My proposed solution is simply that they don't force updates on those who don't want them, and instead allow users to defer or completely ignore unwanted updates and only install software they want on their own computer. This solution looks remarkably like how previous versions of Windows have worked prior to the new policy.
I'm seeing conflicting messages about what you can and can't defer/block now. For example, some posters in this thread have said you could already block driver updates before, but other sources (including the article you linked to) imply that this was not previously the case and has now been changed in response to the Nvidia driver problems that triggered this discussion. In any case, this is all academic if they do the sensible thing and don't force any update on any unwilling recipient.
Certainly some of these companies do have decent customer support -- I don't mean to imply that such issues never get resolved.
The trouble is, unless they all have good support, there is a risk involved in having automatic updates that wasn't there before.
What I honestly don't understand after all the discussions here and elsewhere in recent days is why so many people seem to be defending Microsoft's position. If they're worried about security issues not being patched, they could just as well leave updates on by default but optional, so those who know what they're doing can take steps to apply the important patches with proper testing and without risking unwanted side effects, while those who just plug in and go will probably get exactly the same result as they would with compulsory updates anyway.
As far as I can see, there is literally no reason not to do this -- which is basically status quo for most systems today -- unless someone at Microsoft has intentions that mean they would want to push an update that a clued up user/sysadmin would not want to install, which is the only time it makes a significant difference whether or not the updates are mandatory.
In such cases it is paramount that you contact the hardware vendor and insist that they provide an updated driver to ensure that it works in your environment.
You're adorable.:-)
But seriously, the reality is that you have no power whatsoever to compel an organisation the size of say Nvidia or AMD to provide working drivers. Both provide drivers for their gaming cards that are frequently buggy as hell. Even their much more expensive professional workstation cards -- where almost the entire point is the supposedly better drivers, because the hardware is all but identical -- have all kinds of silly driver bugs that have been known to cause anything from screen glitches while using supposedly certified applications to outright system crashes.
Several people have commented in this Slashdot discussion that you can disable the driver updates within Windows update even if you can't disable other parts, though so far I haven't been able to find any official confirmation of that from a Microsoft source. Even if it's true, that in itself says something about Microsoft's awareness of the potential for forced updates to go badly wrong.:-(
Firstly, given that the default behavior outside of enterprise environments is to automatically install updates do we have evidence that this has been significantly problematic? If this is indeed a problem then there should be plenty of instances in the history of Windows Update.
There are plenty of previous cases where Windows Update has broken things. That's why a lot of us are so concerned. Been there, done that, spent the next several hours clearing up the mess, on occasion even resorting to physical media because the normal recovery mechanism was sufficiently b0rked that even booting that far wasn't happening.
Secondly, if the above case turns out to be valid (I'm no expert, that's why I'm asking) then is there any evidence to indicate that this would still not be resolved after a few months of deferring the update in question?
Severe problems like the ones I was thinking of above? No, to be fair to Microsoft, they have usually fixed those within a day or two. (Drivers are a different question entirely, but as we've determined, those are a different case and not entirely Microsoft's responsibility.)
But minor gremlins that mess something up for people with certain hardware or software combinations? Or updates that aren't really necessary at all, like the Win10 nag messages? I don't see any rush to get those fixed.
In any case, as the financial folks will tell you, past performance is not a reliable indicator of future behaviour. The fact is, if you trust Microsoft to get this stuff fixed and it does turn out that they can't or won't fix whatever issue is affecting you, your business is screwed. What manager or IT group wants to risk their business's ability to trade or potentially their own personal livelihood in that way, entirely unnecessarily? Why would any rational person do that, if they understand the other options available to them?
Right, so is the solution to proliferate the knowledge about how to resolve the problem or just bitch pseudonymously in web forum comments about the existence of it?
Once again, the problem isn't just this specific issue, it's the uncontrolled risk associated with allowing anyone to force software changes on a PC you rely on.
And if you think I'm only bitching about this pseudonymously on-line, you're crazy. Every business I work with (and a couple of family and friends who have asked) has been actively making plans to avoid winding up on Windows 10 for a while.
BTW, my comments on this issue are mild compared to a few I've heard when talking to the sysadmins at some of those businesses. The language some of those people used to describe Microsoft's attitude here isn't something you'd repeat in polite company, let's say.
How is having a system that remains up to date suddenly no longer the right tool for the job?
If it was working for whatever it was needed for before the update, and it wasn't after.
The entire point of the concern here is that Microsoft can and have pushed updates that are broken, and they can and have pushed updates that a lot of users didn't want and that had nothing to do with security (like the Windows 10 nag message).
Microsoft's idea of what constitutes an important update that I should definitely deploy and my idea of what constitutes an important update that I should definitely deploy have been diverging significantly for some time. My standard policy now is that I apply security updates, and unless I have a good reason to do otherwise, that is all I deploy.
That policy was a direct result of problems caused by earlier updates, and I think if you ask around you'll find a lot of sysadmins favour a similar strategy. Even if that weren't the case, the likelihood of Microsoft increasingly pushing unwanted changes that are in their own interest more than their users' seems high given their disclosed strategic plans and business model going forward.
Because now you're moving the goalposts. This is about forced driver updates (read the title).
The issue is bigger than that, and this story is just one early example of how forced updates could go wrong (read the summary, and for that matter numerous other discussions on this and other forums since the forced update mechanism became widely known a few days ago).
I'm happy for you that apparently the systems you use are all running Windows Enterprise, and the people who set them up and maintain them have no problem with spending time figuring out which settings to adjust to turn this stuff off. Obviously from the fact that we're having this discussion a lot of people didn't know to turn this off and got stung by it, and as I've noted repeatedly, there are analogous cases that could be just as damaging but which will not have the option to turn them off even in Pro. A lot of people are going to wind up getting hurt by this policy, even if you personally aren't one of them.
All true, but in general you can only defer updates for a few months even in Pro with Windows 10, or you lose the security updates as well. That change is actually worse than forcing everything on Home users immediately, IMHO, because it removes control from all the small businesses and power users who actually want/need it.
Spam and malicious e-mails don't cause a problem either, unless your time is valuable, or you value your security or privacy, or you actually click on something in them.
I understand that not having a dedicated IT staff is no excuse for not buying the appropriate tool for the job.
Many of these businesses already did buy the appropriate tool for the job: Windows 7 Pro, or maybe the equivalent in 8 or 8.1.
And now they're about to discover that its successor, Windows 10 Pro, is no longer the appropriate tool for the job.
Not updating security holes is frankly stupid. Deferring them with good reason is okay, but no updating security holes is frankly stupid.
Do you understand that what's being forced on everyone isn't just security updates?
Of course we can't predict what updates Microsoft will actually force people to install using this feature. However, as it is currently described in everything I've seen, things like the Windows 10 nag screen everyone hates that they pushed out a few weeks ago would be compulsory for everyone in the brave new world.
Ironically, it sounds like the only way to avoid unwanted non-security updates will be to give up on receiving security updates as well, thus having exactly the opposite effect of what you want here.
Well they would be using the Enterprise version, not Pro, so the IT department has control anyway.
Do you know a lot of organisations that have an IT department and run Windows Enterprise but don't have dedicated IT staff?
Moving on...
And I'm sure those people can point out what has already been pointed out multiple times in this story which is that driver updates through Windows update can be disabled, yes it's the same in Windows 10 as it has been in previous versions.
And which part of this from my last post was unclear?
Even if they can, they're still going to be vulnerable to other forced system updates that could break stuff
The point here isn't specifically that it was a driver update that screwed up, it's that an update was screwed up and that's a compelling argument for not having compulsory updates. Whether or not this particular one could have been avoided (though obviously for many people it wasn't) it is clear that there are other kinds of update that can also compromise a previously working system and that it will not be possible to turn them all off according to Microsoft's current stated policy. Apparently plenty of people are more concerned about that than you are.
Where do all the people replying to me keep finding all these IT staff? A small CAD studio or indie game development shop of the kind I mentioned doesn't have a dedicated IT staff. It doesn't run a corporate network on Windows Enterprise managed by full-time professional sysadmins. A small business like that has a few people doing the creative work, a few people doing sales, and a couple of admin/accounts people. Probably one or two of those people double as the "IT dept" when it comes to setting up the office network and maybe installing a standard set of software on a new starter's machine before they arrive, but they're taking time out from their real job to do it.
This is what happens in the real world for almost any small business up to, say, a few dozen staff. No company with 10 people has a full-time sysadmin, unless it works in some particularly tech-heavy niche and has exceptional requirements. No company that size is running Windows Enterprise either, with the same caveat. But those companies are still going to get screwed by this sort of driver update if they can't figure out how to block it. Even if they can, they're still going to be vulnerable to other forced system updates that could break stuff, and they're probably at relatively high risk given that a lot of their staff will have high-end workstations running very demanding software.
Do you understand that at many small businesses there aren't any dedicated IT staff at all? And that even with Windows 10 Pro you can only defer updates for a while by effectively tracking a different branch, not actually block them if they interfere with your work and you don't want them? This isn't just a concern with the Home edition.
In reality? No. However, it looks like we would have under the conditions we're talking about.
I've got glitching driver issues that have never been fixed on multiple machines I deal with, for example. Usually we just roll them back to whatever was installed initially, so it's not actually causing a critical problem today, but of course that's exactly the option we're concerned about losing.
(a) No-one is talking about just Home. This affects Pro as well, which is what most power users and small businesses have.
(b) You choose your OS because of the software you need to run. Across my various businesses, the number of areas where the software available on Windows is significantly better than the alternatives available on other platforms is quite large.
The most promising alternative platform would be OS X, which has the same kinds of server and development platforms available as Linux or BSD but far better options for some kinds of desktop software. Unfortunately, Apple is currently probably the only company on the planet I trust less than Microsoft and Google not to shaft their users with built-in obsolescence, so I have little interest in switching to them for professional systems for now. If they get around to committing to real long-term support for their desktop/laptop OS one day, that view may change.
Actually, the most recent system-crippling screw-up I had was installing the latest AMD drivers for a FirePro series card on one of our older machines. You know, the ones where you pay a fortune to have roughly the same hardware as a much cheaper gaming card, because of the quality and capabilities of the drivers? Except that this completely routine update, which we were hoping might finally fix the frequency glitches that have plagued the card from day one, took out the whole machine and even made it difficult to recover using the system restore feature.
Fortunately, this was a Windows 7 machine, so once we did have it up and running again, we just made a note not to install that update, and the user of the computer got on with their work the next day as normal. I'm not sure what the answer to that is supposed to be with Win10, if drivers are going to be pushed out via the same compulsory update mechanism. Presumably you're supposed to defer the driver update on every machine that might be affected (or via WSUS if you're big enough to use it) and hope that someone fixes the problem before the ticking time bomb goes off when you can't defer any longer...
With the diversity of systems running Windows, no realistic amount of testing will ever completely guarantee security updates are good. You still need a mechanism to decline known-flawed ones, and a mechanism for recovery and uninstallation the first time you get hit without warning.
In any case, the way Microsoft is going under Nadella, sadly it seems very unlikely they would do as you suggest. They are literally giving Windows 10 away free to huge numbers of people, and presumably they're going it because they want to be more like an Apple or a Google, picking up the revenues on the surrounding ecosystem, not just whatever they can find from the platform itself.
Those automatic updates would be the perfect way to show unavoidable nag messages to sign up for other Microsoft software and services, or those of their selected partners who they believe may be of interest to you, or to install spyware to feed back extra data, or to disable existing Windows feature that used to be free because some commercial interest makes getting you to pay for it a more promising option for them.
Not that I'm suggesting they'd ever do that sort of thing deliberately, of course. Maybe the Windows 7 update that has been nagging users about updating to Windows 10 itself was just an oversight.
If you're a pro, get a pro version and run your own WSUS server on a VM.
Or stick with an OS that works without needing to develop a whole new set of sysadmins skills, like... any previous version of Windows, say.
If you're unhappy that NVidea didn't do it right the first time, complain to them or get a different video card.
And what shall we do when AMD drivers have a problem at the same time?
Perhaps you'd like businesses that paying their staff thousands per week to do CAD work or design game assets to just shut down for a few days until the drivers get sorted out? As far as I'm aware, no-one has yet developed a business model where complaining at a big business that screwed up is an effective strategy for recovering lost revenues from downtime, but if they ever do, it looks like it will be very lucrative in a Windows 10 world.
/glances at KB3079904, which was installed the other day to replace a different update that they got wrong just days earlier, and notes that this is what happened even with patching a serious security vulnerability
If you want to defer your updates, get the Pro version.
But defer is the word, and they're still forced on you within a few months if you want to keep security updates, even if they are potentially hostile, non-security updates.
I'm not going to say I told everyone so. Oh, no, wait, I did. And so did a lot of other people. Shifting to Windows 10 is a one-way trip to losing control of your own computer, possibly unless you're on Enterprise, because presumably the people with real money won't let Microsoft get away with this.
For what it's worth, I'm just trying to demonstrate here that absence of evidence is not evidence of absence. The fact that some software has not been widely exploited in the past does not mean that it can't be in the future, but a lot of people seem to argue that way when talking about other software that has been a common target in the past. Worse, they then extrapolate to assume that modified versions of software that hasn't been widely exploited in the past still won't be exploited in the future even if it has a larger attack surface and/or successful attack methods will be more rewarding. None of this actually follows logically.
The main reasons plug-ins get attacked so much are that (a) they do more than browsers offer natively, notably including hardware interaction as you mentioned, and (b) they provide a big, juicy target.
Expecting that moving those extra functions into the browser itself will somehow result in more secure implementations is optimistic. Every major browser fixes serious security vulnerabilities with updates, including the likes of Chrome and Firefox. They're right there in the release notes for the new version every six weeks, if anyone wants to look. The people and processes and tools used to make these browsers aren't dramatically more effective than the people and processes and tools used to make the popular plug-ins before. And it's often been the case that large, monolithic programs have proven harder to test and secure than a well-designed and well-isolated system of interacting smaller programs.
The argument that browsers will somehow magically become more secure ways of doing the same things comes from the same mindset that says running Linux is the best way to avoid viruses because Windows is a security nightmare. It seemed credible at first, because few people were being successfully attacked while running Linux, but then someone made a Linux system that became popular with regular non-geek types, and today which platform has the fastest growing malware problem? It's probably Android.
Sorry, I must have missed the part about the dawn raid there. And the part about kicking in of doors. And the part about the media being illegally invited along. And any reference at all to how the actions in that article were in any way related to the laws we're talking about here.
Perhaps it's all true and it's just the quality of the source you cited, with El Reg being so favourably regarded in such matters that the need for any actually verifiable details is eliminated, but personally I prefer to have a bit more than that to go on before forming my opinions.
I was just pointing out that the statement I first quoted about being able to stop within the distance you can see with your headlights is optimistic. Even with new lights that let you see further, you still need to allow for moving hazards coming into your view at speed and not drive to the limit of what you can see right now. A lot of generally sensible drivers don't seem to understand that, presumably just because they've never thought about it, so I thought it was worth pointing out. Don't make a big deal of it.:-)
Slashdot Mirror
My proposed solution is simply that they don't force updates on those who don't want them, and instead allow users to defer or completely ignore unwanted updates and only install software they want on their own computer. This solution looks remarkably like how previous versions of Windows have worked prior to the new policy.
I'm seeing conflicting messages about what you can and can't defer/block now. For example, some posters in this thread have said you could already block driver updates before, but other sources (including the article you linked to) imply that this was not previously the case and has now been changed in response to the Nvidia driver problems that triggered this discussion. In any case, this is all academic if they do the sensible thing and don't force any update on any unwilling recipient.
Certainly some of these companies do have decent customer support -- I don't mean to imply that such issues never get resolved.
The trouble is, unless they all have good support, there is a risk involved in having automatic updates that wasn't there before.
What I honestly don't understand after all the discussions here and elsewhere in recent days is why so many people seem to be defending Microsoft's position. If they're worried about security issues not being patched, they could just as well leave updates on by default but optional, so those who know what they're doing can take steps to apply the important patches with proper testing and without risking unwanted side effects, while those who just plug in and go will probably get exactly the same result as they would with compulsory updates anyway.
As far as I can see, there is literally no reason not to do this -- which is basically status quo for most systems today -- unless someone at Microsoft has intentions that mean they would want to push an update that a clued up user/sysadmin would not want to install, which is the only time it makes a significant difference whether or not the updates are mandatory.
In such cases it is paramount that you contact the hardware vendor and insist that they provide an updated driver to ensure that it works in your environment.
You're adorable. :-)
But seriously, the reality is that you have no power whatsoever to compel an organisation the size of say Nvidia or AMD to provide working drivers. Both provide drivers for their gaming cards that are frequently buggy as hell. Even their much more expensive professional workstation cards -- where almost the entire point is the supposedly better drivers, because the hardware is all but identical -- have all kinds of silly driver bugs that have been known to cause anything from screen glitches while using supposedly certified applications to outright system crashes.
Several people have commented in this Slashdot discussion that you can disable the driver updates within Windows update even if you can't disable other parts, though so far I haven't been able to find any official confirmation of that from a Microsoft source. Even if it's true, that in itself says something about Microsoft's awareness of the potential for forced updates to go badly wrong. :-(
Firstly, given that the default behavior outside of enterprise environments is to automatically install updates do we have evidence that this has been significantly problematic? If this is indeed a problem then there should be plenty of instances in the history of Windows Update.
There are plenty of previous cases where Windows Update has broken things. That's why a lot of us are so concerned. Been there, done that, spent the next several hours clearing up the mess, on occasion even resorting to physical media because the normal recovery mechanism was sufficiently b0rked that even booting that far wasn't happening.
Secondly, if the above case turns out to be valid (I'm no expert, that's why I'm asking) then is there any evidence to indicate that this would still not be resolved after a few months of deferring the update in question?
Severe problems like the ones I was thinking of above? No, to be fair to Microsoft, they have usually fixed those within a day or two. (Drivers are a different question entirely, but as we've determined, those are a different case and not entirely Microsoft's responsibility.)
But minor gremlins that mess something up for people with certain hardware or software combinations? Or updates that aren't really necessary at all, like the Win10 nag messages? I don't see any rush to get those fixed.
In any case, as the financial folks will tell you, past performance is not a reliable indicator of future behaviour. The fact is, if you trust Microsoft to get this stuff fixed and it does turn out that they can't or won't fix whatever issue is affecting you, your business is screwed. What manager or IT group wants to risk their business's ability to trade or potentially their own personal livelihood in that way, entirely unnecessarily? Why would any rational person do that, if they understand the other options available to them?
Right, so is the solution to proliferate the knowledge about how to resolve the problem or just bitch pseudonymously in web forum comments about the existence of it?
Once again, the problem isn't just this specific issue, it's the uncontrolled risk associated with allowing anyone to force software changes on a PC you rely on.
And if you think I'm only bitching about this pseudonymously on-line, you're crazy. Every business I work with (and a couple of family and friends who have asked) has been actively making plans to avoid winding up on Windows 10 for a while.
BTW, my comments on this issue are mild compared to a few I've heard when talking to the sysadmins at some of those businesses. The language some of those people used to describe Microsoft's attitude here isn't something you'd repeat in polite company, let's say.
How is having a system that remains up to date suddenly no longer the right tool for the job?
If it was working for whatever it was needed for before the update, and it wasn't after.
The entire point of the concern here is that Microsoft can and have pushed updates that are broken, and they can and have pushed updates that a lot of users didn't want and that had nothing to do with security (like the Windows 10 nag message).
Microsoft's idea of what constitutes an important update that I should definitely deploy and my idea of what constitutes an important update that I should definitely deploy have been diverging significantly for some time. My standard policy now is that I apply security updates, and unless I have a good reason to do otherwise, that is all I deploy.
That policy was a direct result of problems caused by earlier updates, and I think if you ask around you'll find a lot of sysadmins favour a similar strategy. Even if that weren't the case, the likelihood of Microsoft increasingly pushing unwanted changes that are in their own interest more than their users' seems high given their disclosed strategic plans and business model going forward.
Because now you're moving the goalposts. This is about forced driver updates (read the title).
The issue is bigger than that, and this story is just one early example of how forced updates could go wrong (read the summary, and for that matter numerous other discussions on this and other forums since the forced update mechanism became widely known a few days ago).
I'm happy for you that apparently the systems you use are all running Windows Enterprise, and the people who set them up and maintain them have no problem with spending time figuring out which settings to adjust to turn this stuff off. Obviously from the fact that we're having this discussion a lot of people didn't know to turn this off and got stung by it, and as I've noted repeatedly, there are analogous cases that could be just as damaging but which will not have the option to turn them off even in Pro. A lot of people are going to wind up getting hurt by this policy, even if you personally aren't one of them.
All true, but in general you can only defer updates for a few months even in Pro with Windows 10, or you lose the security updates as well. That change is actually worse than forcing everything on Home users immediately, IMHO, because it removes control from all the small businesses and power users who actually want/need it.
Spam and malicious e-mails don't cause a problem either, unless your time is valuable, or you value your security or privacy, or you actually click on something in them.
I understand that not having a dedicated IT staff is no excuse for not buying the appropriate tool for the job.
Many of these businesses already did buy the appropriate tool for the job: Windows 7 Pro, or maybe the equivalent in 8 or 8.1.
And now they're about to discover that its successor, Windows 10 Pro, is no longer the appropriate tool for the job.
Not updating security holes is frankly stupid. Deferring them with good reason is okay, but no updating security holes is frankly stupid.
Do you understand that what's being forced on everyone isn't just security updates?
Of course we can't predict what updates Microsoft will actually force people to install using this feature. However, as it is currently described in everything I've seen, things like the Windows 10 nag screen everyone hates that they pushed out a few weeks ago would be compulsory for everyone in the brave new world.
Ironically, it sounds like the only way to avoid unwanted non-security updates will be to give up on receiving security updates as well, thus having exactly the opposite effect of what you want here.
Where did I say "dedicated IT staff"?
What else did you mean by the following, exactly?
Well they would be using the Enterprise version, not Pro, so the IT department has control anyway.
Do you know a lot of organisations that have an IT department and run Windows Enterprise but don't have dedicated IT staff?
Moving on...
And I'm sure those people can point out what has already been pointed out multiple times in this story which is that driver updates through Windows update can be disabled, yes it's the same in Windows 10 as it has been in previous versions.
And which part of this from my last post was unclear?
Even if they can, they're still going to be vulnerable to other forced system updates that could break stuff
The point here isn't specifically that it was a driver update that screwed up, it's that an update was screwed up and that's a compelling argument for not having compulsory updates. Whether or not this particular one could have been avoided (though obviously for many people it wasn't) it is clear that there are other kinds of update that can also compromise a previously working system and that it will not be possible to turn them all off according to Microsoft's current stated policy. Apparently plenty of people are more concerned about that than you are.
Where do all the people replying to me keep finding all these IT staff? A small CAD studio or indie game development shop of the kind I mentioned doesn't have a dedicated IT staff. It doesn't run a corporate network on Windows Enterprise managed by full-time professional sysadmins. A small business like that has a few people doing the creative work, a few people doing sales, and a couple of admin/accounts people. Probably one or two of those people double as the "IT dept" when it comes to setting up the office network and maybe installing a standard set of software on a new starter's machine before they arrive, but they're taking time out from their real job to do it.
This is what happens in the real world for almost any small business up to, say, a few dozen staff. No company with 10 people has a full-time sysadmin, unless it works in some particularly tech-heavy niche and has exceptional requirements. No company that size is running Windows Enterprise either, with the same caveat. But those companies are still going to get screwed by this sort of driver update if they can't figure out how to block it. Even if they can, they're still going to be vulnerable to other forced system updates that could break stuff, and they're probably at relatively high risk given that a lot of their staff will have high-end workstations running very demanding software.
Do you understand that at many small businesses there aren't any dedicated IT staff at all? And that even with Windows 10 Pro you can only defer updates for a while by effectively tracking a different branch, not actually block them if they interfere with your work and you don't want them? This isn't just a concern with the Home edition.
In reality? No. However, it looks like we would have under the conditions we're talking about.
I've got glitching driver issues that have never been fixed on multiple machines I deal with, for example. Usually we just roll them back to whatever was installed initially, so it's not actually causing a critical problem today, but of course that's exactly the option we're concerned about losing.
Even if:
(a) that is true in the final RTM, which we haven't seen yet,
(b) it remains true in light of future updates, which of course you'll be required to install, and
(c) the user is aware of the risk and turns it off, which apparently plenty of people clued up enough to be trying Win10 early weren't,
presumably that will still only protects you if it's a driver update that goes wrong, as opposed to say, a kernel patch, or a security update.
No, they're probably using Pro, which has exactly the same fundamental problem just deferrable by a few months.
(a) No-one is talking about just Home. This affects Pro as well, which is what most power users and small businesses have.
(b) You choose your OS because of the software you need to run. Across my various businesses, the number of areas where the software available on Windows is significantly better than the alternatives available on other platforms is quite large.
The most promising alternative platform would be OS X, which has the same kinds of server and development platforms available as Linux or BSD but far better options for some kinds of desktop software. Unfortunately, Apple is currently probably the only company on the planet I trust less than Microsoft and Google not to shaft their users with built-in obsolescence, so I have little interest in switching to them for professional systems for now. If they get around to committing to real long-term support for their desktop/laptop OS one day, that view may change.
I feel your pain. :-)
Actually, the most recent system-crippling screw-up I had was installing the latest AMD drivers for a FirePro series card on one of our older machines. You know, the ones where you pay a fortune to have roughly the same hardware as a much cheaper gaming card, because of the quality and capabilities of the drivers? Except that this completely routine update, which we were hoping might finally fix the frequency glitches that have plagued the card from day one, took out the whole machine and even made it difficult to recover using the system restore feature.
Fortunately, this was a Windows 7 machine, so once we did have it up and running again, we just made a note not to install that update, and the user of the computer got on with their work the next day as normal. I'm not sure what the answer to that is supposed to be with Win10, if drivers are going to be pushed out via the same compulsory update mechanism. Presumably you're supposed to defer the driver update on every machine that might be affected (or via WSUS if you're big enough to use it) and hope that someone fixes the problem before the ticking time bomb goes off when you can't defer any longer...
With the diversity of systems running Windows, no realistic amount of testing will ever completely guarantee security updates are good. You still need a mechanism to decline known-flawed ones, and a mechanism for recovery and uninstallation the first time you get hit without warning.
In any case, the way Microsoft is going under Nadella, sadly it seems very unlikely they would do as you suggest. They are literally giving Windows 10 away free to huge numbers of people, and presumably they're going it because they want to be more like an Apple or a Google, picking up the revenues on the surrounding ecosystem, not just whatever they can find from the platform itself.
Those automatic updates would be the perfect way to show unavoidable nag messages to sign up for other Microsoft software and services, or those of their selected partners who they believe may be of interest to you, or to install spyware to feed back extra data, or to disable existing Windows feature that used to be free because some commercial interest makes getting you to pay for it a more promising option for them.
Not that I'm suggesting they'd ever do that sort of thing deliberately, of course. Maybe the Windows 7 update that has been nagging users about updating to Windows 10 itself was just an oversight.
If you're a pro, get a pro version and run your own WSUS server on a VM.
Or stick with an OS that works without needing to develop a whole new set of sysadmins skills, like... any previous version of Windows, say.
If you're unhappy that NVidea didn't do it right the first time, complain to them or get a different video card.
And what shall we do when AMD drivers have a problem at the same time?
Perhaps you'd like businesses that paying their staff thousands per week to do CAD work or design game assets to just shut down for a few days until the drivers get sorted out? As far as I'm aware, no-one has yet developed a business model where complaining at a big business that screwed up is an effective strategy for recovering lost revenues from downtime, but if they ever do, it looks like it will be very lucrative in a Windows 10 world.
I surely don't know what you mean!
/glances at KB3079904, which was installed the other day to replace a different update that they got wrong just days earlier, and notes that this is what happened even with patching a serious security vulnerability
If you want to defer your updates, get the Pro version.
But defer is the word, and they're still forced on you within a few months if you want to keep security updates, even if they are potentially hostile, non-security updates.
I'm not going to say I told everyone so. Oh, no, wait, I did. And so did a lot of other people. Shifting to Windows 10 is a one-way trip to losing control of your own computer, possibly unless you're on Enterprise, because presumably the people with real money won't let Microsoft get away with this.
For what it's worth, I'm just trying to demonstrate here that absence of evidence is not evidence of absence. The fact that some software has not been widely exploited in the past does not mean that it can't be in the future, but a lot of people seem to argue that way when talking about other software that has been a common target in the past. Worse, they then extrapolate to assume that modified versions of software that hasn't been widely exploited in the past still won't be exploited in the future even if it has a larger attack surface and/or successful attack methods will be more rewarding. None of this actually follows logically.
You're absolutely right, of course.
The main reasons plug-ins get attacked so much are that (a) they do more than browsers offer natively, notably including hardware interaction as you mentioned, and (b) they provide a big, juicy target.
Expecting that moving those extra functions into the browser itself will somehow result in more secure implementations is optimistic. Every major browser fixes serious security vulnerabilities with updates, including the likes of Chrome and Firefox. They're right there in the release notes for the new version every six weeks, if anyone wants to look. The people and processes and tools used to make these browsers aren't dramatically more effective than the people and processes and tools used to make the popular plug-ins before. And it's often been the case that large, monolithic programs have proven harder to test and secure than a well-designed and well-isolated system of interacting smaller programs.
The argument that browsers will somehow magically become more secure ways of doing the same things comes from the same mindset that says running Linux is the best way to avoid viruses because Windows is a security nightmare. It seemed credible at first, because few people were being successfully attacked while running Linux, but then someone made a Linux system that became popular with regular non-geek types, and today which platform has the fastest growing malware problem? It's probably Android.
Sorry, I must have missed the part about the dawn raid there. And the part about kicking in of doors. And the part about the media being illegally invited along. And any reference at all to how the actions in that article were in any way related to the laws we're talking about here.
Perhaps it's all true and it's just the quality of the source you cited, with El Reg being so favourably regarded in such matters that the need for any actually verifiable details is eliminated, but personally I prefer to have a bit more than that to go on before forming my opinions.
I was just pointing out that the statement I first quoted about being able to stop within the distance you can see with your headlights is optimistic. Even with new lights that let you see further, you still need to allow for moving hazards coming into your view at speed and not drive to the limit of what you can see right now. A lot of generally sensible drivers don't seem to understand that, presumably just because they've never thought about it, so I thought it was worth pointing out. Don't make a big deal of it. :-)