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Microsoft has been criticised over its Windows 10 software by consumer rights group Which?.
The body said it had received hundreds of complaints about the upgrade, including lost files, emails no longer syncing and broken wi-fi and printing.
In some cases, it said, users had had to pay for their computer to be repaired.
Microsoft defended its software and highlighted that it provided help online and by phone.
"The Windows 10 upgrade is a choice designed to help people take advantage of the most secure and most productive Windows," said a spokesman.
"Customers have distinct options. Should a customer need help with the upgrade experience, we have numerous options including free customer support."
Which? surveyed more than 5,500 of its members in June, and said that 12% of the 2,500 who had upgraded to Windows 10 had later reverted to an earlier version.
It's not a surprise to anyone on Soylent, but this is the sort of thing that causes conventional wisdom to shift.
(Score: 1) by kurenai.tsubasa on Friday September 23 2016, @03:20PM
Etymology!
The etymology of foo is obscure. Its use in connection with bar is generally traced to the World War II military slang FUBAR, later bowdlerised to foobar. The word foo on its own was used earlier. Between about 1930 and 1952 it appeared in the comic Smokey Stover by Bill Holman, who stated that he used the word due to having seen it on the bottom of a jade Chinese figurine in Chinatown, San Francisco, purportedly signifying "good luck". This may be related to the Chinese word fu ("福", sometimes transliterated foo), which can mean happiness.
The use of foo in a programming context is generally credited to the Tech Model Railroad Club (TMRC) of MIT from circa 1960. However, the precise relationship of these terms is not known with certainty, and several anecdotal theories have been advanced to identify them.
The first known use of the terms in print in a programming context appears in a 1965 edition of MIT's Tech Engineering News. Foobar may have come about as a result of the pre-existing "Foo" being conjoined with "bar" an addition borrowed from the military's FUBAR.
The Online Etymology Dictionary doesn't have anything outside of the obvious. Huh, apparently prayer wheels are involved:
…An entry in the 1959 Dictionary of the TMRC Language went something like this: "FOO: The first syllable of the misquoted sacred chant phrase 'foo mane padme hum.'
The correct chant is Oṃ maṇi padme hūṃ [wikipedia.org]. (Om, of course, being the innate sound of creation, at least if you're in India or have a habit of meditating while seated on a lotus flower.)
As far as Bowdlerization:
Expurgation is a form of censorship which involves purging anything deemed noxious or offensive, usually from an artistic work.
Bowdlerization is a pejorative term for the practice, particularly the expurgation of lewd material from books. The term derives from Thomas Bowdler's 1818 edition of William Shakespeare's plays, which he reworked in order to make them more suitable, in his opinion, for women and children. He similarly edited Edward Gibbon's Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire.
A fig-leaf edition is such a bowdlerized text, deriving from the practice of covering the genitals of nudes in classical and Renaissance statues and paintings with fig leaves.
Now we know the rest… of the story?
(Score: 2) by tangomargarine on Friday September 23 2016, @03:34PM
See also the Jargon File entry. [catb.org]
Now if you'll excuse me I'll get back to frobbing my Molly guards.
"Is that really true?" "I just spent the last hour telling you to think for yourself! Didn't you hear anything I said?"
(Score: 1) by kurenai.tsubasa on Friday September 23 2016, @10:01PM
Damn, I've been defeated!