> >I have never seen Windows 2000, XP, or 7 experience a "forced update" when
> >automatic updates is turned completely off (I've never seen Vista do
>...
>
>http://windowssecrets.com/top-story/microsoft-updates-windows-without-users-consent/
What's being described here isn't quite what I had in mind when I said,
"forced update". If you had automatic updates turned completely off, you
had to voluntarily and manually visit the Windows update site to have this
happen. No visit, no "forced update".
When people talk about "forced update" I was envisioning that MS somehow
pushed software onto people's computers without them taking ANY step that
allowed it to happen beyond connecting to the internet.
There was a time with Win 2000 where MS broke Windows Update. You'd go to
the site and it would sit there with the annoying little green blocks going
back and forth forever and ever and ever and nothing would happen.
Eventually the word got out that you had to download and manually install
three separate files from MS, rebooting after each one, to get the thing
working again. That was highly annoying. My position on that was, they
broke it, they should have found a way to fix it without forcing me to
expend my time and energy to do so. Maybe that's why they did this thing in
2007 the way they did.
In general I agree with you about the risks inherent in this. Really,
though, it's inherent in any OS. If you can write an OS, you can write in a
backdoor that lets you control it without anybody knowing it. I'm sure
Apple can do this if they're so inclined, and I'm sure a Linux kernel
programmer could do it if they were so inclined.
Every time MS releases a new OS they make some subset of existing software
unusable. So does Apple and the various Linux distributors.
I'm much more pissed off about them using their near-monopoly status to
bamboozle people into "adopting" new so-called "standards" that confer no
additional benefits for the majority of users but are incompatible with
older software, like they did with their "x" documents. Yeah, Open Office
*eventually* was able to open them. But most people didn't know that and
they were tricked into buying new versions of Office purely so they could
continue to do what they had been doing with the perfectly good old
version. The next person who accuses me of manifest uncoolness because I
refuse to get with the program and spend hundreds of dollars to buy Office
version whatever instead of politely telling them that "x" documents are
not standard and they need to learn how to use the "Save as Type" feature
is gonna get punched in the face.
I think what needs to happen is that software (including OS) sales need to
be regulated the way auto mechanics are. It's illegal in many states for an
auto mechanic to tell you that you need to fix ("upgrade") something that
you don't really need to fix, and it's illegal in all states for a mechanic
to deliberately break something that was working perfectly fine in order to
force you to buy a replacement. When we get that kind of regulation in
place, MS and every other software vendor will have to move to a business
plan that permits them to only collect more money when they provide more
real value that people specifically chose to purchase--and all this other
crap will go away.
That's my two cents.
Ken Dibble
www.stic-cil.org
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