Microsoft Must Be Getting Desperate (V)

I live by myself and had been away from home for 12 hours. I often leave my home computer turned on even when I am gone. Last night, I noticed my computer screen was on and my computer was downloading Windows 10. I tried to stop it and, when I couldn't, I simply shut the computer off.

After turning it back on, it said "restoring to your previous version" and I'm now back to Windows 7. I noticed that somehow my update settings had all been changed to allow Microsoft maximum access and Windows 10 upgrade was now categorized as "important" rather than "recommended".

I caught the upgrade when it was at 12% so it had not reached the point of uninstalling so I suspect I have just a partial version on my hard drive that can't do anything.

Needless to say, I was furious so I contacted Microsoft support and gave "Andrew Z" a piece of my mind. It's one thing to ask me to upgrade. It's a whole 'nother thing to force the upgrade behind my back.

I turned off all Windows updates (not recommended) and told them I will switch when *I* think it's best, not when they do.

>> ‘OpenVMS is being ported to the x86_64 architecture, that could shake things up in the PC market.’
>
> They are 25 years too late. It’s not just a port that makes an OS successful. BeOS/Solaris was ported too, and nobody gave a sht.

In 1992 they released VMS for the Alpha; that was before the WindowsNT kernel was ported into the mainstream consumer Windows OS. (Microsoft also had a WinNT for Alpha, though I'm unsure as to its lifecycle timeline.)

In 2003 they released VMS on the Itanium (limited eval), with a full release in 2005. (This was about when the Itanium was hyped to be the replacement CPU for x86 by Intel; it was co-developed by HP which [IIRC] had acquired VMS by then.)

And in 2015 & 2016 HP updated VMS for the "Poulson" and the HPE 9500 series Itanium processors. (Respectively.)

The port to x86_64 is a new effort, I think it started (from the proposal) 2014 or maybe 2013; they plan to have a release by 2018 and IIUC they've made some good progress so far, though admittedly still in the early stages. — and one thing you're forgetting about is VMS's reputation for security, programming (having the ability to have record-based files as part of the FS is nice), and clustering.

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