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Comment by EchelonFuxMe | Hacker News Reader

Speaking of fickle developers, I'm already planning my exit.

Any mention of Microsoft is enough to turn me off, I have seen enough - I have had enough.

And... what has Microsoft done to you lately? Gates is playing international philanthropist; Ballmer is playing NBA owner. The new regime not only likes open source and contribute massively to open source projects, they joined the Linux Foundation at the _Platinum_ level... there are a lot of "good open source companies" with deep pockets who haven't done that. Like Google.

https://www.linuxfoundation.org/press-release/microsoft-fort...

https://www.linuxfoundation.org/membership/members/

I am forced to use Windows for gaming, and let me tell you what Microsoft has done to me lately.

- Forced updates are a travesty. I should be able to delay or ignore updates indefinitely as I own my computer.

- I'm not allowed to not run an antivirus program, despite having no need of one. I can only temporarily pause Windows Defender's real-time checks before they'll helpfully turn it back on for me. This results in a loss of gaming performance.

- Turning off their spying telemetry is essentially impossible and will helpfully turn itself back on.

- They hold some good games hostage and refuse to release them on Windows (Halo Master Chief Collection) since they don't take gaming seriously on PC.

- Every once in a while, they become dedicated to PC gaming again which simply means they will use their power to force something awful onto the community, like the Windows Xbox Game Bar, Games for Windows Live, etc. in their quest to make my gaming PC into an Xbox.

- UWP is trash and greatly restricts what the user can do with their game, such as mods or fan patches to fix bugs developers ignore.

- The Windows Store is horrible in and of itself and is full of even more low quality software. Instead of releasing their games on Steam, Origin, GOG, or even UPlay, they force them into this dumpster fire.

- They install Candy Crush and other drivel by default on a fresh copy of Windows, and sometimes it magically reappears.

Just because Microsoft has put on the "I'm changed!" act recently by releasing some FOSS and donating some money does not mean they have actually stopped being a negative influence.

Yes, thank you. People are quick to point out the Microsoft hasn't done anything detrimental to society, forget that their software is such a mess. We're too focused on judging companies based on whether employees get paternity leave, an offhand remark by a CEO, or recent scandals, that we're forgetting about the quality of software we're installing on our computers. When I saw a bunch of spammy games like March of Empires and Candy Crush installed with my Windows 10 Pro, I thought I got a bad copy -- instead it was truly just part of their operating system. They force their terrible antivirus (which keeps quarantining files I'm working on, when I'm working with low-level .exe patching) and forced updates and reboots. I wish there was a way to have Windows that's just an operating system.

I'm with you on this one: Win10 is a travesty and is literally forcing me (and the organisation I work for) to switch to Linux distro. Cannot have Pro editions randomly install Candy Crush and reset privacy settings at Microsoft's leisure. No.

Completely agree. But windows and devdiv are two completely different beasts these days. In think the people at devdiv seem fantastic and the tools they have done recently are great (.NET core, VS code, GitVFS, ...).

Microsoft may not have changed completely but part of it has

I couldn't agree more. What a pain. GitHub good bye, hello GitLab (I already am on Bitbucket).

Currently, Microsoft is blocking an open source mod of the Halo Online engine, called ElDewrito. It's an incredibly fun to play mod but now development has been halted because of legal action. I hate Microsoft for all the things you mentioned.

> Forces updates are a travesty.

You can disable this. Google on the use for modifying the hosts file to block your machine's access to Windows Update if you're not sure how to do this.

> They hold some games hostage and refuse to release them on Windows...

Wait -- I thought you were forced, as a gamer, to use Windows. I don't follow.

> UWP is trash...

This is true. UWP tries to be many things, like a single container for desktop, tablet, and (Windows) mobile apps. In the end it mostly fails.

> I'm not allowed to not run an antivirus program.

Uh, dude: I run Windows 7 and Windows 10 machines and none of them FORCE me to use antivirus. They nag about it for a while but those alerts and nags can be disabled.

> You can disable this. Google on the use for modifying the hosts file to block your machine's access to Windows Update if you're not sure how to do this.

That's not disabling Windows Update, that's hacking name resolution to prevent the connection itself. That's like saying you can disable Windows Update by not connecting to the internet.

And I'm not even confident that the host file solution will last forever, in future you might have to do it from the router level instead.

> Wait -- I thought you were forced, as a gamer, to use Windows. I don't follow.

If you play PC games you are effectively forced to use the Windows ecosystem. Several of my favorite games are available on macOS/Linux, but it's like watching movies. You might watch Blazing Saddles and Evil Dead 2 on a regular basis, but you're also going to want some variety in there as well.

What the GP is saying though is that Microsoft is holding game franchises as XBox exclusives to try to slow their marketshare bleed. They are taking franchises that were formerly present (if delayed) on Windows such as Halo and using them to sell XBoxes.

Check the recent history of computing. They willingly botched many good standardization efforts and devalued many by throwing their industry weight around - all in the name of self-interest.

And oh, their software sucks. Sometimes it's kinda bizarre even how much their software sucks, bad engineering abound.

Have you tried updating Windows 7 recently?

They took over the world of computers and made people believe that computers suck and are boring, which they do when they run Windows.

They brainwashed so many corporations and governments to use their stupid solutions for every problem and plague tech people with incredible headache in the process.

It's even worse in the "developing" world, where every single comapny is like: "Oracle! Microsoft! Oracle! Microsoft!". You will never know till you experience it.

In bed with the NSA, telemetry, forced W10 migration, just off the top of my head.

That said, I do appreciate their recent strategy decisions. Lets hope at some point the two hemispheres of MS converge.

Microsoft being (possibly) the biggest 'partner' of the NSA is one of the worst aspects of this acquisition and underrepresented in these discussions here.

> Forced Windows 10 migration

Incorrect. Nagged, yes, but my Windows 7 machine that runs my Primera 4102 DVD duplicator still runs Windows 7 and will for as long as I own it. And it wasn't that hard to find the "don't nag me about upgrading ever again" option on Windows 7.

You may have missed a few news items and non-apologies over the last few years.

There was a peroid where interacting with (closing) the windows 10 upgrade popup caused an unexpected upgrade to windows 10, stop rewriting history.

How is "I was able to tell my machine to stop nagging me and not upgrade to Windows 10" rewriting history? I'll take the kudos that I have way-above-average skills with Windows if you want to bestow that on me, but I know of no cases not-involving confused users hitting something they should not have where a machine was upgraded without any user interaction at all. By all means: send me links to such stories if you have them and I will concede the point to you.

  - LinkedIn
  - Skype
  - Lies around Windows 10 semi-forced upgrade
  - Nokia
  - The hell that is Office365
  - Vermeer
  - Groove
  - Rare
  - Visio
  - Hotmail
  - FASA
  - Firefly

I don't mind their strategy from a business perspective, but from a human perspective I mind they have crushed the goodness out of so many companies they have acquired. It's analogous to the chinese cultural revolution, or if some 3rd rate florentine artist got to buy out Botticelli et al. just as they got started. I know this is not only Microsoft (Cisco, Google et al.) but MS are not innocent and don't deserve to have their slate wiped clean (yet)

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_mergers_and_acquisitio...

I guess it'll just take a lot longer for this generation to see MS as anything but embrace, extend, extinguish.

This. Very much this.

https://www.digitaltrends.com/computing/microsoft-requiring-...

https://tech.slashdot.org/story/18/06/03/0626246/microsoft-s...

I don't use any product from Microsoft. I understand Microsoft is for-profit, but there's no way they can get a single dime from me, and I don't want to become a second-class citizen. That's why I would be leaving.

>And... what has Microsoft done to you lately?

Skype.

Funny enough, I don't feel that way about Skype anymore. Yeah, Microsoft destroyed it, but, on the other hand, why did I even use it? Right, because there was nothing else back then, and Skype was "good enough". And everyone else was using it. Even though, honestly, it always was some buggy proprietary piece of shit, dragging all that legacy of the Delphi era into 201x. If anything, it may be even good it's not so dominant anymore, even though we still don't have anything decent to completely replace it.

Nokia too, although it didn’t affect people directly, as opposed to the series of ultrabad decisions on Skype. Acquisitions aren’t always successful with Microsoft.

That acquisition was almost 7 years ago under the old leadership.

So skype isn't shit any more?

You didn't say anything about that. I've never used it, so I don't know anything about its quality.

Which has recently gone even more steeply downhill now that they've tried to push React/Electron everywhere.

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