In the atmospheric/climatology lab there are a number of computers running very specific versions of Windows (down to specific patches) tailored to really obscure science research software packages, some industry standard, most custom-rolled and tailored to that project. Which means they're very fragile and need to be left alone.
Of course Microsoft blasts Win10 installer files down our very expensive, very slow satellite link, and proceeds to force Win7/8 systems to Win10 which broke a few multi-million dollar experiments in a place that takes MONTHS to get to in the winter. So effectively killed the research.
And yeah, you can argue "well you should've disabled Windows updates etc etc" but in REALITY, not perfect-theory world, you should be able to trust your OS manufacturer not to force-install a major OS revision without your consent. And in the old days of Microsoft, you could. Now they just say "f--- you, we're installing it regardless what you want."
That company can die in a fire for all I care.
Imagine this: you're a broke grad student and you're given $xx grant money to conduct a certain experiment in N months. What are you going to spend your VERY limited time+money on? Finding a good Linux hardware developer to roll some custom solution that no one can understand or support? Or just throw together some hacky Python or .net MVP that will run on Windows which practically anyone in the world can troubleshoot with basic knowledge?
Linux is great and all (runs on all my systems except one), but it is NOT the best option when there are heavy time constraints and the system is going somewhere very remote where there will be one, MAYBE two people with basic IT knowledge to troubleshoot.
Just install some distro and "just throw together some hacky Python". If you had some hardware and measurement instruments that require Windows for drivers then I could understand it, otherwise it's just negligence.
> or .net MVP that will run on Windows which practically anyone in the world can troubleshoot with basic knowledge?
In my experience people who claim that they could troubleshoot Windows is usually just that - they claim it but rarely can they actually fix anything.
I don't know, maybe Windows is that much better and easier to use for everyone and I just can see it - who knows...
It likely is. I have read similar stores about having to refurb an aging 386 or 486 running DOS. This because it is being used to operate a very expensive particle sensor, and the company that made it is long gone.
And if you want to replace said sensor you first have to get the funding to do so, and then you have to shut down the lab for a year to run calibrations so that the results from the new sensors can be compared to those of the old one.
I have some doubts about this story... The forced Windows 10 update was only sent to non-enterprise versions of Windows. I highly doubt any of these experiments were running the home editions of Windows due to the lack of control. Also, I am pretty sure that running home versions of Windows in contexts like this is against the Windows TOS.
If you had a mixed OS environment with a Samba-based domain (or no domain at all, because these machines just take data from lab equipment and shovel it onto network shares), there was a good chance of the update firing off anyway.
FWIW there was a handful of reports of exactly that happening on /r/sysadmin. There was also a ton of domain joined machines that were spammed with the Windows 10 nagware but didn't actually upgrade on their own.
I guess you've never worked with budget-constrained grant projects before.
> I do remember you talking about going to Antarctica in the Tron subreddit
7 months on ice.
> I hope that there isn't some undocumented part of the script that is disabling automatic updates.
Tron doesn't perform ANY undocumented actions. Unlike most the people defending Microsoft's actions in this thread, I am pro-user and seek to minimize negative impact to users in any project I'm involved in.
> Also, I am pretty sure that running home versions of Windows in contexts like this is against the Windows TOS.
If you're telling me there are people in the world using Windows in violation of its TOS I'm shocked, SHOCKED to say the least.
And you're pissed at MS because of this?
And yet he wants to completely blame them.
They are useless for a small team doing a research project.
These project machines are shipped (or physically hand-carried) by grad students from random universities all over the world. They come from who-knows-what IT department running who-knows-what software packages, often cobbled together JUST enough to get it working because they're so budget and time constrained that's all the resources they had to throw at it. So the lab is full of bespoke machines running a variety of very obscure software, much of it on tailored Windows boxes.
So no, "me and my colleagues" didn't "destroy a multi-million dollar project by trying to save a few dollars."
Unfortunately that also comes with completely incompetent IT staff.
For Windows, Microsoft restricts features but not what purpose you can use it for if you're talking about Home versions. For Office however, the home version actually has restrictions in the TOS that limit use to only noncommercial purposes. For a standalone Windows box that is only used for some lab equipment and will never be domain joined there's a good chance that there's no technical reason to go with Windows Pro over Home.
The lesson there is that you should always quarantine computers that need to be pinned on very specific versions of an OS, especially in such a precarious setting! Those computers should not have been able to communicate over the internet at all, except for those cases where communication is part of their purpose (e.g., monitoring the experiments), and that should happen via a dedicated VPN allowing only the traffic necessary.
I'm surprised this isn't the standard operating procedure for this kind of case.
Best i recall, MS was very very insistent with their Win10 "upgrade". To the point that they relabeled the installer patch as critical (aka, reserved for pushing 0-day patches or similar) after people found they could change certain settings to make it go away.
Well, sure, and if they ran a critical machine with no backups whatsoever it might have also been fine for years, but that hardly makes it reasonable practice.
I once had to turn off updates on all laptops in my workplace so we could use the internet. (They thought the network was under a virus attack)
In such a situation you can dramatically reduce the bandwidth required by setting up an update server. There's no need for every laptop to download the same patch from the internet, download the patch once and everyone gets it.
(I appreciate that doesn't help the situation where you don't have enough data for one machine)
Yeah yeah you can turn of Windows updates or whatever, but you shouldn't have to do that just to force Microsoft to respect your wishes to update when you want to. And no, I'm not talking about some stupid restricted 8-hour window with no other option outside completely shutting down the service. TBH I'm still surprised they haven't tried to block users from doing that too at this point.