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Microsoft has removed the “use offline account” option when installing Windows

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Re: Microsoft has removed the “use offline account” option when installing Windows

#701

Post by braindeath »

viraptor wrote: post #683
mikestew wrote: post #549

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Whatever worked is highly unlikely to stop working. New to software development, are we? That is such a laughably bad assumption that I’ll assume what I think you meant to say is not really what you meant to say. But I’m glad to know that editing slides works just fine in Excel. From the link, “Gold” means: “Works as well as (or better than) on Windows with workarounds.” The test results say online login crashes. Tha…

It's not a certification program. It's just reporting system. And yes, it is what I meant. For software like wine, if something works in version X, you can expect it will work in X+1. Sure, there will always be some regression from time to time, but wine's whole existence is based on the idea that they support Window's APIs. These are not random features they'll decide to remove from time to time.

> For software like wine, if something works in version X, you can expect it will work in X+1.

Anyone that expects this is setting themselves up for disappointment.

My actual experience with this has not matched yours. Wine is extremely fragile. There is a reason why things like winetricks and using dedicated wine prefixes exists, for one.

This is not a knock on wine really, but the complexity of the problem at hand.

> These are not random features they'll decide to remove from time to time.

Emulating windows APIs is extremely complicated. Even with the best intentions of not breaking something it happens, quite a bit.

You are extremely naive.

Re: Microsoft has removed the “use offline account” option when installing Windows

#702

Post by mastazi »

pro8ndi wrote: post #674
mastazi wrote: post #527

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I didn’t feel the need to specify that in my comment because the linked Reddit thread already explains it, it’s the top upvoted comment, you can see it just below the initial post. When I said “this is incredibly bad” I was referring to the dark pattern, I wasn’t trying to suggest that the option had been completely removed.

So you assumed everyone else would be able to catch the specific comment you read in a forum thread that will shift comment positions, or allow users to delete them.

There was no malice intended. At the time I commented, also the top comment here in HN was saying the same thing. So I assumed everyone knew what we were talking about. This whole HN thread had like 10 comments in total so it was easy to read. Then the thread made it to the HN front page, and it blew up. (And people in the US/Europe woke up while I was having dinner with friends here in Australia).

Edit: the HN comment I’m talking about is this one, you can see from the timestamp it's older than mine https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21104074

Re: Microsoft has removed the “use offline account” option when installing Windows

#703

Post by klodolph »

yawaramin wrote: post #601
klodolph wrote: post #532

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Anybody who has ever administered Windows PCs professionally at work should know what it means. I would not expect home users to know or care.

I have used Windows PCs at work extensively. I had no idea that 'Domain join' could mean 'create an offline account'.

“Administered”. I’m not talking about local admin rights, I’m talking about the people in your IT department who administer a fleet of Windows PCs.

It doesn’t normally mean “create offline account”, but domain accounts are not the same as Microsoft accounts, and domain accounts are a normal part of enterprise deployments. So it does normally mean that you can create a non-Microsoft account. Yes, it’s stupid. Not defending it, just trying to explain what “join domain” means.

Re: Microsoft has removed the “use offline account” option when installing Windows

#704

Post by klodolph »

Silhouette wrote: post #632
klodolph wrote: post #532

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Anybody who has ever administered Windows PCs professionally at work should know what it means. I would not expect home users to know or care.

Not everyone running Windows PCs at work is in an enterprise environment with in-house IT specialists. Remember, most businesses are small businesses.

“Administered”. If you don’t have IT specialists you don’t have people administering your PCs professionally.

I’m not talking about people who happen to use Windows in a professional setting. I’m talking specifically about people whose main job responsibilities include Windows administration.

Re: Microsoft has removed the “use offline account” option when installing Windows

#705

Post by klodolph »

anoncake wrote: post #637
klodolph wrote: post #532

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Anybody who has ever administered Windows PCs professionally at work should know what it means. I would not expect home users to know or care.

> I would not expect home users to know That's why MS renamed the button. > or care They do, else MS would not need those dark patterns.

> They do, else MS would not need those dark patterns.

No, typical end users do not care what “domain join” means. They only care about creating offline accounts. “Domain join” isn’t supposed to mean “create offline account”, it’s supposed to let you join the computer to an AD domain. Or at least, that’s what I’d expect.

Re: Microsoft has removed the “use offline account” option when installing Windows

#706

Post by lostgame »

chipotle_coyote wrote: post #365
mlinsey wrote: post #343

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Are they really only marketing to those customers? Given the pitch in the keynote, I kinda doubt it. Reminds me of those fancy six figure sports cars that are capable of all sorts of things you would never do on a regular street...”it’s a good price for those who need all that power”...well sure but most of the people who bought it were convinced by the marketing that having all that power was cool and made them seem…

I think they really are marketing that monitor only to those customers. People who want the computer but don't expect to be editing feature films with it can get a 5K LG monitor for $1300. (Of course, those people -- even the ones editing feature films, when push comes to shove -- could also probably get an iMac Pro, or even just a "normal" iMac with bumped-up specs.)

Naw, not unless you’re firing up an eGPU...not for 4K, anyway.

Re: Microsoft has removed the “use offline account” option when installing Windows

#707

Post by mastazi »

Kuinox wrote: post #534
mastazi wrote: post #527

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I didn’t feel the need to specify that in my comment because the linked Reddit thread already explains it, it’s the top upvoted comment, you can see it just below the initial post. When I said “this is incredibly bad” I was referring to the dark pattern, I wasn’t trying to suggest that the option had been completely removed.

To what i see, the top upvoted comment is at the third position behind a lot of subcomments, because of the "hot" ranking of reddit. By reading the discussions here, i don't think that a lot of people realised that the option is still there.

Ah, it must be a user option in Reddit, I assumed that everyone else was reading the same thing I was reading. Also, at the time I commented here on HN, the top comment here was this one so I was assuming everyone would see it (but later it went down the page and now it’s hard to find) https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21104074

Re: Microsoft has removed the “use offline account” option when installing Windows

#708

Post by tikiman163 »

mastazi wrote: post #63

This is incredibly bad. In general I have a positive opinion about what MS is doing lately, but Windows is a glaring exception, it’s getting worse and worse at an alarming rate. In the last two months we had two consecutive updates that broke basic functionality for users who disabled web results in Windows Search (which is a very common setting among those who care about privacy) https://www.zdnet.com/article/window…

I disagree with your premise. For many people this will force increased personal security and make their accounts more easily recoverable in case they forget their passwords.

I'm something of a security expert, having consulted on architure implemented by several of the largest anti-virus distributors and retailers in the world. My honest opinion is that people need a dramatically better understanding of how domains work. If they want the increased privacy they should need to understand how to setup and use a local domain well enough to find the new location for creating a local account.

For those who cannot do this, their device security and therefore personal privacy is far better served by registering a microsoft account.

Any privacy concerns stemming from trust should be addressed by laws governing the acceptable use of user data. California is already pursuing such laws, and we should be supporting those efforts because they are addressing the true root cause of most modern privacy issues.

Re: Microsoft has removed the “use offline account” option when installing Windows

#709

Post by mastazi »

tikiman163 wrote: post #708
mastazi wrote: post #63

This is incredibly bad. In general I have a positive opinion about what MS is doing lately, but Windows is a glaring exception, it’s getting worse and worse at an alarming rate. In the last two months we had two consecutive updates that broke basic functionality for users who disabled web results in Windows Search (which is a very common setting among those who care about privacy) https://www.zdnet.com/article/window…

I disagree with your premise. For many people this will force increased personal security and make their accounts more easily recoverable in case they forget their passwords. I'm something of a security expert, having consulted on architure implemented by several of the largest anti-virus distributors and retailers in the world. My honest opinion is that people need a dramatically better understanding of how domains…

I agree with the last paragraph of your comment, but still I think users should be able to choose. “Security by dark pattern” doesn’t sound to me like the best solution we could possibly come up with.

Re: Microsoft has removed the “use offline account” option when installing Windows

#710

Post by TheRealDunkirk »

jrockway wrote: post #57
NotSammyHagar wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

why do people still use windows? It's stupid and naive to ask that, but I keep wondering why devs aren't successful in getting changes made at their companies.

I use Windows because pretty much every program ever runs on Windows. Buy some weird device? Hey, it has drivers! Want to play the latest game? Hey, there's a Windows version! The same is simply not true of other platforms. The reality is that it's the most popular OS, so when someone can only write their computer program once, they do it for Windows. It sucks, but that's how it is. I use Linux for pretty much all my…

You may be interested in MobaXterm. Don't let the name fool you; it's a good SSH client for Windows. I spent 20 years or so hassling with PuTTY, and just discovered this a few months ago. More people should know about it. I still need pagent for git, and the like, but at least Moba solves the set-the-terminal-options-once-for-all-SSH-sessions problem.
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