Posts by azaks

Windows 10 market share growth rate flattens again

Re: Query on W10..

Whats wrong with basic? This has nothing to do with dynamically detecting your profile (public/private/domain) for the purposes of firewall rule setting. This is manually setting an interface to metered - it either is or it isn't.

Re: 'Windows XP is (still) more popular than 10!

I think lowest common denominators like SSL3 and RC4 will be around for a long time to come. Sure your bank will probably have them turned off, but many, many sites won't (why would they want to DoS their own customers just because they cant be bothered to secure themselves? They're not your mother).

If anyone is stupid enough to do their online banking from XP (assuming they still can), they will sooner or later have their bank account emptied, be unable to pay their ISP bill, and drop off the Internet. Just like Darwin predicted...

People still using XP should give themselves a good hard jab to the head, and then move to something that is supported instead of waiting for the web to get harder and harder to use.

Re: 'Windows XP is (still) more popular than 10!

If your running around on the interwebs with a totally unpatched OS, some miscreant breaking your weak SSL/TLS connection is the least of your worries. A bit like worrying about your hair thinning whilst being slowly digested inside a giant anaconda...

>> it is now only a matter of time before it is no longer able to access secure websites

Nah. Come on - harden up. Just click the "trust the untrustworthy certificate" button and party on!

Re: Query on W10..

A bit dangerous asking for advice on any Microsoft products here. You're likely to get lots of "I switched my nan over to *buntu to check her lotto numbers and she reckons its the badgers nadgers. Good old nan, she's never wrong..."

Your 3G connection will default to being a "metered connection" and you can set your Wi-Fi to metered as described here http://windows.microsoft.com/en-in/windows-10/whats-a-metered-connection

This will disable all of the background chatter like telemetry and auto-updates, plus things like email and file sync software working in the background (i.e. you will need to hit the manual sync buttons for any of this stuff to work over the metered connection)

apart from selling advertising...

... and the mild amusement derived from working the anti-MS contingent up into a lather, what is the point of this month-by-month reporting on Win10 adoption?

The overwhelming majority of windows users either don't know or couldn't give a fuck what version they are using. Some will decide to accept the upgrade, others wont. Others will start using it when it comes preinstalled on their new PC. Why do we have to project our interest in IT onto people who couldn't care less, and dream up conclusions about the numbers are or aren't telling us?

Re: 2016!

a bit late aren't you? I first heard that predicted on Jan 1. I wonder what the predictions will be for 2017?

Re: Looking at the data.

>> Linux kernel 16.76%.

I love how you claim the android stats to make Linux look relevant :-) But I'm not sure why you stopped short of adding the other billion embedded devices that have a Linux kernel to claim first prize. Other commentards have blamed MS for wanting to do the same thing and inflate their mobile numbers by calling them all "Win10". Still, if it allows you to drive their ~85% (desktop) number down to 56% by combining them, then carry on. (i.e. no-one cares one way or another)

Microsoft Windows: The Next 30 Years

Re: It isn't last 30/next 30. It's 15/15/15.

great analysis, except that it is wrong...

MSFT stock price peaked at $59.96 on Dec 12, 1999.

Took a hammering with the dot com burst and never recovered - languishing in the mid-high 20's for a decade (the forgettable "Balmer years"). Has grown steadily for the last 3 years to finish at $54 with most analysts rating the stock a "buy". To be 10% down from where they were in 2000 (when they had near-monopolies and Apple and Android were nowhere to be seen) is hardly evidence of your "decline". Wishful thinking perhaps?

I am glad that there are forums like El Reg where people sympathize with your views and make you feel confident about your predictions. Your employers and population at large (sadly) don't share them...

Re: I'll bet money...

Wow. That's a bold prediction. Cant say we blame you for not wanting to put your name next to that one... ;-)

Microsoft gets Edge on blocking ad injectors

Re: Another MSFT omnishambles

there was an article on a microsoft product - he is duty bound to shit on it.

the fact that he doesn't use or understand it are not relevant...

Edgy online shoppers face Dyre Christmas as malware mutates

Re: What kind of mental midgetry ...

You only have 2 arms? If you looked online, you could probably buy a third, and maybe even a 4th...

Microsoft makes Raspberry Pi its preferred IoT dev board

Re: No comprende

How dare you bring facts to a Microsoft bashing session! shame on you!

This is not a place for facts, it is a place for wild speculation built on the inaccuracies and assumptions of the previous posters.

Agree with one previous poster though - there is a huge feel of "me to" to running Win10 on Pi. I really like Win10 on a desktop or laptop, but the Pi ecosystem is so totally dominated by mature Linux offerings and apps. I cant think of any compelling reason to jump ship

Signups start at 'Windows Store for Business'

conspiracy theories aside...

...the costs of maintaining in-house software provisioning / repair / licensing systems that actually work well are pretty high and haven't changed that much in a decade. As are the costs of packaging apps and their updates for distribution by these systems. I can see this being very attractive to businesses of all sizes, as long as it lives up to its promises. By ensuring that apps are signed, you can basically outsource this task to anyone.

Oh dear, Microsoft: UK.gov signs deal with LibreOffice

Is this news?

Isnt this just what everyone does?

step 1 - realize that license renewal is coming up

step 2 - threaten to jump ship if you don't get a bigger discount

rinse and repeat next time round.

The real news will be how many of those licenses ACTUALLY get deployed. Just sayin'...

Windows 10 is an antique (and you might be too) says Google man

best laugh I've had in ages...

so there is actual conscious design behind the Android UX? Huh... who would have known? Keep up the great work fella...

If you wanted Windows 10, it looks like you've already installed it

pointless click-bait...

Ahh... nothing like throwing a few scraps to the rabid anti-microsoft crowd.

Excluding the sad "IT enthusiast" types that cant wait for a new OS to come out, the VAST majority of PC users couldn't give a fuck what OS they are running (and a good % of them wouldn't even be able to tell you what OS they are running now anyway). To project your sad OS obsession onto this majority, and conclude that because they have not all rushed out and upgraded to Win10 that you can actually draw any useful conclusion is stupid. My guess is that the author is not that stupid (see click-bait accusation above).

To all the Linux whiners out there - you have captured 1.5-2% of the desktop in 2 decades. You are clearly not representative of normal PC users, so off you fuck. I like Linux and use it a lot, but not as my everyday desktop environment. Until you end the obsession with creating a thousand different versions of everything, and put your collective weight behind something that isn't a geek's wet dream, it will never be the "year of Linux on the desktop".

Windows 10 marks the end of 'pay once, use forever' software

Journalism?

Count how many times the terms "I can forsee" and "I suspect" are used in this article. Not a single fucking fact to support the clickbait title.

Claiming that 2008 R2 must be a feature pack for 2008 rather than a new OS because of its name is just stupid. Why do they let this guy write for them?

No, Microsoft: Your one-billion Windows 10 goal is just sad ... really sad

Re: Goodness.

You beat me to it! Have an up vote...

Microsoft Edge web browser: A well-presented mea culpa

Re: Windows 10. Upgrade for 'Free'....

Not sure - a bunch of links and recycled speculation, but man it rendered fast on Edge!

"Unique advertising ID..." - FFS, who isn't using that and why is microsoft worthy of special mention?

Given that the EU has become the defacto litmus test and champion of online privacy, it will be interesting to see if they take issue and impose restrictions on microsoft. I would put more faith in that to see if this constitutes going above and beyond what everyone else is doing.

Re: "It's worth turning on the (potentially) privacy-invading Cortana for that feature alone."

Like you said in a follow up post - if you don't like it, use a local account and disable the offending services.

There is a broad spectrum when it comes to opinions on privacy - ranging from "I have nothing to hide and don't give a shit if it gives a more personalized and efficient experience" to the tinfoil hat-wearing privacy extremists.

There are so many ways to track your activities online and tie it back to you personally (for someone suitably motivated and funded), and you need to go to incredible lengths to evade them - which is way beyond the knowledge and amount of effort most are prepared to invest.

So don't use Win10 and enjoy your heightened sense of privacy, but realize that it is largely an illusion :-)

Windows 10: THE ULTIMATE GUIDE to Microsoft's long apology for Windows 8

Re: Multiple desktops are a new thing?

A multi-desktop app first came out in the NT4 resource even before that, but why let facts get in the way of a good 'ol rant?

The update packages are signed by Microsoft - if they are modified in any way, they fail signature validation and get rejected. So it really doesn't matter whether you get them from the vendor, or the PC down the hall from you

Got an Android phone? SMASH IT with a hammer – and do it NOW

Vulnerabilities in Android?

who could have guessed?

This plus the pile of Chrome exploits reported externally to google a few days ago. Maybe Project Zero should spend more time looking at their own mess rather than everyone elses...

Even Microsoft thinks Outlook is bloated and slow

would El Reg sell more ads...

if they wrote something complimentary about MS? I would say the ratio of MS haters to fans is 99:1 on here. If the headline was "Microsoft go one better on their already stellar mail client", I think they would make a ton more money. Just a thought.

"Microsoft has admitted that its Outlook email and calendar app is too weighty and slow" - really? where? I don't know how Simon lives with himself...

Microsoft to Linux users: Explain yourself

Re: Just use Linux and be done with it!

You clearly don't work in IT or you would understand that "just making a Linux distro that all existing Windows software will run on" is a pipedream.

You also dont work on the business side, or you would surely realize that investing billions of dollars chasing said pipedream, and throwing away a healthy business to run with the challengers and with no financial upside is probably not the wisest of business decisions.

What industry do you work in, and why the fanatical obsession to convert everyone to Linux? And to save you the trouble of responding, yes, yes, we know that "Linux is the most used OS in the world" (if you count Android, fridges/freezers/Hoovers, grandma's purple pleaser... (which most people don't)

>> because what they make is non performant and just does not scale and is closed source and lacks security and is not modular non portable etc

I have a lot of time for Linux fans that make sensible, fact-based claims, but repeating your unsubstantiated claims ad-nauseum on almost every topic gets a little wearisome...

Apple CORED: Boffins reveal password-killer 0-days for iOS and OS X

Wasted opportunity...

To think what they could have achieved by disclosing this information irresponsibly.

I've done some quick estimates - denial down 22%, self-righteousness down 38%, and smugness down a whopping 76%...

It's 2015 and Microsoft has figured out anything can break Windows

Re: Oh, this warms the cockles of my heart

Then the malware is already running as system, at which point no antimalware or security product can defend itself or your machine.The whole point of antimalware is to prevent nastiness before your machine gets pwned.

Re: Surely...

>> you are counting every security issue in every package of a distro against the core Windows OS, without regard to vulnerability type or severity. Linux distributions include hundreds if not thousands of applications whereas the Windows operating system only includes dozens to low hundreds.

You have this somewhat backward Trevor. Most stats do exactly the opposite - compare "linux kernel" against whole distros of windows.

Check out http://www.cvedetails.com/top-50-products.php. From 2004 - 2015, "Linux kernel" has had more vulns than any version of windows every year except 2011 and 2015 (which isn't over) and has not been in the top 5 offenders only 3 out of the 12 years. You are just fabricating nonsense based on your unshakable belief that Linux is inherently more secure than anything else.

>> Windows' issues tend to be far more severe, and they take far longer to get fixed

More hand waving. Any facts to support that?

>> Open source's issues are mostly that issues can (and do) go unnoticed (sometimes for years) because there simply aren't enough penetration testers willing to test open source

So the "many eyes" argument can finally be layed to rest? May it R.I.P.

Have you given even a moments thought to the ramifications of what you are proposing, or has your religious fervor trumped your every last rational thought? 37 years is a long time to have learned nothing about how our industry works - you should get out of your cubicle more often...

Your proposing that MS build an API layer to make all of the existing windows APIs developed over decades work with a linux kernel? This herculean undertaking would take years, and cause an indeterminate (but undoubtedly large) number of app compat issues for the millions of apps that are already happily working on windows. Plus any hand-wavy performance gains from moving to such a vastly superior kernel would be completely outstripped by calls having to wade through all of the extra kludge.

We understand the rapturous moment that this would be for you and your merry little band of fanatics, but what is in it for the rest of the world?

Re: Just Use Linux

>> What they don't do, is publish their own distro which is probably sensible given that RedHat and others provide good enterprise-focused distros themselves.

But isnt the whole point of linux to spin up a new distro rather than agree on anything, and create a mindbending dependency mess for everyone that uses it? Wow... I misread that one

Microsoft sounds 100-day DOOM KLAXON for Windows Server 2003

The answer, as always, is...

it depends.

There is a lot of milage in "if it aint broke, leave it the hell alone". But realize that it wont be getting patches for security vulnerabilities. If its an internal server that is isolated from untrusted code (esp. the internet), there may be no need to upgrade. The problem is that those guarantees of isolation are typically more imagined that real, and as others have mentioned, there will come a day (maybe in the distant future) where it becomes impractical to stay on an obsolete platform (need support for some new issue, need to replace hardware etc.) Your all grown ups, consider your personal circumstances and choose accordingly...

Microsoft says its latest, dodgy Windows 10 build is good for (almost) everyone

More click bait?

Another click bait article to get the "anything but MS" crowd frothing and sell more ads?

Article doesn't say why it calls the latest build of win10 "dodgy".

FFS people, its a beta upgrade from an earlier beta. Beta products have bugs - thats why they are beta products. No doubt when the product is released, they will state what beta versions they will support an upgrade from. For the vast majority of people, this will be from an earlier, released version of windows, or a clean install.

In other breaking news, my car makes a really terrible boat...

Windows 8.1 market share grows, Windows 7 slips, Windows 10 lurks

Re: Perhaps people have realised...

>> I think MS are sacrificing desktop usability in their rush to assume desktop PC's are no longer needed.

That was the knee-jerk reaction of 8.0 to the ipad, but thankfully the madness seems to have abated in 8.1 and is gone in 10. I use both and almost always with mouse & keyboard.

>> Reduced privacy with the 'you should always be logged on to MS central' attitude. (The Windows 10 preview was incredulous that I wanted to log on locally... after I was able to find out how to do it in the first place...). But, I guess they're afraid if I'm not logged on constantly, how will I be buying their apps?

I dont think this has anything to do with buying apps. A big part of the experience is syncing favorites and settings between different machines, which I really like. If they made local accounts the default, people would go on using this out of habit.

Re: Not just a service pack

I'm not sure that we will be seeing "service packs" anymore (at least on client SKUs). They made sense with 3+ year release cycles to consolidate individual updates and reset the support bar between major version releases. A while ago they got flak for adding features in service packs, and so started putting these into "feature packs" instead. Seems like they are commited to much more frequent releases starting with 10, and those releases will contain both fixes and new features. Just a guess...

Sysadmins rebel over GUI-free install for Windows Server 2016

Re: Long-time Linux and Windows Admin here

I agree that PS is daunting when you start. It takes a bit of investment, but is highly intuitive once you get over the initial hump. Not sure I agree about the "length of commands" bit. You could write a whole script as a single pipeline if you want, but you certainly dont have to. As for remembering commands, the <verb>-<noun> pattern of cmdlets is highly intuitive. Want to configure networking? "help *network*" will list every command with network in the name. You dont really need to remember any cmdlet names as you can just search for them, and getting help on likely looking cmdlets with "-full" gives you detailed info on all parameters plus examples.

Where PS positively smokes Linux shell scripting is by treating everything as an object, and a pipeline to process them. Greping through pages of output to pipe text into the next component is mediaeval by comparison. Plus you can invoke pretty much anything in addition to the many cmdlets - other processes, any native or managed api, load any dll and run anything it exports, inline C#, COM components etc Plus you can do any of this as easily on a remote machine as the local machine, or thousands of remote machines at a time.

Dont agree with you on putting everything in config files either. I would much rather have it fail validation due to some error or typo than allow me to save the config and have it work/not work/partially work and have to troubleshoot later. I use and like Linux, but I dont regard that as a strength.

Final comment - this whole "I've been a Windows admin for 20 years and we have always had a GUI so we should always have a GUI" is bollocks. Times change and if you arent prepared to change with them, get left behind.

did anyone actually bother to read the article?

If you need or want a GUI, you install the GUI.

The only change here is that you need to add it after install rather than at the start of it (or more likely, in your unattended install config).

Windows has had the ability to run without a GUI ("server core") for years, but very few people used it ("better pick full GUI during install... just in case")

Hopefully changing the default will encourage more people not to add a GUI if they don't need to, and use GUI tools from a remote system rather than logging on locally (and all the cred stealing opportunities that offers).

Seems like a pretty benign change to me. Now that we've got that out of the way, go back to whining about things that actually matter...

Fanbois designing Windows 10 – where's it going to end?

Andrew, you forgot...

... to provide any alternatives to what you are citicising them for. A more skeptical person might think your article is nothing more that fodder for the people that will never actually use Windows but wait breathlessly for any excuse to bash it. Helps keep the lights on I guess.

You say user input is a welcome change from the Ballmer era. How else are you going to collect it except by asking people actually using it to vote on whether they like it? Spam every email address they have on record for every change (coz people just love getting unsolicited email)? How about delivering an update to every Windows user with a pop-up that you cant clear unless you vote? And do that for every proposed change. Or how about a site where anyone can vote regardless of whether they will use the product or even know what the hell you're asking them? We'd love to hear your bright ideas on how you would do things differently...

Munich considers dumping Linux for ... GULP ... Windows!

Anything but the products...

Its a bungled deployment!

No, administrative incompetence.

Unfair Microsoft coercion?

What about user ignorance?

Obviously an underhanded "buy back"!

Whinging like a bunch of school kids - your contribution to the world of comedy would be priceless if it wasn't getting soooo old.

You can blame whoever or whatever you want, but do you really expect anyone to believe that they would consider another major migration with all the costs and disruption that entails if it were something that could be salvaged?

"Oops - we got the messaging system a bit wrong. Nothing for it but to trash the lot and switch horses again." Seriously?