Warning from Microsoft

[MurphOnMillerAve]

WARNING on NBC News , last night, which told people not to install Windows10, October Update, Version1809. The warning originated with Microsoft, saying, "it had paused distributing Windows10 Update Version," due to it taking people's photos and files.
Murph

[G3750]

WARNING on NBC News , last night, which told people not to install Windows10, October Update, Version1809. The warning originated with Microsoft, saying, "it had paused distributing Windows10 Update Version," due to it taking people's photos and files.
Murph

Gotta love it. I've been in the software industry for 36 years. How the f*** do you let a defect like that get all the way to the customer without detecting it?

Windows 10 has (allegedly) undergone beta testing. Who's doing the testing - chimpanzees?????

Of course, MTH has the same philosophy: Rush the product into production, let the customer find the bugs, and fix on failure.

George

[healey36]

It's not just the software industry:

Toyota recalls 2.4 million Prius hybrids that could stall while driving
https://www.usatoday.com/story/money/cars/2018/10/05/toyota-prius-recall/1532120002/

[G3750]

It's not just the software industry:

Toyota recalls 2.4 million Prius hybrids that could stall while driving
https://www.usatoday.com/story/money/cars/2018/10/05/toyota-prius-recall/1532120002/

That's true, Paul. However, making tangible things has always led to overall better quality. The above example notwithstanding, in general the automobile industry has improved over the years. Software, unfortunately, has been perceived (by its makers) as different. I worked in the Software Process and in the Software Risk Management programs at the Software Engineering Institute and the lessons about quality seem, at times, to be temporary or badly learned.

Microsoft, in my opinion, has been one of the worst offenders over the years. Many of their products are badly designed or the development process is focused on reaching a "drop-dead" code freeze date with the most features. Quality assurance or testing is a "throw it over the wall" approach. There are still bugs in Microsoft Word related to numbering that have survived 20 some years.

George

[Rufus T. Firefly]

WARNING on NBC News , last night, which told people not to install Windows10, October Update, Version1809. The warning originated with Microsoft, saying, "it had paused distributing Windows10 Update Version," due to it taking people's photos and files.
Murph

Gotta love it. I've been in the software industry for 36 years. How the f*** do you let a defect like that get all the way to the customer without detecting it?

Windows 10 has (allegedly) undergone beta testing. Who's doing the testing - chimpanzees?????

Nothing new here.......and why I'm perfectly happy still using Win 7 which as near as I can tell was the last decent OS from MS, although it did kill my use of 1 bit of software that has justified my keeping 1 XP laptop still alive on the shelf. I'm not buying a $3k yearly license when the old version does all I need.

......due to it taking people's photos and files.

Taking them where?

[MurphOnMillerAve]

Their point seemed to be the taking from, not so much the taking to wherever (?)

[G3750]

......due to it taking people's photos and files.

Taking them where?

Oblivion.

George

[MYmoo]

More comments on another forum,
https://askbobrankin.com/grab_october_windows_10_update_now_or_wait.html
about WIN 10 ver.1809 update.

Newer versions not working (well) with older versions dates back to when Steve and Bill were doing the programming.

[rogruth]

Please explain to me,who knows little about computers and those that won't admit they don't understand it all, Should we update our programs or not?
Are there some that need to be and some that shouldn't? How do we know?

[MurphOnMillerAve]

Also, if I may ask, yesterday, when I went to shut-down the computer by clicking on the Windows (?) symbol in the far lower left corner of my screen, and then went to click on the "Power" designation, it said, which I have seen many times previously, words to the effect of, "Shutdown and restart" or "Update and restart," etc. (if I am recalling correctly.) Please do not tell me this is the same procedure as the warning I posted information on here (!)

[Rufus T. Firefly]

......due to it taking people's photos and files.

Taking them where?

Oblivion.

George

Lovely, so not "taking" as much as deleting. Speaks strongly to the need that all should be regularly performing their back-up regimens

[G3750]

Taking them where?

Oblivion.

George

Lovely, so not "taking" as much as deleting. Speaks strongly to the need that all should be regularly performing their back-up regimens

Rufus, that's my interpretation. I don't really know what Windows 10 is doing with files. I've seen situations where files "disappear", which indicates that the file system has lost the header information or the "address" of the file. Sometimes these can be recovered, but that requires a piece of software that can search the disk's cylinders and tracks, interpret the raw data, and reconstruct the header. Effectively, that's what an Undelete operation does, but they aren't foolproof.

As to backing up regularly, that's a necessity. But what most people don't do (and I'm guilty of it as well because it takes effort) is to test your back up with a restore.

George

[Rufus T. Firefly]

As to backing up regularly, that's a necessity. But what most people don't do (and I'm guilty of it as well because it takes effort) is to test your back up with a restore.

My files are off on several external drives that only get plugged into the computer for doing back-ups.

I have had 1 hard drive fail in 20 years, and a few hours later with a new drive installed - all the files were just copied over.

[chuck]

Make sure that anything you consider important is backed up somewhere, thumb drives, optical media, cloud. Be prepared by having restore images of the OS/Software available and the downtime to do a reload in case things go sideways. Availability of an alternate device (tablet/phone/) is probably the ultimate security blanket, particularly if you use cloud storage for email/web.

ALL of the vendors are making updates less of an option, especially as far as security patches are concerned. Patches to the OS for security reasons often lead to patches to programs to deal with those security patches.

It's also important that users understand that the longer you wait to install these patches, it's more likely that they will fail (there is some degree of precedence/interlock) and if you wait too long the failure could become catastrophic, aka only way to fix it is to wipe and reload.

Really not the answer you were hoping for "be prepared" is the best I can offer. Personally, I would recommend waiting a few days/weeks to see how bad things go and evaluating the health of your system before doing any patches (aka check the firmware, run a disk sanity check, and run a deep AV scan).

[Rufus T. Firefly]

Make sure that anything you consider important is backed up somewhere, thumb drives, optical media, cloud.

Start there and always be there. I have zero trust of the cloud having had to deal with it in the Gov't - it was totally unreliable.

Really not the answer you were hoping for "be prepared" is the best I can offer. Personally, I would recommend waiting a few days/weeks to see how bad things go and evaluating the health of your system before doing any patches (aka check the firmware, run a disk sanity check, and run a deep AV scan).

Just reality these days and for the foreseeable future.