[mattkevan]

The windows boxes in our office have been upgrading themselves, much to everyone's dismay:

The one in the meeting room decided to upgrade and then break in the middle of a client presentation I was leading. I got my Mac and continued on, but it was embarrassing.

My colleague's machine upgraded itself overnight, and in the process deleted a bunch of files and corrupted creative suite.

I know having as many people as possible on the latest version is a good thing from a platform perspective, but in reality it's such an irresponsible thing to do. It just lets people know that Microsoft are quite happy to reach in and break their stuff at any point.

If anything it's persuaded the last few Windows holdouts in the office to switch to the Mac or Linux in short order.

[Mithaldu]

Edit: Note that i am not disagreeing that MS is engaging in a dark pattern by opting-in users implicitly, and then only informing them about said opt-in having happened. The snide and snark in this post only came about because i realized rather suddenly what was actually happening, and how the misreporting and sensationalizing had skewed this whole thing in a way that the reporting helped literally nobody but people's click counters.

Know that the upgrade is not unavoidable, and if you have friends who don't want it, tell them how they can avoid it.

> The windows boxes in our office have been upgrading themselves, much to everyone's dismay

Go around and ask which of your colleagues closed this window without actually reading it: http://i.imgur.com/aWFX0vc.png

[anotherevan]

Also ask them about how many bloody times prompts about upgrading have come up, again and again and again. People are not perfect robots that crunch data, fatigue sets in at some point, which is exactly what microsoft preyed on in this case. Crunching data is what we use computers for, or at least try to.

[Mithaldu]

Ok, then report "MS is using dark patterns", not "Windows is upgrading on its own and there was nothing we could do to stop it". Those are both very serious failure modes, and both need to be adressed, but by obscuring which one is actually occurring you're doing nobody a favor.

[anotherevan]

Blaming the victim is doing nobody a favour either.

The distinction between “windows is upgrading on its own and there was nothing I could to to stop it [once it started]” and “microsoft used a bunch of shifty tricks to fool me into pressing a button that supposedly gave my consent, and then there was nothing I could do to stop it” becomes pretty moot, pretty fast.

Yes, the latter is technically correct, and should be the main focus. But for the victims who are wondering what the fuck just happened, a snide, “did you read the dialogue before closing it?” isn’t helpful. It comes off as smug because because you consider yourself superior.

If there was more nuance to your original comment, you probably should have made it in the first place. Your one-liner only came across as snark.

[Mithaldu]

> The distinction between .... becomes pretty moot

I vehemently disagree, since by identifying the actual issue you can, instead of frightening other people into fearing an automatic upgrade at any time, inform them about what is actually happening and better prepare them to prevent the same happening to them.

That said, yes, my previous comment was snide snark. At that point it was all i had upon realizing how badly the whole discourse was fucked up towards not being useful to anyone.

[anotherevan]

> > The distinction between … becomes pretty moot

> I vehemently disagree, since by identifying the actual issue you can

I understand where you’re coming from. And I already agreed that what actually happened – the shifty practice to supposedly gain consent – should be the discussion. My entire sentence about the distinction is with regard to giving consent, which is what your original one-liner alluded to. Microsoft tricked people so they would have the excuse after the fact that you gave consent, when they really do no such thing.

So in most ways we probably agree on the actual issue – but your original one-liner came across as blaming the victim for being human – my reaction to it was to blame microsoft for intentional manipulation of human nature to achieve their objective, without the person’s consent, against the person’s desire, in a way that tries to make it look like their own fault.

If nothing else though, the snark comment prompted us both to elucidate our viewpoints and (I hope) find common ground.

[deminature]

It's pretty much unprecedented that closing a window is giving consent to have your machine upgraded. I'm not sure you can blame users for not realising this.

[markrages]

Yes, it's definitely the user's fault for closing a pop-up window. Those always contain essential information.

[Tempest1981]

No Cancel/Later button?! What does "OK" do, vs Upgrade Now, or the Close [X] button?

[Mithaldu]

The cancel button is in the blue box under the huge date, at system-normal font size. OK does the same thing as [X], dismiss the opt-in the OS informed you about.

The problem here being that such an opt-in happened in the first place.

[Spooky23]

That's a pretty complex dialog.

[yuhong]

Note that businesses will typically use Win10 Enterprise, often with WSUS.

[mavhc]

Large businesses. It's the DIY small businesses that always have problems. They should switch to Chrome OS.

[yuhong]

This is a good time to mention that the minimum for volume licensing is only 5 copies.

[jasonjayr]

Besides opening up a sales channel, is there SOMETHING that can explain what the right way to license Office + Windows in a 50-employee business?

I've gotten by for SOOO long with samba + OSS, and our main stack is OSS, and have remained on the up + up with licensing. But with CAL's, Domain Controllers, File servers, etc, etc -- It seems to get so obnoxiously expensive fast --- for the only benefit of entrenching yourself to Microsoft tech?

Given that I have to maintain a fleet of 40-50 Windows devices, Along with Samba 4, is there any good tech stack OSS or otherwise for managing all that?

[yuhong]

Yea, CALs are another mess altogether. I think some server products even use per-core licensing now.

[cm2187]

If the company only has 5-10 employees, it is pretty safe to assume they will not have a dedicated IT function who would worry for them about volume licensing, domain joined systems, etc. They likely just buy a laptop on Dell's website which comes with whatever version of the OS Dell tells them is good for them.

[yuhong]

Yea, I know many of them probably don't know this.

[technion]

It's still a hard sell. If a machine comes with Windows [Version] Home edition, there are business reasons to upgrade.

If you buy a business machine with Professional edition, it already services all the business needs.

I used to have good reason to push volume licensing when Enterprise was necessary to get Bitlocker.. but now there's very little business reason to do so.

[yuhong]

I think even with Volume Licensing, Enterprise is more expensive than Pro. But my point is that it is definitely possible to get it.

[ams6110]

I thought business licenses for Windows didn't do the auto-upgrade?

[CamperBob2]

As I understand it, you have to be on an enterprise installation to avoid the nagware, the sort that typically places hundreds of users under centralized group policy administration. Just buying a "Professional" or "Ultimate" edition license isn't enough.