Windows 10 - Deeper Impressions

[TELVM]

What people really think about Microsoft’s “Get Windows 10″ campaign

 

 

^ Epic.

[NoelC]

Funny, sure, but Woody has set the level too low.

 

Seriously.

 

Perhaps he's trying to avoid Microsoft's horde of lawyers coming down on him hard.

 

MS-DEFCON 3 was fine for around the time of Win 8.1.  If you haven't been vetting each and every update for a few years now, and delaying the installation until you've heard from others online that it doesn't cause systems like yours to turn over and wave their little rubber casters in the air, then you've been irresponsible.

 

It needed to be raised to 4 at the time of "This update helps ease the transition into a newer version of Windows".  Treat every update as a potential threat, and choose only the ones you really need.  If you haven't actually hidden updates by now, then you've been irresponsible.

 

I've decided it needs to be at a solid level 5 now that despite Microsoft's attempts to shove Windows 10 down people's throats the adoption rate is tapering off.  They've already promised to up the game.  Turn off Windows Updates on your older systems and block your system's attempts to contact the mothership.  Watch the press; if you hear of an update that you really, REALLY need, maybe consider re-enabling Windows Updates brieftly and installing just that one.  Me, I would test any subsequent available update on a virtual machine first.

 

-Noel

[351837]

snip

  Turn off Windows Updates on your older systems and block your system's attempts to contact the mothership.  Watch the press; if you hear of an update that you really, REALLY need, maybe consider re-enabling Windows Updates briefly and installing just that one.  Me, I would test any subsequent available update on a virtual machine first.

 

-Noel

Not even then.   I prefer to download standalone update from M$, extract cab and install it with dism.

I have finger thick dust on wusa.exe and i would like to keep it that way.

Edited November 5, 2015 by 351837

[Drugwash]

What people really think about Microsoft’s “Get Windows 10″ campaign

 

 

I think it is wrong of Microsoft to put this into the computers of people who do not want it. It almost feels to me like an invasion of my privacy. I am a vegetarian and to me it is as if someone opened my front door, and threw in a huge piece of meat etc. with out asking if I wanted it.

Actually it sounds more like:

[…] I am a vegetarian and to me it is as if someone opened my front door, and threw in a dead cat saying "at some point you'll have to eat it!" […]

 

 

Why not? Ever since I first mentioned it somewhere back in this topic, many times each day I have to recover MSFN e-mail notifications from my AOL account's spam folder, despite my marking all of them as 'not spam' each and every time.

 

I have an idea of what causes this, as it happens to me as well with my non-aol email. I think it is because many times I use email to notify me of certain things but do not necessarily read the email. For example, when I get an email from a forum, I then make a note to visit that forum. What I physically do is just delete the email. Delete emails from the same sender without reading them enough times, appears to trigger something that indicates those emails are unwanted and then end up in the spam folder.

Be that as it may (although I rarely mass-delete them because they seldom come in bulk and I don't always log in to read the rest of them), there is a button up there that says "Not spam" and after selecting all MSFN messages in Spam I click that button. I did that too many times without any change in their behavior. Maybe it's me the stupid guy but when a person says "put this on the table, don't throw it away" then you put in on the table from then on. Why do they systematically throw it away? Not all of them, but some - mostly from this very topic.

 

And why doesn't the same thing happen with the dozens of comments from the blogs I follow, when I sometimes mass-delete those after opening the first one? Maybe WordPress is more trustworthy than MSFN because someone told them so?

[Tripredacus]

I've had it happen to sites other than MSFN. It is possible it is picking up on keywords or something. I don't know, but I blame the email web/client in any case.

[Drugwash]

Usually I let POP Peeper to deal with e-mails from most accounts but ever since I caught AOL doing this unwanted filtering I'm mostly using their web interface (old/lite one, to protect my metered connection and weak machine) because the free part of POP Peeper doesn't check/report the contents of the Spam folder. So I actually click their own 'not spam' button on their own interface, which should have absolute priority over any kind of AI they may have in place.

 

Unfortunately I've migrated all my subscriptions to AOL after going through Yahoo and GMail and I don't feel like going back to any of them. I wouldn't even consider using Hotmail/MSN Live or whatever they may be calling it now. Usable alternatives (that allow POP3/IMAP) aren't available on my side of the world.

 

I have to apologyze for the off-topic - I only mentioned it here because it all started to happen after I began following this particular topic and frankly I don't believe in coincidence.

[jaclaz]

Over the past weekend, these things happened within my local circle of geeks, and perhaps also happened to you:

• In the middle of the night, your phone sounds, and wakes you up as though you'd set an alarm, but it's only 2 am. Verizon has pushed an unauthorized update to you.
• Suddenly, your Windows 8.1 hard drive fills. Microsoft has pushed an entire OS upgrade to your tablet (see coverage in InfoWorld last week).
• An icon fills blinks endlessly as Apple hounds you ceaselessly to update to an iPhoto version that it can't deliver, after weeks of hounding you to upgrade to El Capitan.
• Suddenly iOS 9 is waiting on your iPhone, apps work wonkily, and your memory allocation—already bulging and not upgradeable—is near peak.
• You go to the office. Windows update has now placed advertising on your Start Menu. Stuff is smiling at you, and your ancient printer no longer works.

   

Enter a new sensation: Fear.

 

 

 

http://www.networkworld.com/article/3000809/software/its-time-to-update-the-software-update-process.html

 

 

jaclaz

[JorgeA]

A hint of the tech future that Microsoft is envisioning: below is a screenshot of one of the early questions from a recent Microsoft.com Panel survey. Respondents were asked to think about the following concepts and then rate their importance:

 

 

Consider some of the ideas raised here:

• "the combination of data streams and services created by digitizing everything"
• "ubiquitous embedded intelligence combined with pervasive analytics"
• "Computing Everywhere... serving the needs of the mobile user in diverse contexts and environments, as opposed to focusing on devices alone"
• "the convergence of cloud and mobile computing will continue to promote the growth of centrally coordinated applications that can be delivered to any device"
• "Advanced, Pervasive and Invisible Analytics"
• "in a digital business world, security cannot be a roadblock that stops all progress"

(Emphasis added.)

 

I don't know about you, but this strikes me as a profoundly creepy vision of the future, where computers are embedded into everything to monitor and analyze our every move from an all-knowing central lab. It's reminiscent of 1950's-era science fiction movies where society was controlled by a big computer and by the technocrats who operated them -- movies made at a time when people still had a healthy skepticism of computing technology.

 

With its increased focus on cloud and mobile, Windows 10 loks like a step in that direction.

 

--JorgeA

Edited November 7, 2015 by JorgeA

[Formfiller]

 

 It's reminiscent of 1950's-era science fiction movies where society was controlled by a big computer and by the technocrats who operated them

 

It's not just reminiscent, but exactly the very thing they want to achieve.

 

The ultimate goal of cloud-computing is a tech-priesthood consisting of very few members (just the upper echelons of three-four companies), and the all world being depended on them, forever. They don't even deny it if you read their strategy papers etc.

 

That's why even expensive server-related on-premise solutions (Exchange, SQL etc.) get more and more hobbled by MS and Azure is pushed. Their dream-future and long-term-goal is all thin-client, everywhere. With no in-house administrators, not even in large companies. Every data-processing and storage being done at the cloud-farms - and having the whole IT-using globe by the balls.

 

It's weird there's so little opposition to this. It's straight out of dystopia movies and books.

Edited November 7, 2015 by Formfiller

[JorgeA]

Yeah, it IS really weird.

 

We've come such a long way from the mid-1980s, when PC World's David Bunnell wrote an award-winning editorial for that magazine on how the personal computer was serving to liberate people from the tech priesthood. Today, not only are falling back into their grasp, but too many of us are jumping in obliviously.

 

--JorgeA

[JorgeA]

Broken Trust with Windows Update

 

Many of us have grown to trust Windows Update. Maybe not blindly, particularly if we’re responsible for managing and maintaining an enterprise full of Windows machines. But even if we have automatic updates dialed back, we install most everything you send our way.

 

But lately...you’ve really blown it. When did the marketing department take over Windows Update? I’m talking, of course, about your attempts to push Windows 10 out to users via Windows Update the last few months. I keep a relatively clean desktop, free of icons that I don’t use regularly and notifications down to a manageable level of annoyance. So when that pushy Get Windows 10 icon appeared, I was appalled.

 

[...]

 

Making things worse, what’s with all the recommended Windows Update items that only update Windows Update to support updates to future operating system updates? I don’t need all that crap. Worst of all, you’ve forced me to not only have to carefully examine all updates, but reject and hide the frivolous ones. Keep in mind, I’m talking just about my personal workstation and laptop, not an ocean of machines where careful scrutiny of every update is mandatory.

 

 --JorgeA

 

 

[jaclaz]

... meanwhile, elsewhere...
http://techscience.org/a/2015103001/index.php
 

Who Knows What About Me? A Survey of Behind the Scenes Personal Data Sharing to Third Parties by Mobile Apps

• We tested 110 popular, free Android and iOS apps to look for apps that shared personal, behavioral, and location data with third parties
• 73% of Android apps shared personal information such as email address with third parties, and 47% of iOS apps shared geo-coordinates and other location data with third parties
• 93% of Android apps tested connected to a mysterious domain, safemovedm.com, likely due to a background process of the Android phone
• We show that a significant proportion of apps share data from user inputs such as personal information or search terms with third parties without Android or iOS requiring a notification to the user

 

 

jaclaz

[JorgeA]

Anybody have insight into what this person is talking about?

 

Windows 10 is like the virus.Will repair itself online from WU from any registry tweak we made. We can disable WU completely but that is death end...

(I've highlighted above the question that I'm focusing on.)

 

Thanks to @jaclaz for providing the link to the thread that eventually led me to that post.

 

--JorgeA

 

[JorgeA]

   

 

Tech support reps are recommending users to uninstall Windows 10 to resolve PC problems

 

...HP's VP of Customer Experience, Mike Nash, defended the company's support technicians stating that, "At the end of the day, the person's job is to get the PC running."

 

Yup. 

 

--JorgeA

 

 

 

[Tripredacus]

Well consider it this way. When you get the free upgrade to Windows 10, you are then no longer using the OS that HP put on your computer. Even the recovery partition/software will no longer work. If the OS became un-usable, you'd still have to roll back to your previous version of Windows to run recovery. And if you can't (past 30 days, etc) then you're stuck. Even during my days at Sony (the 2nd time), if a customer had changed the OS they put on their VAIO, then the support was only limited to the hardware unless you were feeling nice/bored that day.