Windows 10 - Deeper Impressions

[JorgeA]

Guess who just wrote:

The choice and control belong to the users, and we are determined to protect that.

 

Hahahahahahahahahahahaha

 

 

https://blogs.technet.microsoft.com/mmpc/2015/12/21/keeping-browsing-experience-in-users-hands/

More fun here:

https://www.microsoft.com/security/portal/mmpc/shared/objectivecriteria.aspx

 

 

This is really rich:

 

Microsoft has created a worldwide network where you can submit unwanted software for analysis. Participants in the network play a key role in helping identify new suspicious programs quickly. After analysis, Microsoft creates definitions for programs that meet the criteria, and makes them available to all users through Microsoft antimalware software.

 

If you believe you have been negatively affected by unwanted software, download and install Microsoft antimalware software. If the unwanted software persists, you can report the problem to Microsoft.

 

Among the "evaluation criteria" for "unwanted software":

 

• Unwanted behavior: The software runs unwanted processes or programs on your PC, does not display adequate disclosures about its behavior or obtain adequate consent, prevents you from controlling its actions while it runs on your computer, prevents you from uninstalling or removing the program, prevents you from viewing or modifying browser features or settings, makes misleading or inaccurate claims about the state of your PC, or circumvents user consent dialogs from the browser or operating system.
• Advertising: The software delivers out-of-context advertising that interferes with the quality of your computing experience, regardless of whether you consented to this behavior or not.
• Advertisements: The advertisement should not mislead you into visiting another site or downloading files.
• Privacy: The software collects, uses, or communicates your information without your explicit consent.
• Consumer opinion: Microsoft considers input from individual users as a key factor in helping to identify new unwanted behaviors and programs that might interfere with the quality of your computing experience.

 

And the explanation of "unwanted behavior" includes the following:

 

You must be notified about what is happening on your PC, including what a program does and whether it is active.

Software that exhibits lack of choice may:

• Fail to provide prominent notice about the behavior of the program and its purpose and intent.

• Fail to clearly indicate when the program is active, and may attempt to hide or disguise its presence.

• Install, reinstall, or remove software without your permission, interaction, or consent.

• Install other software without a clear indication of its relationship to the primary program.

• Circumvent user consent dialogs from the browser or operating system.

 

 

So...

 

...can we submit Windows 10 to the Microsoft Malware Protection Center as unwanted software, and will they evaluate it according to their own announced criteria?

 

 

--JorgeA

[jaclaz]

Naah , the actual full quote has another point:

 

Software that exhibits lack of choice may:

• Fail to provide prominent notice about the behavior of the program and its purpose and intent.
• Fail to clearly indicate when the program is active, and may attempt to hide or disguise its presence.
• Install, reinstall, or remove software without your permission, interaction, or consent.
• Install other software without a clear indication of its relationship to the primary program.
• Circumvent user consent dialogs from the browser or operating system.
• Falsely claim to be a program from Microsoft.

 

If a program Truly claims to be a program from Microsoft it doesn't count.

 

If you prefer they just established that by definition anything from Microsoft is fine.

 

jaclaz

[JorgeA]

^^ I left that one out because it distracted needlessly from the rest of them.

 

Note that the criteria state that "software that exhibits lack of choice" may, not "must," do the bulleted items. Therefore if it does any of the listed things, it fulfills the criteria.

 

--JorgeA

 

EDIT: typo

Edited December 22, 2015 by JorgeA

[jaclaz]

^^ I left that one out because it distracted needlessly from the rest of them.

 

Note that the criteria state that "software that exhibits lack of choice" may, not "must," do the bulleted items. Therefore if it does any of the listed things, it fulfills the criteria.

 

--JorgeA

 

EDIT: typo

Sure , but it's the list itself that makes no sense anyway , a given program may well falsely claim to be a program from Microsoft WHILE NOT exhibiting ANY lack of choice.

 

False claims are something pertaining to Copyright or Trademark infringement, not necessarily connected with choices (or lack thereof).

 

In any case remember that the good MS guys do have the secret 7 on the dice:

http://homepage.ntlworld.com/jonathan.deboynepollard/Humour/microsoft-monopoly.html

 

jaclaz

[JorgeA]

 

In any case remember that the good MS guys do have the secret 7 on the dice:

http://homepage.ntlworld.com/jonathan.deboynepollard/Humour/microsoft-monopoly.html

 

That's pretty funny!   I especially like the first line:

 

The old "MONOPOLY on DOS" (which didn't have a board, but instead had a typewritten list of properties, listed in the order that they were added to the game) has been replaced with "MONOPOLY on WINDOWS NT" — the first version of the game that supported more than one player.

 

[emphasis added!]

 

The whole thing is very clever.

 

--JorgeA

[NoelC]

fyi this is actually an image that I came accost on my external drive not 100% sure what os I am guessing 8 or 8.1 preview release 

 

They enabled telemetry without option on the pre-release builds.  After all, pre-release builds are all about THEM, right?

 

While the "regular" builds are so much more oriented to US and OUR needs.

 

-Noel

[TELVM]

https://blogs.technet.microsoft.com/mmpc/2015/12/21/keeping-browsing-experience-in-users-hands/

Love that last line:

 

"Programs that fail to comply will be detected and removed."

[JorgeA]

From InfoWorld's editor-in-chief:

 

Why I'm holding off on Windows 10

 

More than a million people have read Woody Leonhard’s “10 reasons you shouldn't upgrade to Windows 10” since we posted it on Aug. 20, 2015. Its companion piece, “10 reasons you should upgrade to Windows 10,” has been read by fewer than 70,000 people.

 

That tells you something about the way people make decisions: Always look for the showstopper first. But it’s also symbolic of Windows 10’s ongoing drawbacks, despite the fact that many millions of people have already downloaded and installed the free Windows 10 upgrade or have bought a new Windows 10 system.

 

--JorgeA

 

 

[dencorso]

Here, side-by-side, for easy reference...

 

[NoelC]

Those charts are interesting, though a bit difficult to compare directly because the colors have been reassigned.

 

They also seem out of sync from the weekly data from statcounter.com, which puts usage of Win 7 at about 47% right now.  A 9% difference in numbers is pretty huge in a market this size.

 

Get used to the fact that the one OS Microsoft is pushing is going to increase, and the others are going to decrease.  People are being worn down.

 

The world will all be pushed onto Win 10 - or Microsoft will fail utterly, in which case Windows will just stop working worldwide.

 

-Noel

Edited December 23, 2015 by NoelC

[BudwS]

In those charts, it looks like OS X went up a little over 1/4 %.  Win 10 seems to be helping Apple as well.

Edited December 24, 2015 by BudwS

[jaclaz]

A new windows 10 based Lumia tested:
http://www.theverge.com/2015/12/18/10571504/microsoft-lumia-950-xl-review

Microsoft Lumia 950 XL review
Can Microsoft win me back?

Interesting snippet (mind you it comes from someone who actually uses Windows 10 on a PC) :

The Lumia 950 XL simply isn’t for me or the vast majority of smartphone users out there. I use Windows 10 on a daily basis on a PC, but the experience on mobile is just lacking. Microsoft has done an excellent job on its apps for other platforms, and my iPhone home screen is full of them. The Lumia 950 XL needed something exciting and unique to convince me to switch back, but it failed.

 

jaclaz

[helpdesk98]

if they ever got support for android apps that might help MS a bit in the phone market anyway.

[JorgeA]

Not quite OT, actually fairly well related to the topics in this thread from a number of different angles:

 

I don't like the current model that software companies just continually change their products and we just race to love them. This model comes from apps - toys - on phones. It is not suitable for serious software, in which people might have been trained and need retraining. Not everyone learns by clicking wildly til they understand, though people young enough to have grown up with software cannot understand this (or don't care). And people with this world view are now senior enough to be pushing it. Everyone is on the bandwagon now: Microsoft, Apple, FireFox, Adobe are just four of them. Worse, as all the software depends on the other software, NOBODY can get off the rollercoaster.

 

I got there while researching changes in the latest FF update that disabled my Adobe Acrobat "Create PDF" plugin.   (I did find the way to re-enable it, but unless Adobe gets around to signing the plugin's code for my version of Acrobat, I'll be staying on FF 43, or switching to Pale Moon.)

 

The Firefox people can prattle all they want about how this is protecting me, but in effect what they have done is acting like malware by depriving me of established functionality. So it's either facing some theoretical, indefinitely small chance of being affected by whatever vulnerability they're patching -- or a 100% probability of losing the ability to convert a Web page to PDF.

 

--JorgeA

 

 

 

 

[NoelC]

The thing about software system environments being stable for a while is that people really do need time to develop for them.  Often a LOT of time.

 

If the Windows desktop hadn't been stable and placed compatibility high on the list of priorities for literally decades much of the great software available for that platform would never have been developed.

 

Regarding security, that software would require signed add-on components isn't bad in itself, per se, but you will inevitably run into situations such as what you've seen, Jorge, as we make the transition from "anything goes" to "being signed as a requirement". 

 

Your "solution", of course, per the big companies is merely the expenditure of some tens of dollars a month more for an Adobe cloud membership, after which all your trouble will be magically swept away.  Yes, that was said with sarcasm.  I actually have a Creative Cloud membership, and returning to reality, anecdotally at last count I have disabled some 39 Adobe "background/cloud" programs using Autoruns (including the very feature you're mentioning, Jorge), leaving a mere 7 in place.  And that's only after setting up various versions of Photoshop and the latest Acrobat software.  And I have to say, the latest Acrobat software, which has adopted Win 10's flat, lifeless look, is a disappointment. 

 

It is the way of things - more money for less functionality - and is supposed to start feeling comfortable Real Soon Now.

 

By the way, can you not print to PDF, Jorge?

 

-Noel

Edited December 24, 2015 by NoelC