08.07.15
Posted in Microsoft, Vista 10, Windows at 10:31 am by Dr. Roy Schestowitz
“Steve [Ballmer], I’m sure you’re aware of this. Our call lines are being overrun. [by Vista complaints]“
–Hewlett-Packard Chief Executive Mark Hurd
Summary: Vista saga repeats itself as Vista 10 is unfit for use (reportedly rendering many PCs unusable) and early adopters realise that it’s just a freemium version, even if they paid for it
TECHRIGHTS community and sources feel totally vindicated by the news that Vista 10 is being virtually re-released just days after the official release because weeks ago we warned that Vista 10 was just too rough, unstable, and totally not ready for release (far from it). People who had been testing it, as well as Microsoft staff, told us this. Vista 10 quickly turns out to be another Vista, indeed yet another epic failure, much as we expected all along. This is going to mortally affect Microsoft’s common carrier and desktop monopoly.
“Microsoft Corporation (NASDAQ:MSFT) Windows 10 is Murdering PCs” says one headline from a respected site, alluding to the fact that Vista 10 is far from well-tested. It was rushed out the door in order to meet a deadline (business-driven) rather than meet quality control standards, or some threshold that is based on suitability for use (user-driven). “Microsoft Corporation (NASDAQ:MSFT) Windows users are prone to damaging side effects,” explains the article, “when they try to upgrade their PC to Windows 10. The update makes some PCs become unusable.”
Microsoft is aware of these issues. Rather than deny them Microsoft is scrambling to release a new build of Windows “after just one week”, to quote IDG. “The first Windows 10 mega patch is here,” wrote Ryan (former Microsoft MVP) in IRC. “It looks like a whopper considering the number of files that it replaces. Microsoft doesn’t say what it fixes.”
Well, “they don’t have to,” MinceR replied cynically, because “you don’t get to refuse “updates” anymore.”
“I did set it to ask me before it reboots though,” Ryan responds. Microsoft now uses “your electricity,” MinceR added, “and your bandwidth,” as Mark then noted. Microsoft adds PCs with Vista 10 on them to its botnet.
“Even Microsoft apologists cannot hide the fact that Microsoft has serious issues.”Microsoft boosters are obviously trying to downplay the severity of all this. “While this is certainly a large update,” wrote Thurrott, “weighing in at about 325 MB, it is of course not the first update to Windows 10: Microsoft has been issuing fixes and other updates for the system since it sort-of-not-really-wink-wink RTM’d last month. But it’s also not clear exactly what’s in this update, despite a long change list on the KB page.”
“One of my contacts said Microsoft is planning to deliver more cumulative update rollups possibly on a weekly basis at least for the first month of Windows 10 availability,” Microsoft’s Mouth (Mary Jo Foley) wrote. So this mess is far from over.
“Windows 10 bugs emerge,” said the headline from Fox. “Known issues with Windows 10″ was the headline from the USA Today network. They seem to be catching up with the reality of Vista 10.
Even Microsoft apologists cannot hide the fact that Microsoft has serious issues. Sebastian Anthony, despite initially being funded by Microsoft to work on that site (by his own admission, it was launched with money from Microsoft), criticises Vista 10. “If you partake in Microsoft’s free upgrade offer from Windows 7 or 8 to Windows 10,” he wrote, “Windows Media Center will be removed without warning. In its place, a new app called Windows DVD Player has been added to the Windows Store. It costs the princely sum of £11.59, or $14.99/€14,89 if you live in the terrifyingly parched wastes outside Blighty.”
“Microsoft wants $15 for the DVD player app,” Ryan wrote, and it is already all over the British media [1, 2, 3], the Indian media, and so on. Even Microsoft boosters mock Microsoft for it, with colleagues offering workarounds.
“Vista 10 is not free. It’s more like a ‘free’ trial version for people who are already Windows users.”One must wonder how many Microsoft boosters who do the marketing for Vista 10 actually use it on a daily basis. Over a week ago we wrote about applications like Solitaire being removed from Windows so that Microsoft can make more money and it is now becoming the subject of much media coverage, even corporate media. To quote one noteworthy observation, “Microsoft will constantly be serving nag screens in the freemium version urging an upgrade.”
Vista 10 is not free. It’s more like a ‘free’ trial version for people who are already Windows users. Vista 10 also inherits all the antifeatures from Vista. Users are treated like mere “consumers” or “products”, complete with an advertising ID. █
“[Vista DRM] seems a bit like breaking the legs of Olympic athletes and then rating them based on how fast they can hobble on crutches.“
–Peter Gutmann
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Posted in Microsoft, Security at 9:17 am by Dr. Roy Schestowitz
“[W]e’re not going to have products that are much more successful than Vista has been.”
–Steve Ballmer
Summary: The media continues to mock Vista 10 ‘features’ (and by extension Microsoft) for their gross privacy violations while Microsoft boosters try to create an illusion that Microsoft wants to improve security, despite creating back doors for rogue government agencies
BASED on some of the very latest Web statistics, the adoption rate of Vista 10 is very poor, especially when one considers the cost. Vista 10 surprised many people when it was served to the public (final release) with all the surveillance built in, as if every user (or buyer) is a beta tester of Microsoft, expected to endlessly send input to Microsoft for debugging purposes (even keystrokes!). What started with some blogs and privacy groups ranting about Vista 10 is now a major story in much of the media.
“You know that Vista 10 is broken when people (both developers and non-developers) desperately try to ‘fix’ it, as is widely reported in the media right now.”WND, a GOP-centric site, complains about Vista 10 and goes with the headline “Windows 10 spies on emails, images, credit cards, more”. Linux Veda says that “Microsoft are abusing their users and we could do with a useful tool to restrict this.”
You know that Vista 10 is broken when people (both developers and non-developers) desperately try to ‘fix’ it, as is widely reported in the media right now. Some people reportedly abandon it (to go back to older Windows or upgrade to GNU/Linux). Since Vista 10 is proprietary software, there is no way to fix it or even ensure it does not send personal data to Microsoft (silently, with or without encryption). One can only hope, especially when adjusting settings using Microsoft’s own handles.
Twitter’s Microsoft spam (paid for by Microsoft) now reaches shamelessly high levels, for they append “sponsored” Microsoft propaganda even to hashtag pages, calling it “top news” and linking to Bing shortcuts, posted by Microsoft’s professional buddies. We have already complained about how Twitter was helping Microsoft promote Vista 10 (these two companies have been working together for a long time [1, 2, 3, 4, 5]).
Much of Microsoft’s ‘damage control’ (notably in Twitter) is just linking to articles which suggest ‘fixes’, as if privacy in Vista 10 can be easily sorted out. The ToryGraph says that “Microsoft is collecting user account information, credit card details and passwords,” but then goes gentle/soft on Microsoft. An article by Steven J. Vaughan-Nichols refers to those concerned about privacy violations in Vista 10 as “paranoid”. TechRadar, which so often delivers Microsoft spin, tries to advise readers, not by telling them to steer away from Vista 10 but rather to ‘fix’ it. A better article came from Andrew Orlowski, who called Vista 10 “a clumsy, 3GB keylogger.” In his article titled “Microsoft vacates moral high ground for the data slurpers’ cesspit” (showing if not emphasising Microsoft’s hypocritical attacks on Google) Orlowski wrote: “A funny thing happened while I was reinstalling Windows 8 over Windows 10 yesterday morning. There in front of me, halfway through the installation process, were two full, clear pages of privacy toggles. Every toggle was set to not send private information to Microsoft, or anyone else.
“Microsoft has turned users of Windows into useds, or products.”“In addition, Windows 8 created a local user account by default – and didn’t demand I maintain a constant, umbilical connection to Microsoft’s servers. Windows 8 was configured for maximum privacy. Now compare this to the indiscriminate data slurp that Microsoft calls Windows 10. It’s basically a clumsy, 3GB keylogger.
“It’s often said that with data protection and privacy, we’re like lobsters: we don’t notice the water getting warmer and warmer, until we’re boiled alive. So it’s been with Windows. Windows 8.1 didn’t show you clear choices or screens with privacy toggles anymore, but invited you to agree to either “Express Settings” for privacy (wow: cool, convenient) or “Customise” them (there be monsters). It respected your local user account, but then bullied you into switching to the umbilical when you accessed the Store. Windows 10 makes the Customise option so small it looks like the trademark notice, and even then, the defaults are set to send everything to Microsoft, and only allow you to control the data slurp partially. Local user accounts are so buggy in Windows 10 that you’ll probably switch to always-being-slurped anyway.”
“It’s time we owned our own data,” says this new article, quoting what it called a “Silicon Valley truism.”
“If you’re not paying, you’re the product” is the truism. Microsoft has turned users of Windows into useds, or products. Microsoft is intensifying its relationship with the NSA while many other companies try to distance themselves from the NSA. Microsoft does not strive to offer security at all, despite its empty claims to the contrary (like a show trial involving data in Ireland). IDG's Microsoft boosters and Microsoft staff (Microsoft MVP J. Peter Bruzzese in this particular case) prop up the illusion of Microsoft as advocate of “security”, but it is just Microsoft marketing shrewdly disguised as “articles”, or Microsoft MVPs acting like external staff (watch this Microsoft advocacy site having a go too). Vista 10 ought to end any pretense that Microsoft cares about security.
Remember that Microsoft did not fix a serious Windows flaw for 3 months, despite Google urging Microsoft to fix it. The above ‘articles’ (from Microsoft mouthpieces) are just part of the publicity stunt. Microsoft is not bothering to fix critical flaws that it knows about and tells the NSA about (essentially giving back door access to all versions of Windows, as usual). Vista 10 takes all this to unprecedented new levels and lets spies track Windows users in real time (even their keystrokes!). It also harvests passwords, including encryption keys (supposedly for 'recovery'). █
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Posted in Deception, Free/Libre Software, Microsoft at 5:52 am by Dr. Roy Schestowitz
“Greenwashing is the unjustified appropriation of environmental virtue by a company, an industry, a government, a politician or even a non-government organization to create a pro-environmental image, sell a product or a policy, or to try and rehabilitate their standing with the public and decision makers after being embroiled in controversy.” ~Source Watch
Summary: By bringing proprietary software from one proprietary platform (iOS) to another (Windows) Microsoft hopes to make people believe that it’s now ‘open’
A Microsoft tool for proprietary-to-proprietary conversion is being framed as “open” by the company looking to add more proprietary software to its proprietary platform using this non-proprietary tool. Everything is basically proprietary except this tool. Is this something to be celebrated? Does it make Microsoft “open”? hardly so. But be sure Microsoft boosters such as Microsoft Peter and The Verge (Bill Gates-connected) will use it to paint/portray Microsoft as “open”, aided by AOL, Venture Beat, The Register, and other Microsoft-friendly journalists, working for Microsoft-friendly networks.
If all that Microsoft can make “open” is some tool for promoting and spreading proprietary software, what does that say about Microsoft?
Watch Microsoft’s propaganda channel (Channel 9) trying to openwash Vista 10 and Visual Studio [1, 2, 3, 4] (both proprietary) (“Visual Studio 2015, Windows 10, and Open Source”). Who are they trying to kid? █
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