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

zdnet.com

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

#171

Post by cm3 »

o_s_m wrote: post #83
FuriouslyAdrift wrote: post #18

We are tied to Microsoft due to a multi-million dollar ERP. I have frozen at Win 8.1 (software assurance contract). I love server and maybe once Server 2016 is out this Fall/Winter, I can circle back around but the 2 Win10 machines we have (one is mine) tripped every security protocol we have (we do some stuff for foreign and local defense contractors). Thi sis the enterprise edition. In the end, I block a few thousa…

Is DragonflyBSD a good desktop environment for someone coming from Debian and other Linux OSs?

Well, the Intel DRM driver is pretty closely tracking linux upstream and most desktop stuff just works, so you could say it's a viable alternative. But it doesn't have DTrace or ZFS, although it has LUKS/dm-crypt for compatibility with Linux and the Hammer1 filesystem provides most of ZFS (missing some important bits) while requiring much much less RAM. You can actually dedup your Hammer filesystem with little RAM. Matt's been working for a long time on Hammer2 and it's still under heavy development. The message passing, less sharing concurrency in the kernel allowed Dragonfly to be competitive with Linux in benchmarks with just a few developers and a simpler kernel locking scheme altogether. DTrace is the number one feature I miss compared to FreeBSD, but other than that it's great. But FreeBSD gets a lot more contributions so is a much safer bet for production and they're also well on their way to have a linux abstraction layer for quicker sync of kernel drm drivers. So they will soon close up to Dragonfly in terms of Intel and Radeon graphics support. Also FreeBSD gets official Nvidia binary drivers if you need them and they have a kernel driver ABI that doesn't require you to rebuild nvidia.ko.

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

#172

Post by yuhong »

FuriouslyAdrift wrote: post #18

We are tied to Microsoft due to a multi-million dollar ERP. I have frozen at Win 8.1 (software assurance contract). I love server and maybe once Server 2016 is out this Fall/Winter, I can circle back around but the 2 Win10 machines we have (one is mine) tripped every security protocol we have (we do some stuff for foreign and local defense contractors). Thi sis the enterprise edition. In the end, I block a few thousa…

You don't know about the "Security" telemetry level and why it is there? Server has it too BTW.

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

#173

Post by yuhong »

jrcii wrote: post #54
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…

I lived through the exact same disaster. I spent HOURS on the phone trying to acquire a license for Windows 7 Enterprise, I needed it for Hyper-V. Microsoft's main number, dead-end IVR system. Tried the Microsoft Store, they routed me to the dead-end IVR system. 50 or so minutes after my initial attempt I got some person that could barely speak English from India routing me to a voicemail, a couple of times Microsoft…

You are supposed to use downgrade rights, which every VL agreement have.

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

#174

Post by hackuser »

khedoros wrote: post #153
hackuser wrote: post #134

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I took "mainframe era" to be roughly the 50s through 70s or 80s. Are you talking about the same time period?

No, I guess I'm talking about the post-mainframe era; perhaps the PC era.

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

#175

Post by TylerE »

kevin_thibedeau wrote: post #169
leonroy wrote: post #150

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Neither can Linux or OS X.

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

#176

Post by tokensimian »

CaptSpify wrote: post #149
camperman wrote: post #107

I always snigger at the formula of Microsoft's public statements. You just know that in the first paragraph it will claim - disingenuously - to be doing the exact opposite of whatever it's accused of. And sure enough the very first sentence is: "Microsoft is focused on helping enterprises manage their environment while giving people choice in the apps and devices they use to be productive across work and life." You c…

I find this true of most company taglines. "We have the highest rated customer service" = We have shitty customer service. I think the people who write this stuff are usually presented with "Here's the bad parts of our reputation. Make sure your blurb fixes that"

Probably something like, "we took a survey. Here's what our customers / prospects said is important to them."

If a company has poor customer service, byzantine purchase process, etc., that stuff will crop up.

Then again, so will all the standard things -- trust, etc.

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

#177

Post by phkahler »

hackuser wrote: post #15

I want devices that I, the owner, control, whether I'm a small business or enterprise or individual. This is important for many reasons, from security to freedom-to-tinker to using the device I own in the way I want. It was once an accepted standard in IT. Now, can anyone name a current handheld or desktop system that provides end-user control? If you don't think security, including privacy, is important, consider wh…

>> It was once an accepted standard in IT.

That's funny because it's the folks in IT that always want to limit users freedom. But when someone even higher up the chain takes control they get upset about it ;-)

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

#178

Post by barbs »

GigabyteCoin wrote: post #31

And this particular sysadmin-for-my-family will no longer allow windows to be installed on any of our computers whenever they are in need of a reinstall. Windows is becoming more and more like Facebook. Too many users changed a setting you don't agree with? Just block access to that setting or call it something else to confuse enough people to the point that the numbers are "good enough" for management. Almost every…

> Too many users changed a setting you don't agree with? Just block access to that setting or call it something else to confuse enough people to the point that the numbers are "good enough" for management.

Ergh, agreed. Ever try to change the default search engine in Edge to something other than Bing? Hoops galore.

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

#179

Post by rjbwork »

drglitch wrote: post #16

Microsoft enterprise/SMB sales process (via channel partners) is a laughable disaster. Recent task: Run a Windows Server VM on Azure, with 4 remote desktop users connecting in. Result: almost a MONTH of back and fourth with THREE different MSPs since none of them knew details of proper licensing. In fact, even Azure support did not know licensing terms and said just to contact the MSPs, who in turn advised we contact…

I'm slightly confused...you think the multiple users RDPing into it will cause an increase in cost if you go 100% legit? The price of the windows OS is priced into the Azure hosting costs. Windows vms are a bit more expensive than linux ones for this reason.

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

#180

Post by userbinator »

pdkl95 wrote: post #88
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.

> 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…

"Freedom" necessarily includes the freedom to make bad decisions. You want to take away that choice.

Very well said. There's this relevant Gandhi quote:

"Freedom is not worth having if it does not include the freedom to make mistakes."

The whole approach to computer security seems to be based on an argument along the lines of "let's just throw everyone in jail and treat them guilty by default because they might possibly do something we don't like", which (fortunately, at this present time) seems preposterous in the real world, and yet that's what people are silently accepting --- or even strongly advocating --- with respect to online matters and their computing devices.

A world of perfect security and perfect safety, where no one can make mistakes, where no "bad things" can happen to anyone, and in which everything is controlled by some authority would be immensely boring, dystopian, inhuman, and quite frankly not worth living in.

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