More Windows 11 Bad News From Microsoft

[Boogs]

 

[Jonn]

I was considering installing Windows 11 on a removable drive just to run some very Windows-centric games. Maybe now I'll hold off and see the fallout from this 24H2 update.

After reading what you said, I am not touching Windows 11 with a proverbial barge pole until everything gets sorted out.

BTW, I have 3 operative computers sharing (not LAN/interconnected) important links/accounts/etc

 

[Judge]

After reading what you said, I am not touching Windows 11 with a proverbial barge pole until everything gets sorted out.

BTW, I have 3 operative computers sharing (not LAN/interconnected) important links/accounts/etc

Quite disturbing to think Windows 11 was released on October 5, 2021, still so plagued with so many problems to date. With Windows 10 officially ending support next October, short of paying some kind of fee for another three years that has yet to be officially announced.

(The $61 initial primary fee to extend Windows 10 security patches is for enterprise versions only.)

 

[FilterFreq]

Whoa. It's Windoze 10: DLC Edition

That's kind of hilarious, honestly. If they think people are actually going to pay for that. I also didn't realize they were hurting so bad for $60.

 

[Boogs]

Clever marketing over quality of product has been MS's route to dominance, we can't expect them to suddenly reverse such a profitable policy. Much of the worst of it hidden from the public through deals with other companies to monopolise Windows and extract additional license money from people who never needed or wanted yet another MS license. But then MS are hardly unique in that fashion.

 

[Boogs]

I wish I was Bill Gates neighbor now. I would walk over there, ring the doorbell and when he opened the door, I would kick him right in the nuts. Twice.

Is that once for MSDOS, and once more for Windoze?

I think a prosecution for Crimes Against Humanity would be more appropriate though?
Surely there's enough hard evidence of deliberate psychological torture on a massive scale?
And outrageous financial fraud? Anti-competitive monopolistic business practices? Reputational whitewashing through fake philanthropy?

Maybe the greatest crime of all time - the release of Windows 8?
(without including a dozen free intensive PTSD therapy sessions and a lifetimes supply of diazepam!!!)

But you got to hand it to him, finding a product that never wears out and does pretty much everything that 95% of users want or need, then selling it to us for hundred's of £/$'s, only to declare it defunct and 'allow' us to buy yet another version we didn't really want or need but had no choice over, only to have to repeat the process again and again, with the final indignity of having to rent the ruddy thing we've paid for in full repeatedly, just to have the sheer unmitigated joy of calling it Office 365 instead of Microsoft Office?
(or whatever other rearrangement of the name to justify yet another rip off).

And even above all of that, this is the man who 'gave' (punished us with) GW-BASIC! A crime so sadistic it's hard to understand how he's avoided a life sentence for so long, never mind a vigilante lynching!

 

[Judge]

Whoa. It's Windoze 10: DLC Edition

That's kind of hilarious, honestly. If they think people are actually going to pay for that. I also didn't realize they were hurting so bad for $60.

The real rub is that I seriously doubt Microsoft intends to extend nominal security coverage for Windows 10 more than three consecutive years. Though I can see a huge number of users holding out for Windows 12...or whatever they choose to call it.

 

[blitzkrieg]

I would still be on Windows 7 if it were supported properly by Microsoft and other applications used on Windows. That was my favourite OS ever released!

It is a bit tiresome having to upgrade Windows every few years for there to be proper driver support, graphics card compatibility, security updates and so on.

 

[Boogs]

While 7 was indeed a big step forward (before 8 took a huge step backwards), I found 10 to be really good as MS OS's go. Switching over was a little painful, didn't like the horrible new start menu, and the attempt to hide the guts of it didn't win appreciate in terms of technical support and finding all the bits I needed because they'd be hidden away, and the rather clunky new interface paradigm, but in terms of stability, performance (especially the good memory footprint) and much faster boot up times generally made it an improvement worth switching to. Not so keen on 11 though, I have to say.

As I recall (pinch of salt though, my memory ain't great) Windows 10 was originally sold as the last ever new version of Windows, and it would just be continuously upgraded and updated from then on - it seems that one never panned out.
Could it be for the same reason we had so many versions of Microsoft Office that 95% of users never wanted or needed? The reason of rather obscenely large profits? Nah, surely not! That nice philanthropist William Gates would never have allowed that to happen, would he? Someone open the Windows, there's a nasty smell in the room!

 

[FilterFreq]

As I recall (pinch of salt though, my memory ain't great) Windows 10 was originally sold as the last ever new version of Windows, and it would just be continuously upgraded and updated from then on - it seems that one never panned out.

I share this memory.

After googling, apparently one dev at Microsoft did say this, but he was basically just blowing smoke and the media attention made it worse. I tend to think events like these are conveniently engineered to gaslight us, though. Most of us went into 10 believing that it was going to be updated indefinitely, so they can backpedal as much as they want now.

I'm this | ... | close to firing up Ubuntu again and seeing if I can actually work with it, but that's for the Linux thread

 

[blitzkrieg]

I share this memory.

After googling, apparently one dev at Microsoft did say this, but he was basically just blowing smoke and the media attention made it worse. I tend to think events like these are conveniently engineered to gaslight us, though. Most of us went into 10 believing that it was going to be updated indefinitely, so they can backpedal as much as they want now.

I'm this | ... | close to firing up Ubuntu again and seeing if I can actually work with it, but that's for the Linux thread

Yeah, I also share the memory. Microsoft did say Windows 10 would be the last Windows OS that would be indefinitely updated. It seemed too good to be true.... and it was.

 

[Judge]

I'm this | ... | close to firing up Ubuntu again and seeing if I can actually work with it, but that's for the Linux thread

Give it a shot and let us know what you think.

Seems the latest version (Ubuntu 24.04 LTS) sounds pretty good.

 

[Boogs]

A compulsorily new version every few years,
At only the expense of your customers tears.
It may be inducing their very worse fears,
But fills your wallets and coffers my dears.

 

[Judge]

Kind of amusing to see that it appears that Microsoft is again opening up another round of select users to download the 24H2 update through KB5039239. I guess they still want to confine control of users to monitor all the unforeseen aspects of this update.

Then again Microsoft may be fishing to find out how many users who have circumvented (hacked) their requirements to run 24H2 are failing or succeeding. Seems their latest changes for 24H2 are pretty effective at stopping users with hardware platforms without TPM 2.0 or older cpus.

Must seem frustrating and confusing to so many users who still see old presentations on YouTube advocating that you can still hack Windows 11 up to 24H2 on an older computer.

But it would be amusing to see post 24H2 presentations on anyone who has been truly successful in hacking this upgrade given Microsoft's recent and inevitable intent to stop it from happening.

Even more bad news from Microsoft. That you will not be able to uninstall "Recall" from Microsoft Windows 11. A program so fraught with privacy concerns that most folks would probably prefer it not to even be on their hard drive. Whatever you do, don't activate that program.

 

[Boogs]

[Anti-AI Rant Mode = ON]

Even more bad news from Microsoft. That you will not be able to uninstall "Recall" from Microsoft Windows 11. A program so fraught with privacy concerns that most folks would probably prefer it not to even be on their hard drive.

My take on this is that by far the best route is not to have anything at all related to cop-a-lot, er, sorry, co-pilot installed in Windows at all.
(Well, to take it it's logical conclusion, not have Windows installed fullstop! )

Just the fact they tried to hide the info that co-pilot takes snapshots of data on the screen in the background to feed into it's neural network, was really bluddy dodgy. And even when outed about it they lied to make it sound safe and innocuous.

Just the fact they felt compelled to hide so much about it's potential for bad actors to exploit, and the serious questions over data privacy and exploitation of even the most private and personal information seem to have been avoided by them, yet if no bad motives existed at MS, I can't see why they wouldn't have been upfront about it, to engender more trust (in MS) in an environment of misunderstanding, fear and distrust that's pervading the LMM AI 'revolution', not to mention the grievous behaviour by some (many? most??) AI manufacturers.
[Anti-AI Rant Mode = OFF]

 

[Judge]

(Well, to take it it's logical conclusion, not have Windows installed fullstop! )

LOL...you're preaching to the choir. As a former insurance underwriter, one of our most basic tenets of safety is ultimately avoidance- when and where possible. Microsoft has bungled Windows to such an extent and continues to do so, not only making it an unpleasant OS to deal with, but also continuously unsecured. It's simply too dangerous to use, no matter what your intent is with such an operating system. A logical conclusion, indeed.

It's particularly disturbing as well to know that corporations can be just as toxic to your privacy as can hackers. Whether they get their OS running properly or not! I just hope those of you out there who do perceive yourselves to have a choice in such matters will consider other options.

 

[Boogs]

LOL...you're preaching to the choir.

Will the congregation open their "Popular Windows Error Codes" and turn to hymn number 0xB03410BF - "Reboot and Try Again" ...

It's particularly disturbing as well to know that corporations can be just as toxic to your privacy as can hackers.

More so in my opinion, even if only because their reach is much further, and MS one of most prevalent in terms of market penetration.

My feeling from what I read, and work with, is many of the AI-touting tech firms are rushing to push the stuff out to market in the hope of gaining dominance, they are lashing things up as fast as possible with little care for the implications, technically and socially. This rush is creating ever more insecure systems while introducing technology that has ever more potential to exacerbate and exploit that insecurity, especially indirectly.

Another example of the above is MS have introduced (or it's awaiting release) a product that they claim will tag AI created data to differentiate it from human created data, to avoid polluting one of their cloud tenancies (Entra/Sharepoint/365 etc) with AI created data that can't otherwise be easily differentiated (I didn't look at the details but that was the advertised essence).

My reading of that was - WTF? They are looking at using AI and yet rather than plan it from the bottom up so it can't easily produce data that can get mixed up with traditional content, instead in their rush to push AI out and establish it before regulation makes that harder, they put out a tool to try and ameliorate the risks after the fact!

Also, with the rise of cloud computing MS and others have got used to releasing poorly tested new software on the basis of the users doing the testing for them. They introduce changes, some quite fundamental, almost on a daily basis at times. And roll out apps that force users to update, and yet may not even work properly at first, and may have functionality removed that people relied on, etc etc. They tried to update their Windows Teams App this year, and after rolling out a forced update to the new version, within a week or so they had to roll it back because it simply didn't work properly.

Entra itself is something of a lash up. It looks fairly consistent and integrated at first, but if you dig under the bonnet you find they've lashed together various elements of previous systems rather than a bottom up design with solid structure and consistency. All this sort of stuff is going to increase functional weakness, bugs, malware risks, outages, etc, and it's building up layer on layer of increasingly poor quality code. And performance is awful, it's like going backwards twenty years in technology terms.

 

[Judge]

Will the congregation open their "Popular Windows Error Codes" and turn to hymn number 0xB03410BF - "Reboot and Try Again" ...


More so in my opinion, even if only because their reach is much further, and MS one of most prevalent in terms of market penetration.

My feeling from what I read, and work with, is many of the AI-touting tech firms are rushing to push the stuff out to market in the hope of gaining dominance, they are lashing things up as fast as possible with little care for the implications, technically and socially. This rush is creating ever more insecure systems while introducing technology that has ever more potential to exacerbate and exploit that insecurity, especially indirectly.

Another example of the above is MS have introduced (or it's awaiting release) a product that they claim will tag AI created data to differentiate it from human created data, to avoid polluting one of their cloud tenancies (Entra/Sharepoint/365 etc) with AI created data that can't otherwise be easily differentiated (I didn't look at the details but that was the advertised essence).

My reading of that was - WTF? They are looking at using AI and yet rather than plan it from the bottom up so it can't easily produce data that can get mixed up with traditional content, instead in their rush to push AI out and establish it before regulation makes that harder, they put out a tool to try and ameliorate the risks after the fact!

Also, with the rise of cloud computing MS and others have got used to releasing poorly tested new software on the basis of the users doing the testing for them. They introduce changes, some quite fundamental, almost on a daily basis at times. And roll out apps that force users to update, and yet may not even work properly at first, and may have functionality removed that people relied on, etc etc. They tried to update their Windows Teams App this year, and after rolling out a forced update to the new version, within a week or so they had to roll it back because it simply didn't work properly.

Entra itself is something of a lash up. It looks fairly consistent and integrated at first, but if you dig under the bonnet you find they've lashed together various elements of previous systems rather than a bottom up design with solid structure and consistency. All this sort of stuff is going to increase functional weakness, bugs, malware risks, outages, etc, and it's building up layer on layer of increasingly poor quality code. And performance is awful, it's like going backwards twenty years in technology terms.

Truly. It's scary how a mega-corporation like Microsoft has "lost the ball" one too many times with an operating system so dominant in the marketplace. And to think Windows 11 was launched nearly three years ago. What's wrong with this picture?

 

[Boogs]

Truly. It's scary how a mega-corporation like Microsoft has "lost the ball" one too many times with an operating system so dominant in the marketplace.

I think it's a symptom of the way large commercial organisations have succeeded in controlling politics and creating a deregulated market of kill or be killed, where the only limiting factor is what they feel they can get away with. They are now trapped in a situation where however much they may actually want to return to a fairer and more controlled (and less destructive ultimately) system of commerce (I speak hypothetically of course!), to forgo any tactic or strategy that could gain a commercial advantage over their rivals regardless of it's short termism and damaging impact, even legality, would be tantamount to lying down and dying.

The tech industry has now gained an arrogance and air of ultimate entitlement, I think for many they've normalised treating the rule of law as just something to work their way around, or even just ignore because they believe their power makes them untouchable (Musk is the obvious example - huzzah to Brazil for taking him on! But the rest are not much better, just quieter about it). We seem to have approached the corporate governed world of scifi stories alongside the increasing irrelevance of traditional government.

 

[Judge]

I think it's a symptom of the way large commercial organisations have succeeded in controlling politics and creating a deregulated market of kill or be killed, where the only limiting factor is what they feel they can get away with. They are now trapped in a situation where however much they may actually want to return to a fairer and more controlled (and less destructive ultimately) system of commerce (I speak hypothetically of course!), to forgo any tactic or strategy that could gain a commercial advantage over their rivals regardless of it's short termism and damaging impact, even legality, would be tantamount to lying down and dying.

The tech industry has now gained an arrogance and air of ultimate entitlement, I think for many they've normalised treating the rule of law as just something to work their way around, or even just ignore because they believe their power makes them untouchable (Musk is the obvious example - huzzah to Brazil for taking him on! But the rest are not much better, just quieter about it). We seem to have approached the corporate governed world of scifi stories alongside the increasing irrelevance of traditional government.

Points taken. It isn't just Microsoft. Right now it seems like damn near every big name in high tech. Particularly Adobe, who is presently being sued by the US Dept. of Justice. And then there's Intel who is just beginning to acknowledge long term issues with their 13th and 14th generation cpus. And Asus with all their motherboard and unfair RMA related issues. I'm sure others could add to this list. Not a good time for high tech consumers in general.