Woman wins $10k judgment against Microsoft for forced Windows 10 upgrade • Hacker News Board

Re: Woman wins $10k judgment against Microsoft for forced Windows 10 upgrade

#331

Post by drbawb » Mon, Jun 27, 2016, 9:06 PM UTC

givinguflac wrote: post #49

themartorana wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have mixed feelings about this. I'm with you 100% on having the explicit opportunity to opt out of updates like this. That said, a large swath of Windows users are not nearly as technically literate as you and your mother are, and automatically helping people forward (if for nothing else, security fixes and ongoing support) is a Good Thing in my book (so long as it's free, and it is). There is no doubt there are co…

Support it if you want, but you seriously think it's OK for the PC to restart in the middle of a call? What if the user is doing something mission critical; it's acceptable to just wait an hour (or more likely several) to get back to work because "MS knows best"?? There is nothing to stop it from just doing it all over again either. I will never use Windows again because of this behavior.

I use Windows 10 on my home workstation. Last week I was checking a few things in the morning before I left for work. Windows wanted to schedule updates, it suggested "9AM; because it doesn't look like you use your computer at that time."

That computer hosts a Linux VM which I connect to remotely from work and use for most of my development efforts... I use it every day without fail, yet Windows thinks my computer is "idle" simply because I'm not physically sitting at the terminal moving the mouse and keyboard.

I realize that's a perfectly reasonable heuristic for your average desktop user; but something about the messaging and voice of Windows 10 just really rubs me the wrong way. Previous versions of Windows seemed much less chatty, whereas now everything feels so presumptuous and autonomous all under the guise of "Cortana knows your habits better than you do."

Re: Woman wins $10k judgment against Microsoft for forced Windows 10 upgrade

#332

Post by DoofusOfDeath » Mon, Jun 27, 2016, 9:06 PM UTC

CaptSpify wrote: post #200

15charlimit wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> we don't want another "XP situation" with Windows 7 If Microsoft had really wanted to avoid that, they'd have made Windows 10 actually attractive to the end user and the tech people that would recommend it to the end user. Instead they jammed it chock-full of spyware and malware-tier garbage that nobody wants, and treat the installbase as a testbed for forced updates that could easily (and have) render machines ino…

My thought as well. If you have sneak in and force your users to upgrade, your doing something wrong. And everyone frames this upgrade tactic like it's good for the user. In reality, this is good for MS, and it happens to have some benefits for the user. Lets quit acting like MS is being altruistic here.

It's good for the user the way rape is good for the victim: "Just lay back and let us do what we want. Heck, you might even enjoy it!"

Re: Woman wins $10k judgment against Microsoft for forced Windows 10 upgrade

#333

Post by criddell » Mon, Jun 27, 2016, 9:07 PM UTC

randiantech wrote: post #213

I dont see mandatory updates as a bad thing per se. I think ideally it would be a way to allow users that wants to use older versions to pay a fee to do that (Basically to cover the maintenance service due to keep patching legacy versions). I think its understandable that MS dont want to keep investing in phased out software.

> I think its understandable that MS dont want to keep investing in phased out software.

I think the problem is that they are phasing out software to replace it with something that few people are asking for. I like Windows 10. I also liked Windows 8.1, 7, Vista, XP, and 2000. I've been using them to do basically the exact same thing for the past 15 years -- run software and manage files. I think any one of them could have been the operating system that Microsoft declares "this is the last one!".

Re: Woman wins $10k judgment against Microsoft for forced Windows 10 upgrade

#334

Post by blakeyrat » Mon, Jun 27, 2016, 9:07 PM UTC

vocatus_gate wrote: post #327

Fordrus wrote: post #161

Earlier quoted context omitted.

See, this is a GREAT comparison, because thinking, "No one will call 911 at 3am" EASILY falls into the realm of destructive negligence. Like "I didn't realize these cars could be hit from the side!" or, "I didn't realize how much worse I drive when I am drunk, officer!" In the 3am 911 case, those admins could EASILY have cost LIVES with their decision. If that inbound call handler's machine had updates waiting, or mo…

I'm working in Antarctica and we BARELY caught one of our science systems a couple hours before it was about to kick off that stupid auto-upgrade. It would have broke a very expensive and custom box built to run these experiments, which was transported down here at great cost. If I hadn't been wandering by checking on something else I'd never have seen the window and it would've wrecked some poor grantee's years and…

If it's so critical, why hadn't anybody turned off auto-updates?

This problem isn't new with Windows 10. It could have just as easily upgrade to a new Windows 7 patch which broke the product.

Re: Woman wins $10k judgment against Microsoft for forced Windows 10 upgrade

#335

Post by cptskippy » Mon, Jun 27, 2016, 9:13 PM UTC

fabianhjr wrote: post #269

notalaser wrote: post #259

Earlier quoted context omitted.

On the other hand, many/most distributions have major releases every 6-12 months, and the upgrade process is a lot more hit and miss. I have Debian and (unexpectedly enough...) Fedora services that I've managed to drag along two and, respectively, three major releases. On the other hand, I can't remember ever managing to get a clean upgrade on Ubuntu after 8.04 or so. My latest attempt has been miserable, I spent hal…

> many/most distributions have major releases every 6-12 months, and the upgrade process is a lot more hit and miss. You might want to try a rolling release distro, something like Antergos (Arch + Tweaks)

This type of grass is always greener answer is why the Linux desktop experience is so poor. If someone follows that advice they may fix one issue they have but in return they get a whole new set of problems to discover and troubleshoot or run away from.

Re: Woman wins $10k judgment against Microsoft for forced Windows 10 upgrade

#336

Post by squeaky-clean » Mon, Jun 27, 2016, 9:18 PM UTC

Bartweiss wrote: post #92

givinguflac wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Support it if you want, but you seriously think it's OK for the PC to restart in the middle of a call? What if the user is doing something mission critical; it's acceptable to just wait an hour (or more likely several) to get back to work because "MS knows best"?? There is nothing to stop it from just doing it all over again either. I will never use Windows again because of this behavior.

My biggest aggravation with Windows is the pattern of unapproved restarts. Sure, there's usually a setting to disable it, and a popup to delay it, but it's not really enough. The setting appears unreliable at best, and the popup is useless when it pops under fullscreen programs. It really only takes one ill-timed restart to damn an OS forever, especially when the restart is chased by lengthy (and impossible to declin…

> The setting appears unreliable at best, and the popup is useless when it pops under fullscreen programs

This! Anyone saying this is new behavior caused by the Windows 10 update has never been booted out of a WoW raid at 3 am because the restart pop-up didn't show beneath the game window. Windows Update has been doing this since XP.

Re: Woman wins $10k judgment against Microsoft for forced Windows 10 upgrade

#337

Post by cortesoft » Mon, Jun 27, 2016, 9:18 PM UTC

Someone1234 wrote: post #59

Filligree wrote: post #33

I had about three GB free on my root partition. Windows 10 was automatically installed. Well, partially. You can probably guess what happened; if this had happened to anyone else in the family, their computer would have been effectively bricked. I used to spend most of my time in Linux anyway, but now I'm justifiably scared of booting Windows.

Windows 10 won't attempt to install unless it has enough space to complete, and they look for 16 GB. So what I suspect actually occurred is that your hypervisor was set up to misreport how much space as available to Windows, so Windows 10 tried to install on the space it thought it had, only to hit the wall on the "real" filesystem below. It is unlikely this ever would have occurred to anyone else in your family, unl…

What about if that 16GB gets used up while the install is in progress?

Re: Woman wins $10k judgment against Microsoft for forced Windows 10 upgrade

#338

Post by blakeyrat » Mon, Jun 27, 2016, 9:22 PM UTC

arximboldi wrote: post #134

Someone1234 wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm sympathetic both ways on this one. I think Microsoft went "too far" but I also agree that we don't want another "XP situation" with Windows 7. Effectively having 20%+ of the market on a super old OS holding back the industry and less secure. Microsoft claim they're planning to avoid this in the future by no longer releasing named new OS's, and instead just update Windows 10 for "free" forever. Basically the same…

"Holding back the industry" No! I think we, the software industry, are very irresponsible when it comes to __planned obsolescence__ [1]. Computers from 10 years ago are very capable of doing most things common users want to do nowadays. However, many modern operating systems and applications make these computers unusable. We are forcing users to upgrade software, and because of all the layers of cruft accumulated in…

If the machine is on the Internet, it needs security updates. Let's take that as an inviolate law of nature:

If the machine is on the Internet, it needs security updates

This isn't a proprietary vs. open source thing, this is a "level of effort" thing. Microsoft right now, if they discover a security bug, has to create a patch for:

* Windows XP SP2 (thanks to all those "extended support" buyers; the US Navy has purchased support through June 8, 2017, they are not the only ones)

* Windows Vista (yup; also "extended support" for another year)

* Windows 7

* Windows 8

* Windows 8.1

* Windows 10

Why does that matter?

* It requires (up to) 6 times the development time to develop a fix for the bug

* It requires 6 times the QA time

* It makes Microsoft far less responsive to bug reports because of the time required to come up with a fix

* It makes Microsoft set the bar higher on what bugs are "fixable" because of the cost of coming up with a fix

It makes life difficult for everybody, and it wastes a ton of time Microsoft could instead be spending making their product better instead of constantly digging-around in 17-year-old code.

Let's say you're Ubuntu, you're all open source-y and have that warm fuzzy feeling. You want people to use their 10 year old OS installs, no problem. Let's be generous and only include the long-term support versions, because I want to save on typing:

* Dapper Drake

* Hardy Heron

* Lucid Lynx

* Precise Pangolin

* Trusty Tahr

* Xenial Xerus

That's also six versions you have to update every time a security fix comes in. (Potentially) 6 times the code to create the fix, definitely 6 times the QA time, etc. All the same problems Microsoft has, but this time in your open source dreamland.

That's a huge, huge, waste of effort that could go towards actually making the OS better.

Re: Woman wins $10k judgment against Microsoft for forced Windows 10 upgrade

#339

Post by DKnoll3 » Mon, Jun 27, 2016, 9:23 PM UTC

moskie wrote: post #274

cm2187 wrote: post #105

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, it's like my bank "upgrading" me to a Gold account where I will be charged more fees and receive more calls from my bank trying to sell me products...

That is a crappy metaphor.

Uh...how?

Windows 10 advertises Microsoft products, and 3rd party products, and is the first step into being suckered into Microsoft's foray into a paid subscription OS.

Sounds like a great metaphor. Let us "upgrade" you to make more money from you.

Re: Woman wins $10k judgment against Microsoft for forced Windows 10 upgrade

#340

Post by fake-name » Mon, Jun 27, 2016, 9:23 PM UTC

WorldMaker wrote: post #302

Decade wrote: post #182

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In my opinion, there is never a good time to restart. That is simply an artifact of the sad historical circumstances that led to the current state of operating systems. I don’t particularly enjoy waking up to all my programs are closed because Windows decided that tonight was the night that it restarted. It’s slightly better on MacOS, where programs using MacOS-specific APIs can restore their state on startup, but th…

One of the things I thought Windows 8 did really right was trying to instill into applications the lifecycle that they could be force closed/rebooted at any time and should be good at saving and restoring state across application starts. This is good beyond just system restarts and good in general to know that applications would typically come back to where you left off after the system losing connectivity or going t…

The problem with this lifecycle assumption is that there is no way to opt out.

I have a "metro" style SSH application, and windows regularly decides it should close it, which kills my active SSH sessions.

I understand that they removed the ability to opt-out to force developers to change to a more appropriate model, but there are cases where a task cannot be suspended (because, for example, it's interacting with another computer). Having to re-log-in to my ssh session the 4th or 5th time in an hour is absolutely infuriating.