If you've been trying to keep Microsoft's forced updates and upgrades off your machine, your job just got harder. With KB 4056254, we now have a new Win10 Update Facilitation Service joining its comrade-in-arms Update Assistant V2 to ensure no patch gets blocked.
You can look at the new KB 4056254 Win10 Update Facilitation Service and the re-emergence of Win10 Update Assistant V2 from two different perspectives. On the one hand, you have those poor hapless Win10 users who accidentally munged Windows Update. On the other hand, you have folks with bazookas and flamethrowers who want to keep some semblance of control over updating their machines.
Both groups now face two different Microsoft initiatives to reset Windows Update.
[...] Seems, from April to June 2018, some savvy Win 10 users have found new ways to disable or block Windows Update. So, M$ has to come out with KB4056254 to "neutralize" their efforts. It's like a cat-and-mouse game.
Which seems to me like the core of the matter. It's not nice to mess with Mother Microsoft's patching schemes, so you're going to get a few new services running in the background to whop your system upside the head if you dare to block patches.
Sources:
Win10 Update Facilitation Service joins Update Assistant V2 to make sure you get patched | Computerworld
Watch out: Win10 Update Facilitation as a Service and a new push for the Update Assistant | AskWoody
(Score: 2, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday June 23 2018, @05:59PM (2 children)
(Score: 5, Funny) by coolgopher on Sunday June 24 2018, @02:32AM
I haven't had a bluescreen in over 128 days. Nor has my Win 10 install downloaded any updates in that long.
Possibly because it's a dual-boot setup and my Devuan install has a 128 day uptime currently...
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday June 24 2018, @04:15PM
Lock 'em up!
(Score: 2) by SomeGuy on Saturday June 23 2018, @06:13PM (7 children)
Welp. That does it. I'm sticking with Windows 95. Try and update THAT, suckers! :P
(Score: 2) by takyon on Saturday June 23 2018, @07:42PM (1 child)
SomeGuy is actually Ultron?
[SIG] 10/28/2017: Soylent Upgrade v14 [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 2) by JNCF on Saturday June 23 2018, @08:53PM
Ultron is actually Immortal Technique?
Immortal Technique is actually Pinocchio?
The conspiracy, it is deep.
(Score: 3, Funny) by Apparition on Sunday June 24 2018, @04:39AM (4 children)
Come now, be sensible. Windows 98 Second Edition was much more stable than Windows 95, at least update to that. :P
(Score: 3, Interesting) by toddestan on Sunday June 24 2018, @04:59AM (2 children)
The problem with Windows 98 also includes Windows Update, whereas Windows 95 does not (though I'm not sure if you get it if you install IE4 on Windows 95). So if you want to keep Microsoft's hands off your system you really should stick with Windows 95.
With that said, does Windows Update even still work for Windows 98 or did Microsoft finally shut it off?
(Score: 4, Informative) by Apparition on Sunday June 24 2018, @05:11AM
IIRC, Microsoft disabled Windows Update for Windows 98 around 2011.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday June 24 2018, @06:45AM
uhm. you may have gotten carried away for a bit.
if you really want to keep microsoft's hands off your system, you install something non-microsoft.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday June 24 2018, @09:47AM
Windows 98? May as well use Ubuntu. They are equivalent.
(Score: 5, Interesting) by KilroySmith on Saturday June 23 2018, @06:17PM (32 children)
I've installed Microsoft OS's from DOS 2.11a onwards. I've been a lifetime Windows user since Windows 3.10. But in the last couple years, I feel like I'm battling Microsoft for control of my machine - it's like fighting persistent malware, every time you clean it off a machine, it pops back up. My work laptop runs Windows 10, and it really doesn't impress me - it's less stable than Windows 7 was, as is the latest version of Office.
My current computer is getting a bit long in the tooth, so when I build a new one later this year (after GPU prices fall), I'm going to make a concerted effort to use Linux and LibreOffice and convert my family over, with a Windows in a VM in case I get stuck. At home, there are few native applications we use anymore, so it shouldn't be a big problem. If I can make it work well enough, my next job will be moving teams of developers off Windows - because I'm tired of using Unix applications ported to Windows that barely work.
(Score: 5, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday June 23 2018, @06:53PM (1 child)
Yeah, MS used to be the soulless agnostic corporation that let you do whatever you wanted with your machine. It was just a platform. Now its another walled garden with minicams in all the trees.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday June 24 2018, @08:16PM
"Yeah, MS used to be the soulless agnostic corporation that let you do whatever you wanted with your machine. It was just a platform. Now its another walled garden with minicams in all the trees."
One tree that harbors the minicam, & the other tree for the hangman's noose.
(Score: 3, Informative) by RS3 on Saturday June 23 2018, @07:02PM (6 children)
A good migration path would be to start using LibreOffice on your Windows machines. It's not my primary office software, but occasionally it helps, if for no other reason than to export to a different file format, .pdf, etc. But it is pretty useful.
(Score: 4, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday June 23 2018, @08:12PM (2 children)
Not to mention importing. LibreOffice readily imports files that MS Office won't touch: old WordPerfect files, Word documents created with older versions of Word, Excel documents created with older versions of Excel, Word or Excel files that MS Office claims are damaged, etc. (I cite examples I've encountered, but I have no doubt there are plenty of others.)
(Score: 2) by frojack on Saturday June 23 2018, @09:33PM
Plus LO works the same on Linux, Windows, Mac, BSD. Learning curve is short, and google will find "How do you do XYZ on LibreOffice" faster than the help.
No, you are mistaken. I've always had this sig.
(Score: 2) by Pino P on Sunday June 24 2018, @04:13AM
With the exception of Excel files that rely heavily on macros, such as the listing prevalidation templates that Amazon offers to professional sellers on its platform. LibreOffice Basic was not compatible with VBA last I checked. Try to use the template in LO, and you still get a file you can upload to Amazon Marketplace Web Service. But nothing you enter will be validated, and the upload will count against your MWS upload quota even if the file has errors that the Excel macros would have caught.
(Score: 2, Informative) by Sabriel on Sunday June 24 2018, @05:03AM (2 children)
I've run into problems with LibreOffice from about 4.x onwards exporting to PDF; some text (particularly involving different fonts) appears correct but when copy-pasted comes out garbled.
I ended up switching to Apache's OpenOffice earlier this year, fwiw.
(Score: 2) by RS3 on Sunday June 24 2018, @05:11AM
Thanks, I'm going to give it a try.
(Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday June 24 2018, @10:14PM
OpenOffice is now better than LibreOffice? Guess I'll have to take a look. Used to be OpenOffice was crap and LibreOffice was the way to go.
(Score: 2, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday June 23 2018, @07:33PM (3 children)
So now you can use Unix applications natively on *nix that barely work! :)
(Score: 2) by KilroySmith on Saturday June 23 2018, @08:08PM (1 child)
That may be true, but I mostly eliminate the need to try to figure out how to reference network files (Backslash? Forward slash?) or whether an app will approve of the line endings in the file I'm trying to feed it...
(Score: 2) by RS3 on Sunday June 24 2018, @05:14AM
This Windows 7 machine's command prompt shell doesn't seem to care if I enter / or \ for paths, but it always displays \ .
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday June 24 2018, @11:09AM
mostly it's UI errors in Linux that are silly
- yesterday I had the default calendar application in Ubuntu open - it had an uptime of maybe 35 hours - (I left it open in the background and did suspend the pc a few times) - later, I clicked the [today] button so the app would go to today - it wouldn't - it's idea of 'today' was the day that the app was started, not the current day that the pc's clock is reporting
- unless I missed it, the default ubuntu calculator doesn't have the useful [+/-] button
(Score: 5, Informative) by Whoever on Saturday June 23 2018, @08:24PM
No, you are not battling Microsoft for control of your machine.
Not any more. That battle was over some time ago and Microsoft won.
(Score: 4, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday June 23 2018, @11:42PM (10 children)
I've installed Microsoft OSes and DEs for nearly as long as you have, since the days of MS-DOS 3.0. Unlike you, I haven't done so willingly.
I bought and used DR-DOS when I could instead of MS-DOS. I bought and used GeoWorks as an alternative to the lame Windows 3.x, even though Windows 3.x was easily accessible to copy and install. I bought and tried to use OS/2. (My computer met minimum requirements, but it wouldn't install.) I bought and used BeOS. I bought and used numerous Linux distros -- Caldera, SuSE, Red Hat, and others. I bought and used WordPerfect and Quattro Pro instead of accepting Word and Excel. (They weren't an awkwardly bundled office suite then.)
I watched when the industry came out with inexpensive, innovative little netbooks, loaded with stripped down Linux, and shook my head when Microsoft flexed their might, forcing the netbook makers to overburden the machines by preloading Windows XP instead, adding a corresponding cost increase to accommodate the new license fee and extra hardware required to run Windows, pricing them out of the newly-created niche.
Microsoft was there at every turn, trying to wrest control of our computers, anti-competitively forcing people away from MS-DOS alternatives, anti-competitively using their sway with OEMs to force them to not include alternatives to Windows as either a preload or an optional replacement.
Every step of the way, Microsoft has been trying to ensure that the computers we've bought have only been nominally ours. With Windows 10, they effectively own our computers.
I fought their trying to sneakily force Win10 onto any of my computers. I have yet to allow that software to infect my computers. Unfortunately, I know my days are numbered. There are a couple of tools I use for which I have yet to find a solid non-Windows alternative and I know that, at some point, the developers are going to drop support for Win7.
Sometimes it's the unrelenting juggernaut, not the good guys, who wins.
(Score: 2) by Immerman on Sunday June 24 2018, @02:03AM (7 children)
I dabbled with all of those except GeoWorks (BeOS had such promise...), and always came back to Windows, as the only platform that actually supported a decent range of software. Until I finally got a laptop over a decade ago, intended primarily for web access rather than a primary work/play machine, and decided to use Linux as the primary OS, rather than deal with Vista's increasingly customer-hostile "features". I was happy with Ubuntu for years, and even Unity didn't drive me away, though it did convince me to install the incredibly versatile xfce panel instead of their horribly under-powered launch bar. I did try many other distros, but found none that had the same level of "polish" as mainstream Ubuntu - like the best parts of MacOS and Windows combined, with that irascible "rebuild me to your vision" Linux allure just under the surface.
Been happy with Linux ever since - for browsing and a lot of basic "office" stuff. My main system is still Windows though - for serious work and play, Linux sadly still lacks the breadth of both modern and mature software. WINE has made a huge difference though - probably supports 90% of the work software I want to use. That last 10% though, that's what keeps the abomination of Windows 10 on my desktop. Well, that and the games.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday June 24 2018, @06:55AM (4 children)
"lacks breadth of modern and mature software". Really?
I suppose you have to use some autocad-like thingy that's only availabe on windows.
Here's an idea: when you go to conferences, and meet your peers, talk to them. Find out what you guys can do to move away from Windows. It's very likely there are others who want to get rid of windows, and if there are enough of you, you can just talk to the programmers of your "mature software", and tell them you want linux/MacOS whatever.
I would recommend not moving to a Mac, but it's still much better than Windows.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by Immerman on Sunday June 24 2018, @09:35AM (3 children)
Yes really. take any popular piece of software - you know, the software you need to actually be fully compatible when exchanging data with someone else, and we both know the odds of there being a native Linux version are slim. Libre Office is wonderful, and I use it for my own work - but the moment I need to collaborate with someone else - it's got to be MS Office - 90% compatibility just doesn't cut it when you're trying to get work done. And yeah,that one is totally the fault of MS and their intentional file format sabotage, but that doesn't let me get away from it (though I always savor the moments when I get to rescue old MS Office files using LO, since age or corruption has made them incompatible with MS Office's fragile file loader.
And hey, I *do* tell software publishers I'd like a Linux version - but honestly, how many thousands, maybe millions of people have told Adobe they'd like native versions of Illustrator, Photoshop, etc (yes, GIMP and Inkscape are wonderful programs, I love them, but they just don't stack up in a professional setting) They don't care. Linux desktop users are a drop in the bucket, not even remotely as significant a market force as MacOS users, and *dramatically* more difficult to support thanks to platform fragmentation. Even when software is ported over, it's frequently a half-assed port with enough glaring issues that running the Windows version in WINE is the better option.
As for Mac - all I can say is that I grieve that *Apple* has become the face of consumer-friendly mainstream operating systems - because they're pretty much as hostile and imperious as ever.
(Score: 2) by hendrikboom on Monday June 25 2018, @12:41AM (1 child)
I'd be delighted if they just debugged their Windows versions in Wine. Wine is a perfectly good piece of free software.
(Score: 2) by Immerman on Monday June 25 2018, @01:21PM
As would I
(Score: 2) by urza9814 on Monday June 25 2018, @02:35PM
Eh...I used to do that, but 95% of the time I'd jump through hoops to find some legitimate MS Office install that I could use, only to find that MS Office had *the exact same problems* with the file as LO did. So I gave up on even trying that. If a file loads weird in LO, it loads weird and I deal with it. MS Office users are generally used to those issues since, as you said, they have to deal with it often enough just loading files from different versions of Office. I've never once had a complaint. Although when possible I save in PDF, which eliminates all issues for static documents...last time I checked that isn't supported on MS Office without installing special printer drivers and "printing" to PDF...
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday June 25 2018, @04:04AM (1 child)
I've grudgingly used Windows for years, dabbling with Linux and BeOS on secondary machines, but when Microsoft forced Vista on us and Ballmer insisted that this was the future, take it or leave it, I bought a Mac. I expected it to be a half-hearted affair, but I was surprised to discover that I liked it. A lot. The system worked much more logically than Windows. OS X 11.6 sung on the hardware of the time. And then Apple started to bog it down and started tying an increasing number of aspects of the system to "the cloud". Unless they make some serious corrective actions with the hardware -- I'm not holding my breath -- I'll probably be shifting more seriously to Linux as my primary OS.
There are still unsanded and sloppily-painted furnishings involved in the (honestly, far too numerous) Linux distros, but Microsoft has gone full-on malicious spyware with Win10 and doesn't bother doing any QA on updates anymore, just forces them out and waits to see what they break. Apple's hardware has gone to crap with everything soldered and glued into place, and their OS and applications are too tied to the mothership. BeOS is long gone and Haiku, lovely though it is, is a long way from being a usable primary OS. ReactOS looks promising -- I would happily embrace something XP-compatible that looked like Win2k -- but, like Haiku, is too far from being ready for prime time.
<sigh> Too bad about BeOS. It held great promise. Too bad Microsoft were major dicks, threatening OEMs who considered Be's suggestion to the OEMs to ship their computers configured to dual-boot so people could try an alternative to Windows.
(Score: 2) by Immerman on Monday June 25 2018, @01:56PM
Yeah, I don't know anyone that was actually happy with Vista. Seems like Apple missed a big opportunity to become a lot more relevant in the PC realm - though I suppose they were 5 years into the iPod phenomena at that point, and just releasing the first iPhone. so may have simply had other priorities. Their decline since then was sad to watch - they actually made pretty decent computers there for a while. And with the incredibly user-hostility of Win10 they have another opportunity - but it seems they're venturing in similar directions themselves.
If you care about polish, I will reiterate that I've been pretty happy with Ubuntu's success there - things are mostly organized reasonably, work predictably, and look nice. On par with MacOS in many ways, and even easier in some. E.g. when setting up a new printer on Mac had to download and install the drivers and fiddle a bit - Ubuntu detected that the same printer had been plugged in, prompted for permission to download and install the appropriate drivers automatically, and then everything immediately worked beautifully.
I haven't actually looked at recent versions of Ubuntu, transforming their Unity interface into something useful for a power user was enough of a hassle that I've only used 14.x and 16.x long-term releases. But with their return to proper Gnome I'm hopeful things will start moving in a more appealing direction again.
(Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday June 24 2018, @10:57AM (1 child)
Windows 10 came on my new laptop 2 years ago. I didn't want it. I wanted a machine with at least a decent I5 CPU and at least 16GB ram. So, I installed Ubuntu. It was a pain in the ass. Seriously. Even with my experience dual booting Windows and Linux in the past this was crappy. I found what I needed to do in a forum. Made the USB like it needed to be made, used Windows to make the UEFI change - which was galling but the easiest way to just get it working. Got Ubuntu working with the intention of booting into Windows if required. Perhaps putting Windows 7 on at some point. I've never used Windows 10 on this machine. It's there, sitting like a toad at the bottom of a pond. I thought I'd switch back to play games. It just never happened. Now I play games that run on Ubuntu.
Soon I'll need to wipe this machine to update Ubuntu or replace it with something else. Ubuntu has been good to me. It works. Multi monitor support is good. Can plug the TV into it. NVidia card support blows, but I really should get off my ass and fix that with the new install and do it right the first time. Updating has caused problems but I think I've got it's quirks down now. Perhaps I'll try Mint next time or Devuan. Not Windows thought. I don't game like I used to. I can live without my Windows only software. The HP scanner works. VMs work well.
I really like Windows. I do. Explorer is excellent. The Linux replacement's don't cut it yet, but they are getting better. Drive removal and install was better in Windows. Some things were better. Why did Microsoft have to screw it all up? Linux could have just been a hobby for me.
(Score: 2) by urza9814 on Monday June 25 2018, @02:53PM
Yeah, the Ubuntu installer sucks. I thought Ubuntu would be a good choice when I was building a media center PC last year, but after a few issues with the installer (features I needed that simply weren't supported, and known bugs in default options that caused the entire install to crash every time) I ended up going with Fedora. Very happy with that choice. Fedora's got a great installer and it's a solid low-maintenance distro.
Oh...that sounds like it's just the usual issue that Windows doesn't come with proper system tools the way Linux does. All you really need is dd.
This I'm curious about...I have no end of problems with Windows systems that won't detect or won't auto-mount drives. You know when you plug in a drive and Windows immediately says to just format the drive and wipe everything out? Usually those are still readable in Linux; often they're still readable in Windows too if you go into the drive manager and manually mount the thing. It's particularly common with SD cards IME. That doesn't happen in Linux -- I insert the drive, it pops right up in the file manager, and I use it. And when I'm done, I press eject and it's gone. And if not it actually explains why instead of just giving some generic "The operation failed" error message.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday June 24 2018, @12:09AM (1 child)
(Score: 2) by JNCF on Sunday June 24 2018, @04:36AM
"seems much more familiar" might be a reason to keep using something yourself (thus avoiding the upfront learning cost of the unfamiliar), but it's a poor point to bring up in an open discussion of tools. Think "easy versus simple."
(Score: 2, Interesting) by noneof_theabove on Sunday June 24 2018, @12:19AM
African Saying:
Everyone is ignorant, but to choose ignorance is stupidy.
You will need at least 4 threads [4 core or 2 core + 2 threads] for a VM or you probably curse linux until one of the 2 of you die off.
Run some live CDs DVD if you have not and find a "look and feel" you like.
Personal I have been using SolydK [solydxk[dot]com] for about 5 years.
Little update icon near clock to let you know when to click it and never has it messed up anything.
For a new user just coming off windows I would suggest Q4OS.
Runs on about anything 32/64, low requirements even is one of very few full desktops that come a CD not DVD.
Reason is that you are given the opportunity to get [download] the kitchen sink on the first boot after install.
That is Libre, VLC, and much more.
I confess windows 7 is still the host and will alway be.
It is for development with Lazarus for win although it does linux, and web and other stuff but NEVER THE INTERNET.
All internet and thunderbird on on the Linux VirtualBox. And running on Private Internet Access VPN.
Good Luck and may the tuxedo birds have your back.
(Score: 2) by Reziac on Sunday June 24 2018, @02:36AM
Yeah, the pain inflicted by Win8/10 caused me to do another trawl through linux distros. And FINALLY I seem to have hit a keeper in PCLinuxOS (I prefer Trinity and KDE desktops, YMMV). May never move over entirely but when/if I need a 'modern' OS... there it is.
And there is no Alkibiades to come back and save us from ourselves.
(Score: 2) by stormreaver on Sunday June 24 2018, @12:34PM
This is a huge flaw in your plan. I was in the same boat between 1995 and 1999. I had always decided to keep Windows around as a fallback, but then I kept falling back when I got into an unfamiliar jam. It wasn't until I decided to let go of my fallback that I was able to commit to the transition.
Leave Windows behind, totally. Then you will have the motivation to face and beat the problem of unfamiliarity.
(Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday June 24 2018, @05:11PM
Have run Windows since 1990. Learned to work my computer on MS-DOS 3.3, in the very beginning. I've been with Windows for a very long time.
And then Windows 10 was released, and things have been on a steady downhill slide ever since then. The slide ended earlier this year with a crash into the ground when Win10 v1803 was pushed, unwanted, into one too many machines.
That's when I finally had to admit that I have completely lost administrative control of my own, and my customer's machines. This is unendurable, and I am no longer putting up with it.
Everything, my own, and my customers, is now being moved over to Linux Mint Mate. VirtualBox has been installed, and runs on all but the oldest machines in the group. (I have elderly customers on meager fixed incomes, unable to afford even the cheapest used computer, who are forced by brutal economic necessity to continue running ancient XP-era machines, and these machines run well without any need for a VM, performing just the bare basics that are what these people only ever wanted in the first place) I have butchered copies of Win7x32 and Win10 set up for VirtualBox if it becomes absolutely necessary to run something that has yet to be set up for Linux in any user-friendly way. The VM is shut down just as soon as such dirty work as requires MS, is finished. These VM's are destroyed and overwritten from an exported appliance .ova file on a regular basis, bringing them back to square one, each time.
No more Windows, and it's for goddamned sure there's no more Microsoft Office, either.
My people are all now happily running Linux, and so am I.
Fuck you, Microsoft. Just fuck you to hell, ok?
I will not miss you in the slightest, and my only regret is that I did not move my people off of your hateful Greedware any sooner than I did.
Goodbye.
(Score: 2) by PinkyGigglebrain on Sunday June 24 2018, @07:04PM
For me it was an easy switch from Windows to Linux thanks to TDE, it was so much like Windows that the learning curve to go from WinXP/7=>TDE was shorter than Win7=>Win8
Live disk for a test drive of both. Exe GNULinux [exegnulinux.net]
"Beware those who would deny you Knowledge, For in their hearts they dream themselves your Master."
(Score: 4, Insightful) by rylyeh on Saturday June 23 2018, @06:47PM
Ahhh, yes...
Using Linux, I can control all my updates and roll-back easily.
"a vast crenulate shell wherein rode the grey and awful form of primal Nodens, Lord of the Great Abyss."
(Score: 5, Insightful) by Phoenix666 on Saturday June 23 2018, @06:51PM (9 children)
The saddest thing about all this is that Windows users have been subject to a multi-decade scheme to train them away from the ability to choose, to even know that they can choose. Training them to captivity in their software, which is in everything now, trains them to every other kind of captivity. It's tragic, especially when we're at a historical moment when technology has opened more avenues to freedom and empowerment than have ever existed before.
Open Source has come a long, long way from its inception. There are so many shades of choice and customization to choose from that you don't have to be an expert at all to take advantage of. Others have already created entire menus to suit each taste. Me, I run Debian-variants with lightweight desktops like XFCE and LXDE because I like things more bare bones and snappy. Others like 3D animation, effects, and many, many other flavors. You can even run different boot loaders and so on, if you want, if you are that technical.
Even as a business, subjecting your productivity to somebody else's revenue curve like MS does its customers is stupid. It's just stupid.
Washington DC delenda est.
(Score: 2) by RS3 on Saturday June 23 2018, @09:31PM (8 children)
I agree about MS Windows giving fewer and fewer options to many things. I've seen this trend for 20+ years. I've attributed it to MacOS envy, hoping to reduce support calls, and perceived customer demand. Every now and then I stumble onto a 3rd-party addon, like someone (Symantec maybe?) had a major UI mod package for probably Win98 or so. Seems like there's a strong market for tools to get into Windows and give us back the options. I know there are "telemetry" blockers, but lots of warnings that they're bad for you. Bad like Cheetos.
I always wish for an "expert mode" setting somewhere to give me back my options.
Yep, xfce is my go-to in general, and it seems to run kde apps well without all the extra kde "stuff" I don't seem to need.
(Score: 3, Touché) by frojack on Saturday June 23 2018, @09:35PM (5 children)
You mean there are people who actually CALL Microsoft still?
No, you are mistaken. I've always had this sig.
(Score: 2, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday June 23 2018, @11:46PM (2 children)
I've had lots of calls "from Microsoft" telling me they have detected malware on my machine. Microsoft seems to employ a lot of technicians who barely (or don't) speak conversational English.
(Score: 2) by realDonaldTrump on Sunday June 24 2018, @12:57AM (1 child)
I don't have Microsoft. Because I don't have computer. But I got that call too. And I said to the guy, "This is Donald J. Trump. Is this Bill Gates?" Because I've been wanting to talk to Bill about closing up that Internet. The guy says "no, this isn't Bill Gates. I'm calling from Windows." Not Microsoft. And he asked me to turn my computer on. So I go, "maybe you have the wrong number. Or maybe you want my son. Because I don't have computer." Barron is 12, he's amazing with computer. And with every kind of cyber. So I say to him, it's the guy from Windows, do you want to talk to him? And he shakes his head, he told me that was a Fake call. So watch out!!!
(Score: 1) by anubi on Sunday June 24 2018, @05:23AM
Just hope those aerospace contractors who control your "big guns" don't rely on this kind of business model.
You may only think you control them. Until you need them.
"Prove all things; hold fast that which is good." [KJV: I Thessalonians 5:21]
(Score: 4, Funny) by RS3 on Saturday June 23 2018, @11:48PM
They come hoping for help, they stay for the awesome hold music.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday June 24 2018, @11:08AM
Yes, there are people who call Microsoft. People with corporate support. Even they generally regret doing so one way or another. Even if Microsoft do help it is only for their benefit. Your problem may be solved but there is always another problem.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by Unixnut on Saturday June 23 2018, @10:00PM (1 child)
> (Symantec maybe?) had a major UI mod package for probably Win98 or so.
You mean Stardock? They had something called Windowblinds. You could skin Windows with themes that were out of this world.
Back in the late 90s, it was the dogs bollocks for Windows users. I remember it being a hog. One really impressive theme used up around 1024MB of RAM just for the skin + Windows 2000 OS. On my 256MB PC it would swap like crazy just to load the UI, but dear god it looked awesome. Spent ages clicking on it just to watch it work before going back to the standard interface to actually make the PC usable again.
Interestingly, seems they are still in business and allowing skinning of even the latest Windows OS'es:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WindowBlinds [wikipedia.org]
As for me, I never got intimately familiar with it, because shortly after I discovered Linux, and its myriad options for window managers, without basically being a massive hack (I seem to remember windowblinds worked by shunting their own DLLs between the graphic subsystem and the upper UI level drawing DLLs. If it works it was great, but if an app was using undocumented calls, you had a hell of a lot of odd behaviour and bugs). However if it is still going strong all these years, I presume there must be a lot of happy customers using it.
(Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday June 24 2018, @09:58PM
But I believe I read that WindowBlinds was licensed by Microsoft as the basis for their theme support in XP. That was what gave StarDock the money to expand into game publishing and the variety of other products they have moved into since (they were originally app software and then bbs doorgames I believe.)
(Score: 3, Insightful) by turgid on Saturday June 23 2018, @07:51PM (2 children)
Yours or Microsoft's? What are you going to do about it?
I refuse to engage in a battle of wits with an unarmed opponent [wikipedia.org].
(Score: 2) by RS3 on Saturday June 23 2018, @11:53PM (1 child)
Oh it's Microsoft's, they're just allowing me to use it. (trundles off to go pay subscription fee.) Oh yeah, they keep reminding me they're annoyed that I haven't "upgraded" to Win10.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday June 24 2018, @05:25AM
If you are trundling off to pay a fee, you have already lost. They know who you are by your payment credentials.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday June 23 2018, @08:20PM
Its theirs. Get used to it, or look for alternatives.
(Score: 5, Insightful) by Azuma Hazuki on Saturday June 23 2018, @08:49PM (1 child)
...we have people who run Linux or *BSD, with a Windows VM if necessary kept locked the hell down tight. Microsoft can eat the proverbial bag of dicks.
I am "that girl" your mother warned you about...
(Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday June 23 2018, @11:11PM
This.
Last time I was forced to use Windows I installed it as a guest on a private virtual network with the host (Linux Mint), put a proxy on the host with a white list for www.google.com, configured the guest for the proxy and went to google. In a few hours Microsoft politely fills a proxy with the crap you need to filter, but in the end I didn't need to stop it from whitelisting, I just needed to consume the company's licensed office software (MS Office) and to let them pollute a browser I didn't care about for their groupware (GMail, Gdrive and Hangouts). All the real work was done with less untrustworthy tools (at far greater speeds, with far less resource consumption and no material cost).
(Score: 3, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday June 23 2018, @11:25PM
It would be nice if they could make Windows Update actually work stable, reliably and fast. Instead they just extend the mess of services in an ever more inscrutable web of chaos. As if that wasn't the problem in the first place!
In the mean time, it's possible to install several months of Linux updates (including lots of applications on top of OS) faster than Windows takes to simply figure out that there are in fact no updates.
If only they all woke up one day and figured out what a failure their update system is. Admittedly their "all updates are optional" approach they used to have is probably somewhat to blame for getting them into this molasses-like mess.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday June 23 2018, @11:29PM
I have few 4 Win10 in house, the rest are ALL Linux. Must keep wife happy. 2 college daughters with Windows only schools (idoits - schools not daughters). And one Win10 work box that allwos them to interoperate and share linux world "simpler".
MS has been bricking that machine daily since Nov. Yes bricking is strong, words, but it is completely out of control for 8hrs per day, as Win10 tries again and again and again to load its current and greatest patch. 64bit procesor, 2gb of memory and 120SDD. Basicly little work house, also handles printers and a 3d printer.
MS cannot get beyond 83% loaded, before it declares failure and reloads the old version again. I have killed, deactivated and load reg key to say all my networks are metered. I just spent 2days rebuilding it from backup, after the last ry hosed the MSFT space and could not run check disk. I found while doing on this that IO-Bit software was the function that to loaded a MS patch to fix a "security hole". Instead it nailed the machine again afte a month of working right. IO-Bit another bad actor who was good.
In the end this goal of MS is to kil the PC, since Intel and AMD have not brought a new chip in years that actually improves performance for the average joe. YES, we allneed a 16core, 32 thread to write an email "not". Maybe if the start designing computer again, they will realized that not EVERY THING needs to run on the main cpu. and ARM chips will really win.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday June 24 2018, @01:08AM (2 children)
I'd hate to get banged by Micro$oft. I banged them by pirating their shit until I bought a machine that could run Linux.
Now Linux is trying to bang me with systemd, abrt, pulseaudio and the like. I'm still resisting.
(Score: 2) by hendrikboom on Monday June 25 2018, @12:53AM (1 child)
Not the Linux I use. Devuan.
(Score: 2) by SDRefugee on Wednesday June 27 2018, @12:53AM
Am currently on Ubuntu 14.04, when it EOL's next year, I'll be moving to Devuan.. I *was* a big fan of Debian, but Debian jumped the shark with systemd.. Devuan is the new "Debian"....
America should be proud of Edward Snowden, the hero, whether they know it or not..
(Score: 4, Interesting) by SDRefugee on Sunday June 24 2018, @01:21AM
Just how much bullshit people who still, for whatEVER reason, use Windows have to put up with. It's become increasingly clear that, *if* you allow Windows on *your* computer, it immediately becomes MS's computer with an ever-decreasing ability for *you*, the person who spent your hard-earned dollars for *your* computer, to ACTUALLY USE your computer. I spent a 20 year career as a system admin, supporting Windows, from WFW3.11 to the XP/Win7 transition, and when I retired I decided I was done with anything MS.. After seeing what Windows 10 puts people thru, I'm eternally grateful to Linus Torvalds and the world-wide Linux development folks who have given ME (and many others) our computers BACK.....
America should be proud of Edward Snowden, the hero, whether they know it or not..
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday June 24 2018, @02:01AM (1 child)
I've been disabling the Windows Update service as a way of turning off updates. Hopefully the new helper services can be disabled in the same way. #FUCKMICROSOFT
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday June 24 2018, @11:38AM
ha ha ha you stupid peon you really think your OS is telling you what is actually happening under the hood
ahahahahaahhaahaha
(Score: 3, Insightful) by drussell on Sunday June 24 2018, @03:06AM
You guys are using Windows 10?
Seriously?!!
I hope it isn't for anything important... :facepalm:
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday June 24 2018, @05:03AM
They are bugging me to activate after I recently upgraded my CPU and main board. It is fully legit Windows 10 upgraded from Windows 7, which I think was upgraded from Vista, but who remembers, and who knows where the original f'ing DVD is? Die in a fire, Satya Nadella.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday June 24 2018, @05:05AM (3 children)
That I could ditch Windows, but it sadly is simply a required OS as a video gamer. Linux is not a real alternative. About 10% of the video games I own have Linux versions, but they all say that they require Ubuntu, and can't guarantee compatibility with other Linux distros. I may as well stick with Windows in that case. Plus, a few multiplayer video games my friends and I play are Windows only.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday June 24 2018, @08:58AM (2 children)
Games! Yes, I am so dependent upon code that I cannot write, cannot modify, and do not understand that I have no choice but to run Windows, and no choice but to let them hammer me with an upgrade to Windows 10, 10 for Armaggeddon. Do you have any idea how un-leet this makes you sound? Are you 14 years old? Have you no sense of decency, at long last, sir, have you no decency?
#Impeach
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday June 24 2018, @10:00AM
Good thing that I never claimed to be "leet" then, eh?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday June 24 2018, @11:02PM
Found the incel! You don't use Windows like the rest of humanity because you hate women! Death to incels! Police be upon them!
(Score: 2) by Snospar on Sunday June 24 2018, @02:39PM (1 child)
I consider Windows Update the worst software in the world. Not because of its supposed purpose, security updates are important especially on Windows, but because of how it works. I don't understand why a piece of software that is trying to download and apply updates has to thrash my hard disk for an hour or so before it even starts downloading. I don't understand why it must take all cores of my old PC to 100% for so long that I start getting warnings about the CPU temperature. I don't understand why the updates themselves take so many hours to apply after they've downloaded - it takes longer than the initial OS installation. I don't understand why the updates always need to restart and when that restart lands the machine back in Linux the next time I boot into Windows it either locks me out for another half hour of update preparation work or it declares the update has failed.
Finally, I really struggle with the fact that these Feature Updates fail on so many machines and yet Microsoft doesn't appear interested in fixing the issue. I'm not trying to avoid updates but I've got one machine that can't move past the Fall Creator's Update (it tries to apply this every few days and fails every time - the smaller security updates apply without an issue), another machine succeeded on the Fall update but has now failed (repeatedly) on the Spring one.
Even after weeks of absence, apt update && apt upgrade are quick, efficient and seldom require a reboot - they just work as all software should. Windows Update is a cancer on windows.
Huge thanks to all the Soylent volunteers without whom this community (and this post) would not be possible.
(Score: 2) by digitalaudiorock on Sunday June 24 2018, @05:36PM
I have only one Windows machine...my work laptop. Otherwise I use all Linux. Windows updates are punitive...and I'm saying that as someone who has to compile all my updates under Gentoo on this machine...a 14 year old x86 ;).
This. MS seems to keep adding new steps to the update process. What the fuck does "preparing to download updates" mean? Did it stop for a doughnut on the way? What told me everything you need to know about Windows shit design was many years ago when uninstalling some MS development software took an hour and a half.
My guess is that a huge part of this is Windows decision (I'm assuming it's a "feature" of NTFS) to disallow the write or delete of a file that's perceived to be "un use"...which in Windows land means almost anything and everything. That's typical MS mentality that even administrator processes can't overwrite a file when they want to regardless. I'm guessing that the important DLLs and everything else don't really get installedin their final locations until that reboot horseshit. Add all that to the book of shit Unix got right and Windows got wrong.
What's worse than the fact that updates don't work is that, for PR reasons, they keep the failures a fucking secret! You have to be savvy enough to recognize that an update didn't appear to work (based solely on the lack of the expected reboot etc) and to look in the update history for example. I had a recent feature update quietly fail repeatedly recently (with no sign other then "your system is up to date" nothing-to-worry-about-here BS) until I used this hack [kapilarya.com] because the Windows update database repair is a useless piece of shit.
Windows is a cancer on the tech world. It wouldn't bother me half as much if it's pervasiveness hadn't caused a generation of programmers that seem hellbent on repeating it's mistakes in the used-to-be-POSIX world and spreading that cancer to Linux with systemd and the like (none of that here or in my company thank you very much)...but that's another topic.