Author Topic: Microsoft broke into my office and vandalized my work!!  (Read 11220 times)

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Offline IanB

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Re: Microsoft broke into my office and vandalized my work!!
« Reply #50 on: November 12, 2021, 03:36:30 am »
I'm not a fan of the level of computer integration in Teslas, but as far as I know it won't ever just force you to update at whatever random time it sees fit.

Doesn't it do automatic updates overnight?
 

Offline james_s

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Re: Microsoft broke into my office and vandalized my work!!
« Reply #51 on: November 12, 2021, 03:52:52 am »
Doesn't it do automatic updates overnight?

Not that I've seen. It lets you know there's an update available and you can choose to install it. There might be a way to have it automatically update overnight but I sure wouldn't set it to do that, it would be a disaster if you had an emergency and needed to drive somebody to the hospital or something late at night.
 

Offline james_s

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Re: Microsoft broke into my office and vandalized my work!!
« Reply #52 on: November 12, 2021, 03:55:12 am »
On the other hand, my 1988 Volvo has 3 ECUs (Fuel, ignition & ABS). <shrug>

And they are completely independent, aside from an analog engine load signal from the ECU to the ignition box.
 

Offline BradC

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Re: Microsoft broke into my office and vandalized my work!!
« Reply #53 on: November 12, 2021, 05:28:35 am »
And they are completely independent, aside from an analog engine load signal from the ECU to the ignition box.

Actually, not quite. Ign sends timing info to the FI and a separate urgent "please richen the mix, I can't stop it knocking" signal, and the FI sends a PWM load signal to the FI. Regardless, if either die then it's time to get out and push. Oh, and in fact the ABS ECU sends a vehicle speed signal to the FI also and odd things happen if that goes missing.

Easy to fix with hand tools and a worst case a CRO for diagnosis, unlike the Antichrist which needs a separate diagnostic computer just to figure out which of the 9 high speed CAN BUS ECUs is actually causing the cascade fault putting the thing into limp mode.
 

Offline james_s

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Re: Microsoft broke into my office and vandalized my work!!
« Reply #54 on: November 12, 2021, 05:43:38 am »
Actually, not quite. Ign sends timing info to the FI and a separate urgent "please richen the mix, I can't stop it knocking" signal, and the FI sends a PWM load signal to the FI. Regardless, if either die then it's time to get out and push. Oh, and in fact the ABS ECU sends a vehicle speed signal to the FI also and odd things happen if that goes missing.

Easy to fix with hand tools and a worst case a CRO for diagnosis, unlike the Antichrist which needs a separate diagnostic computer just to figure out which of the 9 high speed CAN BUS ECUs is actually causing the cascade fault putting the thing into limp mode.

I forgot about the enrichment signal, in most cases that shouldn't really be active though, especially the non-turbo models, I've tinkered with a lot of older Volvos and I've only ever encountered pinging on the turbos. I had the ABS relay fail once which turned on the warning light in the cluster but I don't recall it causing any problems with drivability for the couple of days before I found the relay and fixed it. That was a 1987 740 which was an odd duck in that it had the optional ABS which was rare that year, but unlike all later models the ABS system was hidden under the trunk bottom in the well behind the right rear wheel, took me a while to figure out where it was. No special tools needed to work on it, but on the flip side the LH 2.2 system had no built in diagnostics at all.

The hardest to track down problem I ever had with that car was an occasional misfire under boost only in hot weather. I finally figured out it was bad spark plug wires, it was arcing around the plug boots when they were hot and the higher cylinder pressure under boost resulted in a higher voltage across the spark plugs.

This is totally off topic for the thread though.
 

Offline Berni

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Re: Microsoft broke into my office and vandalized my work!!
« Reply #55 on: November 12, 2021, 06:20:02 am »
Things in cars tend to run raw C or a simple RTOS, but we are clearly moving away from that.

For example lot of modern cars have a digital dash now and they have a boot time. In my 2016 Volvo they clearly tried to mask the boot process of the dash by playing back a fancy pants animation early in the boot sequence that animates in some of the dial outlines before fading into the proper application at the end once its ready to go. They didn't even try to mask the boot up time of the center console, it just shows a logo during the boot process. At least mine doesn't yet have a ridiculous touchscreen that is a major pain to use while driving.

On top of all that all the fancy modern graphical menus in cars are always poorly optimized for performance. On top of that insult to injury is that they use plenty of animated transitions where i can clearly see the whole UI is being drawn at only about 15fps. But okay i can look past a choppy animation, what is worse about this is that such a slow framerate causes a very noticeable delay from your button press to the menu moving on screen. This makes menu navigation feel really slow and clumsy since if i go too fast i will overshoot menu items. You only had to write your software for 1 SIGNLE piece of hardware for gods sake, surely it is not that hard to get it running at 60fps even if that means dropping some of the eye candy. I seen more responsive displays on a microwave oven.
 

Offline james_s

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Re: Microsoft broke into my office and vandalized my work!!
« Reply #56 on: November 12, 2021, 06:43:09 am »
I really think that touchscreens in cars should be illegal, they are defective by design and not fit for purpose. My car has physical switches that are laid out logically and the switches and knobs are all different shapes depending on function. I can operate any of them completely by feel without ever taking my eyes off the road at all. That is impossible to do with a touchscreen, there is no tactile feedback at all, you cannot operate it without looking at it. Allowing car makers to use a touchscreen on the dash of a car is criminally negligent.
 
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Offline BrianHG

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Re: Microsoft broke into my office and vandalized my work!!
« Reply #57 on: November 12, 2021, 06:55:50 am »
I really think that touchscreens in cars should be illegal, they are defective by design and not fit for purpose. My car has physical switches that are laid out logically and the switches and knobs are all different shapes depending on function. I can operate any of them completely by feel without ever taking my eyes off the road at all. That is impossible to do with a touchscreen, there is no tactile feedback at all, you cannot operate it without looking at it. Allowing car makers to use a touchscreen on the dash of a car is criminally negligent.
1 key reason I will never buy a Tesla.
 

Offline james_s

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Re: Microsoft broke into my office and vandalized my work!!
« Reply #58 on: November 12, 2021, 08:37:10 am »
1 key reason I will never buy a Tesla.

It certainly makes me less likely to, but the performance is just unreal. The higher spec model 3's will do 0-60 in under 3 seconds, that's exotic supercar territory. There isn't much on the road that can beat it other than a crotch rocket sportbike.
 

Offline SparkyFX

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Re: Microsoft broke into my office and vandalized my work!!
« Reply #59 on: November 12, 2021, 11:10:48 am »
+1 for permanent victims of the group policy... just that i can't change mine at work.

it would be a disaster if you had an emergency and needed to drive somebody to the hospital or something late at night.
That's the type of reason that separates consumer electronics from road traffic. Just looking at the upsides makes some people forget that they come at a cost.

I know vehicles have computers somewhere ... under the seat perhaps. Does anyone know if it has an "OS" or is it a glorified microcontroller? I can't recall ever having to reboot my Subaru.  :-DD
Most people can't tell apart the software running on the radio from the rest.
It's a network of networks of controllers and processors that use strictly defined communication protocols, which means state machines run distributed over several nodes. This architecture usually works, until it is the supply voltage, a state needs to be consistent/persistent but is not or something very important broke. Then there are more fault tolerant architectures than others.
Support your local planet.
 

Offline Berni

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Re: Microsoft broke into my office and vandalized my work!!
« Reply #60 on: November 12, 2021, 11:50:09 am »
1 key reason I will never buy a Tesla.

The problem is that other car manufacturers also look at Tesla and copy the idea.

Dad has a more modern 2020 Volvo and it also went to the big touchscreen and minimal physical buttons. For example the only way to adjust the climate control is using the touchscreen. Same for heated seats. I think among the things that have a physical button is the hazzard lights, window defroster, volume up/down and play pause, along with a home button (that puts you into the main menu similar to a iphone). Yet they dedicate significant surface area down lower on the center console for a silly start button that you actually turn 1/8 turn to start rather than just push and some fancy large scroll wheel for selecting the drive mode between eco/normal/sport (That also takes up the whole center console screen with a menu when you spin it, has a fixed timeout before it hides, and always defaults to normal drive mode on start rather that remembering the setting.

A minor detail is also that heated seats default to off when starting the car. While in my one generation older Volvo has a dedicated soft button for heated seats. Not only does it remember what setting you left it on, but also upon a cold start the seats are set to max power for 1 minute to get them up to temperature, then reduces down to the actual setting. So i just set it to the minimum 1/3 power and i leave it there for the whole winter, getting my seat nicely up to temperature when i get in without me having to do anything other than just start the car.

This sort of stupid form over function keeps becoming more prevalent these days. Both in cars and modern software more effort is put into making it look sleek and less effort put into making the features actually useful. Win 8, Win 10 and upwards are breaking Microsofts own UI design rules that they established back in Win 3.1 and ware followed all the way to Win 7. All just to make Win 10 look more modern and sleek while confusing older windows users.
 
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Offline IDEngineer

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Re: Microsoft broke into my office and vandalized my work!!
« Reply #61 on: November 12, 2021, 04:06:46 pm »
Run Win7 everywhere. Problem solved.
 
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Offline madires

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Re: Microsoft broke into my office and vandalized my work!!
« Reply #62 on: November 12, 2021, 04:27:49 pm »
But that implies that you have either paid support (just a short term solution) or don't connect that PC to any network with internet access.
 

Offline SiliconWizard

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Re: Microsoft broke into my office and vandalized my work!!
« Reply #63 on: November 12, 2021, 05:19:01 pm »
But that implies that you have either paid support (just a short term solution) or don't connect that PC to any network with internet access.

Oh really.
 

Offline james_s

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Re: Microsoft broke into my office and vandalized my work!!
« Reply #64 on: November 12, 2021, 10:42:37 pm »
But that implies that you have either paid support (just a short term solution) or don't connect that PC to any network with internet access.

Support? I've never used it. I turned Windows update of completely back around 2015 and never looked back. It's connected to the internet and I use it every day, I've ignored all of the "sky is falling" Chicken Littles for years and so far so good. I have an old XP system that I use occasionally for stuff that needs it, also connected to the internet. I'm pretty careful about what I do, my whole network is behind a firewall/NAT and I keep a pretty close eye on traffic. I know a lot of people with fully modern updated systems who have been infected by things despite being up to date, and I firmly believe that it is mostly down to user behavior, you can't patch the user. When the behavior of modern software is virtually indistinguishable from that of malware and viruses I'll take my chances.
 

Offline james_s

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Re: Microsoft broke into my office and vandalized my work!!
« Reply #65 on: November 12, 2021, 10:49:00 pm »
The problem is that other car manufacturers also look at Tesla and copy the idea.

Dad has a more modern 2020 Volvo and it also went to the big touchscreen and minimal physical buttons. For example the only way to adjust the climate control is using the touchscreen. Same for heated seats. I think among the things that have a physical button is the hazzard lights, window defroster, volume up/down and play pause, along with a home button (that puts you into the main menu similar to a iphone). Yet they dedicate significant surface area down lower on the center console for a silly start button that you actually turn 1/8 turn to start rather than just push and some fancy large scroll wheel for selecting the drive mode between eco/normal/sport (That also takes up the whole center console screen with a menu when you spin it, has a fixed timeout before it hides, and always defaults to normal drive mode on start rather that remembering the setting.

Volvo died years ago and exists now in name only. I'll keep my 1990 740 as long as I possibly can, the 850s are also lovely cars and exemplify what Volvo once was, my mom has a 1996 that is a fantastic car. I would never buy one of the current models, I see nothing of the Volvo heritage in any of them. They started turning into bloated luxury cars in the late 90s and turned completely away from the focus on extremely practical, rugged, long lasting and safe cars that they were legendary for making. For many years most of the outdoorsy types around here all had Volvos, campgrounds and parking lots at the hiking trails were crawling with them. Now that entire market has been handed to Subaru for some years.
 

Offline SiliconWizard

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Re: Microsoft broke into my office and vandalized my work!!
« Reply #66 on: November 13, 2021, 12:09:33 am »
But that implies that you have either paid support (just a short term solution) or don't connect that PC to any network with internet access.

Support? I've never used it. I turned Windows update of completely back around 2015 and never looked back. It's connected to the internet and I use it every day, I've ignored all of the "sky is falling" Chicken Littles for years and so far so good. I have an old XP system that I use occasionally for stuff that needs it, also connected to the internet. I'm pretty careful about what I do, my whole network is behind a firewall/NAT and I keep a pretty close eye on traffic. I know a lot of people with fully modern updated systems who have been infected by things despite being up to date, and I firmly believe that it is mostly down to user behavior, you can't patch the user. When the behavior of modern software is virtually indistinguishable from that of malware and viruses I'll take my chances.

I have applied most updates myself on Win 7, but couldn't care less about them having stopped. If you half know what you're doing, there nothing much to worry about. My network is behind a decent router with firewall, I always check everything I download... Never had a single issue for as long as I can remember.

And occasional fuck-ups on Windows (especially 10) updates have given people signficant grief too. Pick your poison.

Now for less tech-inclined people, that would be another story of course. If you must consider computers for your kids, for instance, that's a different approach!

But if you're in the context of a company, especially one with an IT service, you will have no problem paying for support, and will probably do so anyway if you have a good reason for sticking with an older version of Windows. In this context, the IT manager has responsabilities for the whole company and a bunch of employees using machines in who knows what way. Completely different environment.
 

Offline David Hess

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Re: Microsoft broke into my office and vandalized my work!!
« Reply #67 on: November 13, 2021, 01:45:54 am »
The problem is that other car manufacturers also look at Tesla and copy the idea.

Car manufacturers copied the stupid monostable shifter which looks like a shifter that indicates state, but does not and operates completely differently, leading to accidents, deaths, and lawsuits.
 
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Offline MrMobodies

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Re: Microsoft broke into my office and vandalized my work!!
« Reply #68 on: November 13, 2021, 03:05:32 am »
I had to go through a lot of aggravation to deal with this problem.

Now I got it the way I want. I can turn on and off USCORE service so it don't automatically start. I have taken care of Task scheduler because USOCORE recreates the keys and denies the administrator and all other accounts access. So note down what is in  it c:\windows\system32\tasks\microsoft\UpdateOrchester  (with the service off), set inherit and set permission to do so and then delete the entries and set the SYSTEM account write permission to deny. do the same in registry, you'd need to find the task noted down, delete the values but keep the keeps and this time deny not "system" but TrustedInstaller access to them. Also another service that turns the update on as well Waasmedic.


I use to loose my temper when I discovered this behaviour upon I finding an Acer down the skip in 2019 preloaded with Windows 10 Pro.

Now I just use Windows 10 Enterprise LTSC 2019 from a disk image with everything set in the way I want so I can copy it and I always trying to improve it from time to time when I discover something that I don't like.

I think MSpaint is something I am trying to sort out now. I am looking to either replace it with a previous version that won't do that or remove it find something else as it has this message that soon it will disappear one day but will be available in  the "app store".

No no no no no!      I do not want "install a stupid app on your pc!" just to use something so basic and bundled for around three decades?
« Last Edit: November 13, 2021, 03:14:59 am by MrMobodies »
 

Offline james_s

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Re: Microsoft broke into my office and vandalized my work!!
« Reply #69 on: November 13, 2021, 03:57:10 am »
Now for less tech-inclined people, that would be another story of course. If you must consider computers for your kids, for instance, that's a different approach!

But if you're in the context of a company, especially one with an IT service, you will have no problem paying for support, and will probably do so anyway if you have a good reason for sticking with an older version of Windows. In this context, the IT manager has responsabilities for the whole company and a bunch of employees using machines in who knows what way. Completely different environment.

For non-technical people no amount of patching really solves that problem, I finally set up my mom with a locked down limited user account because I got tired of formatting the hard drive and reinstalling every time she somehow managed to break the system. Other people are so much worse, back before my friend's business had one of those contract IT services I was their IT guy and I was constantly cleaning up systems that were infected with piles of different stuff. This was back when Windows 7 was fully supported and I kept everything completely up to date but that didn't stop people from being idiots and installing stuff. I have yet to ever see an unpatched flaw exploited on a desktop, it's ALWAYS the user, and the more you lock down the machines, the higher your workload installing and configuring stuff for employees. Public facing servers are of course a completely different ball of wax, keeping those update is imperative. I *have* seen servers get compromised by outside attackers before.
 

Offline james_s

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Re: Microsoft broke into my office and vandalized my work!!
« Reply #70 on: November 13, 2021, 03:59:38 am »
Car manufacturers copied the stupid monostable shifter which looks like a shifter that indicates state, but does not and operates completely differently, leading to accidents, deaths, and lawsuits.

If cars all had proper manual gearboxes that would solve almost all of those problems. It is impossible to have unintended acceleration from a stop by confusing the gas and brake or forgetting the car is in gear. You can't put it in gear without depressing the clutch, if you let out the clutch without giving it gas the engine will stall. If you mash any two pedals to the floor the car will stop moving one way or another.
 

Offline amyk

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Re: Microsoft broke into my office and vandalized my work!!
« Reply #71 on: November 13, 2021, 04:25:03 am »
For non-technical people no amount of patching really solves that problem, I finally set up my mom with a locked down limited user account because I got tired of formatting the hard drive and reinstalling every time she somehow managed to break the system.
It's been a while since I've set this up but there's a way to make Windows treat the drive as "read only" and all changes made only persist until the next full reboot.
 

Offline VK3DRB

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Re: Microsoft broke into my office and vandalized my work!!
« Reply #72 on: November 13, 2021, 06:25:55 am »
Hmm this makes me wonder. I know vehicles have computers somewhere ... under the seat perhaps. Does anyone know if it has an "OS" or is it a glorified microcontroller? I can't recall ever having to reboot my Subaru.  :-DD

Oh yes, they boot up these days. If you've ever got in a recent model car with a glass console, you will observe that when you turn on the ignition it takes several seconds before the console boots and displays the home menu.

One major flaw with Windows is there is nothing to tell you then the operating system has actually completed its boot-up. Linux has never had that problem.

If a car booted Windows after the ignition is started, the "Where Do You Want To Go To Today" would pop up on a screen and then you would have to sit there and do nothing for a further minute or two, else the indicators might miss a few flashes, the accelerator will have a delay, the steering could over steer, and brakes would be sluggish.

I once worked with a high-end LeCroy oscilloscope that did that ran under Windows XP. Horrible boot-up time, but at least you could play solitaire at lunchtime.
 

Offline BradC

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Re: Microsoft broke into my office and vandalized my work!!
« Reply #73 on: November 13, 2021, 08:47:37 am »
One major flaw with Windows is there is nothing to tell you then the operating system has actually completed its boot-up. Linux has never had that problem.

It does now. Every recent distribution I've played with that is systemd based boots to a command prompt like greased lightning. Then you have to sit and wait as pretty much every service in the background is still in the process of booting up. It *looks* like it boots fast as long as you don't actually want to use it. *Exactly* like Windows.

 

Offline PKTKS

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Re: Microsoft broke into my office and vandalized my work!!
« Reply #74 on: November 13, 2021, 09:11:27 am »
*Exactly* like Windows.

Never was a surprise...

SYSTEMD thinghy is conceived to implement windooze mimimcs in nix

The POTTERIX system is meant as a compatible layer thrown in the wild

Remove user from boot
Allow a fast vm with wayland piped GUI

PUF MAGIC CORPORATE KIOSKS...
just like same old 30y of shit

Paul
 


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