Looks like they must have done SOMETHING to fix this. Here in August 2022, I just started using Windows 10 in earnest a few months ago, and just started playing Flight Simulator 2002 and 2004 (picked up for three bucks each, at a junk shop, LOL) a few weeks ago. No problems to speak of, except that FS 2002 seems to reliably crash-and-restart if I try to change View settings while flying, and 2004's Cessna is damn-near uncontrollable compared to 2002's... No problems installing or running, though.
Why force the IRS to upgrade, when MS supposedly still supports XP for the US Navy? Or has that, too, finally ended (and, if it has, what horrible nightmare did the Navy endure, to make the upgrade? I shudder to think)?
Speaking of "better late than never..." ;-)
If one nice thing about forcing people to upgrade the way they did was to "help consolidate support expenses," then they should have used their deep-digging-fingers capabilities to determine whether the owner of any particular machine had EVER USED Microsoft Support, and push the upgrade only on THOSE WHO HAD. I myself have never called Microsoft for ANYTHING, since first discovering that after the first month or so of Windows 98 usership (can't say "ownership") it cost $125.00 per call! With a billing policy like that, I'm surprised ANYBODY DOES call them. (They also certainly should have no grounds to complain about the "expense," either, since that is clearly being shouldered by the customer, but I digress.) So if I weren't causing them any "support expense," forcing the Windows 10 upgrade onto me would not have "saved" them anything, and they could have held off on the damn thing.)
As it happens, I avoided the whole problem in my own unique way: my Windows 7 computer crashed in June 2014 and I haven't gotten around to rebuilding it yet. In the meantime I simply continued using a Windows XP laptop (long live Windows XP, damn you, MS) up until just a few months ago, and MISSED THAT ENTIRE PERIOD of Windows history. So there!
Please forgive my six-year-belated appearance here; I only just rediscovered my account info on a long-buried scrap of paper.
Seems to me the thing to do would be to put filters in place -- in your home router, or even in another piece of equipment deliberately interposed between it and your computer(s) -- that BLOCKS the transmissions Windows 10 tries to make "back home." Surely someone has by now developed a comprehensive listing of the URLs and/or IPs involved? I'd be happy to spend even several hours pecking a list into my router's filters, or such facilities that the OS itself might harbor (if they could be trusted to block the OS's own intentions, that is). Anybody have this particular blacklist they could share with me?
One of the best ideas I ever heard was for a piece of what would ordinarily be called "malware" but in this case is actually the Good Guy: a program that runs in the background of your computer, phone, etc., and watches for the telltale sign (details left as an exercise for the reader) of a T&C-acceptance popup, and injects a click on YES before a human could possibly have read them. Sure, on the one hand this reeks of "signing me up for something I didn't want to sign up for" -- but that's splitting hairs. You're absolutely right, the vast majority of people DO click straight through T&C stuff without reading it -- so what this thing is REALLY doing is... giving them PLAUSIBLE DENIABILITY when they decide to VIOLATE the T&C in some way, be it by reverse-engineering a piece of software, hacking or copying a game or song or video, etc. etc. etc. "I never even SAW the T&Cs, so I can't be held responsible for agreeing to them!" You see? I strongly recommend that someone write and deploy this not-so-mal-ware, ASAP.
I've been taking flak for years, from EVERYBODY EVERYWHERE, about my continued preference for physical possession of physical media -- from records and tapes, to CDs and CD-ROMs, to DVDs and DVD-ROMs -- over merely the ability to ACCESS media through one or another streaming service, website, or similar platform. My stated reason for this is PRECISELY that "I don't want somebody else suddenly deciding to remove content that I'm counting on being able to access." That is to say, I spotted the problem with non-physical media RIGHT AWAY, the second it first started to become a phenomenon. It never fails to amaze me that pretty much the WHOLE REST OF THE WORLD takes somewhere between five and thirty YEARS to spot the same problems -- often, not until the problems ACTUALLY HAPPEN, at which point it's often way, way too late to do much about them.
That said, I do have a subscription to Netflix, but other than that I rely on free streaming services and the continuing availability (thus far, anyway) of the option to buy the stuff I REALLY like, on physical media. Now I just have to cross my fingers and hope they keep making players, and TVs, and ...
So, here we are in 2022, and from what I'm hearing on the grapevine, MS is shooting itself in the foot AGAIN, and maybe EVEN WORSE, with the Windows 11 launch. I've been waiting twenty, maybe twenty-five, years for the groundswell of "enough is enough" anti-Microsoft sentiment I am now, FINALLY, hearing about Windows 11.
My own first reaction was twofold: first, I was PISSED OFF, because one of the big selling points during the Windows 10 launch was that "there will never again be another major version of Windows, requiring you to throw away perfectly good hardware and retool from scratch -- just continuous updates to good ol' Windows 10." I have never been a big fan of updates -- their track record consists mostly of BREAKING things and REMOVING useful features, not only in Windows but on every platform-and-product subject to forced upgrades -- but I hate OS forced-obsolescence and forced-upgrade policies EVEN MORE. So when Microsoft finally swore they were going to STOP that, after carefully confirming for seven or eight years that Windows 10 really was stable, and really would continue to run, and run properly, the programs I was used to, I finally committed resources to the purchase of a Windows 10 PC at the start of 2021. And then -- what, maybe six months? less? later, Microsoft announced Windows 11. I was, and I remain, FURIOUS. What a betrayal!
I have been enormously gratified, however, to find that, at long last, I am not the ONLY PERSON WHO NOTICED OR CARES, as I seem to have been in all previous such Microsoft screwings-over of the masses. So that's good.
Second, I am further disgusted by the revelation that Windows 11 "probably won't even run on most 'older' / existing motherboards," because it requires some special chip or component whose name I refuse to bother to memorize. That's just another Microsoft evil, among many others. (I could make a pretty good case for prosecuting Microsoft for Crimes Against Humanity and against the planet, if anybody ever wants to read about THAT. But I digress.) The only way in Hell I would EVER run Windows 11 would be if I ALREADY OWNED a piece of hardware that would take it -- and, all else being equal, that there BRAND NEW WINDOWS 10 PC would be the perfect candidate! But if, five or ten years from now, when I get around to investigating, it turns out that that machine WON'T run Windows 11, well -- that's it for Microsoft; beyond this, it's Linux for me.
See, I've held onto Windows through twenty-plus years of VERY mixed feelings only because there's so much software for the platform. In the early days, it was a no-brainer that Linux didn't have nearly as rich pickings. Well, the last few LiveCDs I've tried indicate to me that that has changed: it looks as though pretty much anything I want, or care, to do on a computer can now be done just as well in Linux as in Windows, so I have literally NOTHING TO LOSE and EVERYTHING TO GAIN (i.e. freedom from Redmond oppression) by making that switch. And I'm hearing the same from a lot of people, so I'm hopeful that the End Of Microsoft might just be in sight, somewhere over a not-too-distant horizon.
... that thing at the start of movies 'way back when, "You Wouldn't Download A Car!" --? Well, everybody *I* know reacted to that with a burst of laughter and "I WOULD if I COULD!"
As someone just about to slide into my second half-century, but young (immature?) at heart, I have to say that in my opinion the MPAA is coming to the party about forty years too late. Digital music sharing got started in earnest, if I recall correctly, somewhere around the initial Napster days circa 1998, but I was doing the equivalent of downloading music, in great quantity for the time and equipment, starting with recording songs off the radio onto a little battery-operated reel-to-reel tape recorder at age eight or nine, in 1971 or 72 -- almost EXACTLY forty years ago.
In addition to taping songs played on the radio, I taped the record collections of everybody I knew or met -- friends, relatives, my local public library, my high school radio station, and more. I would sometimes call up radio stations and ask DJs to send me a particularly special or hard-to-find song on tape (they always did). In high school, when friends and I got jobs at the radio stations, I'd often sit there at night dubbing the stations' own music libraries with their own equipment. You name it. And NOBODY CARED. (Oh, and in those days you could freely sing/play records at parties and in bars, too, without having to pay anybody royalty fees.)
Granted, as one person I didn't have much impact -- I was the only person I knew who did this, originally because I didn't have the money to buy records and later because I'd developed the habit and worked up the techniques to a fine art. I rarely GAVE copies to anyone else. But to this day I still have the 200+ cassettes, 20+ reel-to-reel tapes, and a few hundred actual records (given to me; what, BUY them?!?) I amassed between 1972 and 1998 when I switched to MP3 downloads. (And, okay, I did buy a record OCCASIONALLY; but oh, how I remember my fury when I arrived at the store one day to buy a new 45, only to discover the price had gone up from 75 cents to 84 cents and that the money in my pocket (about 78 cents) was no longer enough!)
So yeah, this sort of stuff has been going on in at least SOME circles for at least four decades (somebody already had, and gave me, that original tape recorder...). I remember, upon hearing my first MP3 and being amazed at the sound quality, INSTANTLY thinking to myself, "Well, the genie is out of the bottle NOW." And once he's out, good luck getting him back in; one really is better off just directing one's efforts toward living with the consequences.
Techdirt has not posted any stories submitted by El Xetto.
Dodged a Bullet
Looks like they must have done SOMETHING to fix this. Here in August 2022, I just started using Windows 10 in earnest a few months ago, and just started playing Flight Simulator 2002 and 2004 (picked up for three bucks each, at a junk shop, LOL) a few weeks ago. No problems to speak of, except that FS 2002 seems to reliably crash-and-restart if I try to change View settings while flying, and 2004's Cessna is damn-near uncontrollable compared to 2002's... No problems installing or running, though.
Special Treatment
Why force the IRS to upgrade, when MS supposedly still supports XP for the US Navy? Or has that, too, finally ended (and, if it has, what horrible nightmare did the Navy endure, to make the upgrade? I shudder to think)?
Another Obvious Idea Missed
Speaking of "better late than never..." ;-) If one nice thing about forcing people to upgrade the way they did was to "help consolidate support expenses," then they should have used their deep-digging-fingers capabilities to determine whether the owner of any particular machine had EVER USED Microsoft Support, and push the upgrade only on THOSE WHO HAD. I myself have never called Microsoft for ANYTHING, since first discovering that after the first month or so of Windows 98 usership (can't say "ownership") it cost $125.00 per call! With a billing policy like that, I'm surprised ANYBODY DOES call them. (They also certainly should have no grounds to complain about the "expense," either, since that is clearly being shouldered by the customer, but I digress.) So if I weren't causing them any "support expense," forcing the Windows 10 upgrade onto me would not have "saved" them anything, and they could have held off on the damn thing.) As it happens, I avoided the whole problem in my own unique way: my Windows 7 computer crashed in June 2014 and I haven't gotten around to rebuilding it yet. In the meantime I simply continued using a Windows XP laptop (long live Windows XP, damn you, MS) up until just a few months ago, and MISSED THAT ENTIRE PERIOD of Windows history. So there!
Obvious Solution?
Please forgive my six-year-belated appearance here; I only just rediscovered my account info on a long-buried scrap of paper. Seems to me the thing to do would be to put filters in place -- in your home router, or even in another piece of equipment deliberately interposed between it and your computer(s) -- that BLOCKS the transmissions Windows 10 tries to make "back home." Surely someone has by now developed a comprehensive listing of the URLs and/or IPs involved? I'd be happy to spend even several hours pecking a list into my router's filters, or such facilities that the OS itself might harbor (if they could be trusted to block the OS's own intentions, that is). Anybody have this particular blacklist they could share with me?
Time for a Hack?
One of the best ideas I ever heard was for a piece of what would ordinarily be called "malware" but in this case is actually the Good Guy: a program that runs in the background of your computer, phone, etc., and watches for the telltale sign (details left as an exercise for the reader) of a T&C-acceptance popup, and injects a click on YES before a human could possibly have read them. Sure, on the one hand this reeks of "signing me up for something I didn't want to sign up for" -- but that's splitting hairs. You're absolutely right, the vast majority of people DO click straight through T&C stuff without reading it -- so what this thing is REALLY doing is... giving them PLAUSIBLE DENIABILITY when they decide to VIOLATE the T&C in some way, be it by reverse-engineering a piece of software, hacking or copying a game or song or video, etc. etc. etc. "I never even SAW the T&Cs, so I can't be held responsible for agreeing to them!" You see? I strongly recommend that someone write and deploy this not-so-mal-ware, ASAP.
It's Hard Being A Prophet
I've been taking flak for years, from EVERYBODY EVERYWHERE, about my continued preference for physical possession of physical media -- from records and tapes, to CDs and CD-ROMs, to DVDs and DVD-ROMs -- over merely the ability to ACCESS media through one or another streaming service, website, or similar platform. My stated reason for this is PRECISELY that "I don't want somebody else suddenly deciding to remove content that I'm counting on being able to access." That is to say, I spotted the problem with non-physical media RIGHT AWAY, the second it first started to become a phenomenon. It never fails to amaze me that pretty much the WHOLE REST OF THE WORLD takes somewhere between five and thirty YEARS to spot the same problems -- often, not until the problems ACTUALLY HAPPEN, at which point it's often way, way too late to do much about them. That said, I do have a subscription to Netflix, but other than that I rely on free streaming services and the continuing availability (thus far, anyway) of the option to buy the stuff I REALLY like, on physical media. Now I just have to cross my fingers and hope they keep making players, and TVs, and ...
History Repeats Itself
So, here we are in 2022, and from what I'm hearing on the grapevine, MS is shooting itself in the foot AGAIN, and maybe EVEN WORSE, with the Windows 11 launch. I've been waiting twenty, maybe twenty-five, years for the groundswell of "enough is enough" anti-Microsoft sentiment I am now, FINALLY, hearing about Windows 11. My own first reaction was twofold: first, I was PISSED OFF, because one of the big selling points during the Windows 10 launch was that "there will never again be another major version of Windows, requiring you to throw away perfectly good hardware and retool from scratch -- just continuous updates to good ol' Windows 10." I have never been a big fan of updates -- their track record consists mostly of BREAKING things and REMOVING useful features, not only in Windows but on every platform-and-product subject to forced upgrades -- but I hate OS forced-obsolescence and forced-upgrade policies EVEN MORE. So when Microsoft finally swore they were going to STOP that, after carefully confirming for seven or eight years that Windows 10 really was stable, and really would continue to run, and run properly, the programs I was used to, I finally committed resources to the purchase of a Windows 10 PC at the start of 2021. And then -- what, maybe six months? less? later, Microsoft announced Windows 11. I was, and I remain, FURIOUS. What a betrayal! I have been enormously gratified, however, to find that, at long last, I am not the ONLY PERSON WHO NOTICED OR CARES, as I seem to have been in all previous such Microsoft screwings-over of the masses. So that's good. Second, I am further disgusted by the revelation that Windows 11 "probably won't even run on most 'older' / existing motherboards," because it requires some special chip or component whose name I refuse to bother to memorize. That's just another Microsoft evil, among many others. (I could make a pretty good case for prosecuting Microsoft for Crimes Against Humanity and against the planet, if anybody ever wants to read about THAT. But I digress.) The only way in Hell I would EVER run Windows 11 would be if I ALREADY OWNED a piece of hardware that would take it -- and, all else being equal, that there BRAND NEW WINDOWS 10 PC would be the perfect candidate! But if, five or ten years from now, when I get around to investigating, it turns out that that machine WON'T run Windows 11, well -- that's it for Microsoft; beyond this, it's Linux for me. See, I've held onto Windows through twenty-plus years of VERY mixed feelings only because there's so much software for the platform. In the early days, it was a no-brainer that Linux didn't have nearly as rich pickings. Well, the last few LiveCDs I've tried indicate to me that that has changed: it looks as though pretty much anything I want, or care, to do on a computer can now be done just as well in Linux as in Windows, so I have literally NOTHING TO LOSE and EVERYTHING TO GAIN (i.e. freedom from Redmond oppression) by making that switch. And I'm hearing the same from a lot of people, so I'm hopeful that the End Of Microsoft might just be in sight, somewhere over a not-too-distant horizon.
Remember...
... that thing at the start of movies 'way back when, "You Wouldn't Download A Car!" --? Well, everybody *I* know reacted to that with a burst of laughter and "I WOULD if I COULD!"
Too Little, Too Late
As someone just about to slide into my second half-century, but young (immature?) at heart, I have to say that in my opinion the MPAA is coming to the party about forty years too late. Digital music sharing got started in earnest, if I recall correctly, somewhere around the initial Napster days circa 1998, but I was doing the equivalent of downloading music, in great quantity for the time and equipment, starting with recording songs off the radio onto a little battery-operated reel-to-reel tape recorder at age eight or nine, in 1971 or 72 -- almost EXACTLY forty years ago.
In addition to taping songs played on the radio, I taped the record collections of everybody I knew or met -- friends, relatives, my local public library, my high school radio station, and more. I would sometimes call up radio stations and ask DJs to send me a particularly special or hard-to-find song on tape (they always did). In high school, when friends and I got jobs at the radio stations, I'd often sit there at night dubbing the stations' own music libraries with their own equipment. You name it. And NOBODY CARED. (Oh, and in those days you could freely sing/play records at parties and in bars, too, without having to pay anybody royalty fees.)
Granted, as one person I didn't have much impact -- I was the only person I knew who did this, originally because I didn't have the money to buy records and later because I'd developed the habit and worked up the techniques to a fine art. I rarely GAVE copies to anyone else. But to this day I still have the 200+ cassettes, 20+ reel-to-reel tapes, and a few hundred actual records (given to me; what, BUY them?!?) I amassed between 1972 and 1998 when I switched to MP3 downloads. (And, okay, I did buy a record OCCASIONALLY; but oh, how I remember my fury when I arrived at the store one day to buy a new 45, only to discover the price had gone up from 75 cents to 84 cents and that the money in my pocket (about 78 cents) was no longer enough!)
So yeah, this sort of stuff has been going on in at least SOME circles for at least four decades (somebody already had, and gave me, that original tape recorder...). I remember, upon hearing my first MP3 and being amazed at the sound quality, INSTANTLY thinking to myself, "Well, the genie is out of the bottle NOW." And once he's out, good luck getting him back in; one really is better off just directing one's efforts toward living with the consequences.