Hacker News Reader

Comment by sundvor | Hacker News Reader

'll most likely be downvoted for this, but whilst I sympathise with the plight of those being auto upgraded at inconvenience a small part of me thinks that those users who cannot be bothered to read the important OS information notices, are the ones who may need the upgrade the most.

As parent (+1'ed) notes, the message itself is quite clear in its intent. I would not for a second think that closing the window would infer the "cancel path" as the result.

Yes, they are being too forceful, and Microsoft ought to have given users a clear "I do not want to upgrade, ever" option, yet at the same time Windows 10 represents a significant increase in security, and in these days of massive botnets and what not that is a good thing on a big scale. In a roundabout way, I'm picturing this as forced immunisation for the greater good.

View on HN

> Windows 10 represents a significant increase in security

Is that really so? It seems that last 20 years Microsoft just plays whack-a-mole game closing endless vulnerabilities instead of designing a better architecture that would not allow such things.

For example in Windows any app has full access to a device. The user can run any app written by anyone just by clicking a link on a web page or mail message. In Android these problems are partially fixed and in iOS the user is unable to run malicious applications at all.

I have no idea whether you're being sarcastic or earnest, but the post is funny either way. Describing "the user has a high amount of control over their own personal machine" as a problem is new. :)

No, I was not sarcastic. Many users are happy with being unable to run unsigned apps or listen to pirated music if it makes their devices secure.

I agree with that on the principle that it's a nice thing to have if it's optional. And amazingly enough, Windows 10 actually does have that: http://i.imgur.com/XV4Hpwd.png

It depends on how this is implemented. Is it enforced on a kernel level? What if some application, like browser or email client still allows starting an unsigned .exe file? Is Windows Store protected from publishing malware? Is there real privilege and access separation for different apps?

I'm on the edge about agreeing that this is a good thing, but you're right. Due to the long history of people ignoring updates and then blaming MS for when they get hit by the latest 0-day, parts of MS are probably feeling very antagonistic against some of their users at this point.

Win 10 is not a security update.

Microsoft is committed to security updates on Win 8.1 until 2023.

Feeling antagonistic also often results in irrational actions.

Yet Windows 10 contains significant improvements to the security model:

https://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/itpro/windows/whats-new/...

While security is a good goal, surely you can agree that they could have (and should have) rolled any major security updates into a small, free OS update for that purpose alone? They didn’t have to simultaneously revamp the entire UI, replace default programs with less-useful versions, etc.

True, I don't understand Windows enough to know whether all the changes in https://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/itpro/windows/whats-new/... could have been easily / practically done as a service pack* though.

Edit: *Especially for Windows 7.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com