5 ms·

Everything you've listed is addressable by enterprise users in an AD environment. I.E., Microsoft's real customers. Using a copy of Windows 10 with no Cortana,

Everything you've listed is addressable by enterprise users in an AD environment. I.E., Microsoft's real customers. Using a copy of Windows 10 with no Cortana, Auto-updates, Groove, or Windows Defender right now.

jeevestobs 10y ago
Having that choice only be available to 'real' customers, while giving personal users no choice, is bad.
- ghostly_s 10y ago
  You've misread my comment if you think I'm defending the practice. Merely saying it's a long established standard practice for MS.
daveguy 10y ago
Yes. If you want that control, all you have to do is buy a subscription [0]. $7 per month isn't that much to be able to control your own computer is it? That's only $84 per year or $252 every 3 years -- it's practically a discount for buying an upgrade every 3 years! [0] http://www.computerworld.com/article/2867542/microsoft-touts-7-per-user-monthly-pricing-for-windows-subscriptions.html http://www.computerworld.com/article/2867542/microsoft-touts...
- CamperBob2 10y ago
  (Shrug) They'll just change the deal as soon as I sign up, like they always do.
- _xander 10y ago
  It comes with Office365 too! I'd totally buy this for the added control over home edition, but it looks like Microsoft only sells this license in bulk to big businesses in my region. Then again...it turns out that you can upgrade to enterprise without a valid key [1] and that there are no real penalties for doing this [2]. So, shrug, I guess they don't want my money - and I'm not going to use an OS that turns me into a mineable dataset. [1] http://www.howtogeek.com/250503/how-to-upgrade-to-windows-10-enterprise-without-reinstalling-windows/ http://www.howtogeek.com/250503/how-to-upgrade-to-windows-10... [2] http://www.howtogeek.com/244678/you-dont-need-a-product-key-to-install-and-use-windows-10/ http://www.howtogeek.com/244678/you-dont-need-a-product-key-...
  - cryptarch 10y ago
    Would you happen to have an up-to-date guide? The one you linked doesn't work in a fresh Win10 Home VM.
    - _xander 10y ago
      I don't unfortunately and I haven't got around to trying it yet. If you (or anyone else on HN) finds something that works, could you post the link here?
graycat 10y ago
What is "AD environment"? Sounds like maybe what I want. I want no updates or changes of any kind without my knowledge. Indeed, before any change, I want to backup the relevant boot partition so that I can restore it if any changes are harmful or doubtful. For Cortana, when I looked at it, everything it has I have a lot better with just my favorite programmable text editor and a few simple macros. Uh, to reply, I have to edit my post! So, here is my reply! My now very old and crude understanding is that Active Directory is a standard part of Windows Server and plays the role of essentially the old MIT system Kerberos for authentication. My concern is that ASAP I need to take my Web site software currently in alpha test and have it go live. For that, for maybe just a few, first users, I could use just my development computer running Windows 7 Professional. But, also on that computer I intend to have at least one bootable partition with Windows Server. So, with Windows Server, I could be running Microsoft's Active Directory. Fine with me. Then that means that somehow all my bootable partitions with Windows 7 or Windows Server will not get updates or changes without my explicit permission? Hope so. Or maybe your point is just that the automatic updates don't apply to Windows Server? I would believe so.
- tomswartz07 10y ago
  An AD environment refers to Active Directory; typically a setup used in large corporations with 100's of users and accounts. This is wayyyyy overkill for a home user.
- wonkaWonka 10y ago
  If you weren't familiar enough with Microsoft's products to immediately recognize that the acronym "AD" within the context of Microsoft anything, means Active Directory, then you are thousands of dollars, and possibly multiple years away from moving in that direction.
  - graycat 10y ago
    I know a lot of the fundamental concepts in computing, many from when they were nearly new. I knew nearly all the concepts long before Windows, 10, 8.1, 8, 7, Vista, XP, 2000, or NT. I didn't learn the concepts in the context of Microsoft or Windows. So, I learned the concepts before I ever saw any Microsoft acronyms. E.g., I first learned about Kerberos from one of the first papers about it, an article in Scientific American. I learned about RSA and public keys, of course, usable with Kerberos, near the beginning. I still have the source code for an early version of Kerberos. And I learned about and used authentication, capabilities, and access control lists back not too far from their origins in Multics. Sure, later IBM called some of that Resource Access Control Facility (RACF) -- saw some of that, too. So, at one point Microsoft in Windows Server wanted some authentication, capabilities, with encryption, etc. so borrowed Kerberos and got Active Directory. Fine. So far I've never seen even a single word of Microsoft's Active Directory documentation but likely already understand nearly all the main purposes and core ideas. For working with the actual code, I suspect that I can get the dozen or so operations I need with examples and documentation and, then, be okay on Active Directory. Uh, in a very significant sense, Microsoft and Windows are an example of the old biology ontogeny recapitulates phylogeny. That is, each organism as it develops from fertilization goes through stages that closely repeat how the species evolved. Well, as Windows grew from Windows 95 to Windows 10, it stayed close to the development of the core ideas in computing, e.g., multiple virtual memory, demand paged, protected, with gate segments, etc., embedded operating systems with an hierarchical file system. They stayed close to the ideas in the Mach kernel. And they are staying close to the ideas in virtual machine. Some of the hardware ideas include instruction caches, data caches, multi-way set associative caches, cache invalidates, page-segment tables, address translation look aside buffers, micro-code, instruction pipelines, speculative execution, out of order execution, parallel execution, etc. I understood all of those well long before I ever touched a PC. I have a friend with a background a little less than mine who got good with Windows Server, Active Directory, Exchange, running an e-mail server, etc. all fairly quickly. So can I. There is an issue: I'm trying to be successful with my startup. For that, I need to learn some about computing. Okay. But I'm not trying to be a broadly competent computer professional. The difference is, I just want to know enough for my startup and am not trying to know enough for everything everyone else might encounter. So, a good computer professional can be eager to learn everything in sight (early in my career, I did a lot of that). But as a startup entrepreneur, I want to minimize how much I learn. Significant difference. Besides, I try to avoid acronyms.
aquadrop 10y ago
I just don't understand what they gain by pissing off power users. Set whatever defaults you want, but let me control when I want it.
- rasz_pl 10y ago
  Power users find ways around that (O&O ShutUp10, Windows10ReTweaker, etc), MS is mostly pissing off semi competent lazy users

jeevestobs 10y ago

Having that choice only be available to 'real' customers, while giving personal users no choice, is bad.

ghostly_s 10y ago
You've misread my comment if you think I'm defending the practice. Merely saying it's a long established standard practice for MS.

daveguy 10y ago

Yes. If you want that control, all you have to do is buy a subscription [0]. $7 per month isn't that much to be able to control your own computer is it? That's only $84 per year or $252 every 3 years -- it's practically a discount for buying an upgrade every 3 years! [0] http://www.computerworld.com/article/2867542/microsoft-touts-7-per-user-monthly-pricing-for-windows-subscriptions.html http://www.computerworld.com/article/2867542/microsoft-touts...

CamperBob2 10y ago
(Shrug) They'll just change the deal as soon as I sign up, like they always do.
_xander 10y ago
It comes with Office365 too! I'd totally buy this for the added control over home edition, but it looks like Microsoft only sells this license in bulk to big businesses in my region. Then again...it turns out that you can upgrade to enterprise without a valid key [1] and that there are no real penalties for doing this [2]. So, shrug, I guess they don't want my money - and I'm not going to use an OS that turns me into a mineable dataset. [1] http://www.howtogeek.com/250503/how-to-upgrade-to-windows-10-enterprise-without-reinstalling-windows/ http://www.howtogeek.com/250503/how-to-upgrade-to-windows-10... [2] http://www.howtogeek.com/244678/you-dont-need-a-product-key-to-install-and-use-windows-10/ http://www.howtogeek.com/244678/you-dont-need-a-product-key-...
- cryptarch 10y ago
  Would you happen to have an up-to-date guide? The one you linked doesn't work in a fresh Win10 Home VM.
  - _xander 10y ago
    I don't unfortunately and I haven't got around to trying it yet. If you (or anyone else on HN) finds something that works, could you post the link here?

graycat 10y ago

What is "AD environment"? Sounds like maybe what I want. I want no updates or changes of any kind without my knowledge. Indeed, before any change, I want to backup the relevant boot partition so that I can restore it if any changes are harmful or doubtful. For Cortana, when I looked at it, everything it has I have a lot better with just my favorite programmable text editor and a few simple macros. Uh, to reply, I have to edit my post! So, here is my reply! My now very old and crude understanding is that Active Directory is a standard part of Windows Server and plays the role of essentially the old MIT system Kerberos for authentication. My concern is that ASAP I need to take my Web site software currently in alpha test and have it go live. For that, for maybe just a few, first users, I could use just my development computer running Windows 7 Professional. But, also on that computer I intend to have at least one bootable partition with Windows Server. So, with Windows Server, I could be running Microsoft's Active Directory. Fine with me. Then that means that somehow all my bootable partitions with Windows 7 or Windows Server will not get updates or changes without my explicit permission? Hope so. Or maybe your point is just that the automatic updates don't apply to Windows Server? I would believe so.

tomswartz07 10y ago
An AD environment refers to Active Directory; typically a setup used in large corporations with 100's of users and accounts. This is wayyyyy overkill for a home user.
wonkaWonka 10y ago
If you weren't familiar enough with Microsoft's products to immediately recognize that the acronym "AD" within the context of Microsoft anything, means Active Directory, then you are thousands of dollars, and possibly multiple years away from moving in that direction.
- graycat 10y ago
  I know a lot of the fundamental concepts in computing, many from when they were nearly new. I knew nearly all the concepts long before Windows, 10, 8.1, 8, 7, Vista, XP, 2000, or NT. I didn't learn the concepts in the context of Microsoft or Windows. So, I learned the concepts before I ever saw any Microsoft acronyms. E.g., I first learned about Kerberos from one of the first papers about it, an article in Scientific American. I learned about RSA and public keys, of course, usable with Kerberos, near the beginning. I still have the source code for an early version of Kerberos. And I learned about and used authentication, capabilities, and access control lists back not too far from their origins in Multics. Sure, later IBM called some of that Resource Access Control Facility (RACF) -- saw some of that, too. So, at one point Microsoft in Windows Server wanted some authentication, capabilities, with encryption, etc. so borrowed Kerberos and got Active Directory. Fine. So far I've never seen even a single word of Microsoft's Active Directory documentation but likely already understand nearly all the main purposes and core ideas. For working with the actual code, I suspect that I can get the dozen or so operations I need with examples and documentation and, then, be okay on Active Directory. Uh, in a very significant sense, Microsoft and Windows are an example of the old biology ontogeny recapitulates phylogeny. That is, each organism as it develops from fertilization goes through stages that closely repeat how the species evolved. Well, as Windows grew from Windows 95 to Windows 10, it stayed close to the development of the core ideas in computing, e.g., multiple virtual memory, demand paged, protected, with gate segments, etc., embedded operating systems with an hierarchical file system. They stayed close to the ideas in the Mach kernel. And they are staying close to the ideas in virtual machine. Some of the hardware ideas include instruction caches, data caches, multi-way set associative caches, cache invalidates, page-segment tables, address translation look aside buffers, micro-code, instruction pipelines, speculative execution, out of order execution, parallel execution, etc. I understood all of those well long before I ever touched a PC. I have a friend with a background a little less than mine who got good with Windows Server, Active Directory, Exchange, running an e-mail server, etc. all fairly quickly. So can I. There is an issue: I'm trying to be successful with my startup. For that, I need to learn some about computing. Okay. But I'm not trying to be a broadly competent computer professional. The difference is, I just want to know enough for my startup and am not trying to know enough for everything everyone else might encounter. So, a good computer professional can be eager to learn everything in sight (early in my career, I did a lot of that). But as a startup entrepreneur, I want to minimize how much I learn. Significant difference. Besides, I try to avoid acronyms.

aquadrop 10y ago

I just don't understand what they gain by pissing off power users. Set whatever defaults you want, but let me control when I want it.

rasz_pl 10y ago
Power users find ways around that (O&O ShutUp10, Windows10ReTweaker, etc), MS is mostly pissing off semi competent lazy users