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Microsoft Is Downloading 6GB of Windows 10 Updates Without User’s Consent

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Re: Microsoft Is Downloading 6GB of Windows 10 Updates Without User’s Consent

#91

Post by johnward »

DougMerritt wrote: post #87
pdabbadabba wrote: post #85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not sure all the outrage against MS is justified since we're just talking about a large download, not any change to the user's system, or sharing of information, etc. (Though I might feel differently if my bandwidth were metered.) But I also can't fathom how so many on this thread are willing to conclude that users consented to this by enabling automatic updates. Because, of course, you don't just consent to have…

> since we're just talking about a large download Even just that can be a problem, since it is quite common these days for people to have a small SSD boot drive, and put everything else in a secondary hard drive. The download could use all remaining space on the SSD, which could cause a variety of problems unless/until the user figured out the problem and deleted the 6 GB download.

A small SSD boot drive is like 250-500gb.

Re: Microsoft Is Downloading 6GB of Windows 10 Updates Without User’s Consent

#92

Post by johnward »

wang_li wrote: post #70
johnward wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Can't users opt out by disabling automatic updates? Microsoft is basically doing what every other modern software company does but taking heat for it.

Arguably all software vendors who sell a product should be prepared to do two things: 1. continue fixing bugs in their prior products. 2. create new features in new products. People who buy something, e.g. an original iPad, no longer get OS updates even though the item was advertised as being safe to use to access content on the internet. This is provably false and while EULA shenanigans provide a fig leaf of proprie…

You can also still manually install fixes if you don't allow automatic updates. I can't understand why these people with such low datacaps would allow automatic updates anyway.

Re: Microsoft Is Downloading 6GB of Windows 10 Updates Without User’s Consent

#93

Post by johnward »

pdkl95 wrote: post #86
pdabbadabba wrote: post #85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not sure all the outrage against MS is justified since we're just talking about a large download, not any change to the user's system, or sharing of information, etc. (Though I might feel differently if my bandwidth were metered.) But I also can't fathom how so many on this thread are willing to conclude that users consented to this by enabling automatic updates. Because, of course, you don't just consent to have…

That download is costing people money, and if there is any justice left in the US, it will result in a class action lawsuit. People in Redmond or Silicon Valley with good internet connections need to remember that a lot of people don't have that luxury. Extremely low bandwidth connections are still very common in the US, and metered connections are an unfortunate reality for many people around the world.

This. This is the thing that makes you question the justice system in the US? Maybe they should have a class action suit against ISPs for having shitty caps? I'm in rural Ohio and I don't have a 2gb cap per month. If I did I certainly wouldn't enable automatic updates for any software.

Re: Microsoft Is Downloading 6GB of Windows 10 Updates Without User’s Consent

#94

Post by pdkl95 »

johnward wrote: post #93
pdkl95 wrote: post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That download is costing people money, and if there is any justice left in the US, it will result in a class action lawsuit. People in Redmond or Silicon Valley with good internet connections need to remember that a lot of people don't have that luxury. Extremely low bandwidth connections are still very common in the US, and metered connections are an unfortunate reality for many people around the world.

This. This is the thing that makes you question the justice system in the US? Maybe they should have a class action suit against ISPs for having shitty caps? I'm in rural Ohio and I don't have a 2gb cap per month. If I did I certainly wouldn't enable automatic updates for any software.

> This is the thing that makes you question the justice system in the US?

I never claimed this.

> I don't have a 2gb cap.

Good. That doesn't mean everybody else does. Stop projecting your situation onto everybody else.

> I certainly wouldn't enable automatic updates

As you're posting to HN, I can assume you are very familiar with computers and understand how to do that. Everybody else just wanted the small security patches that Windows Update provided for years, with minimal impact on data caps.

Re: Microsoft Is Downloading 6GB of Windows 10 Updates Without User’s Consent

#95

Post by AjithAntony »

malux85 wrote: post #13

Holy smoke - this isn't very good. My parents in NZ only get 1 or 2 GB a month ... this would have cost them a fortune. Fortunately I switched them to mac last year. Microsoft : You suck.

Windows 8 and up can accommodate metered connections

http://windows.microsoft.com/en-US/windows-8/metered-interne...

Re: Microsoft Is Downloading 6GB of Windows 10 Updates Without User’s Consent

#96

Post by nacs »

9872 wrote: post #78
nacs wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This isn't a security patch. This is pre-downloading an entire OS upgrade without the user asking for it.

You don't believe the newer version of the OS is more secure? If nothing else, supporting fewer active versions would make MS more responsive to any security issues that do arise.

No I certainly don't. And Windows 7/8 is still supported and patched so nothing makes Windows 10 any more secure.

In fact, I'd say it's less secure since it hasn't been as well tested in the wild as Win 7/8.

Re: Microsoft Is Downloading 6GB of Windows 10 Updates Without User’s Consent

#97

Post by DougMerritt »

johnward wrote: post #91
DougMerritt wrote: post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> since we're just talking about a large download Even just that can be a problem, since it is quite common these days for people to have a small SSD boot drive, and put everything else in a secondary hard drive. The download could use all remaining space on the SSD, which could cause a variety of problems unless/until the user figured out the problem and deleted the 6 GB download.

A small SSD boot drive is like 250-500gb.

Wildly incorrect, there are a vast number of 64 GB SSD's in use, and 500gb drives are NOT small in any case, they are still borderline too expensive for the average consumer.

But it hardly matters, since it's well known that storage needs always exceed available capacity, and 500gb is tiny compared with with today's needs, which may be represented by a reasonable hard disk capacity of 3TB or so.

So even a 500 GB drive won't fit all of the desired 3 TB in the first place, so it's already under pressure even before Microsoft randomly decides it's ok to use up over 1% of it.

And for the much more common 64 GB SSDs, this is 10% of their total capacity.

Which means that 6 GB can never just be assumed to be so trivially small that it won't have a really negative effect on anyone.

You picked a terribly contrafactual way to be a Microsoft apologist.

Re: Microsoft Is Downloading 6GB of Windows 10 Updates Without User’s Consent

#98

Post by psykovsky »

pachydermic wrote: post #19

This is really infuriating... Microsoft, what the hell? I really hope steam machines take off (and stay relatively open). As soon as I'm happy with the number of games Linux supports I'm dropping windows like a rock.

So... never?

Re: Microsoft Is Downloading 6GB of Windows 10 Updates Without User’s Consent

#99

Post by wang_li »

johnward wrote: post #73
wang_li wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Arguably all software vendors who sell a product should be prepared to do two things: 1. continue fixing bugs in their prior products. 2. create new features in new products. People who buy something, e.g. an original iPad, no longer get OS updates even though the item was advertised as being safe to use to access content on the internet. This is provably false and while EULA shenanigans provide a fig leaf of proprie…

Just for the record the iPad2 still updates. Though the hardware can barely handle iOS8. It's almost unusable. It seems crazy to think there would not be an end of support for something that old. Maybe Apple doesn't allow updates because they don't want the original iPad to become completely unusable?

The old devices become effectively unusable as new bugs are discovered and patches are not created, tested and distributed.

It should be possible to fix bugs without having to add in new features. E.g. I shouldn't need to upgrade to floating icons with a parallax background to get a fix for PDF parsing problems.

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