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Microsoft Operating Systems Software Windows

Even In Remotest Africa, Windows 10 Nagware Ruins Your Day (theregister.co.uk) 224

Iain Thomson, writing for The Register: When you're stuck in the middle of the Central African Republic (CAR) trying to protect the wildlife from armed poachers and the Lord's Resistance Army, then life's pretty tough. And now Microsoft has made it tougher with Windows 10 upgrades. The Chinko Project manages roughly 17,600 square kilometres (6,795 square miles) of rainforest and savannah in the east of the CAR, near the border with South Sudan. Money is tight, and so is internet bandwidth. So the staff was more than a little displeased when one of the donated laptops the team uses began upgrading to Windows 10 automatically, pulling in gigabytes of data over a radio link. And it's not just bandwidth bills they have to worry about. "If a forced upgrade happened and crashed our PCs while in the middle of coordinating rangers under fire from armed militarized poachers, blood could literally be on Microsoft's hands," said one member of the team.This is not a one-off case. We're reading about similar incidents everyday. Automatic updates, accidental automatic update, and the humongous data that these updates eat are ruining user experience for many. These are real issues. It's been roughly a year since Windows 10 has been officially available to consumers, and Microsoft is yet to address the issue.
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Even In Remotest Africa, Windows 10 Nagware Ruins Your Day

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  • Come on.
    • Alanis Morrisette called this usage very ironic.

    • The word "literally" is often used figuratively. It's an oxymoron wrapped up into a single word. Kind of amusing when you think about it.

  • by Anonymous Coward

    Why won't somebody donate some consulting help for the people using inappropriate operating systems in life-critical conditions?

  • Boot to the head (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Lord_Rion ( 15642 ) on Saturday June 04, 2016 @11:42AM (#52248609)

    We keep hearing about this... it's clear that Microsoft doesn't care. I don't understand why people are so shocked by that concept.

    • by whoever57 ( 658626 ) on Saturday June 04, 2016 @12:42PM (#52248923) Journal

      it's clear that Microsoft doesn't care.

      It's not that Microsoft doesn't care. Microsoft cares. The software is working as designed. Microsoft would be upset if the software did not work in this fashion.

      Did you mean that Microsoft cares about its users? When has Microsoft ever done that?

      • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

        by hey! ( 33014 )

        Microsoft got where it is by selling, not to user, but to people who buy stuff that other people have to use.

        The only successful (to some measure) consumer product the've ever made is the XBox, and that's largely a matter of developing relationships with game studios. No user buys a Microsoft console because of the cool things Microsoft put on it; those are tolerated rather than embraced. People buy XBoxes to run games; they've largely been lukewarm at best to Microsoft's attempt to take charge of their

        • X-box was a panicked reaction to the burgeoning TiVo/set top surfing market. Who cares about a home PC when you can surf through your TV? Make it Direct X-based for easy (so to speak) cross-development. This had to work, unlike the myriad other "me too" projects they flopped at.

          As it turned out, it was the touch screen tablets that wrecked home PCs as a necessity, and their "me too" of that did indeed flop.

    • Microsoft doesn't care because the legal institutions that supposedly protect users from this kind of misuse of their computing hardware apparently don't care.

      I don't think I've heard a peep out of them on this. Not a single quote.

      • Microsoft doesn't care because the legal institutions that supposedly protect users from this kind of misuse of their computing hardware apparently don't care.

        No, sorry, it is not the responsibility of legal institutions to protect users from doing stupid things like relying on Microsoft. As long as users are too lazy and/or apathetic to take control of their own computing devices using the alternatives available then they will continue to suffer abuse and loss of productivity, and that is self-inflicted.

        Legal institutions are supposed to protect consumers from harm by trust-making activities by corporations, it's pretty hard to spin these abusive upgrade shenani

  • by Anonymous Coward on Saturday June 04, 2016 @11:42AM (#52248611)

    and a patient is dead as a result, then this issue will get noticed. Not until then.

    • Re: (Score:2, Insightful)

      by Anonymous Coward

      and a patient is dead as a result, then this issue will get noticed. Not until then.

      Only if it's a patient in a Western country. Nobody in Redmond will care if people from a developing nation die as a result, because they don't have the money it takes to hire the kinds of lawyers that can beat Microsoft's legal army.

    • Not in the US. An unexpected upgrade would violate the certification of the medical device, so it's the device manufacturer's job to prevent it from happening.

  • I have a Lenovo laptop with Windows 7 Professional on it. Sometime in the last nine months, Windows has forgotten how to talk with much of the hardware in the laptop. This includes the finger reader and all networking devices. I called both Microsoft and Lenovo, and both refused to help.

    So I never see the nags!

    The hardware works fine, as proven by the copy of Fedora 20 I have running on the thing -- when I need to network, I just boot into Linux and have at it. RJ-45 port. Wifi. All happy. (I haven

  • by K. S. Kyosuke ( 729550 ) on Saturday June 04, 2016 @11:53AM (#52248659)

    "If a forced upgrade happened and crashed our PCs while in the middle of coordinating rangers under fire from armed militarized poachers, blood could literally be on Microsoft's hands," said one member of the team.

    Sorry, it's your fault, pal. Didn't you know that Windows was an ancient American word meaning "I can't configure Ubuntu"?

  • I don't reckon I'd ever have bet my customers' lives on Microsoft software.
  • Metered connection (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Utopia ( 149375 ) on Saturday June 04, 2016 @11:55AM (#52248675)

    Set the connection as a metered connection [microsoft.com]. Windows Update will not pull updates over the connection.

    • by bmo ( 77928 ) on Saturday June 04, 2016 @12:05PM (#52248729)

      Windows Update should not pull any data unless /explicitly told to/.

      For /all/ types of connections.

      Your message is "blame the user, always."

      Ever watch a "normal user" (not anyone here commenting at slashdot) deal with a PC? Demanding that the user figure out whether or not to manually set the upgrade to "metered connection" is beyond the pale.

      GWX is malware attached to a user-hostile OS and society-hostile corporation.

      --
      BMO

      • by AmiMoJo ( 196126 )

        Auto installing security updates is the right setting for most users. The problem is the abuse of the system to send malware to users who made the mistake of trusting Microsoft. Well, not even a mistake, that was the best advice until recently.

    • by kyrsjo ( 2420192 ) on Saturday June 04, 2016 @12:09PM (#52248747)

      In the original reddit thread, someone mentioned that this was not available if the connection is seen by the OS as a normal Ethernet connection, and that most satellite connections presents them like this.

    • Yes, that's what someone who knows what's going on would do.

      But I think the point that people on slashdot (a group that has a clue about these things) sometimes forget is that the average user doesn't really have a clue about technical details. They want to turn on their computer and they want it to work. They don't want to have to learn about internal workings, even at a shallow level. And I suggest that they are not wrong about this. They should have an expectation that their computer works for them just

      • ...(T)heir computer works for them just like their car works for them. Yes, they need to learn to drive, but they don't need to learn how to fix the engine.

        Just so. Except when cars were new inventions, drivers *did* have to know how to do basic non-driving things like fixing flats, repairing failed parts and, indeed, fixing the engine. When photography was invented, camera-bugs had to know about chemistry and optics, exposure and light values, etc. And when computing was new, people had to know how to t

      • Yes, that's what someone who knows what's going on would do.

        I think you missed the funny part of this being a feature of Windows 8.1. Windows 7 has no such feature.

  • by Anonymous Coward

    If bandwidth was so precious, then why were updates enabled at all?

    • by Bert64 ( 520050 )

      And without updates, the laptop would end up getting hacked by worms and used for other bandwidth intensive tasks like ddos, spam, etc...

      • Those systems may also be hacked by a "script kiddie" working for the poachers. Automated updates involve trade-offs of security versus stability and network resources that require real thought, especially with the constant critical security updates for Windows based systems.

  • not because Linux makes such as great desktop but because microsoft has become such incompetent assholes and windows has become such a pain the ass to bother with
    • Why would Microsoft care if Windows 7 users who have no interest in ever upgrading, switch to Linux? It's not like they make any money off of people who already have Windows 7.

      Microsoft has a massive incentive to get people onto an OS where they have a convenient store where people spend money and they get a cut. Microsoft also has a massive incentive to get everybody off of Windows 7 so that they can stop supporting it with security and bug fixes. Windows 7 only represents a cost to Microsoft but no rev

  • by bzipitidoo ( 647217 ) <bzipitidoo@yahoo.com> on Saturday June 04, 2016 @12:01PM (#52248707) Journal

    The pushy upgrade was a stupid idea for more than one reason, and this was well known before Microsoft did it. There's the old saw "don't fix it if it ain't broke". Some hardware would quit working. The upgrades were most cavalierly programmed to happen without regard to the customer's needs, able to take a computer out of service for hours, and that could be just when the owner had scheduled some important work. And of course for those with limited, expensive bandwidth, it's damned rude of Microsoft to pig out on such a precious resource without asking. That's stooping to the level of online advertisers, who deserve to be blocked because they just can't lay off the obnoxious loud, flashing animated video advertising that eats gobs of bandwidth and CPU time. Not that Microsoft was ever much above that level.

    Speaking from my experience as a system administrator, doing a major upgrade on production systems for the heck of it was a major no-no. We only upgraded if we had to, for some crucial new functionality, and we'd spend at least a week preparing for it with tests on identical equipment if available, dry runs, and the like. We'd document how long it was going to take, and if too long we might set up a temporary system. We were not going to risk taking down the website of our company. Uptime is critically important. Stunts like this pushy, opt out upgrade assure that Windows will stay permanently banned from the server room.

    That Microsoft apparently can't grasp any of this or just doesn't care shows, again, how stupid their leadership is. Meh, they've been unbelievably stupid for 15 years now. Getting in bed with the MAFIAA of all people, and deferring to those idiots on technical matters around DRM, wow, just wow. MS doesn't deserve to be regarded as a tech company, not while they're willing to defer to tech morons on the areas they're supposed to be the experts on.

    • The first and most significant layer of stupid is the user who keeps subjecting themselves to this year in and year out when they know perfectly well what they need to do to end the pain.

  • Anyone who doesn't want Windows 10 could simply disable the "Windows Update" service, and simply wait for the Windows 10 free update period to expire. This tactic is well known for anyone who was bothered by the dialog boxes asking you to restart your computer every 10 minutes, or for power users that don't want 30+ documents to close overnight.

    Meanwhile, still waiting for the Windows 10 update to appear on Windows Vista.

    • oh yeah...right, i am sure everybody just loves reading tech rags for the news on what microsoft is doing, these people are in the jungle and savannas of africa they got more important things to worry about than what microsoft's scheming and maneuvering is doing to their customers, (not until it breaks their computers) i am sure they are considering alternative operating systems like Linux, i know i would if i was in their shoes, and maybe getting rid of computers all together and getting a few portable 100
  • Next headline:
    "Man goes on windows 10 update-induced killing spree. Microsoft literally has blood on their hands this time"
  • by Sponge Bath ( 413667 ) on Saturday June 04, 2016 @12:15PM (#52248775)

    "...rangers under fire from armed militarized poachers, blood could literally be on Microsoft's hands,"

    Guns don't kill people, Microsoft kills people.

  • General, General! We need air support asap! Sorry lieutenant we are in the middle of a critical update here... So make sure you own that computer before betting your life on it... Not saying that MS is right, they aren't but at the same time this look similar as when a GPS tell you to drive outside of the road...
  • Microsoft never expected that this version of windows would be used for anything of any importance.
  • Issue? What issue? (Score:5, Insightful)

    by swm ( 171547 ) <swmcd@world.std.com> on Saturday June 04, 2016 @12:53PM (#52248975) Homepage

    Microsoft is yet to address the issue

    There is no issue.
    There is nothing to address.
    Windows 10 upgrade is doing what Microsoft wants it to do: maximizing the number of machines running Windows 10.

    Think about it this way.
    If you pay a vendor for something, then--at some level--that vendor will serve you.
    If you do not pay a vendor for their product, then that vendor does not serve you. They may serve some other revenue stream, like advertising, or some kind of big-data analytics that they hope to sell, but they definitely do not serve you. If you are not paying for the product, then you are collateral damage, or prey, or fodder: something to be harvested and packaged for resale.

    Somewhere in Microsoft is a VP who is in charge of the Windows 10 upgrade.
    This VP has been told that his bonus, or stock options, or possibly his job is dependent on getting X million Windows 10 installs, or X million installs per month, or something. He doesn't care how many people are inconvenienced, or lose data, or have their machines bricked. He doesn't care how much bad PR Microsoft gets, or how much bad trade press, or how many outraged Slashdot comments there are. All he cares about is making his number. And this is going to continue until the CEO goes to this VP and changes his performance objectives.

    Deal with it.

    (Linux works for me. YMMV.)

    • I don't know about you, but I have paid for the system I use. It's a paid copy of Windows. If they think it was too cheap to not force a new ad platform (which 10 basically is) on me - they should have priced it higher, too late to change your mind now.

      Right now, from my point of view, MS is just not fulfilling their part of the contract. I was promised a feed of security updates. A feed I now cannot use, because it is used to push telemetry and the upgrade with an unacceptable EULA.

      I only bought this syste

  • Sure they have - they've stepped up the forced upgrade program, regardless of the bad press. It's almost like there's a gun to an executive's head, pressuring for upgrades to 10 at all costs.
  • by tuxgeek ( 872962 ) on Saturday June 04, 2016 @12:58PM (#52248995)

    Not meaning to troll,
    but articles like this always leave me with a smile, not out of malice, but out of relief .. that I got away from M$ products SO many years ago.
    Not even a twitch, only condolences to the poor bastards having their lives literally ruined by M$ Abortionware and the reasoning of the assholes at the M$ helm. From TFA, et al.

    For the record:
    % uname -a
    FreeBSD Krypton42 10.2-RELEASE-p14 FreeBSD 10.2-RELEASE-p14 #0: Wed Mar 16 20:46:12 UTC 2016 root@amd64-builder.daemonology.net:/usr/obj/usr/src/sys/GENERIC amd64

  • If a forced upgrade happened and crashed our PCs while in the middle of coordinating rangers under fire from armed militarized poachers, blood could literally be on Microsoft's hands," said one member of the team.

    No, you are responsible for all blood because you picked the wrong platform, wrong OS for operation of a system on which human life depends on. YOU and nobody else are responsible to design a system resistant to outages to ensure safe operation of your staff. Microsfot shares absolutely no responsability in that. You are an idiot.

    • Well done! You have managed to use your computer knowledge to make yourself feel to superior to people putting their lives on the line to prevent the extinction of species due to poaching. Well done!

      Back in the real world, not everyone has the resources to hire an obnoxious computer nerd to tell them they're idiots^W^W^W^Wset up systems for them.

  • The dream was that there was a class action suit filed against Microsoft for the class that owned one or more computers that MS said qualified to be upgraded to Windows 10. The suit asked for $1,000 for each computer that the Windows 10 update nagging software appeared. The total cost to MS would be in the neighborhood of at least $100 billion if not more. In addition, MS would be required to send out techs to fix all computers damaged by the update, retrieve lost data or replace it if possible and/or repla
  • .... is warranted or even recommended for use in fields where lives *literally* depend on the software operating correctly.
    • Lives don't literally depend on the OS in this case. Their PC is a management tool / information. MS's license prohibits it's use where the failure could directly and causally result in death. If a filed PC could cause your fighters under fire to get killed you have a really poor backup strategy.

    • by Noble713 ( 3516573 ) on Saturday June 04, 2016 @10:21PM (#52251215)
      Spend some more time around military command & control facilities. While the servers are usually Unix (Solaris), the client workstations are all Windows boxes. In my experience, they are USUALLY pretty stable. Some of the client software (C2PC) can be wonky, and since we use that to display our Common Tactical Picture, when it goes down yes lives are at stake.

      Just this week I watched, 2 days in a row, as a briefer's laptop did a forced reboot countdown during his powerpoint presentation. "Um, ok....I guess I've got 15 minutes to get through this before my laptop restarts". This was during a planning conference for one of the largest Joint Exercises we do every year. And we're not even running Windows 10. I dread the day the Marine Corps is forced off of Windows 7.

      I run Ubuntu at home (Lubuntu on my formerly-Win7 gaming rig and Backbox on my laptop), with FreeBSD on an old netbook so I can learn my way around it.
  • Windows 10 update is how they defeat the aliens in the new Independence Day.
  • Their day was already ruined when they chose to operate a military-style operation at the hands of an OS primarily designed for video games and Facebook.

    If they "didn't know better" then they were ill-prepared.

    Sadly, yes, the U.S. Military had a fair amount of windows in their operations, but they can afford the Microsoft tax to get customizations that others can't.

  • Even In Remotest Africa, Windows Ruins Your Day

  • I think even if Microsoft did not want such a thing to happen, it can not stop such things. It is incompetent to that level. But, as they say sufficiently advanced incompetence is indistinguishable from malice.
  • Microsoft is fucking evil.

    This tearjerking little story is actually in Microsoft's interest.

    The message here is that Microsoft can do whatever they want and we are all helpless.

    This is the pattern of narrative we are subjected to again and again and again. "We are helpless".

    We are NOT. Militarize. Get angry. Let the rage fly. If enough people do this simultaneously there cannot be consequences from any authority because they need us all to work. Once the "powers the be" start listening we can demand referen

  • Microsoft has done many things that were monopolistic, illegal, patent infringing, etc. They get sued, eventually they loose typically but by the time they have to stop and/or pay up it is 5 to 15 years down the road and the path they took let them take an entire market, eliminate a competitor etc. DR-DOS, RealPlayer, Internet Explorer and many other examples that anyone can google. Even if the EU, US or whatever comes down on them they will profit from this and hold or increase their market share... At lea

  • There's something amiss here. I had four computers, win 7/8, with the little icon ready to upgrade. I said no. The icon sat there for eight months. It never tried to do anything on its own.

    But I use these machines for business. That means I've spent more than a few minutes properly configuring them to act like business machines -- in a reliable, determined-by-me kind of way. They take orders from me, and they do as I instruct.

    Of course I turned off automatic updates. Of course when I don't want them

    • How effective would you be while under attack by poachers while holding a slightly damaged AK-47? If the answer is not "reasonably", I suggest you be a little more understanding when people who do get in those positions lack some knowledge you have.

      • I'm confused by your comment. Why would I be relying on a slightly damaged AK-47? Wouldn't I have had it properly repaired/configured/setup in-advance of my trip? Wouldn't I have my contracted rifleman check it daily? Wouldn't I bring a proper weapon to a proper scenario?

        Would you just borrow a friend's gun to protect you on such a trip? Seems like a very dumb thing to do.

        • Nothing's invulnerable. If I need a rifle, I want it to be in top condition, but I have to consider that things do happen, and if I'm relying on a rifle I have to know what to do if something happens to it. Alternatively, consider it to be a perfectly good AK-47, and my point stands.

          • Your point doesn't stand. If you're carrying a rifle, and you're a rifleman, then it doesn't matter if the rifle can break, because you can deal with it. If you know what you're doing with windows as a business tool, then windows doesn't upgrade itself in the middle of the jungle.

You are always doing something marginal when the boss drops by your desk.

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