Multi-desktop window pinning is a nice addition. I've usually got YouTube or Netflix running on a second monitor, and switching desktops always meant those windows would disappear. Now that I can pin them, virtual desktops will be usable for me again.
Indeed. This has been my main complaint with virtual desktops so far.
I've had to resort to dirty hacks with cmd'er and screen to get the same cmd sessions across virtual desktops. This should definitely make things smoother.
One of the reasons I finally gave up on Windows was the horrible way they dealt with multiple monitors - especially with Windows 8. Oddly enough I've switched to a single monitor setup anyway.
Isn't it still unknown what is sent to Microsoft even if the user says "don't" in the settings? What was with "everything the user types is copied to MSFT" servers?
"We configured our test virtual machine to use an HTTP and HTTPS proxy (both as a user-level proxy and a system-wide proxy) so that we could more easily monitor its traffic, but Windows 10 seems to make requests to a content delivery network that bypass the proxy."
As far as I'm aware this is as much as they've publicly released regarding telemetry, as for the "keylogger" thing I thought that was just a conspiracy theory.
> you must use Windows 10 Enterprise, version 1511 or Windows 10 Education, version 1511 to manage them all.
Note that the Enterprise versions seem to be effectively unreachable for most (as far as I understand, you must be a company and license for at least 5 computers for two years in advance). Windows 7 is the last generation where a "normal user" was able to get the so called "ultimate" edition which included the functionality from the "enterprise" version for approximately double the price of the Pro version.
The Customer Experience Improvement program in MS Office (that you have to opt-in to) really does send keystrokes back to Microsoft. I'm not clear on how the Customer Experience Improvement code was modified for Win10 where it's on by default, but it wouldn't surprise me if they sent some amount of keystroke data back. Either as aggregate statistical data or a recording of keystrokes that happened before a crash.
The keylogger thing originated from the Public Test Preview of Windows 10. Microsoft told you when you install it that there was extensive telemetry, and they weren't kidding.
People continue to claim that it is still part of Windows 10 which has never been proven and most of these complaints aren't based on fact.
"At telemetry levels Enhanced and Full, Microsoft uses Linguistic Data Collection info to improve language model features such as autocomplete, spellcheck, suggestions, input pattern recognition, and dictionary. For more info, see the Get to know me setting in the Speech, inking, & typing section of this article and the Send Microsoft info about how I write to help us improve typing and writing in the future setting in the General section of this article.
Note
Microsoft doesn't intentionally gather sensitive information, such as credit card numbers, usernames and passwords, email addresses, or other similarly sensitive information for Linguistic Data Collection. We guard against such events by using technologies to identify and remove sensitive information before linguistic data is sent from the user's device"
Of course, they can't know if anybody is typing the password in the wrong field or at the time they didn't expect.
I'd be more inclined to believe that if it weren't for the fact[1] that it continues talking to Microsoft even when explicitly told not to.
I would have sworn there was a Reddit post where someone documented the same behavior on Enterprise SKUs as well, but I'm either mistaken or can't find it.
I think he was saying that, had anyone suggested 2-3 years ago that you'd be running a natively supported Linux stack in Windows, you'd have been asked to share whatever you're smoking.
Ah good so I can ask a question: is there a way to turn off forced updates and reboots (reverting back to how it used to be when it would just nag you but never actually invoke the update automatically)?
I have a computer with hardware that is a couple of years old. The new and improved drivers for Windows 10, which should be compatible with my hardware, work horribly, so I manually installed some older drivers, which work perfectly. However, every once in a while, Windows 10 decides to update my drivers to the new crap drivers, so I have to waste my precious time uninstalling new crap drivers and manually reinstalling good old drivers.
As of yet, I have found no good solution to this problem, if I still want to be able to receive updates for other drivers.
I always have a billion things open and it absolutely infuriates me when I come back to my laptop after a few days of non-use and it has rebooted, losing browser tabs, unsaved changes, etc.
Next is "current branch" for normal consumers, who are forcibly kept up to date (arguably a good thing, since they don't have an IT department to update their computers for them) http://i.imgur.com/kYkvffQ.png
Third is "current branch for business". Businesses are still required to upgrade, but they get a bit more time to ensure rollouts go smoothly. CBB can delay updates but not indefinitely. http://i.imgur.com/vsejEFC.png
Lastly, Enterprise and Education SKUs have access to the "long term servicing branch" where you can indefinitely delay updates, and/or run your own WSUS update servers. http://i.imgur.com/2JsFq1Y.png
tl;dr yes, but you need to pay for the Enterprise SKU for that privilege.
> but you need to pay for the Enterprise SKU for that privilege
This reminds me very much of the old, arrogant MS. I fully appreciate "forcibly kept up to date (arguably a good thing, since they don't have an IT department to update their computers for them)" but imo to earn the good citizen award, MS should support a registry edit to give sophisticated users at least a few weeks of a nag screen before a forced update.
If you upgraded recently Windows keeps files that allow it to downgrade to the old version, you can check by going to Disk Clean-up then select the UAC protected option in there and it might have some upgrade files you can delete.
Aside from that I think you just have to give it some time.
There's been a couple of forced re-enrollments into the Insider Build rings with each of the big "service pack" updates like 10586. Try triple checking that under Advanced it does still show "Fast Ring"?
My personal crazy theory is that Microsoft is distancing itself from the windows platform and moving towards a more Unix based system. I suspect that Microsoft is finding that moving forwards on their original platform is untenable in the long run, and that a Unix like system will improve their product and also be cheaper to develope and maintain. I might be overly optimistic though.
I think that's wishful thinking, at this time they are translating Linux syscalls to the Windows equivalent. This adds maintenance burden, it doesn't remove it. Now if they were to have a dual kernel I could see the argument that they are sunsetting the Windows kernel.
Microsoft's ongoing, massive internal investment in the NT kernel speaks for itself. They already ship multiple kernels. And they ship software that runs on multiple kernels. SQL Server on Linux is announced. Most of the chatter here does not relate to where the puck is headed.
Considering a lot of Windows says admin types can't even program in Powershell (IME) I can't imagine a lot of people wanting to learn BASH (and probably Perl, Pyrhon, etc)
The success of GitHub's shell, native versions of Python and Perl, plus MSYS and warty Cygwin prove that there's demand. This is a better solution for many of those cases.
Giving more people access to common code and frequently-updated, open-source utilities -- how can you find fault with it?
Microsoft is distancing itself from the windows platform and moving towards a more Unix based system. I suspect that Microsoft is finding that moving forwards on their original platform is untenable in the long run
People have been predicting this since at least NT 4.
I'm not so sure they want to actually ditch their internals. Most people agree that in terms of a secured environment for Desktops with users who just have 0 education, Win10 and even Win8 were surprisingly robust.
Which is not to say there weren't a ton of issues. It's just that we've seen historically how bad it could be and it was nowhere near that bad.
Windows NT is quite sound technology. At least the kernel. On the other hand... the kernel doesn't matter. It's the userland that poses problems most of the time. In in this domain, Microsoft is much much ahead of any *nix except OSX (in my opinion, MS is ahead of Apple as well, just not by as wide a margin).
They will never do that; the NT kernel has a strictly better design than any Unix. What they have built is a Wine-like compatibility shim for Linux binaries. This is a have your cake and eat it too move. Microsoft has noted well how Web devs have basically migrated en masse from Linux to the Mac, and want a piece of the action. The carrot will be running Visual Studio while keeping your Linux stack on your dev box.
There are other things to consider, like losing all your unsaved work when Windows decides to run updates and reboot without your consent (I'm assuming they haven't reversed course on this, it's happened to me numerous times although I'm not on the Insider preview program. )
It's not optimal but you can create your own policy settings that stop automatic update downloads and installs. It will still bug you a LOT about it though.
For me, it's because I hardly ever use my Windows partition. What happens is that I boot it up once every few months, and then Windows Update immediately has a panic attack and starts downloading vast amounts of stuff behind the scenes and harassing me about reboots --- while I'm trying (and frequently failing) to get work done.
I really want to turn the automatic updates off, because they are actively counterproductive to everything I want to do. I know I need to update it, but I'll update it on my own schedule, thanks (like, when I'm not actually trying to use the computer).
At this point I no longer trust Windows Update to do its job properly. The idea of it even thinking about forcing a reboot terrifies me.
> I really want to turn the automatic updates off, because they are actively counterproductive to everything I want to do. I know I need to update it, but I'll update it on my own schedule, thanks (like, when I'm not actually trying to use the computer).
I sort of get this, but I also sort of think that it's unreasonable. On the one hand: yeah it's annoying. On the other, you're using outdated software, yo. Security is seriously business and just being in a VM is not actually great protection.
> I know I need to update it, but I'll update it on my own schedule, thanks (like, when I'm not actually trying to use the computer).
I don't mean to be cheeky but, if you were actually going to do that then you probably wouldn't be 2 months behind on the update schedule?
I have this constant internal conflict between, "This is my computer it should do what I tell it to do" and "Wow as a user I am acting unreasonably and recklessly by expecting that thing to work the way I want it to." Maybe I'm just projecting that at you right now. If so, sorry.
I often keep e.g. games suspended, especially when they are slow to start or have poor savegame support. I minimize them and suspend with process explorer. End user triggered savegames have had declining support for years.
I also don't particularly enjoy re-setting my screen session just the way I left it. There's a reason I run screen; it's persistent.
I stop the Windows Update service on a loop, because (on Windows 7 at least) it's quite buggy, eating hours of CPU time at 100% on a core, and stopping it once isn't enough.
I don't do any real work in Windows any more. In many ways, that makes it more annoying to reboot, because less perceived uptime has been had.
I'm not OP but sometimes I'll do a high def video render that's only practical to run overnight. If I lose several hours of processing because Windows decided to reboot itself somewhere in the middle of the night I won't be a happy camper.
...when its time for a reboot it will warn you 3-4 times before it restarts. by default it sets reboot times at a time when your pc is not being used usually in the middle of the night.
assuming that people don't use Windows 10 as a server but as a workstation the "will lose your unsaved work" argument is a bit exaggerated.
That's exactly how it works. You're presented with something very attractive looking (and that everyone else uses), but you have to give up something in return. It used to be a straightforward "please pay for our product", but since "free" had proved itself to be better for businesses, now it's privacy and control - and, of course, no advertising or other vendor-written description would ever tell you that you give up those.
I am not sure it's actually global. Seems to apply to the basically-useless Metro apps. (For instance, the calc app in W10 is missing key functionality from Win8.)
If it could modify actual W32 apps then it'd be cool.
Do you think Microsoft will listen to us privacy-aware people and add a permanent kill-switch for all cortana/telemetry related traffic? Serious question, because somehow I doubt they will backpedal on this sweet sweet data source.
I won't be installing Windows 10 before this happens, but I also realize that at some point they will stop providing Windows 8 security updates.
Honestly, it's really unlikely. The simple truth is that the other major platforms absolutely do this and you can prove they do. I honestly think it's really only a vocal and tiny minority that is genuinely concerned about things like core telemetry being handed back over.
Microsoft's doubling down on this position with their UWP which makes for binary sharing between mobile, tablet and phone. The expectation on Phones (maybe unstated? I'm always surprised we don't hear a single peep from the privacy people on it) is that your apps are sending home telemetry for everything you do. No vendor prevents this, no vendor even really enforces any restrictions on gross EULAs.
And as someone managing multiple mobile apps in the marketplace and doing code commits to one, let me tell you. What users expect is impossible without sufficient telemetry. Our dev tools on mobile are, at best, hacky garbage compared to the great stuff we have on the browser. So all we can do is observe issues in the field.
Unless we can convince the market to substantial raise the price point of software back up to the days when it was $60 in 2005 dollars, people are going to have to accept SOME sort of telemetry and subsidization. We cannot build the apps as cheaply as the market expects otherwise.
I know this isn't your problem, but maybe it should be?
Microsoft's still curating extensions so I don't think the documentation is generally available yet. Some of these early extensions are ports of Chrome extensions (like the Reddit Enhancement Suite mentioned in the article), so it's clear Chrome-like HTML/JS extensions are the main, probably sole, option.
I suspect X servers that worked for the Windows Subsystem for UNIX Applications could be used here too. I will not be surprised to read a report of an old Windows application that is incompatible with Windows 10 running in Wine in Ubuntu on Windows 10. There are bound to be at least a few in this category.
Presumably, audio could be implemented by using a named pipe or network socket talk to an audio daemon too. The work on the Linux side should have already been done by PulseAudio while there seems to be some sort of port for older versions of Windows that might be a starting point for the Windows side:
If the X server supports GLX (which I read XMing and Cygwin/X support), we might even see 3D Linux games running on Ubuntu on Windows and presumably, people would publish benchmarks for the Linux versions of things like Unigine Oilrush against the Windows versions. I would expect the Linux versions to be at a disadvantage, but a surprise there would be hilarious.
Cygwin's version of PulseAudio exists, I've used it for minimodem in windows. I hope that in addition with XMing or Cygwin/X we could have working GUI Ubuntu apps in Windows!
X over TCP works (to something like Cygwin's X server, or an X server on a remote Linux box), but it's of somewhat limited utility right now since terminal emulators don't work (broken pty support). No idea on GLX, though, although I'd be surprised if it works well; IME XMing and Cygwin/X are both on the slow side, which wouldn't be great for performance in 3D games.
"Cortana Cross-Device Features: Starting today, we will be releasing new features to Insiders on an ongoing basis that keeps you in perfect sync across all the devices where you use Cortana to stay connected and never miss a beat throughout your day. "
So much data. And users will want this in droves (specially since Pushbullet went premium).
Of course. What can possibly go wrong always having copied all the work the user does to some servers?
> keeps you in perfect sync
Actually keeps the company servers "in perfect sync" with the work of the user. And some of us worry about the telemetry and copying what user types -- it's actually presented/accepted as a big feature?
I understand that I'm probably a minority, for me, it's scary.
What I don't understand is why these same complaints are cheerfully accepted at every Microsoft thread, but never uttered in Android threads, iOS threads, or OSX threads.
Researchers have shown the same sort of key mirroring is at play there. Especially for OSX, where it is just ridiculous how eager it is.
No news about the status of the desktop bridge for UWP, a.k.a. Centennial. I wonder when more of us will get to play with it. But in the meantime, we can at least watch a video about it from this year's BUILD conference here:
92 comments
[ 2.4 ms ] story [ 120 ms ] threadI've had to resort to dirty hacks with cmd'er and screen to get the same cmd sessions across virtual desktops. This should definitely make things smoother.
This is that moment for Microsoft.
https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2015/aug/13/windows-1...
Isn't it still unknown what is sent to Microsoft even if the user says "don't" in the settings? What was with "everything the user types is copied to MSFT" servers?
When you work around this kind of problem with technical solutions you are telling Microsoft that they can get away with spying on most people.
http://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2015/08/even-w...
The most interesting part:
"We configured our test virtual machine to use an HTTP and HTTPS proxy (both as a user-level proxy and a system-wide proxy) so that we could more easily monitor its traffic, but Windows 10 seems to make requests to a content delivery network that bypass the proxy."
As far as I'm aware this is as much as they've publicly released regarding telemetry, as for the "keylogger" thing I thought that was just a conspiracy theory.
> you must use Windows 10 Enterprise, version 1511 or Windows 10 Education, version 1511 to manage them all.
Note that the Enterprise versions seem to be effectively unreachable for most (as far as I understand, you must be a company and license for at least 5 computers for two years in advance). Windows 7 is the last generation where a "normal user" was able to get the so called "ultimate" edition which included the functionality from the "enterprise" version for approximately double the price of the Pro version.
What can everybody else do?
People continue to claim that it is still part of Windows 10 which has never been proven and most of these complaints aren't based on fact.
"At telemetry levels Enhanced and Full, Microsoft uses Linguistic Data Collection info to improve language model features such as autocomplete, spellcheck, suggestions, input pattern recognition, and dictionary. For more info, see the Get to know me setting in the Speech, inking, & typing section of this article and the Send Microsoft info about how I write to help us improve typing and writing in the future setting in the General section of this article. Note
Microsoft doesn't intentionally gather sensitive information, such as credit card numbers, usernames and passwords, email addresses, or other similarly sensitive information for Linguistic Data Collection. We guard against such events by using technologies to identify and remove sensitive information before linguistic data is sent from the user's device"
Of course, they can't know if anybody is typing the password in the wrong field or at the time they didn't expect.
I would have sworn there was a Reddit post where someone documented the same behavior on Enterprise SKUs as well, but I'm either mistaken or can't find it.
[1]: http://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2015/08/even-w...
- "We polished the Wi-Fi flyout UI and fixed an issue where text entry into a Wi-Fi password field was noticeably top-aligned rather than centered."
Source: I work on it.
As of yet, I have found no good solution to this problem, if I still want to be able to receive updates for other drivers.
First, you can opt into the bleeding-edge update stream http://i.imgur.com/7gWXLd3.png
Next is "current branch" for normal consumers, who are forcibly kept up to date (arguably a good thing, since they don't have an IT department to update their computers for them) http://i.imgur.com/kYkvffQ.png
Third is "current branch for business". Businesses are still required to upgrade, but they get a bit more time to ensure rollouts go smoothly. CBB can delay updates but not indefinitely. http://i.imgur.com/vsejEFC.png
Lastly, Enterprise and Education SKUs have access to the "long term servicing branch" where you can indefinitely delay updates, and/or run your own WSUS update servers. http://i.imgur.com/2JsFq1Y.png
tl;dr yes, but you need to pay for the Enterprise SKU for that privilege.
This reminds me very much of the old, arrogant MS. I fully appreciate "forcibly kept up to date (arguably a good thing, since they don't have an IT department to update their computers for them)" but imo to earn the good citizen award, MS should support a registry edit to give sophisticated users at least a few weeks of a nag screen before a forced update.
Why would anyone use this obvious SPYWARE? The entire OS is designed to kill your privacy and send your data to the NSA. No thanks!
Aside from that I think you just have to give it some time.
How many Windows sys admins are there in the world what percentage of them do you know?
Giving more people access to common code and frequently-updated, open-source utilities -- how can you find fault with it?
Basically, take a look at the Windows Internals book and the new security isolation mentioned here https://www.blackhat.com/us-15/briefings.html#battle-of-the-... and you will quickly realize that Windows is a different beast with its own plan.
People have been predicting this since at least NT 4.
Which is not to say there weren't a ton of issues. It's just that we've seen historically how bad it could be and it was nowhere near that bad.
I enabled it when after saying "no thanks for the reboot now", it self-rebooted 10 minutes later
A small Azure instance is probably cheaper than the electricity you pay for your beastly desktop machine.
I really want to turn the automatic updates off, because they are actively counterproductive to everything I want to do. I know I need to update it, but I'll update it on my own schedule, thanks (like, when I'm not actually trying to use the computer).
At this point I no longer trust Windows Update to do its job properly. The idea of it even thinking about forcing a reboot terrifies me.
I sort of get this, but I also sort of think that it's unreasonable. On the one hand: yeah it's annoying. On the other, you're using outdated software, yo. Security is seriously business and just being in a VM is not actually great protection.
> I know I need to update it, but I'll update it on my own schedule, thanks (like, when I'm not actually trying to use the computer).
I don't mean to be cheeky but, if you were actually going to do that then you probably wouldn't be 2 months behind on the update schedule?
I have this constant internal conflict between, "This is my computer it should do what I tell it to do" and "Wow as a user I am acting unreasonably and recklessly by expecting that thing to work the way I want it to." Maybe I'm just projecting that at you right now. If so, sorry.
I often keep e.g. games suspended, especially when they are slow to start or have poor savegame support. I minimize them and suspend with process explorer. End user triggered savegames have had declining support for years.
I also don't particularly enjoy re-setting my screen session just the way I left it. There's a reason I run screen; it's persistent.
I stop the Windows Update service on a loop, because (on Windows 7 at least) it's quite buggy, eating hours of CPU time at 100% on a core, and stopping it once isn't enough.
I don't do any real work in Windows any more. In many ways, that makes it more annoying to reboot, because less perceived uptime has been had.
assuming that people don't use Windows 10 as a server but as a workstation the "will lose your unsaved work" argument is a bit exaggerated.
If it could modify actual W32 apps then it'd be cool.
I won't be installing Windows 10 before this happens, but I also realize that at some point they will stop providing Windows 8 security updates.
It's a bit of a pain to do but once done should make it quite a lot better...
Microsoft's doubling down on this position with their UWP which makes for binary sharing between mobile, tablet and phone. The expectation on Phones (maybe unstated? I'm always surprised we don't hear a single peep from the privacy people on it) is that your apps are sending home telemetry for everything you do. No vendor prevents this, no vendor even really enforces any restrictions on gross EULAs.
And as someone managing multiple mobile apps in the marketplace and doing code commits to one, let me tell you. What users expect is impossible without sufficient telemetry. Our dev tools on mobile are, at best, hacky garbage compared to the great stuff we have on the browser. So all we can do is observe issues in the field.
Unless we can convince the market to substantial raise the price point of software back up to the days when it was $60 in 2005 dollars, people are going to have to accept SOME sort of telemetry and subsidization. We cannot build the apps as cheaply as the market expects otherwise.
I know this isn't your problem, but maybe it should be?
Presumably, audio could be implemented by using a named pipe or network socket talk to an audio daemon too. The work on the Linux side should have already been done by PulseAudio while there seems to be some sort of port for older versions of Windows that might be a starting point for the Windows side:
http://downloads.tomsguide.com/pulseaudio-pulse-audio,0301-1...
If the X server supports GLX (which I read XMing and Cygwin/X support), we might even see 3D Linux games running on Ubuntu on Windows and presumably, people would publish benchmarks for the Linux versions of things like Unigine Oilrush against the Windows versions. I would expect the Linux versions to be at a disadvantage, but a surprise there would be hilarious.
So much data. And users will want this in droves (specially since Pushbullet went premium).
Of course. What can possibly go wrong always having copied all the work the user does to some servers?
> keeps you in perfect sync
Actually keeps the company servers "in perfect sync" with the work of the user. And some of us worry about the telemetry and copying what user types -- it's actually presented/accepted as a big feature?
I understand that I'm probably a minority, for me, it's scary.
Researchers have shown the same sort of key mirroring is at play there. Especially for OSX, where it is just ridiculous how eager it is.
https://developer.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/bridges/deskto...