Now lets hope...
It deletes the right nagware, and not something else. Because I can imagine it already: "Ok, so now that Win7/Win8 users can no longer upgrade to Windows 10 I guess they won't be needing that update option anymore either...".
Microsoft has quietly excised Windows 10 free upgrade offers from Windows 7 and 8, aka the GWX.exe. PCs running Windows 7 or 8.x and Windows Update will silently delete the nagware, thanks to a new update dubbed KB3184143. “This update removes the Get Windows 10 app and other software related to the Windows 10 free upgrade …
I find Microsoft's refusal to publish useful update information annoying and deeply suspcious. However for the rollup update patch they do give information behind the first link in the knowledgebase article.
September's rollup update (3185278) includes these updates:
"This update includes quality improvements. No new operating system features are being introduced in this update. Key changes include:Improved support for the Disk Cleanup tool to free up space by removing older Windows Updates after they are superseded by newer updates.
Improved compatibility of certain software applications.
Removed the Copy Protection option when ripping CDs in Windows Media Audio (WMA) format from Windows Media Player.
Addressed issue that causes mmc.exe to consume 100% of the CPU on one processor when trying to close the Exchange 2010 Exchange Management Console (EMC), after installing KB3125574.
Addressed issue that causes the Generic Commands (GC) to fail upon attempting to install KB2919469 or KB2970228 on a device that already has KB3125574 installed."
I prefer this to having 6 updates. Of course there might be 'more' updates included within the pack they aren't talking about...
> Removed the Copy Protection option when ripping CDs in Windows Media Audio (WMA) format from Windows Media Player.
The cynical side of me now assumes that the behaviour of Windows Media Player is now to rip with copy protection and the option to disable this behaviour has been removed?
Thanks to Microsoft's pushiness with Windows 10, the only machines facing the internet in my home and at the office now are all running Linux Mint with Pale Moon, Thunderbird and Libre Office. Only the design-room machines are still running Windows 7, and none of those are internet-facing any longer.
It's become our office pastime lately to open with impunity the malicious attachments on the spam emails we get, just for the fun of watching the Cryptolocker payload fall flat on its face trying to run on a Linux box...
No, we don't miss Windows in our office, not one bit!
"The humility always shines through whenever the penguins are posting!"
Hmm, you're either one of those poor souls who have been nagged to death by Micro$oft, or one of those souls languishing in a fruity walled garden environment that requires you to pay £1,000+ for a new computer ever 2 years.
Do you need a hug? x
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fruity walled garden environment that requires you to pay £1,000+ for a new computer ever 2 years.
Hmm. My last Mac cost considerably less than £1,000, and I've had it for nearly four years now, so I know that you can't be talking about Apple. The Mac I purchased before that did cost more than £1,000, but it's been running for nearly six years now. I am planning to buy some 'new' Macs, to replace Windows-infested systems. Some of them may cost over £1,000. Most will be less. Hint: look up 'Mac mini'. Indeed, look up 'refurbished Mac mini from PowerMax'. You'll notice machines which can run the finest version of OS X, Snow Leopard, from before Apple went bonkers and started to make everything flat and grey and iOSified, and for prices ranging from $160 to $450 or so. Hell, no, I'm not buying new, iOSified, systems, any more than I'm buying new, Win 10-infested, systems.
Memo to Tim Cook: Cookie, ol' fruit, if I want to use an iPad I'll bloody well buy an iPad. Keep the iOS crap on iPads and iPhones and leave the Macs alone. And have someone sit on Jonny Ive, he's got way out of control.
"just for the fun of watching the Cryptolocker payload fall flat on its face trying to run on a Linux box"
I would not laugh too hard in case they go cross platform. In any case if you really treat security as a priority then all of you obvious user-writeable areas (such as /tmp, /var/tmp and /home) should be mounted with at least the 'noexec' option to help defeat users accidentally double-clicking on something malicious. For that and other tips you could do worse than checking this out:
https://www.cesg.gov.uk/guidance/end-user-devices-security-guidance-ubuntu-1404-lts
"all of you obvious user-writeable areas (such as /tmp, /var/tmp and /home) should be mounted with at least the 'noexec' "
Already done. Full-disk encryption, noexec and admin application whitelisting are all in place. I'm still looking at what other measures can be taken so that link you provided is very helpful, thanks for that.
I'm sure that the goofing around with email attachments will stop once the novelty wears off. It's just that we in the office have spent so many years being paranoid about never opening attachments, never clicking on links in emails, constantly updating antivirus (and never being sure that said AV can even catch them all) and generally living in fear, that the safety and security of Linux feels strangely liberating. I've encouraged it because it eases the transition for the staff and and creates a sense of camaraderie and fun that helps them cope with the stresses of the changeover. In addition it helps me to locate and plug any potential security holes. But once things settle down properly be assured we'll be as vigilant to threats as we've always been.
@Paul Crawford
upvoted for truth and providing a useful link... I wouldn't recommend anyone baits the virus's on any production machine no matter how safe they think they are... especially not if you've not read and UNDERSTOOD all of the link Paul provided and this one, even if its a bit old...
https://www.maketecheasier.com/secure-newly-installed-ubuntu/
.... that I made the effort to get the Win 10 update early this year and the Anniversary Edition update last week.
Every time I plug that SSD in and boot from it, I'm reminded of why I switched to Linux three years ago. (If you haven't worked your way through the Win 10 Anniversary Edition update process then you haven't died.)
I didn't notice this patch in the September updates for my Windows 7 partition. Is this update out of band?
I did notice that the update to check compatibility with Windows 10 was still there though, so that still got 'hidden'. Thank god we're past all that nagging, at least for now.
On the BBC News website, they're reporting that Which? have condemned Windows 10: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-37431343
On my Windows 7 box KB3179930 - the rollup with the .NET stuff in it - has come up as an optional update, despite the description mentioning that it corrects security issues.
Whereas an update to correct time zone information in Novosibirsk is listed as important despite me being in the UK.
Go figure, I suppose.
Well, it is a lovely place. Great weather, lots of trees, wonderful fishing and hunting, and the people are quite nice (certainly much nicer than in Moscow). You should really drop by for a visit - and now, thanks to Microsoft, you won't miss your return flight on the way back home.
What's not to like?
"On the BBC News website, they're reporting that Which? have condemned Windows 10: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-37431343"
I liked the quote at the end: "On the whole, Windows 10 has been received well, and was a notable step up from the previous Windows 8, which did not go down well with many users." I'd call that damning with faint praise.
Several of my machines have got themselves into a state where the updater can't do anything, while fully using an entire CPU core. Fixing it is a dark art. It's hard to believe how badly they fuck up something so simple, the whole thing must be built on a mesh of bad kludges.
Right! I mean, this is MicroSoft we are talking about, the small software outfit run from Paul Allen's shed. It is not like they could afford, say 10,000 differently configured computers and a team of 100 people to test installation on all of them.
Ironically the standard fix for this issue is to install an update...
You can manually download the individual update from MS however.
Tip: temporarily stop the windows update service before installing it or you have to compete with the locked up background update scanner.
http://superuser.com/questions/951960/windows-7-sp1-windows-update-stuck-checking-for-updates
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"none of my Linux machines have ever locked up when patching without so much as an error message."
Oh, mine did, regularly, on a kernel update. Granted, it promptly unlocked itself and continued booting without a hitch FOURTY minutes later, once it concluded I don't actually have a floppy drive connected, but to be fair I DID have to figure out first that I should just not touch the computer at all for almost an hour even though it positively looks dead as a doornail...
I mean, what could be easier than robustly updating 3 different operating systems on any PC configuration you can think of? Fucking Idiots!!!
You're right, it's really difficult… so difficult in fact that Debian have been doing it across 3 revisions simultaneously for i386, alpha, amd64, mips, mipsel, sparc, ppc, parisc, armel, armhf, m68k… most of those since the late 90s. i386 and amd64 being just as varied as you'd see on Windows including some that cannot run Windows (e.g. Cobalt Qube3/4). Gentoo have been supporting nearly as many, yours truly used to help out with their MIPS port.
Microsoft have been doing it for i386 and amd64. Pretty much all being descendants of the IBM PC compatible. Nowhere near as varied as what Debian supports. Historically they've supported MIPS, PowerPC, Alpha and a few others, but these days, i386 and amd64 are their main ports with some dabbling in ARM. They also have far more economic resources to throw at the problem, and they charge customers for their product.
So yes, I expect them to do better. Much better.
"I think the MS install base is a little larger than the Debian one, and also has less consumer users."
The scale effect might come into play with download speeds and to some extent the speed of checking for updates. But as Stuart said, the installed base is very diverse: from the Raspberry Pi upwards to larger server installations. I think we can reasonably conclude that scale wouldn't shake out many if any hidden quality problems. And having installed updates on both Windows and Linux I know from experience that the latter are still faster even if you disregard the download speeds.
I think the MS install base is a little larger than the Debian one, and also has less consumer users.
Yet Microsoft for all their experience in making it flawless, seem to achieve anything but. Windows Update is all but broken on a fresh out-of-the-box Windows 7 install, or any Windows 7 installation that has been left alone (not-updated) in months.
I'm sorry, but an out-of-the-box just-performed installation of Windows 7 from clean OEM media should JustWork, with regards to Windows Update. This has nothing to do with the number or skill of the users.
Get back to me in the year of the Linux desktop and we'll see whether they can maintain that under scale.
Yep, well we're still waiting for the Year of the Microsoft web server too.