Microsoft no longer allows admins to block Windows Store access in Win10 Pro • Hacker News Board

Re: Microsoft no longer allows admins to block Windows Store access in Win10 Pro

#131

Post by brudgers » Thu, May 05, 2016, 8:46 PM UTC

TheRealDunkirk wrote: post #102

The ball is back in Apple's court. They seem to take the end user more seriously, but they've been mixed. I made a comment taking Microsoft to task when their surreptitious telemetry came to light, and someone pointed me to proof that Apple was doing about the same thing. This is Apple's chance to continue to distance themselves from their competition. They've done well standing up for privacy, with the recent FBI de…

Apple's short support life cycles for its operating systems is problematic for many organizations. Its constant churn of hardware specifications also presents issues for organizations seeking stability and standardization. Personally, I don't see Apple as likely to move away from either practice due to its business model and consumer device focus because both have produced substantial profits for a number of years.

I don't see Google as likely to move into the space either, at least in a way that doesn't increase their cash flow from advertising. Their focus with business and enterprise sales has been on services, insofar as there has ever been such a focus at Google.

Re: Microsoft no longer allows admins to block Windows Store access in Win10 Pro

#132

Post by 794CD01 » Thu, May 05, 2016, 8:46 PM UTC

unprepare wrote: post #82

794CD01 wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Most things that were "once an accepted standard in IT" are horribly insecure. The end user wanting a system he/she controls is very much one of them. Microsoft taking away control from users, especially when it came to forcing them to take updates, is probably the biggest change they could possibly have made to improve the overall security of the internet.

are you under the impression that automatic security updates is what people dislike about windows 10? Its mostly the: telemetry openended ToS poor upgrade/reinstall behavior resulting in lost licenses overly complicated licensing structure (with articles like this showing the professional license feature set degrading over time) forced integration of unrelated products (cortana, bing) integration of advertising into…

I am not. I am under the impression that some people believe "I control my own machine" is a point in favor of security. And that those people are wrong. Perhaps not for themselves specifically, but in turning that philosophy into a general rule to apply to consumer products.

Re: Microsoft no longer allows admins to block Windows Store access in Win10 Pro

#133

Post by mynameisvlad » Thu, May 05, 2016, 8:48 PM UTC

tdkl wrote: post #98

mynameisvlad wrote: post #93

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Full disclosure: I work at Microsoft but outside of Windows. > poor upgrade/reinstall behavior resulting in lost licenses I have never experienced this. If you bought Windows 10 straight up (or your computer came with one) then you have a product key you can use, just like before. If you upgraded from 7/8 or are in the Insider Program, then you get a digital entitlement to your Microsoft account which gets restored a…

> It's also completely disableable How about being opt-in? Can we please just give you money and have a edition of Windows 10 LTSB for consumers where you don't have to wrestle with all this crap? Also will this "surprise motherfucker" style of updates continue when the free update period runs out in July 2016 and MS starts charging money? Because if it won't, get prepared for some heavy legal action.

I believe Windows 8 introduced the group policy to set a default lock screen image (https://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/itpro/windows/whats-new/...). Since Enterprise is the only LTSB SKU, I would assume some sort of group policy is also being deployed. Wouldn't be too hard to set that policy up, which disables Spotlight automatically.

Re: Microsoft no longer allows admins to block Windows Store access in Win10 Pro

#134

Post by hackuser » Thu, May 05, 2016, 8:48 PM UTC

Animats wrote: post #51

levemi wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Microsoft is a huge organization with tens of thousands of employees. We have no idea what was communicated between this commenter and the sales person. At some point you have to kind of step back and realize that you're responsible for your outcomes and not blame everything bad that happens to you on others. Searching Google with "startup microsoft" or "startup pricing microsoft" would have been enough effort to fig…

No. That's not how sales organizations for competent companies work. IBM, in the mainframe era, was very good at this. It was IBM policy that if you called anyone within IBM sales with a problem, it was the IBM employee's job to get you to the right people. All IBM salespeople had a little printed pocket book of phone numbers within IBM, a directory of contacts for various types of problems.

For the record, that hasn't been my experience with IBM; I used to get a pretty bad runaround, but perhaps that's changed - I stopped using their products as a result.

Re: Microsoft no longer allows admins to block Windows Store access in Win10 Pro

#135

Post by TheRealDunkirk » Thu, May 05, 2016, 8:51 PM UTC

cm2187 wrote: post #114

TheRealDunkirk wrote: post #102

The ball is back in Apple's court. They seem to take the end user more seriously, but they've been mixed. I made a comment taking Microsoft to task when their surreptitious telemetry came to light, and someone pointed me to proof that Apple was doing about the same thing. This is Apple's chance to continue to distance themselves from their competition. They've done well standing up for privacy, with the recent FBI de…

Would you trust google more than microsoft with your privacy? A google OS sounds more like a fox in the henhouse than a solution to the invasion of privacy.

Point taken. I just assume that Google is harvesting enough personal info through search that they could carve out a space for a private OS. Maybe I'm being naive. Yeah, I'm probably being naive.

Re: Microsoft no longer allows admins to block Windows Store access in Win10 Pro

#136

Post by hackuser » Thu, May 05, 2016, 8:57 PM UTC

794CD01 wrote: post #127

hackuser wrote: post #126

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Microsoft taking away control from users, especially when it came to forcing them to take updates, is probably the biggest change they could possibly have made to improve the overall security of the internet. Shouldn't the end user get to decide for themselves whether Microsoft can control the computer the user paid for, that sits in their home or office, and that contains their private and otherwise confidential i…

They used to, and they decided to download and execute random malware, and never take security updates.

Isn't that their choice?

Re: Microsoft no longer allows admins to block Windows Store access in Win10 Pro

#137

Post by digler999 » Thu, May 05, 2016, 9:11 PM UTC

levemi wrote: post #50

holyoly wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The fact that you have to go to Google to search to find Microsoft pricing, and have to already have the knowledge that they have special "startup" pricing is a failure on Microsoft's part.

You know given the title and the bait it presents to a particular kind of people I should have known better than share with people a positive thing about Microsoft and to suggest they think for themselves.

If you like MSFT so much, I have some spyware you can remove on my sister's laptop. only took me 4 hrs last time.

Re: Microsoft no longer allows admins to block Windows Store access in Win10 Pro

#138

Post by fencepost » Thu, May 05, 2016, 9:11 PM UTC

rchowe wrote: post #17

The reasoning behind this made a lot more sense to me once I started to do a back-of-the-envelope calculation. There can't have been that many end users who had Windows 10 Pro and went into group policy to turn off the store. So you're looking at small businesses who were using PCs with Win10 Pro on them (likely that came with the PC) that were turning off access to the store but can't any more. The IT admins for the…

>So you're looking at small businesses who were using PCs with Win10 Pro on them (likely that came with the PC) that were turning off access to the store but can't any more. The IT admins for these companies are the people Microsoft wants to upsell.

Or you're looking at small businesses (4-80 users) in regulated industries who have remained on Windows 7 and the IT folks who have recommended doing so in large part due to the ongoing concerns with what Microsoft is doing.

As a simple example: regardless of whether it does this or "just disable that (and work out something to ensure that Microsoft doesn't silently turn it back on)," I don't want to have to EVEN BE CONCERNED about the possibility that a local user searching locally for documents containing the words "John Smith neoplasm" has just submitted PII and PHI to Microsoft.

Re: Microsoft no longer allows admins to block Windows Store access in Win10 Pro

#139

Post by thothamon » Thu, May 05, 2016, 9:18 PM UTC

Just one more reason for me to avoid Windows whenever possible, for myself and for my companies.

I grant Microsoft today is a much better corporate citizen than it was 15 years ago, and I appreciate that. But a move like this feels very much like the bad old days to me.

Re: Microsoft no longer allows admins to block Windows Store access in Win10 Pro

#140

Post by Grishnakh » Thu, May 05, 2016, 9:18 PM UTC

TheRealDunkirk wrote: post #102

The ball is back in Apple's court. They seem to take the end user more seriously, but they've been mixed. I made a comment taking Microsoft to task when their surreptitious telemetry came to light, and someone pointed me to proof that Apple was doing about the same thing. This is Apple's chance to continue to distance themselves from their competition. They've done well standing up for privacy, with the recent FBI de…

>They seem to take the end user more seriously

Unless you're trying to keep music on your computer and use iTunes, in which case they upload all your music to the cloud and delete it off your PC.

>Man, I really wish Google would release their desktop Linux. Ubuntu is OK, but someone with pockets like that could finish the job, and make a credible, consumer-accessible, 3rd alternative to keep BOTH #1 and #2 on their toes.

Have they actually talked about doing this?

It really wouldn't take much to make a "credible, consumer-accessible" version of Linux. Most of the pieces are already present, and Linux Mint for instance is already very easy for a non-expert to install and use. The main problems are 1) graphics drivers for non-Intel chips and 2) software compatibility. Lots of games already work on Linux thanks to Steam. A little more work with WINE maybe, and some improvements to Nouveau, and some more polishing and you'd easily have something that a casual PC user can install easily and use. It'd probably help too if they finally finished Wayland and got the whole systemd thing settled. Then they'd just need to use their influence to push other companies to do their part, such as stupid printer manufacturers who don't make Linux drivers for their winprinters (not a problem for good printers, but for the cheapo inkjets it still is).

Hoenstly, I find it pretty disappointing that Red Hat hasn't done more in this area, particularly considering they're the ones who created systemd and employ many Gnome3 devs. You'd think they'd be pushing corporate Linux desktops hard, but they don't seem to be.