Posts by Asok Asus 88 publicly visible posts • joined 6 Feb 2013
'Hong Kong's first approved virtual asset manager, will "lead in structuring the tokenization of the intellectual property and also develop tokenized instruments for accredited investors, drawing on its expertise as a licensed virtual asset manager. This will enable compliant capital raising for the ongoing research, recovery, preservation, exhibition, and licensing of RMST's assets." '
ROTFLOL!
but hey, with THAT many buzzwords strung together, it's GOT to be legit, right?
Why is TT punishing the rest of us by stopping ALL state filing because of some fraudsters they've noticed? It's the job of the IRS to deal with fraudsters, not TT (unless TT itself is somehow responsible for the fraud).
BTW, I'M SO glad I took H&R Block up on their offer for free H&R Deluxe for POed customers of TT Deluxe that Intuit secretly gutted this year! H&R Block Deluxe installs faster (without ANY permanent updater/anti-piracy background services clogging up my PC forever like TT does), runs faster, has a cleaner, less cluttered interface, less BS up-selling popups, and in general is less annoying than TT. PLUS it comes with FIVE free Federal e-files compared to the gutted TT Deluxe which has only one free Fed e-file. I'm going to take my unopened TT Deluxe back to Costco and get my fifty bucks back and NEVER going back to TT!
I've had Windows Updates disabled entirely on all of my clients' PCs since GWX started showing up. A couple of times a year, I un-disable it and see what shows up and maybe allow a few to install. After October 2016, they'll all be permanently disabled .
Nothing actually really protects windows anyway other than requiring users to use limited user accounts and using software restriction policies to limit those users to executables that reside only in C:\Windows and the Program Files directories.
Touch UI failed on W8, Voice UI failed on W10, so hey, if you're Microsoft, why not go for the ultimate failed UI: the 3D holographic UI!
The OS is not supposed to BE the application, it's job is RUN the application and stay the hell out of the way otherwise. That's what nearly 100% of enterprise users, government users, small and medium business users, and home business users want.
Microsoft has run so far off the rails, they'll never get back on the tracks:
https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/1/19/Train_wreck_at_Montparnasse_1895.jpg
"we recognize that, in some instances, customers have a few systems that require longer deployment timeframes.”
Yeah, just a "few systems", right Microsoft, say like maybe a couple of dozen? Which is why you graciously agreed to support W7 & W8 on modern processors for several more years, you know, because of just a "few systems"?
bullshit. The PC OEMs MADE you do this because their enterprise, government, and SMB customers told them that they were going to stop buying hundreds of millions of PCs if they couldn't continue to buy W7 & W8, because the enterprise and SMB are simply not going to operate their trillions of dollars of operations with a cell-phone operating system optimized for cell-phone apps, cell-phone apps that don't even exist in the Windows world and never will anyway.
"I just can't fathom MS's current strategy, unless they secretly WANT everyone to abandon their operating system. I stand in amazement at their strategy - it strikes me as insane. They seem to be doing everything in their power to alienate their users short of having the start-up screen for Windows say "Fuck YOU, Windows Luser! Switch to Mac or Linux, you Moron!" I'm just wondering what new anti-customer strategy they will adopt next."
That's exactly how I've thought about it. It really does make no sense to me what they are doing, unless they are deliberately trying to drive away their customers.
Windows 10 is such a not mess, with so many ridiculous and new problems that keep accumulating version after major version, it's not worth my effort to keep up on how to fix all of them. I just tell people to either buy a W7 x64 Pro PC or go elsewhere to fix their problems.
At least W8.x hasn't made the full transition to a cell phone operating system under the hood, and with Classic Shell and a few other tweaks, can mostly be made to behave like W7. I'm old enough and financially secure enough, that by the time the last W8.x systems have been retired, I'll be pretty much retired from the PC support biz myself.
GWX Control Panel ( http://ultimateoutsider.com/downloads ) does some good things, but it hasn't kept up with the full list of KB updates that ought to be removed beyond just KB3035583, namely:
KB3035583
KB3022345
KB3068708
KB3075249
KB3080149
KB2990214
KB3044374
KB2952664
KB2976978
KB3021917
KB3112336
KB3112343
KB3083711
KB3083710
KB3123862
KB3012973
KB3146449
KB3139929
So I've made some easy-to-use tools to help put an end to this coerced Windows 10 installation nonsense. They can be downloaded from here and then unzipped:
https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B_hrA7ihzIPlVXpRUnJyc1AyNkU/view?usp=sharing
The three included tools uninstall the Windows 10 nagware and the Microsoft "telemetry" (spyware) "updates" from Windows 7 and Windows 8.x Operating Systems if they are installed, prevent the updates from being reinstalled, and remove the Windows 10 installer folder $WINDOWS.~BT if it is present.
These tools must be run from an account with Administrative privilege, which is the case (unfortunately) for most accounts. They can also be run from a non-Administrator account by right-clicking them and then left-clicking on "Run as Administrator".
The tools are most effective when run in the following order:
1. Run PreventW10InstallationUAC.exe to set Microsoft Update to "manual only" mode and modify a couple of registry variables that tell the OS to never allow a newer OS to be installed. This tool will run quickly unless you accept the optional request (recommended) to make a System Restore Point before the tool makes it changes, in which case the Restore Point will take a while to make.
Note that after this procedure finishes, no more Microsoft updates will be applied unless you manually request a check for updates and then decide which updates to accept, though making such decisions requires knowledge that the average user usually does not possess. However, for mature operating systems I personally believe that blindly accepting Microsoft updates at this juncture has more downsides than upsides.
(If you DO want to attempt to manually check for updates, you'll first have to change the Windows Update setting from "Never Check for Updates" to "Check for updates but let me choose whether to download and install them" before you click the "Check for updates" button.)
2. Run RemoveW10NagwareTool.exe to remove a set of Microsoft updates that relate to Windows 10 nagware ("white flag") popup, Microsoft spyware, and the Windows 10 installer itself if any of them have been installed. Detection and uninstallation can take a few minutes to complete.
If any of this set of updates is found, you'll need to reboot the system.
It might also be necessary to run this tool again after rebooting if the nagware update had previously been slated to be installed AGAIN, in which case after rebooting, you'll STILL see the Windows 10 ("white flag") nag. If that's the case, just run this tool again and reboot again, and then run PreventW10InstallationUAC.exe again.
3. Finally, after you're sure the Windows 10 nagware has been removed, run RemoveW10Folder.exe to detect and remove the Windows 10 install folder if it is found.
GWX Control Panel ( http://ultimateoutsider.com/downloads ) does some good things, but it hasn't kept up with the full list of KB updates that ought to be removed beyond just KB3035583, namely:
KB3035583
KB3022345
KB3068708
KB3075249
KB3080149
KB2990214
KB3044374
KB2952664
KB2976978
KB3021917
KB3112336
KB3112343
KB3083711
KB3083710
KB3123862
KB3012973
KB3146449
KB3139929
So I've made some easy-to-use tools to help put an end to this coerced Windows 10 installation nonsense. They can be downloaded from here and then unzipped:
https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B_hrA7ihzIPlVXpRUnJyc1AyNkU/view?usp=sharing
The three included tools uninstall the Windows 10 nagware and the Microsoft "telemetry" (spyware) "updates" from Windows 7 and Windows 8.x Operating Systems if they are installed, prevent the updates from being reinstalled, and remove the Windows 10 installer folder $WINDOWS.~BT if it is present.
These tools must be run from an account with Administrative privilege, which is the case (unfortunately) for most accounts. They can also be run from a non-Administrator account by right-clicking them and then left-clicking on "Run as Administrator".
The tools are most effective when run in the following order:
1. Run PreventW10InstallationUAC.exe to set Microsoft Update to "manual only" mode and modify a couple of registry variables that tell the OS to never allow a newer OS to be installed. This tool will run quickly unless you accept the optional request (recommended) to make a System Restore Point before the tool makes it changes, in which case the Restore Point will take a while to make.
Note that after this procedure finishes, no more Microsoft updates will be applied unless you manually request a check for updates and then decide which updates to accept, though making such decisions requires knowledge that the average user usually does not possess. However, for mature operating systems I personally believe that blindly accepting Microsoft updates at this juncture has more downsides than upsides.
(If you DO want to attempt to manually check for updates, you'll first have to change the Windows Update setting from "Never Check for Updates" to "Check for updates but let me choose whether to download and install them" before you click the "Check for updates" button.)
2. Run RemoveW10NagwareTool.exe to remove a set of Microsoft updates that relate to Windows 10 nagware ("white flag") popup, Microsoft spyware, and the Windows 10 installer itself if any of them have been installed. Detection and uninstallation can take a few minutes to complete.
If any of this set of updates is found, you'll need to reboot the system.
It might also be necessary to run this tool again after rebooting if the nagware update had previously been slated to be installed AGAIN, in which case after rebooting, you'll STILL see the Windows 10 ("white flag") nag. If that's the case, just run this tool again and reboot again, and then run PreventW10InstallationUAC.exe again.
3. Finally, after you're sure the Windows 10 nagware has been removed, run RemoveW10Folder.exe to detect and remove the Windows 10 install folder if it is found.
I've made some tools to help put an end to this coerced Windows 10 installation nonsense. They can be downloaded from here:
https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B_hrA7ihzIPlVXpRUnJyc1AyNkU/view?usp=sharing
The three included tools uninstall the Windows 10 nagware and the Microsoft "telemetry" (spyware) "updates" from Windows 7 and Windows 8.x Operating Systems if they are installed, prevent the updates from being reinstalled, and remove the Windows 10 installer folder $WINDOWS.~BT if it is present.
These tools must be run from an account with Administrative privilege, which is the case (unfortunately) for most accounts. They can also be run from a non-Administrator account by right-clicking them and then left-clicking on "Run as Administrator".
The tools are most effective when run in the following order:
1. Run PreventW10InstallationUAC.exe to set Microsoft Update to "manual only" mode and modify a couple of registry variables that tell the OS to never allow a newer OS to be installed. This tool will run quickly unless you accept the optional request (recommended) to make a System Restore Point before the tool makes it changes, in which case the Restore Point will take a while to make.
Note that after this procedure finishes, no more Microsoft updates will be applied unless you manually request a check for updates and then decide which updates to accept, though making such decisions requires knowledge that the average user usually does not possess. However, for mature operating systems I personally believe that blindly accepting Microsoft updates at this juncture has more downsides than upsides.
(If you DO want to attempt to manually check for updates, you'll first have to change the Windows Update setting from "Never Check for Updates" to "Check for updates but let me choose whether to download and install them" before you click the "Check for updates" button.)
2. Run RemoveW10NagwareTool.exe to remove a set of Microsoft updates that relate to Windows 10 nagware ("white flag") popup, Microsoft spyware, and the Windows 10 installer itself if any of them have been installed. Detection and uninstallation can take a few minutes to complete.
If any of this set of updates is found, you'll need to reboot the system.
It might also be necessary to run this tool again after rebooting if the nagware update had previously been slated to be installed AGAIN, in which case after rebooting, you'll STILL see the Windows 10 ("white flag") nag. If that's the case, just run this tool again and reboot again, and then run PreventW10InstallationUAC.exe again.
3. Finally, after you're sure the Windows 10 nagware has been removed, run RemoveW10Folder.exe to detect and remove the Windows 10 install folder if it is found.
I've made some tools to help put an end to this coerced Windows 10 installation nonsense. They can be downloaded from here:
https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B_hrA7ihzIPlVXpRUnJyc1AyNkU/view
The three included tools uninstall the Windows 10 nagware and the Microsoft "telemetry" (spyware) "updates" from Windows 7 and Windows 8.x Operating Systems if they are installed, prevent the updates from being reinstalled, and remove the Windows 10 installer folder $WINDOWS.~BT if it is present.
These tools must be run from an account with Administrative privilege, which is the case (unfortunately) for most accounts. They can also be run from a non-Administrator account by right-clicking them and then left-clicking on "Run as Administrator".
The tools are most effective when run in the following order:
1. Run PreventW10InstallationUAC.exe to set Microsoft Update to "manual only" mode and modify a couple of registry variables that tell the OS to never allow a newer OS to be installed. This tool will run quickly unless you accept the optional request (recommended) to make a System Restore Point before the tool makes it changes, in which case the Restore Point will take a while to make.
Note that after this procedure finishes, no more Microsoft updates will be applied unless you manually request a check for updates and then decide which updates to accept, though making such decisions requires knowledge that the average user usually does not possess. However, for mature operating systems I personally believe that blindly accepting Microsoft updates at this juncture has more downsides than upsides.
(If you DO want to attempt to manually check for updates, you'll first have to change the Windows Update setting from "Never Check for Updates" to "Check for updates but let me choose whether to download and install them" before you click the "Check for updates" button.)
2. Run RemoveW10NagwareTool.exe to remove a set of Microsoft updates that relate to Windows 10 nagware ("white flag") popup, Microsoft spyware, and the Windows 10 installer itself if any of them have been installed. Detection and uninstallation can take a few minutes to complete.
If any of this set of updates is found, you'll need to reboot the system.
It might also be necessary to run this tool again after rebooting if the nagware update had previously been slated to be installed AGAIN, in which case after rebooting, you'll STILL see the Windows 10 ("white flag") nag. If that's the case, just run this tool again and reboot again, and then run PreventW10InstallationUAC.exe again.
3. Finally, after you're sure the Windows 10 nagware has been removed, run RemoveW10Folder.exe to detect and remove the Windows 10 install folder if it is found.
I've made some tools to help put an end to this coerced Windows 10 installation nonsense. They can be downloaded from here:
https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B_hrA7ihzIPlVXpRUnJyc1AyNkU/view
The three included tools uninstall the Windows 10 nagware and the Microsoft "telemetry" (spyware) "updates" from Windows 7 and Windows 8.x Operating Systems if they are installed, prevent the updates from being reinstalled, and remove the Windows 10 installer folder $WINDOWS.~BT if it is present.
These tools must be run from an account with Administrative privilege, which is the case (unfortunately) for most accounts. They can also be run from a non-Administrator account by right-clicking them and then left-clicking on "Run as Administrator".
The tools are most effective when run in the following order:
1. Run PreventW10InstallationUAC.exe to set Microsoft Update to "manual only" mode and modify a couple of registry variables that tell the OS to never allow a newer OS to be installed. This tool will run quickly unless you accept the optional request (recommended) to make a System Restore Point before the tool makes it changes, in which case the Restore Point will take a while to make.
Note that after this procedure finishes, no more Microsoft updates will be applied unless you manually request a check for updates and then decide which updates to accept, though making such decisions requires knowledge that the average user usually does not possess. However, for mature operating systems I personally believe that blindly accepting Microsoft updates at this juncture has more downsides than upsides.
(If you DO want to attempt to manually check for updates, you'll first have to change the Windows Update setting from "Never Check for Updates" to "Check for updates but let me choose whether to download and install them" before you click the "Check for updates" button.)
2. Run RemoveW10NagwareTool.exe to remove a set of Microsoft updates that relate to Windows 10 nagware ("white flag") popup, Microsoft spyware, and the Windows 10 installer itself if any of them have been installed. Detection and uninstallation can take a few minutes to complete.
If any of this set of updates is found, you'll need to reboot the system.
It might also be necessary to run this tool again after rebooting if the nagware update had previously been slated to be installed AGAIN, in which case after rebooting, you'll STILL see the Windows 10 ("white flag") nag. If that's the case, just run this tool again and reboot again, and then run PreventW10InstallationUAC.exe again.
3. Finally, after you're sure the Windows 10 nagware has been removed, run RemoveW10Folder.exe to detect and remove the Windows 10 install folder if it is found.
KB3035583 just showed up AGAIN on a plethora of my client's systems a few days ago after I had already removed it, unchecked it and hid it weeks earlier.
And doing this is the most outrageous and evil thing Microsoft has done in its history, namely re-releasing KB3035583 after I've had dozens of clients pay me to remove it and their other spyware (telemetry) updates.
Furthermore, it appears that the update option, "check for updates but let me choose whether to download and install them", has somehow been ignored with one of these re-released updates as I've found systems magically reset to "Install Updates Automatically", even on systems where the users don't even know how to access an administrator account.
Two days ago I found KB3035583 installed AGAIN on several systems I support and had to uninstall it AGAIN. I then had Update find it again, unchecked it and hid it, and lo and behold, the Windows 10 installer itself was STILL pending as the only available update! Looking at "view other updates", I found the Windows 10 installer itself included, and then unchecked and hid it, and that actually BROKE Microsoft updates! After I did the above, update would immediately fail with an error (I think 0x80240019: "WU_E_EXCLUSIVE_INSTALL_CONFLICT An exclusive update cannot be installed with other updates at the same time").
This happened on ALL the systems at one business I support!
Fortunately I had encountered this problem before when I had had to roll back to W8.1 from W10 for a client who was tricked into installing W10, so I knew what to do, namely apply the following .reg hack (it will solve the problem on both W10 and W8):
Windows Registry Editor Version 5.00
[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\WindowsUpdate\OSUpgrade]
"AllowOSUpgrade"=dword:00000000
[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\WindowsUpdate\OSUpgrade\State]
"OSUpgradeState"=dword:00000001
[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Policies\Microsoft\Windows\WindowsUpdate]
"DisableOSUpgrade"=dword:00000001
[Note: copy the above in a file with .reg type, and execute the reg file by right-clicking and selecting "Merge".]
This reg hack can be applied at any time when removing, unchecking and hiding KB3035583 and the Windows 10 installer update itself, but the simplest way to use the reg hack is to first uninstall KB3035583, and then apply the above reg hack BEFORE rebooting, namely first use:
wusa /uninstall /kb:3035583 /norestart /quiet
wusa /uninstall /kb:2952664 /norestart /quiet
then apply the .reg reghack, and then reboot. I've found that if the reg hack is applied that way, the Windows 10 update installer itself will not come back, though you still have to recheck for updates after the boot, to find KB3035583 AGAIN and then uncheck and hide it.
Note KB2952664 comes back too, and if you want to make sure you've removed ALL the telemetry put the following in a .bat file:
@echo on
wusa /uninstall /kb:3035583 /norestart /quiet
wusa /uninstall /kb:3022345 /norestart /quiet
wusa /uninstall /kb:3068708 /norestart /quiet
wusa /uninstall /kb:3075249 /norestart /quiet
wusa /uninstall /kb:3080149 /norestart /quiet
wusa /uninstall /kb:2990214 /norestart /quiet
wusa /uninstall /kb:3012973 /norestart /quiet
wusa /uninstall /kb:2952664 /norestart /quiet
wusa /uninstall /kb:2976978 /norestart /quiet
pause
and run the above batch file, THEN do the .reg hack, and then reboot, and as I said before, you will then have to have update check for new updates, find KB3035583 and KB2952664 and uncheck and hide them.
At this point in the game, because of what Microsoft is doing to my clients with their outrageous, repeated attempts to force W10 onto my client's computers and thereby completely wreck their businesses if they succeed, my only choice is to turn automatic updates off altogether with "Never check for updates" and manually check once or twice a year and see if there's anything worth allowing to install.
CLEARLY these heretics, uh, I mean dissenting "scientists", uh I mean flat earthers, uh I mean denialists, are tools of the oil industry or something. The THEORY of global warming has been PROVEN beyond any possibility of being wrong, so anyone who THINKS they've found contradicting data are either totally insane or simply criminals owned by the oil-industry who should be put in prison for the rest of their lives.
A class action lawsuit needs to be filed against MS for this: 7-10GB can wreck a lot of lower end systems. Plus, MS has made it nearly impossible for the average user to delete this folder. Almost the only way it can be deleted is with cleanmgr using the System Files option.
"I think it's windows downloading win10 without permission"
It was. I've found that was downloaded without permission on every PC where KB3035583 was left installed. The folder is C:\$Windows.~BT and can take up to 1GB. Only easy way to remove it is with cleanmgr using the Clean up system files option after the first scan has finished.
to nuke all of this crap on W7:
from an admin account, select Programs and Features from control panel, select View Installed Updates from the left, wait until that finishes finding all the updates (could be a few minutes), then use the search box to search for each of:
KB3035583
KB3022345
KB3068708
KB3075249
KB3080149
find one at a time, and if found (not all will necessarily be there), right click and uninstall each one in turn.
check Change Settings on the left in Windows Update selected from Control Panel and make sure Install Updates Automatically IS NOT selected.
when all are uninstalled, reboot, which btw way can take hours sometimes after these are uninstalled (i have no idea what that BS is about; retribution by MS?).
after the reboot, go back to control panel, select Windows Update, then Check for Updates. Find all the ones you just deleted, uncheck them, right click and select Hide Update, or otherwise they will come back.
Also, check to see if C:\$Windows.~BT exists, which is the Windows 10 installer. If so, it can be wasting up to 12GB, so nuke it with cleanmgr started from a cmd window. once cleanmgr finishes its initial (very lengthy) scan, you should select Clean up system files, which will do another very lengthy scan, then check the box for that folder and select OK to nuke it.
"I wonder what will happen if a Windows-killing bug appears and Microsoft stubbornly does a WONTFIX, placing you between Scylla and Charybdis."
More sales for Mac PCs for those who have to have a PC and more sales of iOS and Android for those who realize all they were doing on a PC in the first place was accessing the web and reading email.
"and actually create a customer-driven company that creates products people care about.
It's already quite clear that Microsoft has not changed a single whit towards being a "customer-driven" company since Nadella took over. Just look at the fact that Windows 10 is nothing more than Windows 8 with a coat of paint slapped on, namely Windows 10 is really just Windows 8.10. Of all the many "wonderful" things added to W8.10, from Cortana to the Edge Browser (which is nothing more than a dumbed-down browser than run runs in an "app" window", there's essentially nothing of any interest to any business of any size who's running Windows 7 as a mission critical PC operating system. EVERYTHING in Windows 8.10 is simply stuff Microsoft THINKS is critical for Microsoft's strategies, and is pretty much unrelated to the needs of PC users.
Windows 10 is little more than Windows 8.10, and the primary purpose of Windows 8.10 has almost nothing to do with the needs of actual PC users, but again, just like Windows 8.x, is all about what Microsoft wants in an OS, which appears (once again) to be oriented towards mobile, a market Microsoft lost years ago and will never gain back, given that their current worldwide smartphone share is less than 3% and shrinking.
Just as with Windows 8.x, almost no enterprise, SMB, government or industrial users will abandon Windows 7, many of whom just converted from Windows XP.
And just like Windows 8.x, mostly it will be hapless consumers who buy their PCs at retail stores like Best Buy who will be stuck with Windows 8.10. That is, those few consumer Windows PC users who haven't already permanently fled Microsoft because of Windows 8.x.
No one in industry, manufacturing, government, military, business, or the enterprise will care one whit about Windows 10 unless it's a more productive operating system for the vast majority of their PC users.
That really will be the sole metric of the success of Windows 10: is it compatible with the hundreds of millions of current PC applications and users, and is it substantially more productive than Windows 7? If not, then there's no business case for "upgrading" from Windows 7 as there will be no positive return on investment.
PC productivity should have been Microsoft's primary focus for Windows 10. However, Microsoft has persisted in making an operating system that meets Microsoft's needs and not the needs of its industrial and business users. As a consequence, Windows 10 will be another flop like Windows 8, and never before has Microsoft had two major OS flops in a row. Now that Microsoft has all but lost the war for mobile, they can't afford to lose their one remaining monopoly.
The bottom line is that Microsoft is facing a headwind of skepticism (and alternatives) like never before in their history of introducing new operating systems, and I wonder if they know that Windows 10 is not just another OS to be introduced to a naive and adoring audience with their typically lame publicity barrage, but may be in fact be the last OS they ever introduce that anyone will actually give a hoot about if turns out to be as bad a bomb as Windows 8.xxx.
Microsoft's top task should be maintaining it's near-monopoly on the desktop in the enterprise world, and windows 10 is no more capable of doing that than windows 8 was. Microsoft's exclusive focus with W10 has been on mobile, a war it already lost nearly a decade ago when it didn't even know it was in a battle.
Therefore there is no compelling reason to change from W7 TO W10 on PCs, and W10 won't significantly advance Microsoft's currently 3% and shrinking worldwide smartphone market share.
I’m just now converting the majority of my business clients from XP to W7. I’ll keep them on W7 if/until MS produces something that is compatible with the hundreds of millions of current PC applications and user interfaces, and is substantially more productive for their users than Windows 7. Should that case not arise from MS, then there’s no business case for “upgrading” from Windows 7, even if it is "free", as there will be no positive investment return from the costs of the change.
And based on working extensively with W10 TP releases, I can tell you W10 is NOT better than W7. W10 is nothing but a gussied up W8.x with nothing new in it that’s needed on enterprise or SMB PCs. There’s nothing new in W10 that’s not being put there solely to foster MS’s vain hope of growing their currently shrinking 3% worldwide smartphone market share. Cortana, Spartan, APIs for universal device applications, slightly improved (but still bereft) MS App Store, integrated MS cloud, integrated MS Bing, and all the rest are things for cell phones and/or things MS wants to try to trick people into paying extra money for. And not a single one of these things is truly useful for enterprise and SMB PCs.
Fundamentally, W10 is what Microsoft management is selling to its ignorant board of directors as the great mobile savior that will make Microsoft relevant in mobile. The problem is that Microsoft will never be relevant in mobile. That war was fought and lost years ago before Microsoft even understood they were in a battle, much less in a war for survival. W10's sole purpose is really to keep the post-Ballmerites in their jobs for the few years that it will take the board to realize that the post-Ballmerites are equally as clueless and impotent as the recently departed Ballmerites.
Before it was released to the public, I predicted W8.x was going to be a massive disaster for both Microsoft and the entire PC industry, and I predict that W10 will be little better. W10 is going to be almost as big a bomb on the PC for MS as was W8.x.
The only way any OS Windows will ever be even close to secure is if Microsoft quits automatically giving superuser privilege to ALL user accounts by default, and instead make all new installation instances of Windows OS default to having an Admin account with superuser privilege and one or more limited-privilege accounts for the user(s) to do their daily work.
In addition, by default, NO .exe or .dll or other binary program should be executable in the context of any limited-privilege account, meaning that all binary software MUST first be installed from a superuser account for the system to use as a whole. It will also most likely be necessary to prevent even non-binary programs from running in the user-context without explicitly granting them permission.
That would solve about 99.999% of the malware problems and until that is done everything else is just adding additional ineffective security band-aids on top of a whole pile of other, older, ineffective security band-aids.
Furthermore, my experience with those piles of security band-aids is that malware finds a way around them every time, and then those "security" band-aids turn into major impediments for removing the malware. In other words, the security measures don't block the malware, but does block the sys admin efforts.
Microsoft is crumbling. They’ve apparently lost or destroyed their core competency. This is the umpteenth time they’ve had to pull a major patch that blue-screened Microsoft systems during the last 12 months. And Microsoft is truly doomed when it reaches this point of complexity in trying to get customers to manually perform excruciatingly difficult back-fixes to update problems of its own creation.
Microsoft must truly be collapsing internally at a rapid pace, given their recent horrific software and device missteps, management turmoil, repeated destruction of customer systems by multiple mortal updates, etc. It really makes you wonder why the company is so hollowed out: excruciatingly bad management, dysfunctional legacy corporate culture, affirmative action, employee graduated from government schools that have stealthily promoted Fabian socialism, offshore labor, all of the above, etc.???
Oh goody! ANOTHER FF release already! That's just EXACTLY what I and the rest of FF users have been clamoring for!
Sick of all the FF bloat, sluggishness, unwarranted UI changes, bazillion releases that break everything, and arrogant developers?
I’ve just been FED UP with FF because of the horrific memory leaks, sluggishness, constant pointless UI changes, arrogance of online "help", etc. I've been running v16 forever because whenever I’ve tried to upgrade to newer versions, they’d all pretty much just crash after 30 minutes of heavy use, and not a single version of FF that I’ve ever used has ever fixed the memory leak problems. Not a single one.
I actually installed a tiny batch file on quicklaunch so I could quickly kill FF at the point it’s consumed all of my RAM so I could then start over with “Restore Session” to automatically reload all of my previous tabs. After trying every “solution” to the leak problem, that’s the only one that ever did in any good for me. Apparently the arrogant tards at mozilla would rather tweak the UI to death rather than make a browser that actually works. They’re worse than even Microsoft because Microsoft has to listen to their customers sooner or later or go broke. Nonprofits can just drift along forever.
At any rate, I just finished installing PM, including importing everything from FF with their little importer program, and everything went flawlessly, including all settings and the plethora of add-ons I use. The only difficulty was getting roboform attached, which I can’t live without. I did finally dumb around and got the roboform taskbar program to attach roboform to PM, which then worked flawlessly. It is, however, necessary for the roboform taskbar program to run all the time for roboform to continue to work on PM, but this is a very small price to pay to ditch FF forever.
I've used PM for several months now, opening/closing/keeping hundreds of tabs a day, and I’ve been stunned at how much faster PM is than FF, as well as the VERY small memory footprint occupied by PM vs FF. Even after a week's HEAVY usage, PM has not grown beyond 1 GB, and even better, when I close tabs, ALL of the RAM is given back.
Basically, PM is what FF ought to be. Even better, the genius behind Pale Moon, Mark Straver, has committed to keeping the PM UI fundamentally unmolested. I’ll be installing PM instead of FF on all of my client’s computers in the future as well!
(BTW, ALL of the "recommended fixes" for the firefox memory leak problems are a sick joke. Not one of them works. And plugins DO NOT cause the memory leaks! Firefox does! How do I know? Because I switched to Pale Moon, importing everything EXACTLY like it was in Firefox and guess what? No memory leaks in Pale Moon! Oh, and I use Adblock Plus, Flash, Java, DoNotTrackMe, BetterPrivacy CookieCuller, DownloadHelper, Element Hiding Helper, IE View, ViewAbout, Visited, and roboform. So NONE of those is causing the firefox memory leak problems!)
Give Pale Moon a try: it's a fork of Firefox 24 that is everything that Firefox ought to be, but isn't!
I’ve just been FED UP with FF because of the horrific memory leaks, sluggishness, constant pointless UI changes, arrogance of online "help", etc. I've been running v16 forever because whenever I’ve tried to upgrade to newer versions, they’d all pretty much just crash after 30 minutes of heavy use, and not a single version of FF that I’ve ever used has ever fixed the memory leak problems. Not a single one.
I actually installed a tiny batch file on quicklaunch so I could quickly kill FF at the point it’s consumed all of my RAM so I could then start over with “Restore Session” to automatically reload all of my previous tabs. After trying every “solution” to the leak problem, that’s the only one that ever did in any good for me. Apparently the arrogant tards at mozilla would rather tweak the UI to death rather than make a browser that actually works. They’re worse than even Microsoft because Microsoft has to listen to their customers sooner or later or go broke. Nonprofits can just drift along forever.
At any rate, I just finished installing PM, including importing everything from FF with their little importer program, and everything went flawlessly, including all settings and the plethora of add-ons I use. The only difficulty was getting roboform attached, which I can’t live without. I did finally dumb around and got the roboform taskbar program to attach roboform to PM, which then worked flawlessly. It is, however, necessary for the roboform taskbar program to run all the time for roboform to continue to work on PM, but this is a very small price to pay to ditch FF forever.
I've used PM for several months now, opening/closing/keeping hundreds of tabs a day, and I’ve been stunned at how much faster PM is than FF, as well as the VERY small memory footprint occupied by PM vs FF. Even after a week's HEAVY usage, PM has not grown beyond 1 GB, and even better, when I close tabs, ALL of the RAM is given back.
Basically, PM is what FF ought to be. Even better, the genius behind Pale Moon, Mark Straver, has committed to keeping the PM UI fundamentally unmolested. I’ll be installing PM instead of FF on all of my client’s computers in the future as well!
(BTW, ALL of the "recommended fixes" for the firefox memory leak problems are a sick joke. Not one of them works. And plugins DO NOT cause the memory leaks! Firefox does! How do I know? Because I switched to Pale Moon, importing everything EXACTLY like it was in Firefox and guess what? No memory leaks in Pale Moon! Oh, and I use Adblock Plus, Flash, Java, DoNotTrackMe, BetterPrivacy CookieCuller, DownloadHelper, Element Hiding Helper, IE View, ViewAbout, Visited, and roboform. So NONE of those is causing the firefox memory leak problems!)
Microsoft is in trash mode big time right now: Windows 8 to Windows 8.1 (with a different version number yet, actually meaning a different operating system), then "Update 1", and then Update 2, all in a period of a year, and using new terminology for what an update is, using multiple different methods for updating, and with some VERY important updates NOT being delivered by WSUS, and all in a period of a year. And soon there will be Windows 9. Three operating system versions and two major "updates" in two years means FIVE different platform variations in TWO years, and no real improvement in terms of corporate productively, in fact, productivity has regressed for any enterprise foolish enough to embrace Windows 8 on the PC. Oh, yeah, and I'm not even counting Windows RT and its variations.
This unnecessary upheaval is causing both the enterprise and software developers to be going out of their minds. Thus Microsoft is busily obliterating their two big monopolistic advantages: stability and application ubiquity. Software developers are fleeing Microsoft in droves to develop for iOS and Android instead, and the enterprise will soon be fleeing the instability of Windows as much as possible, probably to a combination of Android, iOS and Linux.
Good heavens, it's amazing to see such a megalithic monopoly self-destruct so rapidly and so completely. Heck, it took IBM almost 10 years to sink this badly before they arose from their own ashes.
How is it considered "desktop friendly" when the "restored" Start Menu is nothing but a reformatted version of the universally loathed Metro UI Start Menu? Microsoft is completely insane. Their first attempt at "restoring" the start menu was just a button that took you back to the dreadful Metro UI. Now the second attempt is just a miniature version of Metro UI. I wonder who they think they are kidding? Certainly not their bread and butter enterprise and SMB customers. If anything, these pretend-restorations just continue to demonstrate the utter contempt that Microsoft has for their rapidly fleeing customers.
I have some more "next big thing" ideas for Apple to add to the iWatch accessory line:
1. The iCuffLink.
2. The iSuspenders.
3. The iWingTipBrogans.
4. The iFedoraSnapBrimHat.
5. The iBuggyWhip.
6. The iRotaryTelephone.
7. The i33RPMVinylRecord.
8. The i8TrackTape.
9. The iTieTack.
10. The iBlackAndWhiteTV.
11. The iConsoleRadio.
12. The iCassetteTape.
Not a bad idea. Certainly they're no good as boat anchors because they don't weigh enough, and welding a bunch of 'em together for anchors isn't worth the cost of the welding.
The only problem I see with using them as leg adjusters is if they are too thick for a particular leg, but then I suppose a sledge hammer could be used to flatten 'em a bit thinner if necessary in such a case.
"But they forced touch on everyone to guarantee that touch would be better supported. If nobody used the metro UI then nobody would write for it, leaving WinRT totally isolated."
That's true. But RT has now completely failed in less than a year, almost everyone who was tricked into buying Windows 8 on a PC has figured out how to install Classic Shell or the like to bypass Metro UI and restore the Start Menu, AND Microsoft has REALLY pissed of their enterprise and SMB customers who are the lifeblood of their revenue stream, so their "strategy" to FORCE EVERYONE in the universe to a touch-based UI hasn't exactly worked out too well for Microsoft, now has it?
But then again that's one of Microsoft's biggest problems: trying to FORCE their customers into doing what Microsoft thinks is best for Microsoft, rather than LISTENING to their customers and providing products that are good for the needs of their customers. After all, you've never heard Ballmer say, "Listen, listen, listen." or "Customers, customers, customers." have you? There's a reason for that.
It's just those two.
My guess is that Dell will be out of the RT biz as soon as it can dump a bit more of its existing RT stock before it announces, "Guess what, all Dell RTs are now all orphans". That would leave just Microsoft, who is making noises about a Surface RT 2. But if they really proceed with that, they'll soon be writing down a bunch more of their RT "investment" again. Not too long afterwards, though, Microsoft will be forced to write down ALL of their RT "investment" anyway. Oh, and the fact that Microsoft would still proceed with a Surface RT 2 shows just how rotted out their management structure and decision-making capabilities really are.
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