a subscription to their official Lane Change Management System as well if you want to go anywhere, even though you'd been changing lanes just fine for years before.
The central point of the post you replied to was that even with the technology of 20 years ago we could run a 10-20 player Quake level just fine without needing expensive centralised infrastructure. What exactly do you think is different about today's multiplayer games that requires centralised infrastructure to be provided by the games companies now when it wasn't before, except for the two reasons I gave in my previous post?