29 Sept 2016

And Then 10 Again...

Further to my big boy PC updating to Windows 10 Anniversary Edition, and me saying it’d left my privacy settings alone, yesterday was the turn of my laptop to do the bizz and thus I need to post an update.

To kick-off, for those of you yet to go through the process, make a note of your Microsoft password. Hay, Bill, I’m guessing you employ some of the best coding kiddies in the world so how about one of ‘em actually thinking about the end users. Why? Most folk keep their passwords in a dedicated log-in program or an encrypted word file right? Where is this kept? Kitchen cupboard? Oh! Wait! On the computer of course!

With that in mind, is it beyond the grasp of a coder to produce a line of text along the lines of, ‘Before clicking Install, make a note of your Microsoft password as you’ll be asked for it, first rattle out o’ the box, on completion of install.’ How hard would that be?

After one hour forty I got the ‘Let’s Start’ message and we were off to the home screen. Bill, your boys need to edit ‘Let’s Start’ as it was another twenty minutes before the task bar appeared and I could do anything. Twenty minutes of just a dead cursor that changed to one of they little spiny wheelie dealies when dragged to where the task bar should be and me wondering what’d gone wrong.

Anyhoo, we got there and I decided to dig a little deeper through the Privacy settings this time and checked out Background Apps and found they were all happily talking to the mother ship and beyond.

While shutting them down I noticed many Apps I’d never seen before so went to the start menu, a place I rarely go as I use Truelaunch Bar, and what do you know. Many, many new, unasked for, Apps had been sneaked in with the update. Bill, you’re a very, very naughty boy. Oh, and my camera and mic were on by default. Hi everyone, how ya doin’?

With that sorted, I set a restore point, ensured all I needed was running okay and started a disk clean-up.

Windows is arguably the most widely used operating system and, as stated above, Microsoft must employ the best boys in the business so it came as a bit of a surprise during the clean-up to be warned NOT to delete a bunch of files in case something goes wrong with Windows. It’s an update Bill, an update; and you need me to keep thirty two Gig of ‘just in case’ files? Ah shacks ma heed.

Quote;  Martin Fowler.

“Any fool can write code that a computer can understand. Good programmers write code that humans can understand.”

            Marvin Minsky.

“It’s ridiculous to live 100 years and only be able to remember 30 million bytes.  You know, less than a compact disc.  The human condition is really becoming more obsolete every minute.”

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