Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

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

zdnet.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

161–170 of 251 posts

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

#161

Post by rsync »

DKnoll wrote: post #117
rsync wrote: post #116

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"I lived through the exact same disaster." Might it be easier to just get an OS-level subscription to MSDN ? I got one of those a few years ago for rsync.net and it was quick and easy to purchase ... and then we had everything . Certainly more expensive to get MSDN than a single OS license, but it's not that expensive ...

MSDN is not licensed for production, I assume you mean you're using it just for development and testing. MS Partner on the other hand is licensed for internal-only production use.

"MSDN is not licensed for production, I assume you mean you're using it just for development and testing."

Oh, right.

Yes, we just used it to test clients against rsync.net.

Recommended (MSDN, that is), if you're in that situation...

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

#162

Post by hasdrubal »

794CD01 wrote: post #128
pdkl95 wrote: post #88

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> taking away control from users If you don't control something, you de facto don't own it. You're advocating for a future without personal property. If you doubt this, see John Deere. > improve the overall security of the internet When someone else has remote control over your system, your system is - by definition - insecure. The recent drama involving the FBI and an iphone is a perfect example: the phone is insecu…

I'm not advocating. I am pointing out that user control is fundamentally anti-security. Bad security may very well be worth the tradeoff if you value other things like freedom, fashion, backwards compatibility, fewer restarts, price, etc.

I don't see how your argument works. You seem to be saying that user control automatically leads to less security which is obviously false. Maybe you are conflating groups with individuals. If an individual has control then by definition he can chose to be more secure or less secure by his actions e.g that individual may chose to perform updates asap and stay away from suspicious downloads. He can also chose to do the opposite of these things and be less secure but there is obviously no direct implication either way. But underlying this is a one-dimensional view of security, consider more complex scenarios where users are forced to use a single software to perform a task. If that software is insecure then 100% of users are vulnerable whereas if there are a diverse range of programs the users are more resilient to attacks.

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

#163

Post by jheriko »

the criticism here is imo unfounded. MS are exceptionally supportive of developers in my experience, and this feels like part of that.

since blocking access to the store is in fact an enterprise requirement... why not restrict it to the enterprise edition?

... and besides that. how about employers trusting their employees anyway?

this is much less than what other platform holders have done in this respect too... Apple being foremost amongst the worst in this category - and yet still receiving fanboy support to the level of religiosity.

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

#164

Post by Symbiote »

fu9ar wrote: post #12
Qantourisc wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If I recall correctly they want to get people on their 365. Not a good plan unless you trust Microsoft completely, of-course these kind of moves don't help their argument.

Sometimes, but significantly often, when I click on an email in the Outlook 365 web app, nothing happens. The display pane goes blank-white. There is a noticable delay when I click to focus on the search bar, and often I have to retype because I click and go to start typing in my search term and lose the first few characters. Almost always, when I search for an email in the Android app, it just hangs and even if I le…

A colleague had a similar problem, except email never worked in the browser. It took three weeks for Microsoft Support to fix it.

We'd have migrated to Google, except the system administrator had booked a holiday for two of the weeks.

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

#165

Post by brazzledazzle »

Someone1234 wrote: post #2

If Microsoft wants SMBs to use Enterprise then make the Enterprise edition more easily available to SMBs, don't try to force them to move to it by making petty little changes to make their life more difficult. I can go on the Google Apps website right now and buy myself seats with a few clicks and a few minutes. If I want to buy Windows Enterprise licenses it will take weeks, cost an unclear amount (at the onset), an…

No joke, it's like that in no small part because corporate types love it that way regardless of business size. If it's easy to buy licenses they'll find a way to go through a VAR anyway. I've seen a consultancy engaged to middle-man the Google Apps purchase and configuration and ultimately the only value they provided were a couple trainings and some initial configuration any idiot with a few minutes and the ability to read could do.

The reality is that for your corporate/enterprise-fully-entrenched-fiefdom-building management person easily buying things or having someone read documentation and configure something is just not compatible with how they operate. They need net 30/60/90, sales drone wine, dine & golf, "is this in the Gartner Magic Quadrant?", a drawn out high-touch sales engagement and consultants they can blame.

Risk averse is the name of the game and it doesn't matter if it makes the business too slow to compete because a middle manager will never be held directly accountable for doing exactly what every other politics-first middle manager is doing. You want to sell to enterprises? Get in with the developers but be prepared to provide all of the above to the people actually making the purchasing decisions.

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

#166

Post by hasdrubal »

794CD01 wrote: post #132
unprepare wrote: post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Care to offer any arguments to support your claim?

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

#167

Post by Silhouette »

notsotrue wrote: post #108
keithpeter wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"The whole process made me feel like I was losing my mind." And perhaps Microsoft shareholders are beginning to feel as if they might be losing their capital soonish... This sounds like The End.

A tad hyperbolic, don't you think?

Microsoft had a train wreck with Windows 8. They're on track for another train wreck with Windows 10 that they seem to be actively compounding at every turn by adopting a customer-hostile strategy. They're supposedly shifting towards more cloud- and device-based models as a corporate strategy, but being comprehensively out-competed in both markets on almost all counts by other big tech firms. And their share price has been pretty flaky since it became clear how Windows 10 was actually going to work.

At some point, the hyperbole starts looking like a plausible assessment.

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

#168

Post by jzwinck »

mynameisvlad wrote: post #93
unprepare wrote: post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

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…

I upgraded three computers to Windows 10 a few months ago. One each from Vista, 7, and 8. All three had showstopper problems. One would never again resume from sleep and had to be downgraded (HP laptop). One encountered a permanent boot error on the second boot into 10, and had to be completely wiped to make it work (Lenovo desktop, only a year old). And the third required purchase of a new graphics card, because acceleration which worked in Win7 does not work in Win10 if you have older Intel integrated graphics.

These free upgrades cost me about 15 hours of lost time, $80 in hardware, and a lot of goodwill. Or I guess I should say, two upgrades, since one had to be undone.

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

#169

Post by kevin_thibedeau »

leonroy wrote: post #150
Someone1234 wrote: post #2

If Microsoft wants SMBs to use Enterprise then make the Enterprise edition more easily available to SMBs, don't try to force them to move to it by making petty little changes to make their life more difficult. I can go on the Google Apps website right now and buy myself seats with a few clicks and a few minutes. If I want to buy Windows Enterprise licenses it will take weeks, cost an unclear amount (at the onset), an…

Adding my voice to the chorus. The Microsoft Windows ecosystem is a god send for those wanting to enforce single sign on, roaming profiles and group policy to control things deploy Chrome, 7-Zip or all manner of apps straight to the desktop or lock down access for say the demo room machines but give full access to engineering notebooks and enforce things like password policy, mapped network drives, etc. It honestly j…

> When put together it really does work beautifully.

Except for the forced reboots because their OS still can't completely update itself at run time.

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

#170

Post by jordanthoms »

rchowe wrote: post #97
basch wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Your small business is already an O365 E3/E5 customer, and Microsoft is tricking your users into signing up for Microsoft accounts ontop of O365 accounts (which creates all sorts of unnecessary sign in complications, like OFTEN having to choose WORK over Personal TWICE in a row.) Now you have all sorts of training issues and confusion when peoples onenote notes end up in their Microsoft account and not their O365 acc…

I've been working on a web app that integrates with Office 365 using OpenID Connect. If someone is signed into their Microsoft account instead of their corporate account, the sign-in process just gives a generic error page with light-grey text explaining the error at the bottom of the page. I know some of your pain :)

Wow, I'm impressed. Looks like Microsoft managed to an even worse job than Google with managing the duplication of work and personal accounts and integration of that with OAuth.
Post reply on HN