Posted on 06/05/2016 8:31:16 AM PDT by Utilizer
When you're stuck in the middle of the Central African Republic (CAR) trying to protect the wildlife from armed poachers and the Lord's Resistance Army, then life's pretty tough. And now Microsoft has made it tougher with Windows 10 upgrades.
The Chinko Project manages roughly 17,600 square kilometres (6,795 square miles) of rainforest and savannah in the east of the CAR, near the border with South Sudan. Money is tight, and so is internet bandwidth. So the staff was more than a little displeased when one of the donated laptops the team uses began upgrading to Windows 10 automatically, pulling in gigabytes of data over a radio link.
And it's not just bandwidth bills they have to worry about.
"If a forced upgrade happened and crashed our PCs while in the middle of coordinating rangers under fire from armed militarized poachers, blood could literally be on Microsoft's hands," said one member of the team.
"I just came here recently to act as their pilot but have IT skills as well. The guy who set these PCs up didn't know how to prevent it, or set a metered connection. I am completely livid."
(Excerpt) Read more at theregister.co.uk ...
*ping*
https://www.grc.com/never10.htm
Run Never 10 and join that class action lawsuit against Microsoft when it’s filed.
Mission critical applications should never run on Microsoft operating systems.
Lol. Unfortunately they do. Back up often!
My thanks for the reference, as I am certain that more people need to be aware of it.
Myself, I run Linux so I’ve no worries in that regard.
Cheers. :)
Win-10 reports keystrokes back to Redmond.
That data can then be sold to advertisers and hostile governments.
It’s a “free” download because microsoft will be making billions selling your data...
...and if you live under a totalitarian government, keystrokes on your computer could be your death sentence.
Unfortunately, many manufacturing processes and Point of Sale devices run a version of Win XP, so things such as this are a constant worry for them.
I keep urging customers and friends to switch from the ‘doze platform over to Linux, but people can be such stick-in-the-mud types over such minor things! *sigh*
I still run XP because many of my development tools will not run an the newer bloatware. The XP machine does hide behind a Linux firewall. This has proven to be fairly robust.
“Lucy, you got some $plaing to do.”
I will no sooner upgrade to Win 10 as I would to invite LE into my home to poke around.
Actually, I think I may have read something about that some time ago, but it had slipped mind over time. However, assuming that I ever did install Win10 for any reason, none of the computers I control are allowed to connect to the internet at any time when they are running any version of 'doze.
All internet activities are run on a Linux OS of various types, although lately I have been considering setting up a VPN of some sort for even greater security. I simply have not had the time to research how to do so as it seems a bit more difficult than doing something as simple as launching a browser. Perhaps some day.
I’m seriously considering making a switch to Linux. Can you give me some assurance that my games (Fallout 4, Fallout 3, Fallout: New Vegas, Total War: Empire, Total War: Rome 2, and so on) will run? Will I still be able to develop software in C#.Net, VB.Net, MVC5, and SQL?
In short, is Linux more-or-less completely compatible with Win software?
I run XP occasionally as well, but purely because I run some high-end CAD/CAM programs that will only run on XP.
I simply make certain that I am disconnected from the net when I work with them.
Only slipped up once over the years, and when I noticed the computer was transmitting and downloading data in the background, I promptly disconnected, shut it down then restarted it with a Boot Disk and reloaded the OS.
No worries after that.
So why didn’t these people just turn the automatic updates off? Why on earth did they just hook up laptops to this already dodgy system of data transfer, and then just leave it?
Jesus, it’s like MS is the only company on Earth where people blame their carelessness on them. It’s like it’s the Trump of OSs.
You have a bevy of donated laptops, and a “radio signal” for a data connection. It is YOUR responsibility to be the competent IT and make sure that you manage that connection.
You need to set your computer to NOT automaticallydownload “Recommended Updates” from MS, because step 1 in the process of the godawful WIndows 10 is the download of the software prior to installation, which will happen automatically unless you have blocked recommended updates from auto-download - then you have to identify the update in question (Just Google it) and make sure to NEVER download it.
My business software rund fine with WIn 7, and was a nightmare with Win 8 and 8.1
So I have no desire to be the guinea pig for Win 10, and besides, if it ain’t broke, I don’t want it fixed.
MS Win 10 pimps can GTH
More or less, yes, and there are Linux versions of many popular games out there.
Generally speaking, the older the game is the more likely a Linux version has been developed or the likelihood that it will run under Wine (a type of Windows-Emulator) in Linux. Some of the games have even been ported to Linux by the developers as the demand has increased over the years.
As far as other Windows programs, Linux versions exist such as LibreOffice which compares to MS Office.
The Gimp is a very high quality drawing program, Inkscape for vector graphics editing, Amarok for Audio files, VLC for video files and DVDs, K3b or Brasero for disc burning... the list goes on and on.
You can even look up the online list of linux-equivalents that has been growing over the years and find some I have not even mentioned.
When Windows 7 support ends, I'll switch to Mac OS.
A year ago when I went to Zambia, I did six internal flights and their handbag xray machines were all very wonky to say the least. At one place (Mfuwe) we were held up for an hour while they tried and tried to get the PC connected to the xray machine to work. I noticed them fumbling through a Windows 3.1 manual while they were fiddling with the thing.
Lately, Win10 has begun automatically installing in older versions whether or not you declined to install it. MS believes you must install it whether you wish to or not.
https://ixquick.com/do/search “installing windows without permission” (without the quotes).
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