{"id":10713,"date":"2017-12-05T06:30:07","date_gmt":"2017-12-05T14:30:07","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.palada.net\/index.php\/2017\/12\/05\/news-4485\/"},"modified":"2017-12-05T06:30:07","modified_gmt":"2017-12-05T14:30:07","slug":"news-4485","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.palada.net\/index.php\/2017\/12\/05\/news-4485\/","title":{"rendered":"Thanks, Microsoft, but I\u2019m still saying no to Windows 10"},"content":{"rendered":"

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Credit to Author: Steven J. Vaughan-Nichols| Date: Tue, 05 Dec 2017 05:26:00 -0800<\/strong><\/p>\n

I\u2019ve been hearing a lot from friends recently about how Windows 10 is the best Windows ever and people would be stupid not to switch. These being friends, I don\u2019t want to be rude, but \u2014 cough, ahem \u2014 I don\u2019t buy it.<\/p>\n

Is security your No. 1 concern? Well, Windows 10 is no more secure than Windows 7 \u2014 which is to say it is a profoundly insecure operating system. There have been a lot of serious Windows security patches in the last year, and Windows 10 had all the same problems as Windows 7.<\/p>\n

True, Windows didn\u2019t have anything as bad as macOS\u2019s unbelievably stupid \u201cLet anyone log in as the administrator\u201d security hole<\/a>, but just because Microsoft didn\u2019t botch things as badly as Apple did doesn\u2019t get it off the hook. I mean, what do you call it when Microsoft fixes security holes in Windows 10 that it doesn\u2019t patch in Windows 7<\/a>? I call it really, really stupid.<\/p>\n

Yeah, I know, not patching Win7 is consistent with Microsoft\u2019s desire to shove everyone into Windows 10 ASAP<\/a>, but come on! The last I checked, Windows 7 was supposed to keep getting security patches until Jan. 14, 2020.<\/p>\n

I also wouldn\u2019t care to be \u201cupgraded\u201d against my will, as happened to Windows 10 users who had toggled what they needed to toggle to tell Microsoft, \u201cPlease don\u2019t move me from Windows 10 1703, Windows 10 Fall Update, to 1709, Fall Creators Update.\u201d As my colleague Woody Leonhard<\/a> points out, this happened via Windows Update with the November patches, when there were \u201cso many issues with this month\u2019s security patches<\/a> that it\u2019s hard to decide where to begin.\u201d<\/p>\n

By the way, I want it on record that I don\u2019t want Windows 10\u2019s rapid release cadence, with its short-lived support timelines<\/a>. Two major upgrades \u2014 or service patches, as I still think of them \u2014 a year is one too many. I can\u2019t make sure everything works with a significant update every six months. I don\u2019t know anyone who can.<\/p>\n

As for the November patches, the sheer number of problems<\/a> that Microsoft admitted to fixing was imposing \u2014 almost two dozen of them. I guess Microsoft can\u2019t keep up this twice-a-year pace either. The problems ranged from the minor (\u201cAttempting to clean temporary files on the Windows Phone results in the error code \u201cE_FAIL\u201d) to the thoroughly annoying (\u201cModern applications built using JavaScript may fail to initialize\u201d) to the \u201cpull out your hair and scream, \u2018No! No!! NO!!!\u2019\u201d bad (a black screen appears with only a cursor, and you must reboot in order to log in successfully).<\/p>\n

Then there were such fun, fun, fun things as the patches that broke Epson dot matrix printers. Now, you may think dot matrix printers vanished with the arrival of laser printers. Nope. They\u2019re still used in businesses that need multiple copies of a printed document \u2014 point-of-sale terminals, for example. Believe it or not, Epson is still selling an entire line of new dot matrix <\/a>printers. Someone should fax Microsoft the news!<\/p>\n

As for Windows 10\u2019s security features, some of those don\u2019t look so good. Recently, Will Dormann of Carnegie Mellon University\u2019s CERT Coordination Center (CERT\/CC)<\/a> tweeted that Windows 10\u2019s implementation of address space layout randomization (ASLR) as a security measure is \u201cessentially worthless.\u201d<\/a> Dormann followed this up with a CERT security advisory. That\u2019s the equivalent of a four-alarm fire in security circles.<\/p>\n

Microsoft responded by claiming that what Dormann had spotted wasn\u2019t really a security problem at all. \u201cThe configuration issue is not a vulnerability<\/a>, does not create additional risk, and does not weaken the existing security posture of applications.\u201d But, later in the document, the Windows programming team admitted, \u201cCERT\/CC did identify an issue with the configuration interface of Windows Defender Exploit Guard (WDEG) that currently prevents system-wide enablement of bottom-up randomization.\u201d Eventually, Microsoft will patch this. In the meantime, it gave us some workarounds.<\/p>\n

What it all adds up to is that, while Windows 10 is certainly a good operating system, it\u2019s far from great. For the time being, I\u2019m sticking with Windows 7 on my Windows machines, and I recommend you do too. I know what to expect from Windows 7, but with Windows 10, every new forced update is a roll of the dice.<\/p>\n

http:\/\/www.computerworld.com\/category\/security\/index.rss<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

<\/p>\n

Credit to Author: Steven J. Vaughan-Nichols| Date: Tue, 05 Dec 2017 05:26:00 -0800<\/strong><\/p>\n

\n
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I\u2019ve been hearing a lot from friends recently about how Windows 10 is the best Windows ever and people would be stupid not to switch. These being friends, I don\u2019t want to be rude, but \u2014 cough, ahem \u2014 I don\u2019t buy it.<\/p>\n

Is security your No. 1 concern? Well, Windows 10 is no more secure than Windows 7 \u2014 which is to say it is a profoundly insecure operating system. There have been a lot of serious Windows security patches in the last year, and Windows 10 had all the same problems as Windows 7.<\/p>\n

True, Windows didn\u2019t have anything as bad as macOS\u2019s unbelievably stupid \u201cLet anyone log in as the administrator\u201d security hole<\/a>, but just because Microsoft didn\u2019t botch things as badly as Apple did doesn\u2019t get it off the hook. I mean, what do you call it when Microsoft fixes security holes in Windows 10 that it doesn\u2019t patch in Windows 7<\/a>? I call it really, really stupid.<\/p>\n

To read this article in full, please click here<\/a><\/p>\n<\/section>\n<\/article>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"colormag_page_container_layout":"default_layout","colormag_page_sidebar_layout":"default_layout","footnotes":""},"categories":[11062,10643],"tags":[714,10761],"class_list":["post-10713","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-computerworld","category-independent","tag-security","tag-windows-10"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.palada.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10713","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.palada.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.palada.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.palada.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.palada.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=10713"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/www.palada.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10713\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.palada.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=10713"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.palada.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=10713"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.palada.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=10713"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}