back to article Windows 10 Anniversary Update completely borks USB webcams. Yay.

Microsoft says a fix is on the way for a video encoding issue in the Windows 10 Anniversary Update that has left people unable to access their USB webcams and applications. Multiple peeps and developers have reported issues with their cameras or software not working following the installation of the Windows 10 Anniversary …

  1. vir

    "We worked with partners to make sure their applications continued to function throughout this change, but we have done a poor job communicating this change out to you guys."

    What do you mean, "you people"?

    1. Cirdan
      Linux

      Yay!

      My webcam is still working...

      Just trolling :-P

      ...Cirdan...

      1. Anonymous Coward
        Anonymous Coward

        Re: Yay!

        So are mine - I use Linux and OSX..

        1. Omgwtfbbqtime

          Re: Yay!

          I'd have to remove the black tape over mine to see if it is affected.

          Nah...

      2. Anonymous Coward
        Big Brother

        Re: Yay!

        They're all still working really. We just broke the external api so you'd think they're not working.

        God damn we're smart.

        --tEH nsa

    2. Doctor Syntax Silver badge

      "What do you mean, "you people"?"

      I think the work "little" got lost somewhere.

    3. TVU Silver badge

      "We worked with partners to make sure their applications..."

      That's all very well, dear Redmond, but you should have done two things first:

      a) consult and inform the relevant device manufacturers well in advance so that they could have made the necessary software changes;

      b) thoroughly test this aspect in advance before releasing it into the wild but that requires quality control testers whom, I am led to believe, have pretty much all been sacked.

      1. Alan Brown Silver badge

        Re: "We worked with partners to make sure their applications..."

        c) if you have software which is pulling in a YUV stream and redoing it as H.264 or MJPEG, then make an interface available that looks like a virtual webcam so you don't break legacy software.

      2. CrazyOldCatMan Silver badge
        FAIL

        Re: "We worked with partners to make sure their applications..."

        > That's all very well, dear Redmond, but you should have done two things first:

        Actually 3 - MS' own application for VC (Skype) is one of those affected. Maybe they should arrange a left-hand, right-hand dating day?

      3. Anonymous Coward
        Anonymous Coward

        Re: "We worked with partners to make sure their applications..."

        I feel it would be remiss of me to not correct you regarding the the "quality control testers" you refer to in point b of your post.

        Microsoft point out that they have millions of such testers who are independent of Microsoft and (in this case alone) do not receive any payment or funding from Microsoft so they are very impartial and not financially swayed. In fact quite the opposite is true, these people actually pay handsomely to Microsoft so that they may have the privilege of being involved in testing.

        Microsoft do not disclose what title or position they class these testers as but I do believe that companies elsewhere refer to them as "customers" ;-)

    4. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Windows 10 = Windows Vista

      Yet another Microsoft fail.

      1. Down not across

        Re: Windows 10 = Windows Vista

        Dunno, Win 10 is starting to make Vista look quite good in comparison.

        1. anonymous boring coward Silver badge

          Re: Windows 10 = Windows Vista

          "Dunno, Win 10 is starting to make Vista look quite good in comparison."

          Win 10 makes Win 3.1 and DOS 5 look good from many standpoints in comparison.

        2. Updraft102

          Re: Windows 10 = Windows Vista

          Vista is quite good (now). The very popular Windows 7 is closely related to Vista, and it hasn't held it back a bit.

          Vista was perceived as bloated and slow when it came out. Some of this was because Microsoft gave in to Intel's demands that PCs using its 915 chipset be certified for Vista, even though they were really not up to the task. MS created the "Vista capable" moniker for them, which meant it would run Vista, but it wouldn't be optimal (the optimal experience got a 'puter the "Vista Ready" label).

          As could be expected, people didn't know the difference, and they came to associate the poor performance of Vista on "capable" machines with Vista itself. In addition, the early drivers for Vista were far from optimized, and that just made everything that much slower.

          The Aero interface, now one of the things that people are begging MS to bring back, was seen then as useless eye candy that contributed to the slowness and bloat of Vista. On a machine that had the chops to run Aero, it was great (and many users of such machines liked it), but lower-end or older PCs were simply not powerful enough (particularly in the graphics acceleration department).

          Not all of the complaints were without merit. In a series of well-publicized articles in computer magazines, Vista was beaten soundly by Windows XP in things like file copying-- even on the more powerful machines.

          Over time, hardware caught up with Vista, and the drivers evolved to be faster and leaner, as did the OS itself. By the time 7 arrived, just about any new PC you could pick up at Best Buy would be able to run Aero without issue, and the complaints about Vista being slow and bloated began to fade. I really don't know if the file copy issues as such ever were resolved, or if the hardware just got speedy enough to make OS differences less important.

          I'd much rather run Vista today than 10, though Vista's cut-off date is near. Vista had a rocky start, but it matured nicely as the problems that made it unpopular were solved over time.

          Windows 10 is disliked for completely different reasons than Vista was. Win 10 is not slow and bloated-- by all accounts, it seems to be a bit faster than 7 on average (it was a little bit faster for me, but nothing to write home about). What ails 10 is intentional... the "features" baked into the OS are what people don't like. By contrast, Vista was never meant to be slow and bloated. Those were not core features... they were flaws that MS would have loved to get rid of (and for the most part, they did, in time). Vista wasn't crappy by design; 10 is.

          1. Ropewash
            Windows

            Re: Windows 10 = Windows Vista

            Grove giveth and Gates taketh away.

            Such was Vista. A victim mostly of it's own marketing department. The devs had to drop most of the planned features and re-write the system to get something to market since XP had been going on too long for corporate liking. The marketing folks hyped the shit out of it (Vista Wow). When it was released it was un-finished with bad drivers and crap performance on the hardware of the day. This popped the marketing bubble and the resulting implosion did far more damage to Vista than it deserved.

            Windows 7 IS the patched copy of Vista that should have been it's actual release candidate if time hadn't been such a factor for Microsoft.

            Win10, as you say, has it's own core issues, but it also suffers from the marketing push it's been so ruthlessly given. Forced GWX installs, pop-up ad windows practically yelling at people to upgrade, all the sorts of things that either alienate your consumers through the perception of desperation (WinX Wow), or drive their expectations so high that failing to live up to them is almost inevitable.

            Then they release a system riddled with spyware in the era of NSA concerns, and furthermore break it regularily with badly planned update roll-outs. Another bursting of the marketing bubble though maybe this system deserves it more than Vista did. (at least Vista wasn't spying on anyone)

            Personally I think they should have doubled the size of the QA department instead of sacking them all and instead should have scorched the marketing department to the bedrock and focused on the development of a quality OS that would have stood up on it own merits.

            But I'm not a businessman or a tech... I cut metal. Maybe they know things I don't.

            1. anonymous boring coward Silver badge

              Re: Windows 10 = Windows Vista

              "Maybe they know things I don't."

              They know how to screw people for profit, and now they think they have the means to do it.

              They will wake up to the real world one day, though.

          2. Alan Brown Silver badge

            Re: Windows 10 = Windows Vista

            Make no mistake. Vista _was_ bloated, but it was the last of the major bloatware.

            Up to that point MS was working on the basis that memory and cpu power would always increase so there was zero need to optimise anything. It was the rise of netbooks which torpedoed this strategy as Vista either wouldn't install on them or was so painfully slow noone would put up with it (2Gb was the practical minimum for XP once AV software is loaded and you want to run Office apps, 4Gb for Vista)

            Win7 is primarily a result of putting Vista on a diet. It'll run in 2Gb (or less) like XP would and performed tolerably on netbooks (it even runs passably on a 768MB Tosh Satellite I keep around). At the same time MS took the paring knife to Office and its memory/cpu/gpu footprint was improved too.

            As pointed out, i915 should never have been certified for Vista, but for that matter the i945 and the 3xx/4xx ranges were abysmal on it too thanks to their anaemic GPUs.

            Win8 and 10 have pretty good memory/CPU footprints. That lesson has been learned. It helps that CPU core speeds haven't increased noticeably and nor have core counts on desktops, so MS can't use Moore's law as a software strategy anymore. The primary criticism is the awful tiles-based portable-use oriented desktop - which can be thrown out. They're also fairly reasonable on their GPU requirements, to the point that if you can run Win7 then Win10 is usually a better performer. That said: 3rd party software has continued to bloat.

            It's almost as if MS has taken a leaf from IBM's playbook back in OS/2 days where they only let developers have the kinds of machines endusers would be using rather than the latest/greatest stuffed with infinite ram and top end CPUs. There's still a lot to criticise about Windows (and it's still slower than Linux on the same hardware) but the UI performance is fairly good.

            The demise of Surface tablets and Windows phones may remove the handbrake from bloat though. Having to ensure stuff worked in those environments was beneficial for the rest of the software.

      2. hplasm
        Happy

        Re: Windows 10 = Windows Vista

        Close.

        Windows 10 = Windows Vista Plus

  2. razorfishsl

    More interestingly... this was planned behaviour, so the question is , what exactly is M$ upto?

    More DRM by the back door?

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Well, having the OS do the decoding of the video stream on behalf of the multiple applications likely using it to me sounds like a good idea…

      …If the applications using the stream are in fact doing the decode themselves.

      They assumed this was the case. If an application is simply pumping the video stream elsewhere though, why would it bother decoding it? It may well be expecting an encoded stream, and yes, when you upset the status quo, applications crash.

      I'm not certain that DRM had anything to do with it, or that not doing this would necessarily have any effect on DRM implementation. Let's face it, unless you run a different OS, they've got root.

      1. Roo
        Windows

        "Well, having the OS do the decoding of the video stream on behalf of the multiple applications likely using it to me sounds like a good idea…"

        I sincerely hope MS isn't doing the decoding in the kernel. They are still shipping fixes for kernel rendering code vulns they introduced with NT 4.0 (20 years ago). :(

      2. MrXavia

        "If an application is simply pumping the video stream elsewhere though, why would it bother decoding it?"

        Exactly my thoughts, shows that MS don't think....

    2. getHandle

      Multiple steam...

      Makes sense if the NSA are already decoding your webcam steam!

      1. Christoph

        Re: Multiple steam...

        "when a PC is running multiple applications that request access to the same webcam."

        The user's program. the NSA, GCHQ, Microsoft, several hackers, various viruses, your child's school ...

      2. Stoneshop
        Boffin

        Re: Multiple steam...

        'Webcam steam' means it's running way too hot.

        1. Phil W

          Re: Multiple steam...

          Steamy webcams has always meant something very different to me.

    3. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Isnt it obvious, they want all cams using mjpeg raw so as it encodes it can also steam back cough encoding telemetry to base, if you not doing the encoding you cant steal a single frame so easy as its video streamed data and made up from the frames before it (unless its a key frame) in x264. Raw on the other hand you could randomly select any frame you want and get a good still picture. Their fix will actually introduce more load (and more usb bus saturation) as it will have to rencode streams so they can be decoded to then be recoded again to make the broken software work. Its nothing to do with performance if you ask me, its all about being able to steal all the things.....

    4. Alan Brown Silver badge

      "this was planned behaviour, so the question is , what exactly is M$ upto?"

      I can see where they're coming from. It's an attempt to lighten CPU load by avoiding having multiple pieces of software unpick a mpeg stream. The problem is that they didn't think it entirely through.

      I can see the point of not providing a virtual interface for legacy software (forces devs to adapt) but it breaks a shitload of old software.

      Like the rollout of XPsp2 firewalling, this is a good idea but was bound to cause disruption. They should have telegraphed it better.

      1. Richard Plinston

        > avoiding having multiple pieces of software unpick a mpeg stream.

        I can't think of any reason why _I_ would want multiple applications looking at the same camera. Maybe some want to feed their CCTV out to the web for others to view, but then that is one application because locally a browser could be used to view the same stream.

        If I were to be suspicious I might think that perhaps MS wants to load its own app to send the stream to its own sites, perhaps so that it can use face recognition to verify that a particular registered user is the one using the computer, if another person was at the keyboard then a second _per_user_ licence would be required for Windows, Office and Office365.

  3. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    How many more cock-ups before everyone switches to Linux?

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Unhappy

      In far too many cases, infinite.

    2. ecofeco Silver badge

      This parrot is dead!

      No it's not!

      1. Queeg

        Also my first thought...

        Beautiful plumage

        1. davidp231

          Re: Also my first thought...

          Perhaps it's pining for the fjords?

          1. Dead Parrot
            Linux

            Re: Also my first thought...

            Alive and well and living with the penguins, actually... :)

        2. macjules

          Re: Also my first thought...

          Look, I took the liberty of examining that webcam when I got it home, and I discovered the only reason that it had been sitting on the laptop in the first place was that it had been NAILED there.

    3. TheTick

      My Virtualbox VM host and Teamspeak server will be migrated to Linux now. This update decided to ignore the "Notify to schedule restart option" and just went ahead and did it, dirtily shutting down the VM. It was at 3am so no real harm done but that's it for me, no need to have a Win 10 as a simple server host I'll knuckle down and put Linux on it one evening.

      Desktop may still be a bit further off due to the games I'm playing at the moment.

    4. kain preacher

      Yes cause linux will run all of my games. And all of my apps. Oh and don't tell me I have to get new Apps.

      1. macjules

        One word: Steam

        1. a_a

          Same here, if the games worked I'd move to Linux.

          1. nematoad
            Linux

            "Same here, if the games worked I'd move to Linux."

            It depends on what you want to run. The likes of Wine, PlayonLinux and Crossover do a pretty good job for a lot of games. Oh, might take a bit of fiddling with but there is a lot of advice and scripts to take care of most cases.

            Give it a go, you might like it and the sense of liberation from the MS mothership can be wonderful.

            1. Updraft102

              You could always set it up as dual-boot, so you keep your existing Windows and try Linux out at the same time. I'm on Linux Mint now, but I have 7 available too in case I want it. I have little hope of 10 being morphed into a reasonable OS by the time Windows 7 goes unsupported, so I am beginning the process of transitioning early, so I can do it at my leisure.

          2. Anonymous Coward
            Anonymous Coward

            Well you can do both. I run games on windows (stereoscopic doesn't have a linux driver - thankyou nvidia not...) but by moving everything else to linux it means windows can be thinned down for gaming.

      2. Doctor Syntax Silver badge

        "Oh and don't tell me I have to get new Apps."

        It sounds as if you have to if you want to run a webcam on W10.

        1. kain preacher

          I don't want to run a web cam.

          1. Anonymous Coward
            Anonymous Coward

            I don't want to run a web cam.

            Then what's the problem? Complaining about having to move to new applications because a feature you don't use is broken?

            The ones that might consider a move to another OS are probably ones that are suffering from said breakage and are fed up with what has been served to them from this vendor in the past.

      3. hplasm
        Gimp

        Oh and don't tell me I have to get new Apps.

        Ok then.

        (Apps are for toys.)

      4. CompUser

        Try Linux Mint. I just used it to install Windows XP to VirtualBox and it ran quite well. I'll be trying Widnows 7 on VirtualBox next to see how that goes.

        I haven't tried large programs on it but office seemed to run well on it.

    5. CmdrX3

      Well let me see, we've had Win95, 98, ME, XP, Vista, 7, 8, 8.1, 10 and 10+ Anniversary update... not including the other various ones before and between those mentioned. So generally speaking... I wouldn't hold your breath.

    6. Tchou

      Linux? Meh.

      Where the FreeBSD icon when you need it?

      1. bombastic bob Silver badge
        Devil

        Re: Linux? Meh.

        "Where the FreeBSD icon when you need it?"

        would THIS one suffice? (posting from FreeBSD)

        (but I like Linux too!)

        1. MJI Silver badge

          Re: Linux? Meh.

          How about Orbis OS for games?

  4. ecofeco Silver badge

    The beginning of the end

    We are watching the beginning of the end of Microsoft.

    1. chuckufarley Silver badge
      Coat

      Re: The beginning of the end

      It's been a long time since I last posted a comment on El Reg, but I think this needs to be said.

      The end for Microsoft began a few years ago and will continue for many more years. As a modern technology company they will have many, many chances to avert their decline and they will squander most of them in the name of tradition and short term profits. They may even drop the ball a few times while trying to give their customers what they want and need. Their only hope is that the chances they don't waste are amplified by the failures of their competitors, startups, and government regulators.

      Just as Rome wasn't built in a day, it didn't decline in a day.

      As far as driving end users to linux: They won't go. Linux is in the hands of the "developers" and they don't care about end users. They don't even really care about power users. They care about other developers. After all, what good are Free Open Source Software projects if no one is helping you write the code for them?

      1. Ropewash

        Re: The beginning of the end

        "Linux is in the hands of the "developers" and they don't care about end users."

        While I've certainly said something very similar to that on occassion, it's not entirely true and also not a game-breaking detail. Eventually someone doing dev work wants to use the program in a way that makes it beneficial for all users.

        Sure a guy isn't going to sit down and say "How can I make this exactly what the people who aren't even thanking me let alone paying me want it be?" but he might sit down and say "Shit. This thing doesn't work how I want it to. I'mma gonna change that." Sometimes that change is exactly what everyone wanted. (for a given value of "everyone")

        Sometimes the user doesn't even notice when there's a new and useful change;

        I've been mounting .iso images and smb shares manually for so long that I didn't even notice that you can click your way through it now. (though the clicking seems more convoluted to me than the mount command, but that's just habit.). As a sub-entry to that, the mount command used to need a flag for smb. Now it just knows. That's pretty useful too.

        1. Anonymous Coward
          Anonymous Coward

          Re: The beginning of the end

          "Shit. This thing doesn't work how I want it to. "

          Perfectly sums up my windows 10 experience for the last year !

          1. Pompous Git Silver badge

            Re: The beginning of the end

            "Shit. This thing doesn't work how I want it to. "

            Perfectly sums up my windows 10 experience for the last year !

            Me too. But the same happened when trying to use Libre Office. There's no Outline View like in Word so I'm back running Word in a Win7 VM. Obviously people who just write letters don't need an outliner, but they make complex documents much easier to manage.

            1. Anonymous Coward
              Anonymous Coward

              Re: The beginning of the end

              There's no Outline View like in Word so I'm back running Word in a Win7 VM

              You'll have to explain to me why you'd need that. I have as yet not found a need for that, but I assume you need it because there's no other way for you to keep an overview - in which case you *certainly* need LibreOffice.

              When I construct a document framework, I start with the chapter headings - that, indeed, is an outline. But after that I have the LO Navigator open which is substantially more powerful and flexible than Word's overview functions as it also offers a live overview and navigation of other document elements such as text frames, graphics, indexes, tables, even document searches.

              The Navigator is one of the key reasons I would never switch back to Word again - it's simply a superior approach to navigation and management of complex documents.

              1. Pompous Git Silver badge

                Re: The beginning of the end

                But after that I have the LO Navigator open which is substantially more powerful and flexible than Word's overview functions as it also offers a live overview and navigation of other document elements such as text frames, graphics, indexes, tables, even document searches.

                The Navigator is one of the key reasons I would never switch back to Word again - it's simply a superior approach to navigation and management of complex documents.

                When I move a main heading in Word's Outline View, it carries all of the text below it up to the next main heading. Ditto for sub headings. Navigator only moves a little bit of what's below a heading, leaving most of what was between it and the next main heading in place. I managed to totally fuck up a document I've been working on for a considerable time. Thank goodness I keep snapshots of any work in progress. Only a few hours wasted.

                Editing documents is not the same as navigating through them.

                1. Anonymous Coward
                  Anonymous Coward

                  Re: The beginning of the end

                  When I move a main heading in Word's Outline View, it carries all of the text below it up to the next main heading. Ditto for sub headings. Navigator only moves a little bit of what's below a heading, leaving most of what was between it and the next main heading in place.

                  Ah, OK, I understand now.

                  I think this depends a bit on how you work with the Navigator. If I'm moving whole chapters I tend to collapse their content, and at that point it's a matter of grabbing it with the mouse and moving it, and the whole lot comes at once. If I want to move pieces I personally find it easier to simply open an extra window on the same text so I can drag & drop chunks across.

                  I managed to totally fuck up a document I've been working on for a considerable time. Thank goodness I keep snapshots of any work in progress. Only a few hours wasted.

                  I've worked with Word from the days it was more "What You See Is Roughly What You'll Get", and in all the years that I suffered that, Auto-save never actually did. Thus, saving frequently becomes a must anyway. LO is in that respect better, but the LO people did one thing wrong: "Save a new version" (File - Versions) is not a single function, so you're always forced to cook up a macro to make it a single-key action, the same as "Paste text only without adding any &^%#$ formatting debris". The latter is IMHO the real cause of Word document problems: there really is no more efficient way to utterly screw over a document than doing a lot of cut & paste which allows it to scatter formatting fragments all over the place and confuse itself.

                  That, more than costs, was eventually the key driver to move to LO: if I have to use LO to open a document that Word can no longer open without crashing (because of the mess it made itself) I might as well save myself the trouble and stay in LO, and learn how that works instead. It also means I don't have to start excavating useful commands from deep inside the menu structure every time Microsoft decides to foist an UI change on us because it needs to sell a new version and by God, I hate that &^%#$ ribbon (and it appears I'm not the only one).

                  That said, there is one Word function I could really do with in LO, and that is "resume last cursor position" (Shift-F5). There is no LO equivalent, and it's super handy if you're in a long document and need to look something up. I solve that by usually having 2 windows open on a long document (one edit, one view), but that's not quite the same.

                  On balance, I now prefer LO. Your mileage appears to differ, of course - if you're frequently use a Word specific function it makes sense to stay with Word. That is, until Microsoft decides they need to change the UI again, of course :).

                  1. bombastic bob Silver badge
                    FAIL

                    Re: The beginning of the end

                    (regarding micro-shaft office)

                    "I hate that &^%#$ ribbon (and it appears I'm not the only one)."

                    it's the most hated feature, I'd venture to guess. And in addition, I *hate* 2D flugly and hamburger menus, 2 more "new, shiny" things that have attempted to dominate our desktops. Yucchhhhh!

                  2. Pompous Git Silver badge

                    Re: The beginning of the end

                    On balance, I now prefer LO. Your mileage appears to differ, of course - if you're frequently use a Word specific function it makes sense to stay with Word. That is, until Microsoft decides they need to change the UI again, of course :).

                    I would have stayed with Word and Win7 but MS in their wisdom decided otherwise ;-)

                    The menus the stupid ribbon replaced can be returned with an add-in that works quite well. [Aside] Sometimes Outlook hangs on startup and this is caused by it failing to load the Menus add-in.[/Aside] However, your comments inspired me to do some investigating, something that's always tempting when you really should be working on the document! It would seem that the Organon add-in for Writer might do the trick.

                    I too have worked with Word for a very long time (as well as Word Perfect, Lotus Word Pro and Wordstar) and IIRC there was no autosave in Winword 2. My autosave is Ctrl-S and it's completely automatic. That said, I've never had a problem with Autosave. Mind you, I've always turned off Quick saving. This latter saves edits to the end of the file rather than in place and makes for a longer, more complex file.

                    Your theory as to the cause of instability seems sound, but I invariably paste as plain text. Local formatting is pretty much confined to bold and italic. Another cause of headaches in Word is attempting to use it as a page layout program. It's not and both Word Perfect and WordPro suffered from the same blight of adding such features.

                    Yes, Shift-F5 is a dandy feature. Another workaround is to insert some unlikely text (e.g. "^6") before leaving the document. Then you can Ctrl-F to find it when re-opening the document. Since it's already highlighted, you can just hit the Del key before commencing work. Your two window solution seems more cumbersome.

                    1. Anonymous Coward
                      Anonymous Coward

                      Re: The beginning of the end

                      I would have stayed with Word and Win7 but MS in their wisdom decided otherwise ;-)

                      I parted with Word in Office for Mac 2010. When I replaced my machine, the restored backup of the software wanted the license code yet again, and between me and the possible location of the box was about half a planet worth of travel so I decided what I had been thinking about anyway - after all, FAST has been telling us that it's very bad to get licensing wrong so I figured I might as well free myself of that risk too.

                      The menus the stupid ribbon replaced can be returned with an add-in that works quite well

                      OK, but isn't it daft to have to add something to software to simply get back what you used to have? Call me fickle, but I like to have the option of NOT following into this new wonderful Microsoft world where everything is shiny but nothing actually *works*.. As for the software you've used - yep - all of them. Heck, I even used Borland's Sprint, and Solution Software's BRIEF with the dBrief Paradox add-on for writing scripts - been there, but the T-shirt eventually fell apart.

                      I don't use "resume cursor" to find my place in a doc when I open it - Word as well as LO go back to where you were automatically (for LO that's a somewhat recent innovation :) ). It's more when you're in a doc and you suddenly realise that what you're writing links with something else so you have a quick look - with Shift-F5 you can just jump back to where you were, even if that was a couple of jumps back (as it saves a history). Never mind - different purposes.

                      I've had a look at Organon but it strikes me as unmaintained (last update was for LO 4, not 5). That said, it would be overkill for my needs anyway - the complexities in my writing lie elsewhere. That's why I tend to write "black screen" using the Ulysses application - more or less turning my super wonderful computer back into a slightly more intelligent VT220 terminal, nicely without distractions :).

                      Anyway, happy writing - whatever works for you!

            2. Kiwi

              Re: The beginning of the end

              There's no Outline View like in Word so I'm back running Word in a Win7 VM.

              Just as hopefully something to save you some time - did you ever try installing Office directly (under WINE basically)?

              I have done this for Offfice '03, '07 and '10 (years may not be exact, substitute appropriate versions) under Mint 11 and one later version (maybe 14) as well as on Fedora (can't recall what version, this was sometime in '12 or '13). It worked perfectly from what I and my then boss (who was pissed off it was so easy to install and trying to prove that you cannot run Office on Linux) could tell. Of course, more modern versions of Office or Wine may not want to play so well together.

      2. a_yank_lurker

        Re: The beginning of the end

        Linux and BSD have been successfully commercialized as viable user OSes as ChromeOS, Android, iOS, and OS X as wells a few solid commercial traditional Linux distros. But your point Slurp will be around for awhile before it becomes another marginalized player or completely disappears is quite correct.

        A far as FOSS developers not caring about about power users or end users misunderstands that FOSS projects often begin life as someone trying to fix a problem. Often the project, particularly in the early stages, does not have a wide perceived target audience because the developers are not doing marketing surveys, marketing plans, etc. It's often later when they realize there is more interest in the project that start to address the other needs.

      3. Doctor Syntax Silver badge

        Re: The beginning of the end

        'They won't go. Linux is in the hands of the "developers" and they don't care about end users.'

        My emphasis.

        Did you even read what the Microsoft developers were quoted as saying in the article?

        To some extent I agree with the general point - developers can easily become detached from what users want except where they're working in in-house teams, and maybe not even then. It's not a prerogative of open source developers. As regards Linux, Linus seems to have a pretty solid mantra: don't break userland* which the Microsoft camera team could have heeded in this case.

        I like to distinguish between projects and products, product in the sense that Brookes, used in in chapter one of TMMM, not necessarily something that's going to be sold. Projects all too often go off on personal gratification but open source also delivers some solid products such as LibreOffice.

        *IME userland did get broken between 2.4 & 2.6.

      4. hplasm
        WTF?

        Re: The beginning of the end

        ""Linux is in the hands of the "developers" and they don't care about end users."

        rather

        "Microsoft is in the hands of the "developers" and they don't care about end users."

        Didn't you get the memo, forced down your throat?

        Or are you still on XP?

      5. Updraft102

        Re: The beginning of the end

        Linux, though, is not one unified project. It's dozens upon dozens of smaller projects, rolled into distros by still more projects.

        The kernel people aren't concerned about end users. They don't have to be at the kernel level, though. Each bit has its own developers, and they seek to make their portion do what that one portion is meant to do as well as possible, and that doesn't really depend on the end-user either at the deeper levels.

        When you get to the desktop environment level, the end user does matter, and Ubuntu has been trying to develop Linux into an OS suitable for regular end-users for more than a decade. A lot of people think Ubuntu has gone astray with its Unity desktop (not to mention Gnome itself), which is why Ubuntu derivatives like Linux Mint have appeared. Mint is meant for the ordinary user, though the tools appreciated by power users are still available if the user wants them.

        That's not to say, of course, that there are not gaps in the "end user friendly" bits of Linux. There clearly are... and it is true that for a long time, these were overlooked because the nerds who develop Linux for themselves don't mind doing things with the command line instead of graphically, so they never had the "fire in the belly" to go develop graphical tools for administrative stuff the way they did for other things that also needed their attention.

        One thing that Linux devs DO share, though, is the desire to provide an alternative to the Microsoft hegemony, and they are realizing more and more that this means making Linux friendlier to the end user who is somewhere in between "total beginner" (for whom Linux desktop environments are quite adequate, and where someone else is doing the admin work) and "Linux guru/power user" (who would use the command line instead of a graphical tool even if the graphical tool was incredibly powerful and easy to use).

        Linux isn't at the point where all of the things you could do in Windows graphically can be done without the command line in Linux, but it is moving that way. Progress is sometimes frustratingly slow in FOSS projects as compared to commercial software, but it is at least moving in the right direction, whereas Microsoft seems determined to annoy and alienate every one of its users to the point that they jump ship. They're looking toward a future in which they are a cloud services company, not a traditional "software in a box" company as they have been in the past, so perhaps they don't even care if they destroy Windows with all of this short-term "monetizing" of the product.

    2. Captain DaFt

      Re: The beginning of the end

      "We are watching the beginning of the end of Microsoft."

      Been watching that for way too long. Can't I just fast forward to the good part?

      1. itzman
        Linux

        Re: The beginning of the end

        This IS the good part. The slow motion crash as bits start to fly off, and the carcase starts to do 360 degree rolls and spins.

    3. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: The beginning of the end

      We are watching the beginning of the end of Microsoft.

      Not a chance. A Microsoft infestation is like malaria: just when you think you've got it under control it flares up again. As long as you have a large volume of C level people that rather believe the chap they meet in a club than their own techs, as long as very senior people can be swayed by some sponsorship to look the other way and as long as consultancies and advisers make more money off the continual maintenance of Windows based platforms than they would do off a far more stable Open Source environment Microsoft can pretty much do what it wants - the rest of us have no choice but to follow.

      It can continue to produce average, unsecure software that just about works because it simply buys sponsors the key players. If you want an example of how that works and what devastation follows just look at the UK: we're *still* mopping up the mess, almost a decade later. Worse, I have seen inside information that this is about to be repeated in another EU country where at very senior level the dictat "thy shall use Microsoft, and nothing but Microsoft" has been given, despite formally reported issues re. security and data protection.

      I don't have to disclose which nation it is - you'll know soon enough by the constant reports of failing government IT. Give it a year or 2 and it'll be abundantly clear where this is happening.

      1. John Brown (no body) Silver badge

        Re: The beginning of the end

        "A Microsoft infestation is like malaria: just when you think you've got it under control it flares up again. As long as you have a large volume of C level people that rather believe the chap they meet in a club than their own techs, as long as very senior people can be swayed by some sponsorship to look the other way and as long as consultancies and advisers make more money off the continual maintenance of Windows based platforms than they would do off a far more stable Open Source environment Microsoft can pretty much do what it wants - the rest of us have no choice but to follow."

        That's what they used to say about IBM. They sold off their printer business. Then they sold off the PC and Laptop businesses. They're still around, they're still big, but they don't really have any impact on the market that most people remember them for. They used to dominate it. Hell, they more or less invented the desktop mass market.

        1. Alan Brown Silver badge

          Re: The beginning of the end

          > (IBM) Hell, they more or less invented the desktop mass market.

          But it only took off when clones appeared.

    4. bombastic bob Silver badge
      Happy

      Re: The beginning of the end

      "We are watching the beginning of the end of Microsoft."

      PROMISE???

  5. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Oh, for the love of...

    While I do appreciate the extra work that Microsoft is throwing my way, please stop. I'm up to my eyeballs in family members and clients seeking to climb out of the rolling dumpster fire that Microsoft has become.

    1. Doctor_Wibble
      Devil

      Equally conflicted, different reasons... Re: Oh, for the love of...

      Having spent many joyous hours playing with webcams on W9x and their marvellous ways of requiring 15 gigs of unsplittable driver-plus-crap-program just so you could have an unscalable 20x30 jumpy postage-stamp of a moving thumbnail (with the rounded-corner window, be still my beating heart, that so makes it worth it) I am happy to see such things condemned to oblivion. I sympathise with affected users but it's only fair that everyone gets to enjoy such indignity reminiscent of ye olden dayes.

      If that also indirectly means pain for the manufacturers who thought that it was all a price the plebs would think was worth paying for their unreliable hardware then so much the better. See also venom wrt driver version 2.1.1.1.1b not working with camera version 2.1.1.1.1a because the addition of a small dot on the casing makes it all totally completely incompatible between identical hardware, USB webcam makers the only people worse than printer makers.

      I'm not bitter, just small-minded and vindictive. It's my right, I'm allowed.

      ... and breathe...

  6. Len Goddard

    Optional behaviour

    A change like this is bound to badly impact some users with older/more obscure hardware/software (or home coded stuff). The solution is easy - when you make a change like this you provide a way of falling back to the old behaviour. Toggle "legacy_usb_video". Even if the new behavour is the default, you just need to document the fallback.

    Oops, sorry, I forgot M$ doesn't do documentation.

    1. JeffyPoooh
      Pint

      Re: Optional behaviour

      "...provide a way of falling back to the old behaviour."

      Far too many coder drones don't seem to realize that.

      Their instincts are incorrect. Your instincts are correct.

    2. Pascal Monett Silver badge
      Trollface

      Re: Optional behaviour

      Microsoft never "falls back". That would be to admit defeat and allow the errors of the past to continue. Microsoft will only boldly go forward, forging brilliant new errors along the way. And now everyone gets to experience them directly thanks to the ever-changing code base.

      1. Doctor Syntax Silver badge

        Re: Optional behaviour

        'Microsoft never "falls back".'

        And yet in the past they've maintained bugs like allowing usage of memory that's been freed simply to allow applications that did that continue. That seems to have been an egregious error that should have been thrown back in the lap of the application developers. This seems to be largely a performance issue; if the user wants to run a combination of stuff that requires a lot of CPU power it's up to he user to provide that power and maintain backward compatibility for the rest.

        1. 9Rune5

          Re: Optional behaviour

          "if the user wants to run a combination of stuff that requires a lot of CPU power it's up to he user to provide that power and maintain backward compatibility for the rest."

          The OS' job is to help the user utilize the hardware in the most productive way achievable.

          Stopping apps from wasting CPU cycles doing the exact same task is an obvious place to start. What the article says MS did makes perfect sense to me.

          OTOH, I do wonder what happens after. I.e. that decoded stream from the webcam is then supposed to be transmitted somewhere. And that means encoding it back to H.264..?

          I suspect there is more light to be shed on this problem.

          BTW: Keep in mind that many hardware vendors are notorious for making crap drivers and bundle crap software. To keep all that ticking along nicely is a rather unpleasant task. AFAICT MS has done more in this department than any OS provider to date.

          1. Dead Parrot

            Re: Optional behaviour

            "The OS' job is to help the user utilize the hardware in the most productive way achievable."

            No, the OS's job is to do what it's damn well told. If I fire up a program that wants H.264 video, I want the OS to go and get H.264 video, not try to give me a different format or a game of sodding Candy Crush.

          2. anonymous boring coward Silver badge

            Re: Optional behaviour

            "The OS' job is to help the user utilize the hardware in the most productive way achievable."

            1. No it's not.

            2. There is no way for the OS to know anything about the "most productive way achievable".

            "Stopping apps from wasting CPU cycles doing the exact same task is an obvious place to start."

            The obvious place to start, then, is to remove Win 10. That way it's not wasting any more CPU cycles.

            I can't think of anything less useful than using the computer's resources for telemetry.

            From the article:

            "If a program expects MJPEG or H.264 from a USB-connected cam, it won't be able to get it. Bye-bye video feed.

            Morante said this change was made in the operating system to improve performance when a PC is running multiple applications that request access to the same webcam. "

            Well... You have to be some effing moron to not realise that this will instantly break many, many applications. Alternatively, you don't give a flying sh*t about your customers.

            Possibly both. (Technically, if you don't give a sh*t about your customers, you ARE a moron.)

    3. Geoffrey W

      Re: Optional behaviour

      Apparently there is a way to change back to default behaviour, though I warn that I haven't tested this because, like, no windows 10 here yet. A quote:-

      "Specifically, a DWORD named EnableFrameServerMode at HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows Media Foundation\Platform (for 32-bit Windows, and 64-bit applications on 64-bit Windows) and HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\WOW6432Node\Microsoft\Windows Media Foundation\Platform (for 32-bit applications on 64-bit Windows) set to the value zero will restore expected camera functionality."

      This is taken from :-

      http://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2016/08/windows-10-anniversary-update-breaks-most-webcams/

      Don't blame me if if it doesn't work.

  7. Frank N. Stein

    Who's customer reviews is Microsoft reading? The Internal Wishful Thinking Report?? I have yet to meet anyone who has praised Windows 10, accept Microsoft Shills. We won't even get into the strong arm upgrade tactics that apparently didn't work.

    1. David Austin

      Go speak to an mom and pop Windows 8.x user that's happy that a) it looks and behaves superficially the same as Windows 7 & XP

      But yeah, I'm with the power users with this one: for every cool feature in Windows 10, there seems to be a step back in another area.

      Related: I'm I the only person missing Client side Volume Shadow Copy since Windows 7?

      1. joed

        Shadow copy can be enabled/is enabled. MS just convoluted the access (if I recall it required opening folder as a share on localhost\c$ url). But in general it's true that MS has tendency to kill useful functionality while trying to push new crap.

      2. itzman
        Trollface

        a) it looks and behaves superficially the same as Windows 7 & XP

        Linux Mint?

        1. TVU Silver badge

          Re: a) it looks and behaves superficially the same as Windows 7 & XP

          "Linux Mint?"

          It might seem initially counterintuitive, but all the recent market share figures and reports I have seen all seem to point the same way, i.e. that Windows 10's ongoing stuff ups are producing a statistically significant switch to the unices in the form of OS X, Linux and Chrome OS (chromebooks) in a way that the introduction of the controversial Windows 8 never managed to do. That really ought to be a concern for Redmond.

          1. Updraft102

            Re: a) it looks and behaves superficially the same as Windows 7 & XP

            Linux on the desktop has grown at a faster rate than Windows 10 for the last two months, according to netmarketshare.com. Linux still has a long way to go to reach parity even with MacOS or Windows XP, but the longest journey starts with a single step. Linux is actually big enough now to get its own category in the pie chart on the aforementioned web site-- it's not just part of "other" anymore.

    2. Updraft102

      I think the customer reviews MS refers to are those in its Insider program... since all of the critical Insiders have been purged from their official forums and what-not, they're left with an echo chamber.

      Oddly enough, some real-world people do like Windows 10. I've met some. It's like meeting an alien, kind of. Weird.

      1. anonymous boring coward Silver badge

        "It's like meeting an alien, kind of. Weird."

        Makes you wonder what's inside that skull, that looks human on the outside. Could be a perfect vacuum?

      2. Geoffrey W

        RE: "Oddly enough, some real-world people do like Windows 10. I've met some. It's like meeting an alien, kind of. Weird."

        Nope. Tech people who care so much about operating systems and technical shit are the aliens. Those are normal humans you're seeing. You, and, I suppose, me, are the weird ones.

  8. Magani
    Trollface

    "Engineering and customer support are investigating these on a case by case basis and offering trouble-shooting tips as necessary."

    Have you tried turning it off and back on again?

    1. David 132 Silver badge

      Have you tried turning it off and back on again?

      You jest, but have you actually seen the responses from "Microsoft technical support" on the MS support forums?

      "Turn it off and on again" is about the level of it. They have a stock response which gets copied & pasted into ANY thread, along the lines of

      "Thank you for contacting Microsoft support. I understand that you have an issue with <completely unrelated problem that totally misses the point of what the user posted>. Please try the following:

      1) Run SFC /scannow

      2) Defrag your disk

      3) Change your desktop color scheme to be just a smidge less blue and a teensy bit more green"

      (OK, I made that last one up, but that's about the level of usefulness they provide)

    2. bombastic bob Silver badge
      Trollface

      Have you tried turning it off and back on again?

      no, but I put it in the microwave on 'high' for 15 minutes.

  9. ACx

    "Windows 10 Anniversary Update completely borks USB webcams. Yay."

    Some of us would think of that as a security update.....

    1. Ropewash
      Thumb Up

      @ACx

      "Some of us would think of that as a security update....."

      They were probably trying to turn the things ON by default to log some more valuable <cough> telemetry to make the Windows experience better for you. Since MSupdate is now Bizarro World, it ended up turning them off instead.

      A patch will be issued soon.

      1. a_yank_lurker

        Re: @ACx

        @Ropewash - I hate to pedantic but please define "soon". I think there are a couple of definitions here: the dictionaries and Slurp's.

        1. Ropewash
          Joke

          Re: @ACx

          @a_yank_lurker - There are a lot of factors used to determine the given value for "soon" at any moment for both source definitions.

          Dealing strictly with Microsoft's "soon" here;

          If it's a fix that will prevent a hacker from accessing your system then "soon" means between the first big media report and the next Windows release.

          If it's a fix that allows you to actually use your own machine as you want to then "soon" means 'maybe we'll get to it after the next Windows release, but it'd be easier to just find third party workarounds.'

          If it's a fix that effects Microsoft's revenue stream then "soon" means in the next patch rollout if we can actually fix the issue, we'll probably break a few things trying. Eggs - Omelettes. Windows users will understand.

          1. a_yank_lurker

            Re: @ACx

            Ropewash, thanks for the definitions. In this case sometime before never is the target date.

    2. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      It's not for security, it's for productivity:

      > "Morante said this change was made in the operating system to improve performance..."

      Certainly if there's less preening and flexing at the workstation then productivity must rise.

    3. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Actually...

      This is the first thing that MS has got right with W10.

      Like Zuck, the first thing I do with a new device (tablet or Laptop) (no matter what OS) is to put some tape over the camera.

      Then I do the same to the microphone.

      If I want to speak to someone using the device I plug in a headset. When I'm done, it gets removed.

      anon just because of the target I'm giving to the hackers.

      1. Anonymous Coward
        Anonymous Coward

        Re: Actually...

        Like Zuck, the first thing I do with a new device (tablet or Laptop) (no matter what OS) is to put some tape over the camera.

        Then I do the same to the microphone.

        If I want to speak to someone using the device I plug in a headset. When I'm done, it gets removed.

        You could just use a OS that leaves YOU in control...

        1. Anonymous Coward
          Anonymous Coward

          Re: Actually...

          use an OS that leaves you in control....

          I would but work decrees that Win 7 is the order of the day.

          At least it isn't W10 but the plan is to upgrade at the end of the year. Time to look for a new job.

      2. Anonymous Coward
        Gimp

        Re: Actually...

        Then I do the same to the microphone.

        Are you sure tape is sufficient for the mic? Have you tried recording it while you're speaking on your headset to see if it's still picking up anything discernible?

        I use a pin to properly fuck 'em up. It's the only way to be sure.

        Looks like leather... actually lacquered tinfoil ---->

      3. Captain Badmouth
        Happy

        Windows user announces sticking plaster solution?

        "the first thing I do with a new device (tablet or Laptop) (no matter what OS) is to put some tape over the camera.

        Then I do the same to the microphone."

      4. heyrick Silver badge
        Happy

        Re: Actually...

        Amateurs. I flipped my computer over. Voided the warranty. The camera module is a four wire plug (probably USB) and the microphone was just a crappy unshielded two wires twisted. Both unplugged. Machine put back together.

        Tape and pins won't keep the bastards away. The only safe way is an air gap between plug and socket.

  10. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    customer satisfaction

    > Windows 10 continues to have the highest customer satisfaction

    And the most satisfying thing about Windows 10 is the ability to roll back to Windows 7.

    1. Wade Burchette

      Re: customer satisfaction

      "Windows 10 continues to have the highest customer satisfaction of any version of Windows."

      What are they smoking? And where can I get it? Everybody I talk to, everybody I have met, everywhere I read, people hate Windows 10 with a passion. PC sales are still down because of Windows 8 and 10. You should see how people's eyes light up when I tell them how to get a Windows 7 computer. And yet, despite all these facts, Microsoft says it has the highest customer satisfaction of any Windows. I think their management and PR department would do well in the North Korean propaganda department. They are like the former information minister of Iraq under Saddam Hussein who proclaimed the Americans were losing while the world saw them march into Baghdad. "Windows 10 is the most popular Windows ever. PC sales are not down; these are lies. In fact, people are still begging to upgrade from Windows 7 to Windows 10."

      1. a_yank_lurker

        Re: customer satisfaction

        We now know who hired Baghdad Bob.

  11. Dwarf

    Spyware ?

    If the video feeds must be un-encrypted, then its logical that they could be sent to other places too ... I wonder what else slurp is slurping or planning to slurp - and to who ?

    The wonderful world of the Windows Alpha program. Can you get your job done today, or will your system be a pile of useless junk until the next "update" comes along.

    Secondly, I don't know what they are smoking.

    Windows 10 continues to have the highest customer satisfaction of any version of Windows. We have seen a small number of reports of unexpected behaviors following the Windows 10 Anniversary Update

    Nobody I know actually likes using it once it forced its self on their machine and I'd expect that independent reviews would say that Windows 7 and Windows XP gave the highest satisfaction to users.

    Glad I don't have this problem any more..

  12. Ropewash

    Totally unrelated. (almost)

    I finally let my Win8.1 update for the first time since the nagware began and it looks like things are back to normal. The ugly KB's are in the "recommended" section that I'm still ignoring, and the security updates didn't seem to fiddle with my system to log into MS data harvesters. (yet).

    I look forward to my GWX-free future.

    Wasn't GWX also the "Genuine Windows eXperience"? Kinda odd to re-use their own acronyms.

    1. joed

      Re: Totally unrelated. (almost)

      Enjoy while it lasts. Beginning in October MS will start pushing cumulative blobs of s..t.

      1. Ropewash
        Unhappy

        Re: Totally unrelated. (almost)

        Awwww Shit.

        I was actually kinda happy about my Windows machine there for a minute and you had to go and fuck it all up.

        I'd forgotten they plan to roll out dungball patches in the future for all their releases.

        (I was going to say "tarball" but that's already taken by a vastly more respectable application and I refuse to conflate the two.)

        1. Anonymous Coward
          Gates Horns

          Re: Totally unrelated. (almost)

          MS's à la foie gras marketing campaign was such an unmitigated "success" that there's bound to be more on the way.

          Say what you like about slurp... they've never been the type to let a bad idea slip away.

        2. Dead Parrot
          Pint

          Re: Totally unrelated. (almost)

          I hereby nominate "Dungball Tuesday" as the official name for the monthly patch release date (depending on the day, naturally).

    2. Updraft102

      Re: Totally unrelated. (almost)

      WGA. Windows Genuine Advantage.

      1. Ropewash
        Thumb Up

        Re: Totally unrelated. (almost)

        Thanks for the correction.

        I think my brain's been cat'ing the MS pop-ups.

  13. fidodogbreath

    Windows 10 continues to have the highest customer satisfaction of any version of Windows.

    And the Titanic had the highest customer satisfaction of any ocean liner....for the first half of the trip, anyway.

    1. a_yank_lurker

      "And the Titanic had the highest customer satisfaction of any ocean liner....for the first half of the trip, anyway." - Comparing 'bloat 10 to the Titanic is an insult to the Titanic.

    2. Ropewash
      Joke

      Windows 10 Titanic Edition

      The comparison needs a bit more fleshing out to truly appreciate how incredible Microsoft really are.

      Their Titanic version is sailing now while the welders are still working to join the hull. There's mechanics in the engine room that have to dodge between rotating parts in an effort to fix the fact that certain pistons just aren't getting any steam. The captain is currently not at the helm because he's trying to decide which MS ship he should captain next. They gave away all the tickets for free so now are trying to flog high-price food in the restaurant but not enough people are buying it. The merchant area is deserted. The highly mobile lifeboats have been jettisoned due to the fact that no-one was using them while the main ship was floating.

      Now there's a few icecubes in the sea to deal with, but that seems like a mere technicality compared to actually keeping the whole boat from simply tipping up and dropping into the sea all on it's own.

      All it needs is a catchy soundtrack.

      1. bombastic bob Silver badge
        Trollface

        Re: Windows 10 Titanic Edition

        "All it needs is a catchy soundtrack."

        'Those endearing young charms'

        piano or xylophone, doesn't matter.

        https://allthetropes.org/wiki/Xylophone_Gag

  14. wsm

    All in a days work...

    "Engineering and customer support are investigating these on a case by case basis and offering trouble-shooting tips as necessary."

    Isn't this just the ordinary users as beta-testers approach MS have been using for the past few years, even more so with Win10?

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Windows

      Re: All in a days work...

      "Last few years" meaning ever since "MS"DOS/1981? How the hell old are you?

  15. a_yank_lurker

    Competence?

    There seems to be a defacto standard format in use that users and developers are very familiar with. Thus the software and hardware are using the defacto standard. But Slurp has decided to muck things up.

    Also, I wonder how new some of this hardware is. I recently bought a couple of video cameras. While Slurp will not affect me, I wonder how many people will need to spend money to either replace their software and/or hardware. This can only improve customer dissatisfaction measures.

    1. itzman
      Coat

      Re: Competence?

      Odd how I misread that as defecato standard format...

      1. Wensleydale Cheese
        Unhappy

        Re: Competence?

        "Odd how I misread that as defecato standard format..."

        Meet the new shit.

        Same as the old shit.

        1. Pompous Git Silver badge

          Re: Competence?

          Meet the new shit.

          Same as the old shit.

          Actually, it's really still the same old shit, it's just in a different toilet.

  16. cosymart
    Devil

    All fine

    Still on Windows 7, didn't take the poisoned chalice.

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: All fine

      Sew up your anus. Quick. While you still can.

      1. hplasm
        Devil

        Re: All fine

        "Sew up your anus. Quick. While you still can."

        Wow. The hoops you have to jump through to run Windows these days...

        1. ecofeco Silver badge

          Re: All fine

          Wow. The hoops you have to jump through to run Windows these days...

          It's always been that way. Remember XP's 3 service packs before it actually became a good OS? And that was considered progress for Microsoft.

          And that's the problem. MS has had 21 years since Win 95 to perfect upgrades and updates and they haven't. Yet I can run a Linux DVD, FROM the DVD player, and it works right the first time and runs just as fast as Win 7, 64 bit. From the DVD player. Never mind after I install it. Windows can't even touch it.

          MS has used up all my patience. They are crap.

  17. PhillW

    Multiple webcam access

    "...to improve performance when a PC is running multiple applications that request access to the same webcam..."

    So I assume one of those applications will be Redmond having a look round your office / front room to see what they can come and nick?

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Terminator

      Re: Multiple webcam access

      ...and another sending regular grabs to their bestest mate's hollowed out mountain in Utah...

      Awesome.

  18. VinceH

    "Windows 10 continues to have the highest customer satisfaction of any version of Windows when we conveniently exclude versions with higher customer satisfaction, and ignore all the negative comments that are being made everywhere."

    FTFY!

  19. Doctor Syntax Silver badge

    Things are getting really bad. SWMBO tells me that this one has even made it to "You and Yours" on Radio 4.

  20. james 68

    Just usb webcams you say?....

    There are only 2 complaints I have with the Win10 update.

    1) It changed both my language and system settings to Japanese - Every update that changes version number does this. It's fucking annoying.

    2) I cannot watch streaming video, this is not just a webcam issue, it's an H.264 issue. Any site that streams in H.264 is stuffed, it'll buffer and play maybe 10-15 mins worth of video then either just stop completely, or stop for 30 seconds and start again from the beginning of the stream, rinse, repeat.

    1. ecofeco Silver badge

      Re: Just usb webcams you say?....

      Windows media handling has always been problematic. Always.

      1. Pompous Git Silver badge

        Re: Just usb webcams you say?....

        Windows media handling has always been problematic. Always.

        Though perhaps not quite as bad as Linux (Mint 18). Attempting to play DVDs, they play part the way through, then freeze. Copying them with DVD Fab in Windows to USB stick works well, but really shouldn't be necessary.

        1. anonymous boring coward Silver badge

          Re: Just usb webcams you say?....

          Didn't Win 10 drop DVD support altogether? That's probably worse than some bug that I'm sure is easily resolved (and probably specific to your setup).

  21. Captain Badmouth
    Windows

    WinX anniversary edition

    Gives a whole new set of meanings to the words "gift" and "giving".

    1. Not also known as SC

      Re: WinX anniversary edition

      Isn't gift a Dutch word for poison?

  22. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    MS is in decline, but Linux will never replace it

    So MS has two strikes with this release, stealth turn on of GVR (leading to frequent lag and freezes) in the background, and now hosing up webcams.

    As management heavy MS flounders, Linus suffers from the opposite problem, i.e. no management at all. As someone else here said, Linux is developed by developers, for developers. Normal every day users are not part of the equation.

    The average person who is not a developer who tries to install Linux on an average box usually fails, because there is no working graphics driver, or mouse driver, etc. for some part of their machine.

    I have worked in IT for years, and installing Linux on any platform/brand has always been a crap shoot. It either works, or it wont and there is no fix for it, unless you develop it yourself.

    1. Chemist

      Re: MS is in decline, but Linux will never replace it

      "The average person who is not a developer who tries to install Linux on an average box usually fails, because there is no working graphics driver, or mouse driver, etc. for some part of their machine.

      I have worked in IT for years, and installing Linux on any platform/brand has always been a crap shoot. It either works, or it wont and there is no fix for it, unless you develop it yourself."

      I note that you are anonymous presumably because you are telling porkies !

    2. Anonymous Coward
      FAIL

      Re: MS is in decline, but Linux will never replace it

      The average person who is not a developer who tries to install Linux on an average box usually fails, because there is no working graphics driver, or mouse driver, etc. for some part of their machine.

      Oh my! What century are you trolling from? Are you certain you're not thinking of your beloved Windows(tm) which is abjectly useless shit until you download and install 300MB of your GPU vendor's obfuscated binary god-knows-what-crap into your dearly beloved Windows(tm)? Linux isn't at all like that: any graphics you're likely to find will Just Work (tm) straight out of the box! It's quite remarkable! Try it - you'll be amazed. That said, all the major graphics purveyors also offer their binary blobs for Linux, should you feel inclined to go blobby. Mmmm.. choice! Do try it!.. You might like it!

      Never, ever, found a mouse which didn't just plug-in-and-work. Even funky multibutton laser "gaming" mice. How many kinds of mice do you have for all those "parts of your machine"? Sounds like you might have a somewhat unconventional setup. Is one of them running from an improperly terminated SCSI bus perhaps?

      I have worked in IT for years, and installing Linux on any platform/brand has always been a crap shoot. It either works, or it wont and there is no fix for it, unless you develop it yourself.

      Gosh! Really? What a shocking departure that must be from your beloved Windows(tm): Installing Windows(tm) on any platform/brand has always been a crap shoot. It either works, or it wont and there is no fix for it.

      1. Ropewash

        Re: MS is in decline, but Linux will never replace it

        Somewhere between the AC's the truth is buried.

        https://nouveau.freedesktop.org/wiki/FeatureMatrix/

        A glance down the WIP and TODO should be sufficient to see whether you'll get a great "out-of-the-box" experience on your hardware. Note that NV130 isn't on that chart, so when you drop in your new 1080GTX assume all boxes are red.

        I appreciate the hard work the Nouveau guys are doing a lot, especially in the face of the help Nvidia is giving them (none), but it's always going to be a long game of catch-up.

        Those binary blobs are still a necessity for many users.

        There will always be tweaking and driver issues to consider, especially on newer hardware and obscure devices, but that goes in Windowsland too.

        It's just as wrong to say "Everything works perfectly out of the box" as it is to say "Built by developers for developers".

        Most hardware works well and you don't need much IT experience above knowing how to google for instructions. So give Linux a try and see how you like it.

        1. Ropewash
          Linux

          Re: MS is in decline, but Linux will never replace it

          I feel inclined to supply a few more examples since Nvidia graphics cards will always be an issue until they finally stop with the firmware nonsense and release some decent source.

          From personal experience with the machine I'm typing this on;

          BD burners do not work well out-of-the-box on any Debian based distro. A licensing issue lead to them dropping cdrtools from the repos ages ago. The cdrkit they use is not able to close a BD data disk properly. You can compile cdrtools yourself and fix this, or run a distro that supplies it. Try one that's Arch based.

          A Samsung CLP-320N printer doesn't work out-of-the-box on Manjaro. You need to remove their print driver blob and replace it with just CUPS and the Samsung unified driver from ArchUserRepos. This printer worked perfectly out-of-the-box on Mint last time I tried. (Mint 14 iirc)

          Hotswapping hard-drives is not always fully supported, even when set to swappable in BIOS/UEFI. It's a good idea to use "sudo hdparm -y /dev/sd<x>" to shut it down before removal since umount won't reliably stop it spinning and park the heads. Newer Linux installs will pick up the new drive when you put it in, but some older ones needed "echo "0 0 0" >/sys/class/scsi_host/host<x>/scan". There may be a more elegant way to do this, but it's one I don't know.

          These are all work-arounds I've used for this particular machine, most of the hardware has spanned multiple distro's over it's lifetime. It's been on Manjaro for the last few years and is running almost exactly how I want it to, but I'd be lying through my teeth if I said there wasn't a fair bit of tweaking involved to get it there.

          I'm a Linux user and supporter, but I'm not a fanboy.

          1. tiggity Silver badge

            Re: MS is in decline, but Linux will never replace it

            RE: Ropewash & printers

            Printers are always a pain on any OS - you can get grief on "commercial" software..

            We had a scanner / printer that had worked fine on partners old Mac.

            When partner got a newer mac (with massively newer version of OSX) the old printer was not supported by Apple, printer manufacturer did not provide drivers for anything other than way back versions of OSX.

            OK, it was an old printer - but it still worked and would have been a pity buying a new one needlessly.

            Fortunately, with OSX being UNIX under the covers, I was able to sort it out for the non techy partner by seeking out CUPS drivers made for unix distros, so cheers to the UNIX community for sorting a Mac issue & prolonging life of old priter / scanner.

    3. Youngdog

      Re: MS is in decline, but Linux will never replace it

      "The average person who is not a developer who tries to install Linux on an average box usually fails, because there is no working graphics driver, or mouse driver, etc. for some part of their machine."

      This was last true 5-10 years ago

      1. a_yank_lurker

        Re: MS is in decline, but Linux will never replace it

        Though many well known Linux distros are extremely easy to install, I would not let the average install ANY OS especially 'bloat. There are often a couple of steps where it helps to have installed any OS before and thus knowing what to expect. The average user, who has never installed any OS, would not be familiar with the process and all the steps that need to be done such as backing up all their data onto an external hard drive that is not connected during the installation.

    4. Doctor Syntax Silver badge

      Re: MS is in decline, but Linux will never replace it

      "I have worked in IT for years,"

      In what capacity? Marketing?

      "installing Linux on any platform/brand has always been a crap shoot."

      What you should realise is that those of us criticising Windows but normally using Linux or other non-Windows OSs nevertheless have experience of Windows, usually over very many years. At the very least that consists of sorting out Windows problems for friends and family. So not only do we know how straightforward Linux installation has become these days, we also know all too well the on-going problems with Windows.

      1. ecofeco Silver badge

        Re: MS is in decline, but Linux will never replace it

        At the very least that consists of sorting out Windows problems for friends and family.

        Many of us have been supporting Windows since literally the last century and we are saying it's crap because it is. (I started with DOS 2.0, but didn't get paid for it until Win 95)

    5. TVU Silver badge

      Re: MS is in decline, but Linux will never replace it

      "MS is in decline, but Linux will never replace it"

      I see what you're saying but while I don't think OS X, Linux and Chrome OS will necessarily replace Windows on the desktop, what I do think they will do is continue to significantly eat into Microsoft's operating system market share as a result of Windows 10's ongoing SNAFUs. For example, April this year was a watershed moment because that was the month that Windows' market share went below the 90% mark and that downward trend will surely continue.

      I also don't recognise that description of Linux operating systems because these days distributions like Linux Mint and Linux Lite work straight out of the box.

      1. Captain DaFt

        Re: MS is in decline, but Linux will never replace it

        "Linux Mint and Linux Lite work straight out of the box."

        Might I add, "While still in the box!"

        Just set your computer to boot from usb, plug in stick with a live distro, and boot.

        Doesn't even need installing these days to try out.

    6. hplasm
      Gimp

      Re: MS is in decline, but Linux will never replace it

      Whether you work in IT for years,or not, installing Windows on any platform/brand has always been a crap shoot. It either works, or it wont and there is no fix for it, unless you are willing to pay for it yourself or wait until Redmond get round to it.

      There- FTFY

    7. Dead Parrot

      Re: MS is in decline, but Linux will never replace it

      May I gently suggest you are in the wrong line of work? My daughter managed an install of Manjaro when she was eight years old.

    8. PhillW

      Re: MS is in decline, but Linux will never replace it

      Mind coming back on and telling everyone who you work for, so that they can avoid you?

      I do not work in IT and I installed Mint on my mums old Dell with Vista (I know, lets not go there, it was at best unusable), the ONLY problem I had was double tap on the trackpad did not work, 20 mins of searching found me a fix and now she has a perfectly usable laptop.

      1. Doctor Syntax Silver badge

        Re: MS is in decline, but Linux will never replace it

        "Mind coming back on and telling everyone who you work for, so that they can avoid you?"

        I think we can all make a pretty good guess who they work for and in what capacity.

    9. ecofeco Silver badge

      Re: MS is in decline, but Linux will never replace it

      I have worked in IT for years, and installing Linux on any platform/brand has always been a crap shoot. It either works, or it wont and there is no fix for it, unless you develop it yourself.

      Really? Because I've installed several flavors of Linux on a variety of machines and they have always worked.

      Have you tried in the last few years? I haven't had any problems in the last 5 years.

    10. nkuk

      Re: MS is in decline, but Linux will never replace it

      "MS is in decline, but Linux will never replace it"

      Many people said the same about Internet Explorer when it was bundled with the OS and competing against Netscape that had to be manually installed, and look where we are now.

      Unfortunately Linux doesn't have anywhere near the marketing of Windows, so I think growth will be slow based on word of mouth and individual frustration, but just like IE there may come a tipping point where some catalyst accelerates the momentum of people switching.

      If MS starts charging a rental fee for Windows like they do with Office365, I think that would start the ball rolling in earnest.

    11. CompUser

      Re: MS is in decline, but Linux will never replace it

      For someone who works in IT, you sure don't know much about Linux.

      The desktop version of Linux Mint doesn't come with developer tools, they can be installed from the available packages, but they aren't there when you first install. Most of the different versions of Linux I've installed give you the option of choosing which packages you want on your system. There are plenty of Linux users with heaps of experience. You ain't one of them.

      Were you part of the insiders program maybe, and still trying to push the Microsoft propaganda?

  23. Andus McCoatover
    Windows

    Seems to bork "Mouse Without Borders", too.

    Odd, because it comes from the 'Microsoft garage'. No longer can I slam the mouse towards my other machine, use keyboard and mouse there.

    1. Ropewash

      Re: Seems to bork "Mouse Without Borders", too.

      That is a really cool idea right there that I did not know even existed.

      Would be a bit of a pain though if one of those machines was playing twitch shooters wouldn't it? Or is there some trick that prevents un-intentional switching?

      I guess I should have said "prevented" if it's not bloody working anymore.

      1. Kiwi

        Re: Seems to bork "Mouse Without Borders", too.

        That is a really cool idea right there that I did not know even existed.

        There's also one called Synergy which does Linux, Mac and Windows. That works by going "through" the relevant screen edge. You could control up to 15 machines (5x3 grid) with this, though I've only ever used it for 3 myself.

  24. Unicornpiss
    Alert

    Satisfaction?

    "Windows 10 continues to have the highest customer satisfaction of any version of Windows. "

    Just where are they getting that?? Are they only polling people too young to remember XP and that have never seen Win 7? Did they only poll Microsoft staffers just before mid-year reviews?

    1. anoco

      Re: Satisfaction?

      This is MSI (Meaningless Statistical Information) often used by politicians to convince the less informed. They just omit the part that makes their statement stupid.

      1 - It could be that there are more users now than when they first run the program, so in total numbers WX wins, but in percentage it fails.

      2 - It could be that their customer satisfaction program wasn't aggressively pushed before, so less people answered it before, giving WX the nod now.

      3 - It could be how they asked the question. For example, "Are you happy WX is free?"

      4 - It could be that the people that really hates WX skipped the survey because they were frantically trying to return to W7 and had no time to waste with stupid surveys.

      5 - Or... it could be that people that waste time with satisfaction surveys just enjoy wasting time with WX.

      1. Dead Parrot

        Re: Satisfaction?

        I suspect they just asked the die-hard fanbois in the Insider program, which is an echo chamber for MS marketing.

        1. Captain DaFt

          Re: Satisfaction?

          The most likely answer is that they have a profanity filter on their survey, and anyone telling MS exactly how they fell about Win10 can't get past it. :)

      2. Hans 1

        Re: Satisfaction?

        >Windows 10 continues to have the highest customer satisfaction of any version of Windows.

        6. It could be that they totally made these non-numbers up ... never trusts stats you have not tampere not 1984, for once ... Since they did not mention an independent survey, they are pants ...

        I have not met a single person who mentioned Windows 10 to me and said "It is not bad" ... nor "It is good" ... all I hear is resignation or hatred ... Oh, no, there is one ... one ... he switched his phone from Nexus to Windows Phone, 6 months ago, for the "complete experience" ... I doubt he will be happy to hear MS is canning Windows Phone ... then again, he lunches with the MickeySofties from the office next door ...

      3. Unicornpiss
        Meh

        Re: Satisfaction?

        Okay, I may have figured it out. Perhaps they're using Bing to tally the results...

  25. Will Godfrey Silver badge
    WTF?

    Just a thought

    Why would you want several applications to access the same webcam?

    1. Richard 12 Silver badge

      Re: Just a thought

      There's the videoconferencing tool you're using, the crapware that installs with the Webcam that you can't figure out how to kill, the NSA intercept, the GCHQ intercept and the KGB intercept.

      Perhaps this is actually MS's "up yours" to the TLA/ETLA agencies as the intercepts want the compressed stream?

    2. Kanhef

      Re: Just a thought

      I've been struggling to come up with a reasonable situation in which one would do this.

      If you're sending video from one webcame to multiple recipients, you're probably using a single program to do it.

      Using multiple programs for multiple video sources could make sense (for example, videoconferencing on a webcam while sending security camera footage to archive storage), but that situation is unaffected by this change.

      I suppose you might want to split a video source if you want to stream live footage over the internet and record it at the same time, but only if you're using brain-damaged programs that can't do both.

  26. Dick Emery

    Unimodem wave audio driver fix when? It's been broken since the refresh yet MS still have not aknowledged it.

  27. anonymous boring coward Silver badge

    The touchpad on my and my son's laptop has been extremely unreliable lately as well. Both laptops unfortunately came with Win 10. Basically the touchpad stops responding for long periods of time.

    1. Hans 1
      Paris Hilton

      I have that, ever since I upgraded to 10 (corporate fallacy) ... Mediamarkt sell mice for 1 euro in Germany, got two on my last visit ...

  28. anonymous boring coward Silver badge

    BTW, my laptop reboots pretty much every day against my will. And I can't schedule when either. Just some vague "non-work hours" for my non-work laptop. Total effing bull. NO other OS does this.

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      That's just NSA upgrading your telemetry stack. Don't worry about it.

  29. [a-z][A-Z]*
    FAIL

    But back to the core of the problem here

    So let's get this straight. I have a device which outputs a stream of data in a standard format. My application opens said device, starts reading the data and the OS says sorry I'm going to reformat all that data and give it to you in a different format. In this case this just sucks, I may actually want the h.264 elementary stream rather than some attempt at decoding to YUV.

    However this is actually a bigger worry, what's next? I open a file that's encrypted and the OS decides to decrypt it for me? Open a libre office document and deliver a word document?

    The OS in my book is there to help slurp stuff between the outside world and my process, not to interpret my data for me and deliver something **completely** different.

  30. Trilkhai

    To paraphrase their old ad campaign…

    “Microsoft: What Do You Want To Bork Today?”

  31. s. pam Silver badge
    Paris Hilton

    I bet this fscked the home live porn industry

    They'll not be able to get it up or get it off so they'll be filing a class action lawsuit over damage to their businesses!

    I'll get me coat....

  32. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Update three strikes now

    Strike one - GVR running stealth mode (but fixed a week later)

    Strike two - webcams hosed up, fixed sometime later

    Strike three - Will no longer mount a Win 7 vhd backup file that would mount a week ago

    PS, did you know there is not Microsoft Virtual PC for win 10?

  33. Haku
    FAIL

    Let's see, OS maker pushes out update that stops many devices people own from working properly.

    They're just copying Apple again.

  34. Arachnoid
    FAIL

    NSA fix!

    The NSA will soon sort a fix out for this after losing access to all their end user webcams

  35. Howard Hanek
    Happy

    Retask the Webcam?

    From the captioned picture did the webcam suddenly become a depilatory device? If so then that will be yet another 'feature' of W10. Turning the webcam into a laser hair removal utensil certainly would improve sales.

    1. Geoffrey W

      Re: Retask the Webcam?

      What a freak in that photo. Looks nothing like a normal human being, such as me.

  36. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    A noob's view of Linux

    The parade of horribles that continues with Win10 reaffirms my decision to make to jump to Linux. However, I am not an IT pro, and would like to share my perspective of as a minimally competent home user.

    We needed a new, cheap PC and found a deal on a Vostro 3900. The Win 10 articles on the Reg and elsewhere convinced me to give Linux a try. I had some prior experience (with help from out IT folks) using it in Virtual Box on a Win7 system at work.

    I decided on Mint 18 Cinnamon and found it very easy to install ((after a screwup fixed with Gparted). It even found my printer that was connected via wifi. Pretty much everything worked out the box. The system is fast, mostly stable (some user switching glitches) and seems to be roughly equivalent to Win7 from a user's view. This is true for software installation (via software manager) and updates as well. For routine web, document, and graphic uses, I would recommend Mint (and probably Ubuntu etc) w/o reservation. As a very slightly savvy user, I find the availability and breadth of online support to be amazing.

    The biggest flaw is lack of drivers, especially for scanners. SANE is a great effort, but finding a new, affordable scanner that will work under Linux is very difficult. The second problem is the lack of Linux versions of commercial software like Turbo Tax. I realize that neither of these is the fault of Linux or the Linux developer community, but rather the economics of market share. While these problems also existed w/ Windows (and, I presume, Apple) as drivers/software were rendered incompatible by OS upgrades, the basic unavailability in Linux is frustrating.

    I was able to get around these issues by installing Win10 under Virtual Box, since I was eligible for a free Win10 upgrade from Win7 (Wine didn't install properly and Turbo Tax is reported not to run under it anyway). While, in the end, I have a nice system that does what I need, getting there was not effortless. The less patient or experienced user who needs a scanner etc, could find the process daunting and without availability of an MS or Apple OS to run in Virtual Box, ultimately impossible.

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: A noob's view of Linux

      >The biggest flaw is lack of drivers, especially for scanners. SANE is a great effort, but finding a new, affordable scanner that will work under Linux is very difficult.

      What scanner do you have?

      Most "new affordable" scanners work very well. I particularly like (and recommend) Epson.

      If SANE is too complex for you, try SimpleScan:

      sudo apt-get install simple-scan

      Or via whatever pointy-clicky package manager you prefer.

    2. anonymous boring coward Silver badge

      Re: A noob's view of Linux

      Congrats on making the jump to Linux!

      You will soon notice that one MASSIVE difference is that system updates don't go on for hours and hours. You typically don't notice them. The Windows update system must be one of MS's biggest blunders to date. No wonder they are trying to sneak in one of the Linux update systems through the Win 10 "Bash" backdoor.

      1. Geoffrey W
        Trollface

        Re: A noob's view of Linux

        Cant help wondering if Microsoft having to serve updates to a hell of a lot more machines than any Linux distro has to might have something to do with the speed differential, especially in windows 10 where updates are more of an imperative.

        1. anonymous boring coward Silver badge

          Re: A noob's view of Linux

          No, that has nothing to do with Windows horrendous update performance. I'll get back to you with some further info.

          1. anonymous boring coward Silver badge

            Re: A noob's view of Linux

            You can read about it here:

            http://superuser.com/questions/890038/why-is-checking-windows-update-so-slow

            Rest assured that it's not the server download bandwidth that's the main issue.

            1. Geoffrey W

              Re: A noob's view of Linux

              I'm a bit late but I don't obsessively check how my comments are faring. That actually is interesting so ta! I cant help noticing that overburdened servers is actually one of the noted reasons for slow performance so your comment it has nothing to do with it is a bit off, but I'm a bit wiser now...and I was kinda trolling anyway.

  37. Matt Bryant Silver badge
    Stop

    Bullshit.

    I have personally updated four laptops and three desktops with various built-in and USB-attached webcams and not a single problem with any of them. In fact, Win10 Annie doesn't seem to have "completely borked" anything. Just another click-bait article.

    1. anonymous boring coward Silver badge

      Re: Bullshit.

      You put Win 10 on ALL you machines? :-o

    2. Geoffrey W

      Re: Bullshit.

      @ Matt

      I upvoted you to annoy the down voters. It has borked quite a lot of web cams though, but, in contradiction of so many posters on here, there IS a way to revert back to previous behaviour so no one really needs to stay borked unless they want to. It does require a change to the registry though so penguins can still feel superior coz we all know registries are shit.

      Oh, and I forgot to mention it in any other post - My linux machine with a web cam doesn't allow it to work. I tried for a while to fix it but lost interest and just used the windows machine instead. I never normally use web cams anyway so no loss, but interesting in current context.

      1. Matt Bryant Silver badge
        Happy

        Re: Geoffrey W Re: Bullshit.

        ".... It has borked quite a lot of web cams...." Thanks. I have now seen more articles online regarding the issue, so I'll withdraw the "bullshit" rating and change it to "WTF?" because I still haven't found anyone - colleagues, friends or family - that have been affected by this bug, which makes me think it is being exaggerated or hyped.

        "....My linux machine with a web cam doesn't allow it to work...." I would suggest trying a Logitech model, they seem to work well with Ubuntu-based distributions and Fedora/RHEL in my experience.

  38. steve hayes
    Happy

    So Glad

    I stuck with Windows 7. As time progressed up to the 'Anniversary f**kdate' and beyond, I feel smugger and smugger,

  39. PeterM42
    Flame

    What is the difference.........

    .......between Windows 10 and a virus?

    A: It's easy to get rid of a virus.

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