JorgeA

glnz, are you using an ad blocker? Forbes.com recently tweaked their website to block users who are using ad blockers. I'm using Ghostery on Pale Moon and can visit the site by unblocking just a few ad servers: DoubleClick, LiftDNA, Media.net. I have all the others blocked, and can get in no problem even though I'm not a subscriber. You may want to play around with various combinations of blocked and unblocked servers. --JorgeA

But allowing such a degree of choice and freedom to the user is so XX century! We must get 'modern' and 'embrace change'! A very apt image. Maybe Microsoft and its apologists should be considered (and addressed as) "techno-fascists." They gleefully reject choice -- in fact, not only do they choose not to have a choice for themselves, they vigorously defend taking that choice away from everybody else. They're comfortable with being tracked and monitored, and they're OK with a smiling authority telling everyone what they must install on their PCs. It would be more precise to label them "techno-authoritarians," as "fascist" may bring in unwanted political connotations, but it doesn't roll off the tongue so well. Anymore, whenever I see MSFT's slogans of "personalize your PC" and "make it your own," I can only laugh sarcastically. --JorgeA

New details emerge about forced Windows 10 upgrade -- and how to block it --JorgeA

Very nice. --JorgeA

There are really 3 options... Linux, BSD (FreeBSD, OpenBSD or NetBSD) and maybe Illumos (former OpenSolaris). And ... well ... maybe ... Hackintosh ??? I've heard of BSD but not of Illumos (OpenSolaris did sound vaguely familiar). I'll explore those too and see what they're like. Thanks for the tip! --JorgeA

Gordon Kelly's good work warning about Microsoft's shenanigans is especially valuable, because he writes for a media outlet that reaches a more general, less "techie" audience, and so helps to get the word out to the broader public. --JorgeA

Thanks for the warning! One more update to look out for, in case it turns from an optional update into a "recommended" one. --JorgeA

Welcome, Mathletic, Great post! Your points 2 and 3 could be accomplished in one stroke, by issuing that Service Pack 2 for Windows 7. Because the release of a SP shortens the support period for the previous SP, Microsoft could say that it's now "Windows 7 SP2" that will be supported until 2020 and not the current SP1, with the Win7 we know and love reaching EOS in (say) 2018. And of course that SP2 would contain all the stuff we don't want. Like you, I'm exploring making the switch to Linux if and when running Windows 7 becomes untenable. --JorgeA

Microsoft forcing Windows 10 onto people is wrong Not quite beating a dead horse, as the new insights and arguments keep rolling in: --JorgeA

How did you get stuck on it, what happened? --JorgeA

New Insider Hub notice this week: Two questions: What could they possibly be working on at this stage (six months after Win10's public launch) that could be causing such major problems? Anybody know what that task named "WSRefreshBannedAppsListTask" might be? Is there a way for the user to add (among so many other things) Cortana, Edge, and the Windows Store to the "banned apps list"? --JorgeA

Now you can go back to those forums and throw their own quotes back at them. --JorgeA

Another perspective on that new recommended "update": Look out: Microsoft shifts Windows 10 to ‘Recommended’ update, automatic download [boldfacing added] --JorgeA

That's a very apt way to look at it. A related analogy would be to walking down a city street late at night. You need to be on the lookout for muggers and other unsavory characters jumping out in front of you from behind every corner. --JorgeA

Happily, I don't have that file or subdirectory on my Win7 system. But yesterday the dreaded updates KB2952664 and KB3135445 reared their ugly heads again (and promptly got them chopped off once more). --JorgeA

That's what the report in the newspaper article focused on, although of course the same could also apply to private malicious hackers. --JorgeA

Microsoft ups user, device minimums for Enterprise Agreement volume licensing deals I wonder if this change might have anything to do with a desire on Microsoft's part to let as few Windows users as possible to escape from the telemetry-and-forced-updates gulag. At least, it appears to be a move to round up as many as they can into the cloud model. --JorgeA

Here's another angle on the implications of the Internet of Things: New Technologies Give Government Ample Means to Track Suspects, Study Finds It boggles the mind to think that telemetry (hmm, where have we heard that word before?) from tea kettles or toothbrushes could be used to build a case against suspected enemies of the state. --JorgeA

Found in an unrelated web post, but highly applicable to Windows 10 Home users: Heh, they've as much as said that when it comes to new patches and features served via Windows Updates, Win10 Home users are the guinea pigs for Enterprise customers. So what else is new? --JorgeA

The discussion of how programs may (or sometimes must) be made incompatible with an older OS was educational. Thanks, guys! The bottom line for me is that while claims of incompatibility should be taken with a grain of salt, sometimes they really are valid. I'll probably be able to stay on Vista (and then Win7) for longer than "they" say, but not as long as I'd like... --JorgeA

^^ I hadn't heard of that game before, but it's remarkable what you can do in such a small package. Sounds like it would fit on a 5.25" floppy! One surprising bit from the Wikipedia article: --JorgeA

Huh, so that's how software publishers make programs "incompatible with old, obsolete OSes" -- simply by changing the value on the minimum version? --JorgeA

Reminds me of the magazine drawing at my local health-food store, with the Dalai Lama opening an empty gift-wrapped box and exclaiming, "Wow, everything I've ever wanted!" --JorgeA

Windows 10 appears to be corrupting some users' external hard drives: Complaints continue into 2016. People who had no issue witth their hardware while on Windows 7 (or even 8.1) are suddenly losing their data when they move to Win10: This has been going on for a year and a half now, apparently with no acknowledgment from Microsoft that there might be a problem. Guess they're too busy adding fluff to the OS to deal with a substantive issue like HDD corruption. From another Windows Insiders thread: --JorgeA

The Sphinx Windows Firewall Control product, which was recommended to me by XPClient, is a deny-by-default product, and it pops up and tells you about new programs it has detected attempting network access (and which are denied). It controls, via its own service, the Windows Base Filtering Engine (BFE), so the protection is quite solid under the covers. Thanks for the rundown, Noel. I'll look into Sphinx. If I set it up on one of my Norton-protected PCs, I wonder if Norton will throw a fit when I disable their firewall to install the new one. --JorgeA