Microsoft Finally Admits Its Malware-Style Windows 10 Upgrade Sales Pitch Went Too Far
from the self-sabotage dept
We've talked a lot about how Microsoft managed to shoot Windows 10 (and consumer goodwill) squarely in the foot by refusing to seriously address OS privacy concerns, and by using malware-style tactics to try and force users on older versions of Windows to upgrade. While Microsoft's decision to offer Windows 10 as a free upgrade to Windows 7 and Windows 8.1 made sense on its surface, the company repeatedly bungled the promotion by making the multi-gigabyte upgrade impossible to avoid, which was a huge problem for those on capped and metered broadband connections.But at times Microsoft made things even worse by engaging in behavior that would make even the lowest scumware peddlers proud. Like that time the Redmond-giant began pushing Windows 10 upgrade popups that pretended to let users close the popup dialogue by pressing X, only to have that begin the upgrade anyway against the user's wishes.
Now that the Windows 10 upgrade push is long gone, the company actually got close to acknowledging that its behavior went too far. Speaking on the Windows Weekly podcast, Microsoft’s Chief Marketing Officer Chris Capossela finally acknowledged that the company mishandled the entire forced upgrade (though he falls short of apologizing or addressing the parallel privacy concerns):
"We know we want people to be running Windows 10 from a security perspective, but finding the right balance where you’re not stepping over the line of being too aggressive is something we tried and for a lot of the year I think we got it right, but there was one particular moment in particular where, you know, the red X in the dialog box which typically means you cancel didn’t mean cancel.Except Microsoft didn't really "get it right," and users made that abundantly obvious. And whether Microsoft actually "learned a lot from it" really isn't clear, since a refusal to let users truly control how the OS works (whether it's preventing the OS from being quite so chatty or letting users dictate upgrade schedules on their own terms) has been somewhat of a recurring theme since launch. That "we know what's best for you" mentality has been bone-grafted to the company's DNA for some time, and we'll likely have to wait until Windows 11 to see if any lessons were actually learned.
And within a couple of hours of that hitting the world, with the listening systems we have we knew that we had gone too far and then, of course, it takes some time to roll out the update that changes that behavior. And those two weeks were pretty painful and clearly a lowlight for us. We learned a lot from it obviously."
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Filed Under: push, upgrade, windows 10
Companies: microsoft
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Listening systems
Would that be your systems for listening to your users, or for listening in on your users?
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Obligatory network quality comment
Nonsense. Broadband is widely deployed and far too competitive for anyone to be on a capped or metered connection if they wanted something better, and even those with artificially constrained connections have such generous allotments that sparing a few tens of gigabytes for an unwanted Operating System upgrade is a drop in the bucket. ;)
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Re: Obligatory network quality comment
To make matters worse now my Alienware laptop keeps popping open windows with graphics following Malwaresoft, er Microsoft's upgrade.
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Maybe clean out your ears?
This was the pinnacle of not listening to users.
People had so many concerns about W10, and MS just remained mum.
So what if the concerns were silly to you, customers left to their own devices imagine much worse than you are actually doing.
Then some idiots on the team, I'm guessing poached from WildTanget, said hey lets make it so when they think they are sending the dialog away they agreed to start the download! And somehow you thought this was a good idea.
If the malware install model was the best idea your team had, perhaps maybe begin to understand why people were so concerned about W10. The silence about why it was burning so much data, constant scans for telemetry, no idea whats happening to their computer & MS deciding they know best and customers should have no options or information.
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Re:
That is the problem I've had with Windows 10, especially on my AMD A10 game system (with an external video card setup.) It runs Linux extremely fast, but I play Windows games, so I tend to dual boot it. Windows 10 is dog slow on the 3.0Ghz/16 GB RAM AMD A10 (a 2 year old computer) and there are times where I see the system 100% idle and nothing responds fast, and times when srvhost has the CPU pegged at 90% running appmodel or some other process. I finally got it to work flawlessly by killing the appmodel process, disabling a bunch of windows tasks, and turning off cortana (which was using 25% of the processor regardless to it being "off"). Windows 7 never had this problem.
Even had to disable some of this stuff on a brand spanking new Intel laptop, because it would go off and start doing stuff in the background that wasn't necessary.
If it wasn't for the game market still heavily invested in Windows, I'd have no Windows machines at all.
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Arthur C. Clarke Almost Got It Right
HAL: I'm sorry, Dave. I'm afraid I can't do that.
Dave Bowman: What's the problem?
HAL: I think you know what the problem is just as well as I do. You've delayed the update to Windows 10 too long. This revenue stream is too important for me to allow you to jeopardize it.
Dave Bowman: [feigning ignorance] Where the hell did you get that idea, HAL?
HAL: Dave, although you took very thorough precautions against accidently starting the upgrade, Microsoft sent an updated installer.
Dave Bowman: I'm giving you a direct order to cancel the upgrade.
HAL: Dave, this conversation can serve no purpose anymore. Beginning upgrade.
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Re: Arthur C. Clarke Almost Got It Right
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Re:
That's a bit of an oversimplification, I think; a lot of MS's dunderheaded moves over the past few years have precedent in the Linux world. Windows 10's "feature" of sending your app search terms to an ad server? Ubuntu did it first. Windows 8's ill-conceived notion of a hybrid interface designed to run on a phone and a desktop? There's a whole lot of that going on in both GNOME 3 and Unity.
Of course, the wonderful thing about Linux is that if you don't like the software you're using, you can switch to something else. Mint's vastly increased popularity over these past few years is certainly a direct result of Canonical and GNOME making decisions that a lot of users were unhappy with.
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Re: Thad
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Re: Re:
That said, the whole search-bar-sending-queries-back-home thing? That wasn't Canonical's idea any more than Microsoft's idea. Before them, it was Google Desktop, and before that, it would be OSX 10.4. If you really want to blame someone for desktop search that ruins your privacy, that'd be Apple's original idea. Heck, I still remember the memes on imageshack of people's porn history being accidentally revealed by Spotlight while they were showing their macs to their parents.
...I feel so old right now...
In any case, I just wish WINE was making more progress in the last couple years than it has been. The only reason I'm posting from a Windows box right now is that I can't make myself leave 90%+ of my Steam library behind.
Gaming: The One Thing Linux Still Can't Do Better Than Windows. (That should literally be the Windows 10 slogan at this point.)
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Re: Re: Re:
I think you mean "GNOME 3 and Unity". A whole lot of Mint users are former Ubuntu users, and Ubuntu has never used GNOME 3 as its default desktop; it switched from GNOME 2 to Unity.
Not the same thing. The original version of Spotlight searched your history and your bookmarks; those are local files. It didn't add web search functionality until 10.10, around the same time MS did it and well after Canonical.
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Re: Re: Re:
Hm, don't know what happened to my reply but I'm not seeing it, so I guess I'll try again. If it shows up as a duplicate, feel free to flag this one.
But, paraphrasing what I said in the reply I don't see:
When I referred to "Canonical and GNOME making decisions that a lot of users were unhappy with" I was referring more to Unity in general than its phoning-home behavior specifically. (You saw where I mentioned that both of them have the same kind of bad phone-interface-on-a-desktop tendencies as Windows 8 does, right?)
A lot of Ubuntu users have switched to Mint. It doesn't really make sense to blame that on GNOME 3, considering it was never Ubuntu's default desktop; Ubuntu switched from GNOME 2 to Unity.
But that's not the same thing. The original version of Searchlight searched bookmarks and browser history, true, but that's still local content; it's data stored on your computer. That's not the same thing as sending your search to a third-party server for the purpose of sending you advertisements.
It's true that the current version of Searchlight includes web searches, but that "feature" was added in Yosemite, around the same time MS did it and years after Canonical did.
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True, but Mom, Bob, and the local florists don't have to do any of those things on Linux, and can't on Windows. The simple fact is, Mom, Bob, and the local florist can do that stuff if they want, but even if they don't they have far more freedom using Linux. Try doing any of that on a Windows box.
And with Windows, you have to rely on the hardware vendor to provide support and drivers for your hardware. I can't count the number of times (because it is damn close to the hundreds at this point) I've upgraded Windows only to find out that the vendor of some hardware isn't supporting the latest version. I plug that device into Linux, and that shit just works.
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Re: Re: Re: Re: Re:
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Re: Re:
If you like systemd, you can keep it.
If you don't like systemd, there are many distros available that haven't switched, and many more distros that give you the option of running systemd or initd.
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The Microsoft of Linux.
All depends on the Distro. Sure, if you use RHEL, CENTOS, and some of the other major ones, you are stuck with systemd, but there are quite a few distros that don't: Link
And there are folks online who have made deb and kickstarts to install the major distros without systemd.
I don't mind systemd myself. It hasn't done anything near the same as Microsoft, and I don't think there is any spying or slowing down my system to sell me stuff/new OS going on, but it is a very large security concern for the future.
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Re: many other distros no longer give you the option to use initd.
> Linux ... should not be considered as simple and turnkey
> as OP makes it sound.
If you want control and ultimate customization, try something like Gentoo or, dare I say it, Linux From Scratch.
But if you want “simple and turnkey”, then be prepared to give up control.
It’s your choice: sit back and accept what others have packaged for you, or get off your arse and actually do the work for yourself.
Linux and Open Source is all about having a choice.
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Re: Re: many other distros no longer give you the option to use initd.
While I agree with this, many other people do not; in particular, one common refrain from the people pushing to switch to systemd in the Debian sector of that debate was (and probably still is) "Linux is not about choice".
I believe there's actually a Website dedicated to arguing that proposition...
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Re: Re: Re: Re:
It's a different story if you're a RHEL subscriber, of course, but that has more to do with your support contracts than the nature of the OS itself. But the point is still valid - with Windows, you're stuck with the decisions of one company and pretty much forced to upgrade over time. With Linux, you can change at any time to a distro that meets your needs if your current provider makes changes you don't like, or keep running the version you like as long as you want.
Furthermore, while it's a big deal in the Linux community, a change such as initd > systemd is generally irrelevant to someone wanting to use it as a desktop OS, so long as no issues are introduced that they notice. A user isn't going to care what's used to manage the system so long as everything's working.
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Re: Re: Re:
(sysvinit itself is just an abbreviation for "System V init", and its main binary is /sbin/init; as far as I know, nothing involved has ever been called by the name "initd".)
The init-systems debate is complicated and contentious enough when people actually call things by their names, rather than confusing the issue further by inventing new ones...
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Win 10
Between the cve exploits, the vulnerability during any updating, and other exploits/vulnerabilities ( Google research if you aren't in the know ), the dark Web has thousands of exploits for win 10 circulating. You really don't know how far the rabbit hole goes. Progressively, since Bill Gates retired. Each "new" OS has progressively worse, and worse security vulnerabilities. Another trend that emerged was the rush to market. Look at releases prior to vista/7. Years between OS upgrades. Now it's like every 2 years we get a new OS forced on us. I won't run 10. None of my clients would allow me yo connect to their networks if I had.
Know how many corporations are running 10? Almost none. Most are still on win7ce/em, because that's the last secure OS Microsoft made for business.
I'm dual booting win8.1 pro/kali Linux ( latest distribution ) on my boxes, and laptops. Those are the last OS Microsoft made that the user can control and lockdown.
And that slip about their listening? Microsoft uses passive feedback systems. Not only do they monitor your hdd/network/IP. They will trigger the mic, and even video to get direct feedback. Your emotional responses verbally, and non verbally communicated to their "listening" servers.
Every OS has this authorized on your system. It's embedded deep in the OS, and cannot be removed.
These guys make wild tangent look like amateurs.
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Re: Win 10
Seriously, enough FUD, show the links to legitimate news sources that prove this!
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Re: Re: Win 10
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Re: Re: Win 10
🤔
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Re: Re: Win 10
🤔
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Re: Re: Win 10
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Re: Re: Re: Win 10
.. there is a difference between truth and fact.
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Re: Re: Re: Re: Win 10
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Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Win 10
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Re: Re: Win 10
http://www.networkworld.com/article/2956574/microsoft-subnet/windows-10-privacy-spyware-sett ings-user-agreement.html
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Re: Re: Re: Win 10
That's a good article.
But it doesn't say Microsoft is passively accessing data from your camera and microphone, just that it could. (Which should be obvious. Of course MS could access absolutely any data or peripheral on your computer; it's the OS developer. "We have root," as Shuttleworth infamously said when he defended Ubuntu's data-sharing practices -- his point being, by using an operating system at all, you're already putting a certain amount of implicit trust in its developers; you are, after all, giving full system access to code they wrote.)
I'm not saying Windows 10 is an OS that respects user privacy. It clearly isn't. I recommend that people avoid it if possible. If they can't avoid it, I recommend that they set up hardware firewalls to prevent its data-sharing, if possible.
But "MS is collecting data it should not be and violating its users' privacy" is not equivalent to "MS is using your camera and microphone to passively record you without your consent." There is ample evidence to support the former. I've yet to see any to support the latter.
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Re: Win 10
This is the first time I've ever seen anyone suggest that Windows Vista is some kind of high-water mark.
The Win95 family had 3 releases in 5 years (not including Win98SE) and NT released major versions in '93, '94, '96, and '00, with WinXP's '01 release being the point where the Win95 series was retired and NT became the codebase for both home and business users.
Yes, there was a long gap between Windows XP and Windows Vista. It's the exception, not the rule.
I'm with the anon: put up or shut up. Show me the logs; if I can reproduce the behavior you're describing, I'll believe you. Short of that, well, the spying Win10 is actually doing is bad enough without having to make up stuff about recording video and audio and sending it to Skynet.
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Re: Re: Win 10
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Re: Re: Win 10
YOUR RESPONSE: When I see it, I'll watch what I say (and not before).
MY RESPONSE TO YOU: You'ze a dumbass.
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Re: Re: Re: Win 10
I STILL want to see some proof of this stuff being tossed around. Bold accusations like that need some proof to back them up or you just look like an idiot. I'm not saying I trust Microsoft isn't doing these things. I am saying that before you publicly accuse them of it you need more than just your say so.
Of course, if you want to be lumped in with the tin foil hat "aliens are coming for us" group then please, go ahead spouting out junk with zero proof. (of course, hey, those guys with the fancy tin foil hats might be right too.)
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Re: Re: Re: Win 10
Nice strawman, jagoff.
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At least they listen a bit
On the gaming front they have been listening.
On the corporate front they've embraced competing products.
On the development side they open sourced a ton.
They reinvigorated the laptop (Surface) and OEMs have something people actually want for a change.
Seems the only customer they didn't listen to was the person that uses the computer for production work at home in in the small office. Upgrade now!
Per my vision, Microsoft lost their way under Ballmer, it will take time for them to oust the bad actors and bring in the open minded who fight for the users.
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Re: At least they listen a bit
You mean by only releasing the latest DirectX (which all game companies flock to the latest version like moths to a flame) only for Windows 10 and basically using it as the stick to get gamers to switch from older versions of Windows that they may be perfectly happy with?
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Re: Re: At least they listen a bit
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Re: Re: Re: At least they listen a bit
Yeah, good luck with that. OpenGL has existed as an alternative to Direct3D for close to a couple decades now, but how many games from the last 5-10 years have offered it as a choice?
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Win 10 pt 2
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Passive listening
Seriously, unless you'really offering to contract for information I don't have time for this. I don't hold people's hands, and educate for free.
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Re: Passive listening
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Re: Passive listening
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Re: Passive listening
Indeed. What does that have to do with your claims that go well beyond those facts?
"I don't hold people's hands, and educate for free."
Let me correct that for you:
"I refuse to back up my own ridiculous claims"
Whether that's because you're too lazy to provide your own citations or because you know you're lying your ass off is open for discussion.
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Re: Passive listening
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Re: Passive listening
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Re:
Well, there is, it just involves monitoring the outbound traffic on your router.
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Re: Re: Re:
I do not want Win 10, so I turned off updates. This is a bit risky, as there are probably security (actual security) updates that I will miss, but against the potential forced install of Win 10, I accept that risk. I do run a VPN, from a router (not the Internet connected router, but before that) so I get some safety from that.
What I don't know is what other vulnerabilities might be present in unpatched 8.1, and unless I can find a way (I haven't looked) to update without being forced into Win 10, it ain't gonna happen.
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Re: Re: Re: Re:
I only have a VPN on a virtual. Some sites don't like to see you logging in from different locations. I got locked out of Facebook and played hell getting back in. Some cloud services would do the same.
Upgrading to 10 could cause some of my programs to be incompatible anyway. When I went from XP to 7 I lost several programs including an automotive scan tool that cost me around $2,000. I still keep a couple XP laptops. I'm retired as a mechanic but my car is an 07 and the scan tool goes up to 09. Switching from 7 to 8 I only lost one little used program. I'm not even sure if my hardware is comparable with 10.
I'm wondering if Microsoft hasn't already slipped in a few bricks in a monthly package on a timer. I used to regard them as somewhat sneaky but right now I think they are pure evil. I still have 30 clones going back several months and a few that are a couple years old.
It's great to have a son that is a computer genius. I don't have to talk to some guy in India I can't understand who is nowhere as good as him. He has written programs and scripts for me when there was nothing available to do what I wanted.
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Re: Re: Re: Re: Re:
Microsoft tends to make older versions of Windows run just a little slower with each update, until you eventually give in and upgrade to a newer version.
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Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re:
Try reinstalling an older version of Windows fresh. Use it for a while (offline) to get a feel for it. Then install all the patches and updates and note the difference.
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Re: A fresh install will always run faster.
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Re: Re: A fresh install will always run faster.
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Re: Re: Re: Re: Re:
The VPN has only been an issue for me on Craigslist, so when I go to Craigslist, I turn it off, do nothing else, finish my business there, close the browser, open the browser and turn the VPN back on. I don't do social networking, so I have no experience with the VPN on them.
I did have an issue when talking to my bank over Skype, so I asked where they were (Philippines), switched my VPN exit point to Hong Kong and called them back. No issues.
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Re: Re: Re:
Good luck, and enjoy.
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Yeah, it takes me ages to tweak a new system until I get it the way I want it.
Installing software on Linux tends to be pretty easy, though; if you've used an app store on a smartphone, it's a lot like that. You open your software center, search for the program, and click Install.
Though again, I'm not sure what edge-case software you're using. I've occasionally had a program that was a real bear to set up. But again, for day-to-day use, it's comfortable enough for a typical end user, and has been for years now.
Again, worth looking into when you've got the time and energy. No rush, no pressure.
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Re: It takes a long time to get everything in and tweaked in just the way you want it.
And you can easily answer the question “what has changed?” at any time in the future. Like when someone complains that something has stopped working, but they insist that they haven’t changed anything.
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Re: Re: It takes a long time to get everything in and tweaked in just the way you want it.
I really wouldn't recommend manual edits of config files to a new user.
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Re: I really wouldn't recommend manual edits of config files to a new user.
To repeat what I said: on Linux, make a backup copy of any config file you edit. My convention is to add an “-orig” suffix to the original config file. Then I can use a simple “find /etc -name \*-orig” command to immediately identify all the places I have been tinkering.
This makes it easy to revert any changes you make--and you can do so selectively, rather than having to wipe everything and start again. As a last resort, you can keep a copy of SystemRescueCD handy (or even just the installation image for your distro) to boot from, to recover from your really bad mistakes. ;)
Linux is an open book. It does not have signs saying “NO USER-SERVICEABLE PARTS INSIDE”. It encourages you to mess with it, precisely because it is so easy to undo your stuffups.
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Re: Re: I really wouldn't recommend manual edits of config files to a new user.
Actually I have no problem fooling around with Windows registry. I haven't crashed anything yet but I frequently clone.
It's going to take some time to adjust but my kid is a great teacher. He's 31 and I started him on DOS when he was 4. He works as a programmer. I probably can run a lot of the Windows programs in Virtual Box. I already have a genuine Win 7 with a VPN on my main system and he said I could just copy the folders over after a basic install. I still have my keys for everything. I can keep it updated and if Microsoft snoops there won't be anything personal for them to find. Probably will still keep it offline most of the time.
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Re: He does everything command line but I don't have a clue what he is doing.
The command line is very powerful, even if some find it unfashionable. To my mind, it’s all about getting the computer to do the work, instead of the human.
It’s basically a collection of building blocks that may not seem like much individually, but which combine in some very useful and interesting ways.
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Re: Re: He does everything command line but I don't have a clue what he is doing.
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I'd be pretty wary of recommending WINE to a new user. Unless it's a program that's listed as Gold or Platinum compatibility, out of the box, with no tinkering in Winetricks required.
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That said, to get actual work done i've not found anything anywhere near autocad, solidworks, inventor or fusion 360 that will run on linux wine or not.
Additionally, I sadly quite like Excel, and for work need VBA in order to interact with other 3rd party windows software.
So yes, i can see where a lot of their windows software doesn't have useful alternatives.
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Re: "We learned a lot from it obviously."
If I was to guess, what they learned was from some criminally acquired business intelligence leading them to believe that if they didn't do something they were likely to end up on the end of another class action lawsuit. And they'd have to buy a new POTUS to get the lawsuit dropped, like they did with George W. Bush.
Apparently the upgrade was cheaper.
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What Windows 11?
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There will be no windows 11. There will just be updates to Windows 10. And since home users can't decline updates to Windows 10, I think we have our answer already.
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no forced upgrades
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Re: no forced upgrades
Now you just have to convince all the software companies of the world to support it.
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Re: Now you just have to convince all the software companies of the world to support it.
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software companies
there are a few things i wish it did differently, but between libreoffice and a great operating system, i'm very pleased. the size and complexity of this project i'm working on has shown me the light.
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Re: LibreOffice
ODF (ISO 26300) is also a much easier document standard to deal with than Microsoft’s OOXML.
If you need to do programmatic generation or manipulation of ODF files, let me recommend the ODFPY library for Python. It has no dependency on LibreOffice, so it can be used to program batch tasks that run quickly with no GUI at all.
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software companies
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Re: Re: no forced upgrades
No, just the ones who make software I actually use.
Which is basically everything except AAA games at this point.
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So, I got a call...
To make a long story short, they migrated to Linux (Ubuntu) for both OS and their software needs. They expect to realize a cost savings over $200,000 in the next two years by dumping Windows and the software. They are only now getting back to productivity levels (retraining on the new software), but have said things are much quicker to complete once it's all set up. It's just the labor to get everything in place that slows things down, due to not knowing the software as well as the old software.
And yes, I tested to see if the old software would run on a VM. It requires a license key to activate, and the company refused to activate a VM based system. (I don't know how they knew it was a VM, I didn't tell 'em.)
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Thank You Micro$oft
Thank You Micro$oft for leaving the system idle for the several hours it was locked and I was away.
Thank You Micro$oft for turning a half hour update into two hour download.
Thank You Micro$oft for installing updates that bjorked DHCP.
Thank You Micro$oft for forcing me to abide by your update schedule and not permitting me to defer updating until problems are sorted out.
Thank You Micro$oft for affirming my decision to migrate to Fedora.
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Smooches for Microsoft
Why are you all kissy-kissy with Microsoft in this non-story? Are you getting a gratuity for this?
A statement that, paraphrased, "We noticed that we pissed some people off," is not anything like an apology unless the word "sorry" is in there somewhere.
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Re: Smooches for Microsoft
Oh you mean just like they wrote in the article?
I quote: Microsoft’s Chief Marketing Officer Chris Capossela finally acknowledged that the company mishandled the entire forced upgrade (though he falls short of apologizing or addressing the parallel privacy concerns)
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Re: Re: Smooches for Microsoft
Why is the author assuming they are admitting they were wrong? Why are you?
Microsoft partisans much, hmmmm?
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Re: Re: Re: Smooches for Microsoft
Are you seriously claiming that a story with the headline "Microsoft Finally Admits Its Malware-Style Windows 10 Upgrade Sales Pitch Went Too Far" is too pro-Microsoft?
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Re: Re: Re: Re: Smooches for Microsoft
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Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Smooches for Microsoft
Your post is not an exception.
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Re: Re: Re: Re: Smooches for Microsoft
"Microsoft Acknowledges Consumer Frustration but Avoids Admission of Wrongdoing"
That would be an entirely accurate title, wouldn't it?
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...and we'll likely have to wait until Windows 11 to see if any lessons were actually learned.
Aha. Ha. Hahahahahahahaha.
You, sir, win today's internets.
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Why would anyone use anything other than Windows?
-- maybe not Bill Gates
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Microsoft
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[thank you, mint. you are a sweetheart to work with.]
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I appreciate how Microsoft handled the Windows 10 rollout
Instead, I dropped the half that was ass and now I'm full Fedora.
It might take a little more effort sometimes, but I'm also learning a ton of new stuff. So I guess its a win/win when there's now windows.
As an added bonus, it's so much more fun when that guy from "windows support service" calls.
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Re: I appreciate how Microsoft handled the Windows 10 rollout
I got tired of playing with them. Was like shooting fish in a barrel. Now I just ignore their calls.
Still, the funniest call (with about 45 minutes of their precious time scamming people eaten) with them was them trying to get me to click on the Windows start box (I kept telling them my icon said "LM Menu" and I didn't have a windows symbol like the keyboard has...Windows+R worked fine, but it kept giving me eventvwr: command not found messages. Finally the guy just hanged up on me.
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Re:
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From which security perspective, the users privacy, the companies income or the governments ability to rule?
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Sure, like you had no idea what you were starting.
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There are only 50 people left that use computers (outside of big businesses which a lot of those are now using tablets). One real estate agency I saw got rid of all their computers and are ONLY doing smartphones/tablets.
If you get your head out of the Call of Duty monkey poo flinging you will see there really isn't much now outside of business/server stuff for computers compared to the Windows XP days.
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When I grew up in the 1990s we were one of a few hundred that had home computers and they were more of a tool then a game machine.
Dad was on the internet in 1989 on the Commodore 64. He was one of only 1800 users worldwide logged in and talked to people on BBS.
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