You will downgrade to the abomination like it or not

[trimixer]

Curious, has MS been buying a ton of RedHat or Apple stock? could explain quite a few things

[cannie]

...like it or not?

If you buy an OS or anything else it becomes your private property and nobody has the right to modify it against your will.

This is an individual constitutional right protected by the US Constitution and also by every democratic Constitution all over the world.

Microsoft should consider this seriously. They could be sued in court for violating the private property.

[jaclaz]

...like it or not?

If you buy an OS or anything else it becomes your private property and nobody has the right to modify it against your will.

This is an individual constitutional right protected by the US Constitution and also by every democratic Constitution all over the world.

Microsoft should consider this seriously. They could be sued in court for violating the private property.

Naaah, you do not "buy" an OS, you acquire a License to use it, additionally within a given set of rules or limitations stated in the EULA or license, there is not a real transfer of property.

The point to debate might be whether the EULA represents a valid, binding contract.

Given ad absurdum that it does represent a valid contract (IMHO it doesn't), with the advent of the abomination there is the further point of the OS being - through the modifications made by windows update - changed up to a point that it is not anymore what you agreed upon.

jaclaz

Edited December 20, 2015 by jaclaz

[Jody Thornton]

I have some 486 motherboards that have a graphical interface with mouse support in the BIOS, within 128KB (remember AMI WinBIOS??) Are BIOS written in Java these days??

I miss that era.  I had a Cyrix 5x86/100 CPU installed on a baby PCI/ISA board with that BIOS on it.  I ran OS/2 Warp 3.0 on it for the most part.

[TELVM]

Even geeks were astonished when they discovered that Skylake wouldn't allow straightforward installation of Windows 7:

 

"I would never even have considered the possibility that Windows 7 would not run on Skylake"

 

Just imagine the confusion and helplessness of the average Joe    . It's just 'Murder by Decree' of W7   .

 

 

This video shows how to use the Asrock utility to patch W7 installation iso with the needed USB 3.0 drivers, the guy says that it also works with other mobo brandss, not only Asrock ones:

 

[NoelC]

Naaah, you do not "buy" an OS, you acquire a License to use it, additionally within a given set of rules or limitations stated in the EULA or license, there is not a real transfer of property.

The point to debate might be whether the EULA represents a valid, binding contract.

Given ad absurdum that it does represent a valid contract (IMHO it doesn't), with the advent of the abomination there is the further point of the OS being - through the modifications made by windows update - changed up to a point that it is not anymore what you agreed upon.

 

^ This!

 

Ad absurdum indeed.  It is crafted to divert attention away from the fact that the OS can and WILL now be changed every 4 months or sooner to have different functionality.  That's why it's not really a EULA any more but a Services Agreement. 

 

You are now expected to agree to accept whatever Microsoft chooses to do.  And why not?  They're doing everything you want to do...

 

 

There is a special version, "Long Term Servicing Branch", offered to Enterprises willing to $Pay$ for the privilege of NOT having Microsoft update it all the time and drop features at their whim.  In other words, if you want to work you have to pay.

 

We can all try to hang onto our existing, working operating systems as long as possible, but it will ultimately become futile.  You have already agreed to allow Microsoft to change it at their whim.

 

-Noel

Edited December 20, 2015 by NoelC

[jaclaz]

Yep, and another part of the population that MS seemingly ignore are *all the rest of us*.

 

If you look at it, they do have only two expected "customers":

1. Enterprises (large ones)
2. End private user <- please read as mindless consumers already made id*** by Facebook, Twitter, WhatsApp, etc.

 

What about all the rest?

Small businesses, small firms with 3 to 15 people, shops, workshops, artisans, individuals making a living as consultants, writers, programmers, etc., accountants, lawyers, architects and engineers (not part of big associated firms), doctors, and similar make up (at least here in Italy) for something like 40 or 50% of the total....

 

jaclaz

[NoelC]

Exactly.  Windows "Pro" is for, well, pros, right?  That's what Microsoft says.

 

Yet its rules are essentially the same as those for "Home" users.

 

"Pro" gets the ability to delay installing upgrade versions for 3 months - presumably the time it takes for the "Home" user community to report all the nasty "can't get there from here" bugs. 

 

Just what we need, "Home" users driving what happens to the "Pro" version.

 

Anyone see anything wrong in this strategy?

 

-Noel

[BudwS]

Why not just clone your backup copy to an HDD or an SSD?  If your production copy gets update trashed, you use your clone to recover.  Your clone should also have all the updates you want for your comfort level.  I suppose it's so simple that there must be an obvious flaw.  However, it seems to work just fine for me.

[dencorso]

Many among us use either bit-by-bit images or straightforward clones as backup. It's a sound and fool-proof strategy, when used right.

[NoelC]

Why not just clone your backup copy to an HDD or an SSD?

 

It's quite possible that backups are such a staple among the technically educated that they go without saying in a place like this.

 

Backup anecdote: 

 

Not terribly long ago I checked backup files on a few year old Western Digital MyBook drive connected to my 2015 Haswell-based system via USB3.  Upon doing some fairly long-winded comparisons I found data errors!

 

Only by connecting it to one of the USB2 ports did I avert the occasional errors showing up in multi-gigabyte files.  It was not a cabling issue, nor anything wrong with the software.  I updated all drivers and firmware to no avail.  The problem is apparently inside the MyBook box itself, possibly in the chips themselves, and is averted entirely by using USB2 instead.

 

I can imagine someone thinking, "I'm too lazy to find that bug, and it has only about a 1 in a billion chance of occurring, which is less than the chance of getting hit by lightning".

 

Thinking is so underrated.

 

-Noel

[BudwS]

 

 

It's quite possible that backups are such a staple among the technically educated that they go without saying in a place like this.

Perhaps I did not make myself clear when I used the word clone.  I was speaking of a bootable clone of the HHD or SSD that was identical, bit for bit data-wise.  Not many techs do that as a matter of course.  If a HDD or SSD had a hard failure or massive data corruption, simply removing the failed drive and replacing it with the bootable clone would save hours or days of recovery time.

[NoelC]

Fair enough, I did over-generalize that. 

 

Yes, I can see how there could be merit to adding the hardware and processes to your system to create an alternately bootable setup.

 

There are also such things as RAID configurations that offer redundancy from failure.

 

Last backup I restored (and it's been quite a while) did take a few hours, and if you have a system config that lends itself to doing so, and minimizing downtime is important then I agree, cloning your running system could be viable and useful.

 

I have little experience with cloning system drives, since for a long time with my setups (system drives being RAID arrays) cloning makes less sense.  How do the activation processes in a modern Windows system handle suddenly running the system from a different (cloned) disk drive?  Is it considered a small enough change in hardware to not need re-activation?

 

In a case where an entire system was replaced, of course I saw that re-activation was necessary (and a relatively painless process, but again keep in mind my info is dated; that was with Win 7).

 

-Noel

Edited December 26, 2015 by NoelC

[jaclaz]

 How do the activation processes in a modern Windows system handle suddenly running the system from a different (cloned) disk drive?  Is it considered a small enough change in hardware to not need re-activation?

Unless something has changed very recently, replacing a hard disk with a clone of it does not "trigger" any event.

 

jaclaz

[NoelC]

Thanks.  I figured that must be the case up through Win 7 at least.  My understanding is that you can change components - as long as you don't change too many.

 

I wonder about 10.  Now the activation seems to be all the more tied to the hardware.

 

-Noel