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Windows 10 Anniversary Update To Roll Out On August 2 156
Windows 10's first major update -- dubbed Anniversary Update -- will be released to users on August 2, according to a blog post published by Microsoft (Archive link). The company presumably posted the blog post ahead of the original publication plans, and as a result, quickly pulled the story. Windows 10 Anniversary Update will bring with it a number of major changes including extensions to Edge, and improvements to Cortana and Hello biometric feature. It will also mark the end of the one-year free Windows 10 update offer for Windows 7 and Windows 8.x users.
By any other name... (Score:4, Insightful)
Re: By any other name... (Score:1, Insightful)
Great! Always good to get a service pack that improves the security, stability, and performance of the system. Call it what you want but I'm excited for it!
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Please, think of the touchscreens!
Re: By any other name... (Score:2, Funny)
You're just jealous that Windows 10 users don't have to deal with Systemd and GNOME 3.
Re: By any other name... (Score:4, Insightful)
You're just jealous that Windows 10 users don't have to deal with Systemd and GNOME 3.
The most serial criticisms of system and GNOME 3 are that they're too similar to Windows SCM and Metro, respectively. Thus saying that one should then use Windows to avoid them is a collapsing spiral staircase of lunacy.
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This may be the first time where I would prefer a video version of that post.
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You're just jealous that Windows 10 users don't have to deal with Systemd and GNOME 3.
The most serial criticisms of system and GNOME 3 are that they're too similar to Windows SCM and Metro, respectively. Thus saying that one should then use Windows to avoid them is a collapsing spiral staircase of lunacy.
as a Gnome Shell user, I have to disagree about it being similar to Windows 8.
Well, sorry then. I have no desire to antagonize GNOME Shell fans/users. I'm just responding to the insane trolling that it's somehow bundled into the Linux kernel and therefore unavoidable.
Well played. (Score:1)
As a Linux user, I applaud you. Good jab. LOL
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A year later and Windows 10 is still buggy as shit, not to mention all the horrendously bad design decisions.
You must be running at the minimum hardware specs. Windows 10 is like Windows Vista. I originally built my system for Vista in 2007, which required more hardware resources to run fine. Windows 10 runs perfectly fine on that system.
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The GP didn't say anything about it being slow, only that it's buggy with bad design decisions.
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I'm talking about the bugs that still haven't been fixed after more than a year, all the bad UI design and pointless crapware, like Cortana, which if you completely delete will hose your system.
Just ignore Metro and turn off Cortana, which is what I do.
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"Just ignore the advertising and work around the data theft"
What advertising and what data theft? I'm using Win10 exactly like I did with Win7.
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"This sucks! Fix it!"
"Okay, here's your fix."
"Why would I want that? This still sucks!"
"Umm... What? Oh, fuck it." *forces the update silently*"
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Not what happens. They may provide the fix, but it's buried amongst things *they* want to foist on you.
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Quite right - You should demand your money back, immediately!
Oh, wait...
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I don't have the ads you speak of so I honestly don't know what you're talking about.
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Ahh, the spotlight feature. I was thinking you guys were referring to something different. Although I don't get that, possibly because it's disabled by default on the pro version. If this is people biggest problems with Windows 10 they need to get a grip. This is nothing compared with paying to see a movie, waiting at an airport, browsing the web, watching video online...
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They are quite unobtrusive and if you never open the start menu that way you never see them. After all most of the important stuff comes up under a right-click in a convienient list. As I use the start menu to access a few key, but seldom used programs not pinned to the t
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Exactly. I think the haters will hate no matter what. This is no invasive by any means and can easily be disabled.
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Only kids and the IT illiterate lust after day 1 updates and meaningless version bumps.
Professional IT workers will test an update for two weeks prior to releasing into a production environment. Not every patch released by Microsoft gets approved for installation. Fortunately, most corporate environments are still Windows 7.
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Only kids and the IT illiterate lust after day 1 updates and meaningless version bumps.
Professional IT workers will test an update for two weeks prior to releasing into a production environment. Not every patch released by Microsoft gets approved for installation. Fortunately, most corporate environments are still Windows 7.
Not my employer, and we have over 4,000 users worldwide. No testing of MS updates, and many users have either Win8 or Win10. Maybe that's why our IT management has such high turnover. Now that they got rid of the idiots, I'm hoping things get better in a hurry.
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Now that they got rid of the idiots, I'm hoping things get better in a hurry.
That's the first step in developing a professional IT department.
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You get that stuff from the periodic updates, not from a service pack.
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Right. And I'm a bit worried about the understanding of basic English by the author of the summary. The sentence "a number of major changes including extensions to Edge, and improvements to Cortana and Hello biometric feature" clearly confuses the word "major" with "yawn-inducing".
Anniversary update.... (Score:5, Insightful)
And then I have to re-turnoff Cortana, reset the switches to block MS-bound data, and in general, try
to discover the new ways MS has made sure to F-up things so they can anal-probe my machine...
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And then I have to re-turnoff Cortana,
Even if you "turn off" Cortana, it's still running in the background. Try to kill it with Task Manager and it comes right back. There is a way to kill it permanently, but my experience has been that Cortana is the new Internet Explorer -- kill it and you hose your entire system.
Re:Anniversary update.... (Score:5, Interesting)
Even if you "turn off" Cortana, it's still running in the background.
Yes and no. Yes, there absolutely is a process called Cortana running in the background. But its not still listening to your microphone, etc. Its providing backend services for stuff like location services.
What's in a name?
In theory Microsoft should have broken the functionality into two separate modules. "Cortana Personal Assistant" and "Cortana Services". Where the former is JUST the voice-mic-UI stuff; and the latter does all the other stuff -- the search functionality, location services, and provides the hooks that other apps connect to to add their "cortana" functionality, should you ever turn Cortana back on. ... of course people like your self would still freak about "Cortana Services" running even after the "Cortana Personal Assistant" went away so instead of calling it "Cortana Services" it should be called "wcmi_support" or something suitably innocuous. Then when you looked at the process list, nothing would be *called* cortana and you'd now be happy.
Although nothing changed at all except the name of a process.
Sometimes I think Microsoft should rename the Task Scheduler from "Schedule" to "Clippy" and "svchost" to "systemd" just for the fireworks display.
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I'd be unhappy if there were services in the background of any name providing location services, indexing my files (I've always turned that off), and so forth. When I see my hard disk being constantly active when I've been sitting idle for an hour then I start getting suspicious of either malware or Microsoft bloat. Apple has an OSX update that tries to reduce CPU usage and improve power savings, whereas a Microsoft update seems to be about how to suck up even more of those cycles.
How does the "Free" licensing work? (Score:3)
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So, free as in punch in the balls?
Anyway, this sort of update is one of the reasons why I haven't upgraded. Randomly changing major parts of the OS in ways I can't predict or veto. I'll stick with 8.1 for now thanks, purely for stability. The "slow ring" thing for Windows 10 is a joke, it just delays the pain but does little to mitigate it.
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FTFY
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Exactly how would the community "fix up all the problems and snooping"? It's a closed source operating system, you are totally beholden to the manufacturer for any changes. And you have no say whatsoever in the design, implementation and quality of the product.
The product is designed solely from the manufacturer's perspective; and that perspective is to extract as much revenue as possible from you directly or indirectly. Your wishes make not one iota of difference to them unless it means you will not be
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Exactly how would the community "fix up all the problems and snooping"? It's a closed source operating system, you are totally beholden to the manufacturer for any changes. And you have no say whatsoever in the design, implementation and quality of the product.
You're right, this can't be readily changed by the community at the OS level. However, Windows still (at least for the moment) gives users root access. I got sick of Cortana's executable starting up, so I went to the folder and did a 'deny all everyone' file permissions change; not even the system user can access it. O&O ShutUp 10 and Spybot AntiBeacon both reduce telemetry and set policies that disable many of the snooping/syncing features. It's possible to configure Windows Firewall to block system ap
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In my opinion the ONLY way Windows 10 is going to EVER be tolerably safe to use is if you block the telemetry sites in a hardware firewall.. Home users are kinda out of luck unless they're clueful and use something like pfsense or other *real* firewall.. Just for fun, I did some testing a while back, took two laptops with Windows10 on them, one with a default-install, meaning all of the telemetry/spyware enabled, an MS account login, and a second laptop with a "castrated" install, local login account only,
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Other than starting a "Whack-A-Mole" between the authors of this "Windows 10 Privacy Suite" and MS.. Sure this "Privacy Suite" might stop the spyware aspects of Windows10 *today* but if more and more people began to use said tool, and MS/NSA's data-collection started dropping off, you can bet there would be changes that would bypass/change things and re-enable the spyware aspects and then the devs of the privacy tool would counter those changes, Rise and Repeat, ad infinitum... OR the MS legal dept would j
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Is it worth doing the free upgrade and then downgrading?
IMO Yes.
Will I be able to upgrade to W10 indefinitely
According to Microsoft yes. (at least on that hardware)
on the off chance that they (or the community) fix up all the problems and snooping
The community more or less already has, depending on your level of paranoia.
Spybot Anti-Beacon
And there are several other tools out there too.
And for what its worth, unless you are disabling all updates and/or manually vetting every update to your win7/8 box the snooping is still a problem.
For most people, whether you are on 7 or 10 you are probably best served with an anti-telemetry tool as the least hassle way of dealing with this. And since i
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Is it worth doing the free upgrade and then downgrading? Will I be able to upgrade to W10 indefinitely on the off chance that they (or the community) fix up all the problems and snooping? How does the licensing work?
The free upgrade is tied to your computer's Hardware ID.
When you install Windows 10 your hardware ID is sent to Microsoft. As long as you don't make any major changes to your computer (new motherboard is the big one) you can do a clean install at any time and Windows 10 will continue to work just fine. It just checks your Hardware ID against the one Microsoft has on file and when they match everything is fine.
Don't mess around with upgrading/downgrading. Use a backup program to save a copy of your curren
Digital entitlement (Score:2)
I get the impression from "Activation in Windows 10" [microsoft.com] that when you upgrade to Windows 10 or install Windows 10 with a Windows 7 product key during this offer, your digital entitlement is stored with Microsoft. So if you upgrade before the end of July, go back to Windows 7, and then reinstall Windows 10, it will access the same digital entitlement.
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It might be possible. However it's a bit risky. You get all the pain from upgrading combined with all the pain of doing a rollback, and the chance that one of those steps will go wrong. To do a rollback would mean you need an in-place upgrade that leaves lots of junk leftover on the system rather than doing a clean installation. If it did work you'd have to keep that authorization code stored away and then re-apply it in the future.
Things don't work the same way the used to. For instance, you can not j
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The OEM-ness is inherited too I think. Ie, my PC came with Windows 7 pre-installed, then I upgraded to Windows 8 Pro and paid money for it ($15). But this special offer only applies to those who had purchased a new PC within a few weeks of Windows 8 release (normally a ridiculous $199 price). Then that could be upgraded (for free) to Windows 10 Pro. But it's probably still tainted by originally coming from an OEM.
Re:Hope they fixed 2 bugs (Score:4, Insightful)
question... (Score:1)
With the end of the "Free update", does this mean the end of the festering nag screen of "Don't you want to update to Windows 10?" as well as any chance of it "accidentally" updating to Windows 10?
Re:question... (Score:4, Funny)
No. It will still upgrade to Windows 10 but then encrypt the hard disk until you pay for the upgrade.
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No. It will still upgrade to Windows 10 but then encrypt the hard disk until you pay for the upgrade.
Funny as hell!
Crap, I can't mod up once I've replied to a story.
I hate silly, pointless rules that exist just for the sake of having rules.
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Microsoft says they will stop trying to push Windows 10 on you after July 29. That's what they say. Whether or not they are lying remains to be seen.
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hehe It'd be just like them to continue to push it on everybody, but after its downloaded, it pops up a box asking for a credit card, and if you refuse, it soft-bricks your computer... Frankly I wouldn't put it past them.....
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but after its downloaded, it pops up a box asking for a credit card, and if you refuse, it soft-bricks your computer...
If you refuse, it just checks all cached web sites for any credit card details and runs it automatically, "for your convenience".
Meh (Score:3)
Given its penetration, the Edge extensions hardly matter.
Most of the other features are niche, invasive, or useless. Seriously, does anyone release malware that can't evade Windows Defender out of the box?
Cortana will remain relatively useless until it can integrate with smartphones, which means Microsoft will have to put more effort into its Android and iOS apps, helping to make them first-class platforms.
Anything that makes the Windows Store better sounds good. That's the only thing of real value I see, and even then it's more for the future than the present.
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does anyone release malware that can't evade Windows Defender out of the box?
Given Window Defenders wide spread usage, it would kind of be pointless to do so. Evading Windows Defender would be the minimum requirement for any new piece of malware.
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does anyone release malware that can't evade Windows Defender out of the box?
Given Window Defenders wide spread usage, it would kind of be pointless to do so. Evading Windows Defender would be the minimum requirement for any new piece of malware.
No antivirus is capable of defending against zero-days, so it's a moot point to begin with. The Windows security model is fundamentally broken--probably on purpose, to fuel sales for the AV vendors.
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I am excited to get a fully functional bash (Ubuntu) in Windows! You cannot deny that is pretty awesome... The year of desktop Linux indeed!
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MEH, for sure!!
If I want a bash shell, I *know* where to find it.. hint: It ISNT on an MS product!! I suppose for those poor schlubs who MUST use Windows (at work, or have to run pgms that Wine/Crossover won't do) it may be of *some* use, but jeeeebus, running a bash shell on Windows, is like towing a beat-up UHaul trailer behind a Ferrarri...
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Only one way to make the windows store better! (Score:2)
Taking these things into consideration, the only way to improve it, it to delete it off your system. It is a useless pile of garbage that has some fundamental design flaws. The biggest of which is that it is run by Microsoft and the biggest flaws in it Microsoft has no interest in p
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I love how the MS Store is a cash grab... ok, I suppose you are right, but then so is Google Play store and Apple store...
Anyway, the value I see in the store is universal Windows apps and games. Buy a game once on the app store and you can then play it on all Win10 platforms, including the xbox... that is certainly less cash grabby than forcing you to buy multiple copies...
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Yes those are cash grabs too. That's the major flaw in Windows 10, in that it tries downgrade itself to being merely a smart phone OS. So lots and lots of apps available, but after browsing them it turns out there are only 2 or 3 apps worth ever getting for free and 0 apps worth paying for.
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Seriously, does anyone release malware that can't evade Windows Defender out of the box?
This is about the only thing I can find fault with in your post. Yes. Windows Defender catches plenty of things. It's about as good as any anti-virus which is significant because you can get rid of those bullshit programs which ironically slow down your system more than the alternative Microsoft offer.
Past studies I've seen show Windows Defender on par or better than various products. Mind you the better then ones seem to use somewhat questionable methodology, but ultimately if you're relying on Anti-virus
What about LTSB? (Score:2)
On The Fence re: Win10? (Score:4, Interesting)
I performed this procedure [ghacks.net] on an old Win7 netbook, and it worked out fine. Good way to take an objective look at Win10 without endangering your Win7 installation with a possibly irreversible update process.
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It's still an upgrade in-place rather than a clean install. That is, it will try to migrate all your settings, applications, and so forth. Which is ok, but it will leave around a lot of junk and you never really get back to that new computer smell.
I had a problem once where I screwed up the install by not exporting my files to a backup, so after wiping the primary partition and installing from scratch it ended up saying that all the files on the second partition were owned by an unknown user and couldn't
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It's still an upgrade in-place rather than a clean install. That is, it will try to migrate all your settings, applications, and so forth. Which is ok, but it will leave around a lot of junk and you never really get back to that new computer smell.
No, it's a clean install, but it has to start with a working instance of Win7. In my case, I copied gatherosstate.exe from the install DVD to the Win7 desktop, executed it, and copied the resulting GenuineTicket.xml to a thumb drive. I then installed a new hard drive in the computer, did a clean install from the DVD (skipping the license key entry by selecting "I don't have a license key" -- at least I think that's what it said. Something like that, anyway), then copied GenuineTicket.xml to the appropriate
"Free?" (Score:1)
Good Riddance (Score:2)
It will also mark the end of the one-year free Windows 10 update offer for Windows 7 and Windows 8.x users.
All I can say is "Good Riddance"... I lost count of the number of machines I've had to mess with because either the client DIDN'T WANT Windows 10 for one reason or another, OR the "malware" that *is* Windows 10, or "Windows NSA Edition" or my fav, Windows, the CTD (Computer-Transmitted Disease) managed to get installed, user was on the ball enough to initiate the "roll-back" to their previous version and 10 decided to shit the floor with their machine/data... I was soooo glad to hear of the lady who sued MS
If the udate to 10 is free (Score:2)
Does that mean I can sell my six retail wiindows 7?
The question is kind of rhetorical as I suspect not.
Oh, crap... (Score:2)
Only this week I replaced my laptop's 5400rpm hard drive (Windows 10) with an SSD running Debian.
Sorry MS.
Do you support booting off a USB2 drive yet, cos come August I couldn't be arsed getting the screwdriver out again.
No more annoyment then ? (Score:1)
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It's great that those of us normal people who have already updated to Windows 10 will receive this update. Meanwhile, the neckbeards and tinfoil hat Lunix zealots will be stuck without a secure and up to date system. Seems like a good deal to me.
Obviously you don't have much experience at trolling - that attempt was about as subtle a sledgehammer, and reeked of incompetence. Go away, and don't come back 'til you have some skillz.
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Secure, if you don't count M$ having the ability to execute malicious code (forced updates) whenever they decide to.
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You point out that Windows 10 isn't secure from its update provider. But is any general-purpose PC operating system secure both from its update provider and from attackers who exploit defects in software that isn't updated?
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I point out the irony in the shill posters' claims that your PC can't be secure without the service pack, which service pack changes nothing about the fox guarding the chicken coop
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You point out that Windows 10 isn't secure from its update provider. But is any general-purpose PC operating system secure both from its update provider and from attackers who exploit defects in software that isn't updated?
If you use a FOSS operating system like Linux or FreeBSD, you can audit the updates and apply them selectively. So even if you didn't trust Red Hat/SUSE/Canonical, you could still benefit from their security patches.
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Considering the extremely high probability of more security fixes in the future, is the system truly ever secure?
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http://www.flamewarriorsguide.... [flamewarriorsguide.com]
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Describing the collection of anonymized data as spyware is dishonest and false for two reasons. First, it's anonymous so it can't be used to spy on anyone. Second, they are not hiding that they collect it; normally if you are spying on someone you don't tell them.
Aside from that it's just an overblow worry. People who have this concern typically have no problem using a smartphone or google products. They just use it as a flimsy prop for their anti-ms bias.
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Describing the collection of anonymized data as spyware is dishonest and false for two reasons. First, it's anonymous so it can't be used to spy on anyone. Second, they are not hiding that they collect it; normally if you are spying on someone you don't tell them.
Aside from that it's just an overblow worry. People who have this concern typically have no problem using a smartphone or google products. They just use it as a flimsy prop for their anti-ms bias.
How do you know it's anonymized? How do you even know what information is being transmitted to Microsoft? It's encrypted. And clearly it's very valuable to Microsoft, because it conspicuously bypasses the user's hosts file and the firewall. And it's dispersed to over 100 domains [github.com], some of which you could possibly guess what it's for, but most of them in mystery.
Although Microsoft have publicly documented that you can't turn off the surveillance, the buttons in the OS which seem to turn it off is very misl
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Although Microsoft have publicly documented that you can't turn off the surveillance, the buttons in the OS which seem to turn it off is very misleading. Hence they are, in effect, hiding it.
Telemetry is fine. Forced telemetry is fine - for the free version (hey, you got it for free). Here's the problem I have with it: The paid version of Windows 10 will still have (I strongly imagine) this forced telemetry and all the other crap, like adverts and subscription Solitaire. That's unacceptable.
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How do you even know what information is being transmitted to Microsoft? It's encrypted.
lol.. its encrypted.. so how do _YOU_ know what it is? Maybe its nothing.
You linux cheerleaders are funny and sad at the same time. I guess you don't really have to be rational to use Linux. You just have to be some kind of anti-ms troll.
That's amazing logic there. You don't have to worry about spyware because you don't explicitly know how much of the surveillance is being reported.
Somebody put an Internet-connected video camera in front of my toilet. I'm not worried though: I don't know what it's taping!
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No, but repeating your false pro-Linux propaganda over and over won't make it true, either.
Which part is false: the part about the spyware (which even Microsoft admits is true, albeit in an indirect way, because they've documented that you cannot turn off any of the surveillance without the Enterprise edition), the part that Windows has malware and Linux does not, or the part that it is my advocacy that people should boycott Windows and use Linux instead?
I might be missing something but I was able to turn off all the spyware in the privacy settings and I am running the home version. ??
No, you pressed some buttons that gave the appearance of turning off the spyware. In effect, they do nothing unless you're on the "Enterprise" edition: http://www.forbes.com/sites/go... [forbes.com]
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Dunno why I'm replying to an AC, but here goes... You *just* think you turned off the spyware... I've found thru my own testing that installing using the non-default method, and turning OFF all those cute little toggle switches do NOT turn off the spyware aspects of 10... I described what I did later in another comment later on, and its certainly convinced me that, withOUT a hardware firewall blocking these connections, Windows 10 Home/Pro are a privacy nightmare... So glad I gave up using MS products on my