Microsoft to end free Windows 10 upgrades, a year and a half after ending free Windows 10 upgrades

With the closure of the "assistive technologies" loophole, Microsoft's Get Windows 10 (GWX) campaign finally limps to a close. Does that mean we'll stop hearing about it now?

From Windows Latest:

On July 29, 2016, Microsoft ended the free Windows 10 upgrade offer for the owners of Windows 7 and 8.1 machines. The company, however, left a loophole, that allows any user to upgrade to Windows 10 for free despite the original offer is over. As we reported, the Windows 10 free upgrade offer was still available even after the release of the Fall Creators Update.

Microsoft is now finally going to end the offer later this year. Once the offer ends, the official loophole will be closed and the users won’t be able to upgrade their Windows 7 or 8.1 machines to Windows 10 operating system for free.

[...]

Microsoft never restricted the upgrade offer to specific assistive technologies and even no verifications where being made, basically offering the Windows 10 upgrade for completely free to any users.

I sometimes wonder if tech journalists will ever wake up to reality, here. People who haven't "upgraded" to Windows 10 are not still on Windows 7 or 8.1 because they're procrastinating, or because they just haven't got around to it yet. The procrastinators were all switched to Windows 10, by Microsoft, in some cases after having refused the "upgrade" repeatedly. Anyone still using an older Windows version had to take active steps to stay there; they're dug in now, and don't want to switch.

The lure of free Windows 10 has not been enough to lure Windows 7 users away from their OS for over two years now. The fear of WannaCry or other malware has failed to scare Windows 7 users into the safe, warm arms of Windows 10 for over six months. The Windows 10 deal started rotten, and has been a moving target ever since, and Windows 7 and 8.1 users simply decided to opt out; they're not going to change until the have to, and many won't change even then.

Yes, Windows 7 is the new XP; it really has already happened. Keeping this "assistive technologies" loophole open as long as they did wasn't just pointless on Microsoft's part, it was insulting. Now that it's finally ending, I say good riddance.

The price of non-GAAP bullshit press releases is becoming increasingly apparent.

I've mentioned non-GAAP press releases a time or two before on this blog, mainly in other contexts, but I haven't really done a "deep dive" into the practice, beyond writing this:

FYI: When corporations resort to this sort of non-GAAP bullshit, it's safe to assume that they're lying to you. The "good news" that they're claiming to present to you won't be nearly as good as they're claiming, and there will be significant "bad news" that they're trying to gloss over in the process. Non-GAAP is lying with statistics, every single goddamn time. The question isn't, "are they lying?" The question is, "what, exactly, is the lie?"

I stand by this, by the way, but it still falls pretty far short of actually explaining what non-GAAP is, or exactly why it's so potentially damaging. The reason for this is simple: I am not an economist. I might understand in the broadest general terms why Generally Accepted Accounting Principles are important, and why corporations routinely circumventing them to present a distorted impression of their financial health would be double-plus-ungood, but I don't have sufficient economic chops to really explain it all properly... at least, not in a way that I'd be satisfied with.

Enter CBC News:

More than 85 per cent of the information disclosed by public companies and used by investors to decide where to put their money hasn't been independently audited, posing a risk to investments and retirement savings.

It's a practice that can mislead investors by letting companies overstate their earning potential and push their share prices higher. That sounds good — until the music stops and the stock price falls.

The problem is serious enough that Canadian regulators plan to raise it with their international peers at a conference in Toronto Nov. 1-2.

Company financial statements are externally audited using internationally approved practices. But many companies provide additional unaudited disclosures, according to institutional investors at a recent industry conference. 

These disclosures regularly show more favourable results and trends, according to a global survey by the Chartered Financial Analyst (CFA) Institute of its 145,000 members in 2016.

And investors are placing their bets using that unaudited information.

The implosion in the price of Valeant Pharmaceuticals, from a high of $335.32 a share on July 31, 2015 in Toronto trading to a low of $11.20 a share in April, is a stark example of what can go wrong for investors. [...] At its peak, Valeant traded at a seemingly reasonable 22 times its "adjusted earnings" per share, in line with the overall S&P 500 market multiple of 24 times.

But this market measure is based on generally accepted accounting principles (GAAP) earnings for the companies in the S&P500 Index. On that same basis, Valeant was actually trading at an astonishing 440 times earnings.

According to Richard Talbot, former director of research for RBC Capital Markets and board member of the CFA Institute of Toronto (the second largest chapter in the world), to make non-GAAP information effective, consistent definitions and standards need to be applied:

• By a company across all reporting periods.
• Across all companies within an industry.
• Across all industries.

"The first two are a must," he said. "The third would be a nice-to-have."

Non-GAAP disclosures are lies; carefully crafted to obscure inconvenient facts, and present a rosier-than-reality picture of a company's health, in order to dupe unwitting investors into buoying up the share price of a company, and thus its executives' bonuses and stock options, beyond what is actually justified by that company's performance. Non-GAAP reporting makes comparisons impossible, which means that informed buying decisions cannot be made by potential investors; and the utter inadequacy of GAAP-compliant filings, which are generally as limited and inscrutable as the letter of the law allows, makes the problem worse, since non-GAAP reports are the only information that most investors have access to.

The fixes outlined by Talbot would severely restrict non-GAAP reporting, bringing the financial "reports" issued by publicly-traded corporations into compliance with generally accepted accounting principles in a way that makes meaningful comparisons possible: whether across multiple reporting periods for a single company, or between a company and its competitors in a single industry, or (ideally) even between potential investment opportunities in different industries. It would make lying with statistics more difficult, allowing investors to make informed choices, without requiring them to be experts in both forensic accounting, and the industry in question. Right now, none of that is happening.

Of course, establishing standards for non-GAAP public disclosures is only the first step; they must also be monitored, and enforced by regulators, something which seems unlikely to happen in the U.S. under the Trump administration. Still, the CBC piece discusses the efforts that are underway to achieve this in some detail, before closing with this:

Consistency of regulatory approach across countries is critical, not only for investors, but especially for companies whose shares are listed on multiple exchanges and must meet multiple local reporting requirements.

A key opportunity for Canada to advance global co-ordination on this topic is the upcoming International Financial Reporting Standards (IFRS) annual conference Nov. 1-2 in Toronto.

[Linda Mezon, chair of the Canadian Accounting Standards Board] has secured a rare joint appearance by both the chair of the International Accounting Standards Board and the chair of the Financial Accounting Standards Board in the U.S., which has a different, and sometimes conflicting, approach to accounting from the rest of the world.

They will join her in a roundtable discussion during which she intends to raise the issue of non-GAAP measures.

"We need to solve this together," said Mezon.

Fingers crossed, people. Think good thoughts for Linda Mezon.

AAA loot box abuse getting mainstream attention

Various videogame blogs and media outlets have been talking about loot boxes for weeks, as the increasingly omnipresent (and increasingly manipulative/abusive) "feature" not only finds its way into every AAA videogame release, but results in games being cancelled, and their studios closed, when they the projects can't be easily reworked to include them. Up until now, the tempest has been entirely confined to the games-media teacup, but that may be starting to change.

From CBC News:

Loot boxes aren't strictly new. Similar micro-transaction systems are a regular feature of smartphone games that are initially free-to-play. But unlike free-to-play games, where players might chip in a few dollars for a game they enjoy, loot boxes are being introduced in games that already sell at a retail price of $80 Cdn.

Gamers have become increasingly critical of highly anticipated new releases — such as Forza Motorsport 7, Middle-Earth: Shadow of War and Star Wars Battlefront II — locking items and features that in previous instalments were free.

Many players have likened it to gambling — and some are even calling for government regulation on the matter.

The piece goes through both sides of the argument pretty thoroughly, and reaches no obvious conclusions, although I personally find the AAA publishers' position (i.e. that they need unrestricted access to casino-business game mechanics because their "business model doesn't allow for growth") to be a very weaksauce rationale for letting them get away with exactly the same shit that we regulate at casinos, but that's not nearly as important, I think, as the fact that the piece exists at all. The outcry against AAA videogame publishers naked greed, and total lack of anything that resembles self-control or scruples, has reached a level of intensity where the non-videogaming world is starting to notice... and wonder if it isn't time to do something.

The EAs and Activisions of the world may yet come to regret having pushed the envelope so hard.

Boldly predicting more of the same... whatever that means.

We're just a few days away from the latest OS market share numbers's release, so let's take a minute to discuss expecations.

For the last two months, NetMarketShare's initially posted results have shown a significant shift away from Windows, and towards Linux. Both times, NetMarketShare have blinked rather than standing by their own data collection and analysis, and re-weighted those numbers to hew closer to tech reporters' expectations. In both cases, though, their carefully targeted re-weighting has failed to make the shift go away entirely; they've masked the shift, but not eliminated it.

Looking at both the first-reported numbers and the later revised numbers together shows both trends:

The truth lies somewhere between these trend lines... but where?

So, what should we expect this month? More of the same, would be my guess... as you can probably tell from the fact that I'm tracking both 1st-posted and revised numbers, and plotting them against each other. We'll have to see just how big the reported shifts are, both as first reported, and then after NetMarketShare cave to the pressure and massage as much of the shift as possible out of their reported statistics.

They're not going to make it...

Back in July, when Nintendo Switch pre-orders were selling out instantly, and supply of the units was obviously an issue, the company was sounding confident that solutions were imminent, and that there would be plenty of Switches in stores for the busy XMas shopping season. "To take advantage of this favourable momentum, we will continue to bolster our manufacturing facilities and strive to increase production in preparation for the Christmas period, which has been factored into our forecast of shipping 10 million units globally by the end of this fiscal year," was what they were saying to DigitalSpy at the time.

By September, that had changed, with Reggie Fils-Aimé transitioning the company's message from confidently predicting amply XMas supply, to cautiously explaining to the Financial Times why that wasn't going to happen:

Nintendo’s US chief has warned Switch customers to prepare for potential disappointment this Christmas, as demand for its hit games console continues to exceed supply.

Since the Switch launched in March, the hybrid console — it can be used as a handheld device on its own or plugged into a television at home — has been selling out almost as soon as new stock arrives in stores around the world.

In Nintendo’s domestic market of Japan, the shortages have been especially acute, with new machines being sold by lottery or changing hands on auction sites at double the retail price of around ¥30,000 ($280).

In an interview on the sidelines of Variety’s Entertainment and Technology Summit 2017 in Los Angeles, Reggie Fils-Aimé, president of Nintendo of America, told the FT that supply shortages of multiple components, coupled with higher-than-expected demand from customers, were behind the protracted shipping delays.

Well, that nearly two months ago now, and it would seem that the  situation has not changed significantly, because M. Fils-Aimé is once again hard at work, getting out ahead of the story. From The Verge:

“Broadly speaking, it’s been a strong year and a strong launch for the Nintendo Switch,” says Nintendo of America president Reggie Fils-Aimé.

But even within one of Nintendo’s most important years, a lingering issue remains: supply. For many, the Switch remains hard to find in stores, even months after launch. A quick stock check at Best Buy suggests that supply and demand are finally starting to level out, thankfully. And while the SNES Classic fared much better than the original NES Classic, which was near impossible to purchase, it’s still nowhere near readily accessible to walk-in consumers at most electronics stores.

[...]

“I wish we would have more hardware. Our inability to meet demand is not something that is satisfying in any way, shape, or form. And we’re working hard to satisfy as much demand as possible.” Fils-Aimé says that the company has made changes to its supply chain to improve the situation, and notes that we’ll likely hear more on the subject next week, when Nintendo announces its financial results. “I expect that our chief executive Mr. Kimishima will comment on this,” he says.

So, to recap, the message has gone from We'll have enough, don't worry;  to This is why we might not have enough, actually; to We don't have enough, we're not going to this year, and my boss will comment further next week when he has to explain why our quarterly results are below expectations. Yikes.

I've said it before, and I'll say it again: Nintendo's Switch might be off to a brisk start, but they still have a lot of obstacles to get over, and they're a long way from being out of the woods. We'll have to see how the PS4 Pro and XBO-X sell over the holidays, and whether Switch sales continue to be brisk into January and February, but missing out on a significant portion of their XMas sales with a new gaming device can't possibly be how Nintendo wanted to launch the Switch.

They're not just cosmetic, and they're not harmless...

As if Activision's recently-patented process of weaponizing online multiplayer game match-making weren't bad enough, it turns out that there's an even worse level of emotionally abusive bullshit lurking beneath the scummy surface of the videogaming industry, and unlike Activision's, this one has definitely already been deployed against unwitting and willing consumers. Ladies and gentlemen, I give you... Scientific Revenue!

Jim Sterling gets credit for the scoop on this story, and his video piece on the subject is an absolute must-watch for anyone who's ever despaired of finding a decent game in the wasteland of shit that is the mobile gaming market.

In a nutshell, though, what Scientific Revenue does is use "best practice" techniques from other industries (specifically, the "big data" and casino businesses) to build data profiles of consumers, without their knowledge or informed consent, the better to target those with demonstrated propensities for in-game purchases and then extract as much money from each tier of punter with a variable pricing scheme.

Basically, the more addictive your personality, the more likely a "SciRev" (nice one, Jim!) is to target addiction-prone players with microtransactions that are priced higher than the exact same MT offerings as presented to players with less-addictive personalities... the idea being that players who are less likely to buy expensive MTs might pop for cheap ones, while the "whales" that are already well and truly hooked will continue to bankrupt themselves by spending money they can't afford on useless digital tat that they don't actually need, and which they probably wouldn't want if it weren't being presented to them in such an emotionally abusive and psychologically manipulative manner.

SciRev's defense of this slimy bullshit is that they're just applying other industries' "best practices" to mobile games. This is rather interesting since one of the industries involved is obviously the gambling industry (they even use the casino industry's terminology for high-revenue victims customers, i.e. "whales"), a heavily-regulated industry to which the AAA video game business, anxious to avoid having their casino-business bullshit slapped with legislated regulations, has been trying very hard to avoid comparisons.

SciRev's other defenses include comparisons to auctions and surge pricing, comparisons which fail for two obvious reasons:

1. consumers engaged in an auction do so knowingly (something which SciRev's victims cannot say), and place their bids deliberately and openly, which doesn't happen under SciRev's invisible, black-box process;
2. surge pricing is applied all consumers equally depending on demand fluctuations, while SciRev's model varies prices invisibly to unfairly target individual purchasers.

Bullshit excuses aside, the most important things to know about Scientific Revenue are a) that it's already in use, and b) that is clearly shows up the most common defense of AAA microtransactions (that they're "optional," and somehow about player choice) as the lie that it has always been. This kind of abusive microtransaction-based business model is not intended to be optional; it's intended to be unavoidable, it deliberately targets the most vulnerable consumers, and it desperately needs to be regulated. There really ought to be a law. Seriously, this microtransaction bullshit needs a legislative remedy.

Incidentally, for those that are keen to see the Nintendo Switch succeed, I'd say that the existence of operations like Scientific Revenue in the smartphone gaming space go a long way to improving Nintendo's chances. Whether you're on Google Play or the iOS App Store, mobile gaming has become a wasteland of shit; Nintendo's actively-curated experience might be full of ports of games that made their mark on other platform, but those are all excellent games, and Nintendo seems to be alone among AAA videogame companies in having absolutely no appetite for this kind of abusive bullshit. Nintendo sees their customers as customers, and not as "whales" waiting to happen, and that could be a powerful selling point for their (superior) mobile gaming platform.

For those that can't watch Jim Sterling's excellent video, Heavy.com wrote a pretty decent piece (Scientific Revenue: 5 Fast Facts You Need to Know) covering it. Seriously, though, if you care at all about videogames, and hate corporate bullshit, then you really should be subscribed to The Jimquisition by now.

Comparing bowling balls to oranges

Earlier this month, security researchers at Google's Project Zero grabbed some attention when they called out Microsoft for leaving vulnerabilities unpatched in Windows 7 and 8.1 long after those vulnerabilities had been patched in Windows 10. This, GPZ's researchers argued, was bad practice, creating extra risks for Microsoft's customers on those older platforms... especially problematic for Windows 7, of course, since it still holds 47.21% of the desktop OS market.

This is not a new thing for Google, of course, who have been disclosing unpatched and actively-exploited vulnerabilities since 2013, in an attempt to goad Microsoft into patching some of them. This was the whole point of Project Zero - the vulnerabilities at issue were already actively being attacked, and the companies who should be plugging these security holes were dragging their feet on fixing them.

Microsoft's products, being in widespread use, were often targets of these attacks, and Microsoft have often been slow to patch them, which has led to Google's team embarrassing Microsoft over and over again, for four long years, on the subject of their products' security. Well, Microsoft appears to have decided that it's time for some tit-for-tat payback, of the absolutely pettiest sort, and are now going out of their way to embarrass Google over vulnerabilities in Chrome... which Google had already quite responsibly patched shortly after being privately notified of them, and without needing to be publicly shamed into doing so. Something that Microsoft currently aren't doing.

From Paul Thurrott:

“Security is now a strong differentiator in picking the right browser,” a post on the Microsoft Security Response Center begins.

Yikes.

Worse, Microsoft didn’t randomly discover a flaw in Chrome, alert Google, and then wait some period of time before disclosing it publicly. Instead, it specifically started a project to “examine Google’s Chrome web browser” for security problems. And it found some. Alerted Google. And then disclosed it publicly, after taking careful note of how long Google took to fix them. In short, Microsoft just wanted some revenge on Google.

To compare what Microsoft just did (attempting to embarrass Google for having responsibly patched a product in a timely manner after being alerted of a weakness) to what Google did two weeks ago (attempting to embarrass Microsoft into patching vulnerabilities in Windows 7 and 8.1 that they'd already patched in Windows 10, but inexplicably left open to attack for 53.1% of desktop PC users) is to compare bowling balls to oranges. The two things might both be round, but that is where the similarities end.

Microsoft's lax approach to security for Windows 7 and 8.1 users, i.e. most Windows users, is bad practice, and makes those users less safe. Google only started calling them out on this sort of shit, four years ago, because it was the only way to goad them into sluggish action where a quick response was clearly called for. The vulnerabilities that GPZ was calling Microsoft out for, two weeks ago, are still not patched, unless I've missed something.

For Microsoft to research security problem in Chrome is fine; most Windows users also use Chrome, so alerting Google of potential vulnerabilities keep Microsoft's customers safer, assuming that Google can issue patches in the timely fashion, which they did. For Microsoft to turn around and try to embarrass Google for responsible behaviour, however, behaviour in which Microsoft themselves do not engage, all in an attempt to push users from Chrome to Edge by baseless scare-mongering, is reprehensible.

Microsoft haven't just surrendered the high ground here; they've wallowed in the filth, and accomplished nothing in the process except to make themselves look desperate.

Samsung ups their DeX game

Back in May, Samsung released their Dex smartphone dock, potentially bridging the gap between desktop and mobile computing with Android. Engadget described it as an "impressive, unnecessary, phone-powered PC," which suffered from one major flaw:

There's a limited number of apps optimized for DeX and others don't always work properly on the big screen. [...] Ultimately, DeX blurs the line between smartphone and PC better than any other attempt we've seen -- we're just not convinced many people will find it genuinely useful.

Samsung, apparently, agreed with this assessment, and decided to do something about it. They decided that what DeX really needs is Linux.

From The Reg:

Samsung has announced it will soon become possible to run actual proper Linux on its Note8, Galaxy S8 and S8+ smartphones – and even Linux desktops.

Yeah, yeah, we know Android is built on Linux, but you know what we mean. Samsung said it's working on an app called “Linux on Galaxy” that will let users “run their preferred Linux distribution on their smartphones utilizing the same Linux kernel that powers the Android OS.”

“Whenever they need to use a function that is not available on the smartphone OS, users can simply switch to the app and run any program they need to in a Linux OS environment,” Samsung says. The app also allows multiple OSes to run on a device.

[...]

Samsung thinks developers are the market for Linux on Galaxy, as it means they “can now set up a fully functional development environment with all the advantages of a desktop setting that is accessible anytime, anywhere”. Samsung's announcement suggests developers will “code using their mobile on-the-go and with Samsung DeX, and can seamlessly continue the task on a larger display.”

We keep creeping closer to the day when you really can do all of your personal computing, productivity and mobile, with a single device that fits in your pocket. With Microsoft giving up on Windows 10 mobile, and HP putting a bullet in Continuum, it's looking more and more like that truly-all-in-one PC will be Linux-powered, and not Windows-powered.

The search VR's "killer app" continues.

Microsoft's Fall Creators Update for Windows 10 dropped this week, with a heavy focus on "Mixed Reality" - Microsoft's attempt to rebrand VR into something that might actually appeal to consumers. Mixed Reality has a couple of advantages: MR headsets are entering the market now with signifcantly lower price points and PC hardware requirements than the likes of Oculus' Rift or HTC's Vive, and at least the potential to be used for Augmented Reality (AR) applications as well as VR.

Much like VR, though, MR suffers from a lack of a reason to exist. MR headsets must be tethered to a PC (or laptop, if your laptop's specs are sufficiently beefy), which will limit its usefulness for AR applications; and VR still lacks the quantitatively new experience which will sell it to consumers. And, yes, I'm including the new Cliff House feature in that assessment, as reported by Popular Science:

The home base for Mixed Reality is a virtual home called the Cliff House and makes navigating windows more like walking around a swanky dwelling with a nice view. Want to watch a movie? Head into the home theater. Want to use regular windows apps? Head over to the virtual desktop and get a 3D Windows experience.

This is neither quantitatively new, nor particularly useful. Bumptop* have been doing interactive 3D work spaces for years, something which Cliff House just expands from a potentially useful desk (where everything you might want to work with is conveniently located in one work area) into a much less useful structure, forcing you to walk around your virtual house in order to do different things, a setup with completely ignores the way modern consumers use PCs.

Por ejemplo, right now, I've got music playing in the background while game updates download in a second application, all while I compose this post in a third. On a desktop, that's easy to manage, because they're all in one place -- firing them up took just a few mouse clicks, opening three windows between which I can move back and forth with a simple ⊞ Win+Tab ↹. This took only seconds... in a standard GUI, with a keyboard and mouse interface. In the Cliff House, though, I'd have to waste extra time "walking" from room to room in my virtual house just to get everything started.

Also, while representing your PC's file structure as a Cliff House might be mildly interesting from a technical standpoint, if not very useful from a practical one, virtually touring a house is not a new activity; architects and real estate agents have been using virtual tours for years already, with no VR required. So, not only is Cliff House not useful, it's not quantitatively new, either; it's just a more elaborate (and less useful) Bumptop, with VR providing some qualitative enhancement. Just like every other VR application.

Cliff House is not going to become the new way you interface with your PC, and the FCU's MR package doesn't include any other new use for the technology, either, something which Popular Science acknowledge:

Right now, the challenge is finding enough interesting stuff to actually do in Mixed Reality. There are a few games out there like Halo Recruit VR, but overall support is spotty.  

Mixed Reality, much like Virtual Reality, is still not actually a thing. At least, it's not a thing that consumers want or need, and is therefore unlikely to be a thing which sells VR headsets. VR's "killer app" still waits to be found... assuming it exists at all.

* Bumptop, BTW, is more of a curiosity than anything else; it's been around for years, but hasn't really caught on, for the simple reason that it's not very useful, either. There's a reason why keyboards are still so popular, people: they're simple, effective, efficient, intuitive, and provide unparalleled responsiveness combined with audio/tactile feedback that makes each keypress an intrinsically satisfying experience. Combine with a mouse, which provides drag + drop simplicity when you might want or need it, and you really don't need any other way to work with your PC; there's a reason why Xerox PARC used this control scheme for their early GUI, why Apple swiped them for the Macintosh, why PCs followed suit, and why the combination of keyboard and mouse has prevailed over all other challengers for nearly four decades since.

They're not just cosmetic.

One of the main arguments that people often advance for the inclusion of paid, free-to-play-style microtransactions in full-price, AAA videogames is that they're just cosmetic, and therefore harmless. This is an argument that the AAA videogame industry has pushed themselves on multiple occasions, arguing that MTs were entirely optional, and weren't in any way intended to manipulate players, or the games themselves, to squeeze more money out of customers who've already paid for the games themselves.

There's just one problem with that line of defence: it's bullshit. AAA videogame companies absolutely intend for their MT systems to be as manipulative and exploitative as possible, and at least one of them is actively working on ways to make them even more so, as reported by Brian Crecente at Rolling Stone:

Activision was granted a patent this month for a system it uses to convince people in multiplayer games to purchase items for a game through microtransactions.

[...]

The patent details how multiplayer matches are configured, specifically how players are selected to play with one another. That process used by Activision involves a computer looking at a wide variety of factors including skill level, Internet latency, availability of friends and other things. It then goes through a system to first soft-reserve a slot in a game for a player and then assign the players to the same match.

This patent, though, specifically discusses how that system for pairing up players can also be used to entice a player to purchase in-game items.

"For example, in one implementation, the system may include a microtransaction engine that arranges matches to influence game-related purchases," according to the patent. "For instance, the microtransaction engine may match a more expert/marquee player with a junior player to encourage the junior player to make game-related purchases of items possessed/used by the marquee player. A junior player may wish to emulate the marquee player by obtaining weapons or other items used by the marquee player."

The patent goes on to note that the same information could be used to identify which sorts of in-game purchasable items should be promoted.

Activision, naturally, claim that they haven't put this patented technique to use in any games.... yet. Specifically, they haven't added this special bullshit sauce to Destiny 2, in spite of that game clearly having been designed around its microtransaction system. This was just some R&D people "working independently from [the] game studios," and doesn't represent any intention at all (😉) on Activision's part to basically turn all their online-only multiplayer games' match-making systems into the shittiest experience possible, and their players into helpless victims of this cynical exploitation.

Activision's newly-patented match-making system describes exactly the opposite of an enjoyable player experience. It literally sets the player up to fail in the least fair way possible, matching them against players who have out-geared them, and then advertising that gear to losing players in that emotionally charged and vulnerable moment, pushing paid content that will let them victimize other lower-ranking players in exactly the same way... and then going on to reward them with exactly that kind of griefing experience if they cave to the pressure and drop the cash. It's not so much a match-making system as a grief-making system, encouraging toxic behaviour that more-reputable developers are trying to eradicate from their games' online communities.

But Activision aren't planning to ever use it, of course. Heaven forfend!

BULLSHIT.

It is time to stop rewarding these assholes with your money. It is time to stop paying full-price for games are come deliberately broken in order to push free-to-play monetization mechanics at you. Do not spend money on any game that also tries to milk you after purchase for paid microtransactions. I don't care how "optional" or "cosmetic" they're supposed to be. These systems are not intended or designed to feel in any way optional, and they are not harmless.

At least lawmakers in the UK are starting to take an interest in this issue; hopefully more lawmakers in other countries follow suit, so that regulators can impose some controls here, since it's painfully obvious that AAA publishers either can't or won't do so on their own.

Jim Sterling, who's been covering this issue since dinosaurs roamed the Earth, has a pretty good video out on the subject, as do Pretty Good Gaming, who have been covering this issue pretty intensively for months now.

 

Fall Creators Update drops, and nobody cares

Just in case you were wondering how much it hurt to have the Netherlands' Data Protection Authority announce that Windows 10 still violated Dutch privacy laws, I'll remind you that the Fall Creators Update dropped last week, and most of that coverage related to a BSOD/perpertual restart bug that came with it (and bricked users' systems). There were also quite a few articles detailing how you could avoid the FCU, a few more on how to Remove Paint 3D (part of the FCU) from your system, and a bit of extra scare-mongering over Microsoft's failure to patch Windows 7 and 8.1 in a timely manner (apparently, Microsoft's failure to keep promises is supposed to make people want to migrate to Windows 10). There was also one bit of good news: apparently Edge does a better job of blocking phishing links and sites than either Chrome or Firefox... which will probably still not prompt anyone to switch to Edge.

The top story, though, even with all of that going on, is the privacy issue. Whether you search for Windows 10 news by relevance, or by most recent, it's the top result, either way. So, at a time when Microsoft would love the narrative to be all about their newly released Fall Creators Update and its features, the FCU is getting coverage mainly for its problems; at a time when Edge is getting good marks for security, it's Windows 10's failure on privacy that are dominating the news; at a time when Microsoft are trying to turn the page after declaring Windows 10 mobile to effectively be dead, just about the only thing that people are talking about is a privacy problem that simply won't die.

• Microsoft is again accused of violating privacy

• Windows 10 data collection breaks Dutch privacy laws

• The Netherlands Rules Windows 10 Data Collection Illegal

• Windows 10 telemetry violates privacy laws

• Dutch slam Windows 10 for breaking privacy laws

• Windows 10 blamed for breaking privacy laws

• Microsoft's Windows 10 violating users' privacy, claims Dutch privacy ...

• Windows 10 Runs Afoul of Dutch Privacy Regulations

• Windows 10 Found To Violate Dutch Privacy Law

• Throwback Friday – Dutch regulators unsatisfied with Microsoft's ...

• Microsoft to Face Sanctions If It Doesn't Stop Breaching Privacy ...

• Windows 10 violates data protection law, according to Dutch DPA

• Dutch privacy regulator says Windows 10 breaks the law

• Microsoft used personal data of Windows 10 users without consent ...

• Dutch DPA says Microsoft breaches data protection laws with ...

• Microsoft Windows 10 Violates Privacy Laws, Lacks Consumer ...

Q: At some point, does all this bad press make it worth Microsoft's while to simply do the right thing on data collection, and allow users to simply opt out? How many more times do they have to go through this, before they actually learn? I understand that users' data is hugely valuable to Microsoft in the upcoming cloud-based computing age, but is it really worth this much cost in the trust and good will of consumers, and the constant attentions of the government agencies that help to protect them?

These aren't rhetorical questions, by the way. I really do wish that I knew the answers.

Windows 10 breaches Dutch data protection law

I had a feeling that Microsoft's anti-consumer data collection bullshit wasn't done getting them into trouble with European regulators, but I'll admit that I wasn't expecting the next chapter in that story to come out of the Netherlands.

As reported by ZDNet's David Meyer:

Microsoft breaches the Dutch data protection law in the way it processes the personal data of people using the Windows 10 operating system, the country's data protection agency has said.

On Friday, Dutch data protection authority (DPA) the Autoriteir Persoonsgegevens said that Microsoft doesn't tell Windows 10 Home and Pro users which personal data it collects and why. It also said the firm makes it impossible for users to give their valid consent to their personal data being processed, due to the multiple ways in which that data might subsequently be used.

The data watchdog added that Microsoft "does not clearly inform users that it continuously collects personal data about the usage of apps and web surfing behaviour through its web browser Edge, when the default settings are used".

"It turns out that Microsoft's operating system follows about every step you take on your computer. That results in an intrusive profile of yourself," said Wilbert Tomesen, the regulator's vice-chairman. "What does that mean? Do people know about this, do they want this? Microsoft needs to give users a fair opportunity to decide about this themselves."

The issue, naturally, is telemetry.

While Microsoft offers users an overview of the categories of data that it collects through basic telemetry, it only informs people in a general way, with examples, about the categories of personal data it collects through full telemetry, the regulator said.

"The way Microsoft collects data at the full telemetry level is unpredictable. Microsoft can use the collected data for the various purposes, described in a very general way. Through this combination of purposes and the lack of transparency Microsoft cannot obtain a legal ground, such as consent, for the processing of data," it said.

It's hard to say exactly what effect this will have. When France's data watchdog had issues with Windows 10, Microsoft was able to find a bare-minimum level of compliance which resulted in a closed file, and mostly cosmetic changes to Windows' telemetry, an outcome that they're clearly hoping to replicate (ZDNet's piece quotes Microsoft Windows privacy officer Marisa Rogers as prioritizing compliance with the Dutch data protection law, while sharing "specific concerns with the Dutch DPA about the accuracy of some of its findings and conclusions"), so it could be that very little will actually change this time, either.

But with Windows 10 still struggling to win converts, and signs that Windows 7 users are leaving Windows entirely, for Linux, it's hardly good news for Microsoft that Windows 10's data collection and privacy issues are once again back in the news. They'd clearly hoped that this issue would go away, but since they haven't actually fixed the problem, that may be unlikely.

Hey, Microsoft! Do you want to know what will make this problem go away, completely, and forever? Let people turn the telemetry completely off. If telemetry is opt-in, rather than can't-really-opt-out-but-there's-a-lower-level-of-intrusiveness-available-you-pussies, people will stop complaining about the telemetry system. You might even win some converts amongst dug-in Windows 7 users (no promises, though - those folks have dug in pretty deeply).

Oh, and before I forget.... If you're reading this, then you should be running Spybot's Anti-Beacon, or something similar. Don't forget that Microsoft retconned this telemetry bullshit into Windows 7 and 8/8.1, too, so you should be taking steps to protect your own privacy, regardless of which Windows version you use. Microsoft sure as shit aren't going to.

Microsoft just never, ever learn...

Le sigh.

From ZDNet:

Microsoft's update servers began pushing out a mysterious new app recently, and the unexpected arrival is stirring up suspicion and anger among some Windows 10 users.
The new app is called Photos Add-on, and its entry in the Windows Store offers few clues about what it is or does.

[...]

More than 70 percent of the early reviews have given the mystery add-on a 1 star rating, with reviewers adding comments like these:

• Installed without permissionI didn't ask for this, I didn't approve this, I didn't even know you were planning on installing this. When will you get it that people don't want YOU to decide what gets installed on MY computer. Stop it already.
• Forced installNot cool, MS.
• Don't install without askingI have no idea what this even does. Why do I have it and why didn't I have a choice?

[...]

Ginny Caughey, a developer with deep experience in UWP apps, notes that this is "not something to worry about - just an add-on to an app that comes with the OS."

She's right, which is why this roll-out is so frustrating. It's yet another example of an unforced error on Microsoft's part. Even a tiny amount of documentation in the listing for this add-on would have tamped down the suspicion. Instead, they've provided fresh fuel for conspiracy theorists.

I guess that it's really hard to break the anti-consumer monopolistic habit, once you're started down the dark path? Seriously, is someone in Redmond planning to learn from their many, many mistakes?

Oculus Go finally announced, may already be irrelevant

Back in July, rumours of Facebook's upcoming $200 standalone VR headset were garnering a lukewarm reception. Since then, of course, Intel have cancelled their own standalone VR headset due to a lack of interest, and both Oculus and HTC deeply discounted their tethered-to-PC headsets... with mixed results. Mark Zuckerberg teased yesterday's announcement with one of the most tone-deaf PR stunts to be seen all year, outside of the Trump administration.

Undeterred, though, Zuck went ahead with today's announcement anyway, confirming that Facebook's $200 standalone VR headset will be hitting the market soon, and that it will be called the Oculus Go. So, what exactly is Oculus Go? It turns out that nobody really knows.

TechCrunch attempted to explain:

Oculus was more than a little vague in how they portrayed the device, so I won’t assume too much, but there’s little doubt that the headset will be less powerful as a standalone than what the Rift can currently handle. That may end up disappointing die-hards, but subtle movements of the high-end market away from being tethered to a PC is going to do Facebook a lot of favors in terms of platform sustainability and leaving the early-adopter niche.

[...]

Oculus Go will save Facebook from having to build complex partnerships with smartphone manufacturers that are 100x easier for Google to gain through Android anyway. Samsung is Oculus’s only friend when it comes to mobile VR, and this year the company put both of its flagship smartphones on Google Daydream, as well. This move could likely signal a future where Oculus moves away from smartphone mobile VR as they shift to building their own platforms and letting Google dominate VR on Android, which was a bit of an inevitability anyway.

[...]

The thing is, there’s been this misconception that Valve or Samsung or Microsoft or Sony are Oculus’s competitors, when the fact is that their main competitor is irrelevancy.

TechCrunch buried the lede a bit in their piece, as far as I'm concerned, so I've reversed the sequence of these excerpts, to start with a description of what Oculus Go is, proceed to a description of what it will actually do, and end with what it, to me, The Point.

Still not ready for prime time

From BBC News:

It must have seemed like a good idea. As a taster for a big announcement about Oculus VR on Wednesday, send Mark Zuckerberg on a little virtual reality trip, including a stop in Puerto Rico.

But the reviews are in - and they are not good.

The sight of Mr Zuckerberg using VR to survey the devastation of an island still struggling to recover from Hurricane Maria may have been meant to convey Facebook's empathy with the victims.

The fact that he was there in the form of a cartoon seemed to many the perfect visual metaphor for the gulf in understanding between Silicon Valley and the real world. 

It looks like VR still isn't ready. Surprise!

Facebook, who own Oculus, are one of the industry leaders in VR hardware; with Facebook having a keen interest in making Social VR into a thing (even though it's not going to be a thing), one could be forgiven for assuming that this represents the cutting edge of Social VR:

Cutting edge, baby! Woo hoo!

Why Zuckerberg thought that virtually touring a disaster zone, using other people's suffering to showcase his social VR experiment, was a good idea, will forever remain a mystery. Why Zuckerberg thought that a social VR experience filled with painfully low-fi cartoon avatars would appeal to consumers, even without the disaster zone, is even more of a mystery. Seriously, why would anyone with even half a brain think that any part of this was a good idea?

Apart from Zuckerberg, natch, who clearly thought this was genius, and who still doesn't seem to understand how badly he's stepped in it.

"One of the most powerful features of VR is empathy. My goal here was to show how VR can raise awareness and help us see what's happening in different parts of the world. I also wanted to share the news of our partnership with the Red Cross to help with the recovery. Reading some of the comments, I realize this wasn't clear, and I'm sorry to anyone this offended."

You should be sorry to everybody, then, Zuck. Because even those of us who weren't offended by your attempted exploitation of Puerto Ricans (which is already most of us, BTW) can still be offended by the fact that you seem to think we're stupid enough to be impressed by your lame-ass VR bullshit. Empathy, my ass.

You see, Zuck, in reality, VR's most powerful feature is actually the sense of presence that it gives to people who are experiencing it directly. This is why VR evangelists keep saying that it's critical to convince people to try the tech. There are times when looking at a thing through the aperture of a 1080p screen really can't convey the true sense of the scale of what you're looking at; VR, however, can, providing the sense of scale that images on a screen lack.

But that only works for people who are strapped into their own VR headsets; it doesn't work if you stick a carton avatar in front of the thing, and then display it on the same 1080p screen that had already proved inadequate for conveying the scale of, say, a fucking disaster zone, to the viewer. Touring a disaster zone might convey a sense of the scale of the disaster to people who are taking the virtual tour themselves... but that's not something you can share with someone who isn't "there," unless you lend them your VR headet so that they can take the tour, too.

With one small publicity stunt, Mark Zuckerberg has managed to make social VR look profoundly heartless, aesthetically ugly, and fundamentally limited and isolating, all at once. VR experiences aren't easy to share with others... and, thanks to this, the attempt to share them now looks a lot less appealing in every conceivable way. Clippy had lower hurdles to leap over than this PR disaster has now put in front of social VR.

Which was never going to become a thing anyway, but still.

GG, Mark Zuckerberg! GG.

Is Microsoft the next IBM?

It's hard to believe now, but there was a time when IBM was a blue-chip juggernaut in the world of computer technology, and Microsoft merely the plucky start-up that IBM had hired to write a version of the CP/M operating system for IBM's PCs. That became PC DOS, which became MS-DOS, which became Windows... which had, at its peak, 95% of the PC OS market. Microsoft became the tech sector's juggernaut, while IBM slowly faded into the background, focusing on AI technologies like Watson, supplanted by x86 PC OEMs in the PC hardware space.

So, it would be the height of irony for Microsoft, having failed to leverage their desktop PC OS dominance into a viable mobile market position, were to withdraw into its enterprise business, fading into the background and focusing on AI and quantum computing research. But people are increasingly seeing that as the path that Microsoft are on. Yesterday, it was Kareem Anderson at ONMSFT; today, it's Peter Bright at ars technica:

For fans of the platform, the official confirmation that Windows on phones isn't under active development any longer—security bugs will be fixed, but new features and new hardware aren't on the cards—isn't a big surprise. This is merely a sad acknowledgement of what we already knew.

Last week, Microsoft also announced that it was getting out of the music business, signaling another small retreat from the consumer space. It's tempting to shrug and dismiss each of these instances, pointing to Microsoft's continued enterprise strength as evidence that the company's position remains strong.

And certainly, sticking to the enterprise space is a thing that Microsoft could do. Become the next IBM: a stable, dull, multibillion dollar business. But IBM probably doesn't want to be IBM right now—it has had five straight years of falling revenue amid declining relevance of its legacy businesses—and Microsoft probably shouldn't want to be the next IBM, either.

Today, Microsoft is facing similar pressures—Windows, though still critical, isn't as essential to people's lives as it was a decade ago—and risks a similar fate. Dropping consumer ambitions and retreating to the enterprise is a mistake. Microsoft's failure in smartphones is bad for Windows, and it's bad for Microsoft's position in the enterprise as a whole.

I find it interesting to see this becoming the conversation that people are having now, about Microsoft.

Microsoft's anti-consumer strategy... of self-destruction

I've spent plenty of time writing on this blog about Microsoft's anti-consumer bullshit; in fact, some may say that I've spent far too much time writing on the subject. But all of my writing on this topic has started from a single, straightforward, baseline assumption: that Microsoft want our money. 

If you assume that Microsoft want as much money as they can extract, and to extract money from as many of us as possible, then a lot of what they're doing seems at once obviously motivated, and bafflingly counter-productive. But what if that's not the goal? What if MS don't care about individual consumers at all?

That's the argument being put forward by Kareem Anderson at ONMSFT:

CEO Satya Nadella and by extension, software giant Microsoft doesn’t want you or me as customers.

Why might you ask?

Perhaps, because we’re fickle, fair-weather, shiny gadget chasing consumers whose financial investments are mostly spent perpetuating the status quo rather than helping to make the leaps necessary to shape a technology future envisioned in countless science fiction books and films.

Instead, Microsoft’s ideal customer is a 250,000 seat Office 365 licensee, or an aerospace facility using Azure as its backend cloud solution. Microsoft can no longer be bothered with our petty wants or needs as a Microsoft Health, Band, Windows Phone or Groove Music consumer.

Microsoft believes a future isn’t in the shackles of 5-inch plus rectangle piece of glass, the latest streaming media platform, or even the most powerful gaming console of the time. Instead, Microsoft is betting that the future is in an always-connected mesh network of interconnected devices, nodes, sensors and software that combine to anticipate, automate and regulate the lives of most people. And, quite frankly, it seems Microsoft is tired of walking consumers hand-in-hand through this process.

This is a perspective on Microsoft's anti-consumer approach to... well, everything, that honestly hadn't occurred to me, but it does make a horrible sort of sense. Customers are work. It seems a lot easier, at least on paper, to build the info-structure that other businesses will use to deal with all those demanding, unreasonable individuals, and then ignore all those little people to do business exclusively with other big businesses.

There's just one problem with that: the simple fact that personal computing is personal... and that interacting with those people directly is the only way to know anything about them. It's really hard to build a framework that will let you deliver services to individual consumers that you don't understand at all.

Microsoft is leaving old bugs unpatched in Windwos 7, and that's a problem

While Windows 7 isn't receiving new features anymore, it is supposed to be receiving security updates until 2020. That's the deal; it is explicitly what "extended support" means. Microsoft, however, does not appear to be living up to their end of the deal. Surprise!

As reported by Liam Tung at ZDNet:

Microsoft is essentially leaving clues for hackers when it patches Windows 10, but not Windows 7, argues [Google's Project Zero researcher Mateusz] Jurczyk.

That's because hackers can use a technique called 'binary diffing' to analyze fixes in a modern product and pinpoint weaknesses in the older product.

The technique lends itself to Windows 7, Windows 8, and Windows 10, which are a perfect example of concurrently supported branches of a single product that share the same core code, but are patched and improved differently. 

As the researcher explains, the ability to use binary diffing is a problem in particular for the security of Windows 7 users, which account for half of all Windows users, because attackers know that Microsoft adds better security and sometimes even bug fixes only to the latest version of Windows.

[...]

One example was the bug CVE-2017-8680, which affected Windows 8.1 and Windows 7, but curiously not Windows 10. Project Zero reported it to Microsoft in May and it was fixed in Microsoft's September Patch Tuesday update.

On discovering the bug, the researcher identified the relevant patch in Windows 10 and realized that Microsoft hadn't backported it to earlier versions.

After running more comparisons between Windows 7 versus Windows 10 and Windows 8.1 versus Windows 10, he found two more vulnerabilities, CVE-2017-8684 and CVE-2017-8685, in the Windows 7 and Windows 8.1 kernels. These were also patched in September.

I know that Microsoft want users to migrate from Windows 7 to 10, but effectively breaking 7 to coerce users into migrating is not OK. We are not talking about new features, here. We are talking about bug fixes and security patches which Windows 7 users are supposed to be receiving, and aren't.

It goes without saying that any bug which was present in Windows 7, 8, and 10 is a long-standing issue which Microsoft should be addressing on all three platform. Instead, they've left this rake lying in the grass, waiting for Google to call them out on it, publicly, before doing anything. Google brought the bug to Microsoft's attention, remember; it's not as if Microsoft didn't know that Google (a competitor, let we forget) knew about this, and their Project Zero team have already proven that they'll call out companies for failing to act on security problems.

Microsoft hadn't managed to find a rake in their own grass for almost a month, but I guess that streak is now over, because they've definitely stepped on this one.

Self-inflicted injury, for the win!

Once could be an accident, twice could be a coincidence...

One of the more troubling recent trends in journalism is that of the pre-existing narrative frame. This occurs when reporters, who are expecting a thing to happen, and waiting to report on the thing as it happens, ignore evidence that contradicts that pre-formed narrative. They don't report what's actually happening, as it's happening; instead, they cherry-pick from the available stats and factoids, telling only the stories that they were already planning to tell.

We see this a lot in political reporting; false equivalencies, false dichotomies, and pre-conceived narratives that exclude important-but-contradictory facts are all rampant "in the beltline." It's one of the reasons why public confidence in mainstream news reporting is at historic lows; it's one of the reasons why political reporters and pundits have spent the last year constantly being blindsided by actual developments in politics. People were more comfortable getting their news from The Daily Show than from their daily newspaper because Jon Stewart didn't do this; Last Week Tonight wins Peabody awards because John Oliver doesn't do this.

The phenomenon isn't limited to political reporting, either. It happens in tech reporting, too. When MSPowerUser was reporting on this month's OS market share trends, they did it explicitly:

This month Netmarketshare’s data appears to have an error, claiming a 5% increase in Linux market share in one month, so I think it can be safely ignored.

Never mind that this was the 2nd month in which this shift was visible; never mind that Satya Nadella is already trying to get out ahead of the Shift, downplaying the importance of Windows to Microsoft. MSPowerUser's writer, like many tech media writers, had spent months waiting to tell the story in which Windows 10 finally surged in the marketplace to overtake Windows 7, and so he cherry-picked the stats which seemed to finally be telling that story, while explicitly ignoring stats that didn't fit.

ZDNet is doing it, too. Unable to completely ignore the undeniable trend in the data, they've instead taken issue with the source, NetMarketShare, in this recent piece:

There have been numerous stories that the Linux desktop has more than doubled from its usual 1.5 to 3 percent marketshare to 5 percent. These reports have been based on NetMarketShare's desktop operating system analysis, which showed Linux leaping from 2.5 percent in July, to almost 5 percent in September. But unfortunately for Linux fans, it's not true.

Neither does it appear to be Google's Chrome OS, which tends to be under-represented in NetMarketShare and StatCounter desktop operating system numbers, being counted as Linux. Mind you, that would be fair, since Chrome OS is based on Linux.

The real explanation is far more mundane. It seems to be merely a mistake. Vince Vizzaccaro, NetMarketShare's executive marketing share of marketing told me, "The Linux share being reported is not correct. We are aware of the issue and are currently looking into it."

Again: ZDNet, confronted with with data that didn't fit their existing narrative, went looking for a rationale that would let them ignore it, rather than reporting on it as it was happening... you know, the way reporters used to.

And the insidious thing is that NetMarketShare have been co-opted by this. Faced with skeptical reporters who refused to use actual facts as the jumping-off point for their reporting, NMS are hard at work, tweaking their statistical models so that their reports can more closely match reporters' expectations.

A quick note on StatCounter

Microsoft's supporters have been quick to seize on StatCounter's version of the month's numbers, which show a much rosier picture for Microsoft, choosing to ignore NetMarketShare (and the Linux Shift that stubbornly keeps showing up in their data) almost entirely. Wayne Williams at betanews made an interesting comment about this phenomenon:

Before we get into it, it's important to note that StatCounter's numbers are reported differently from NetMarketShare's, because they just break down Windows's share, whereas NetMarketShare's numbers include other operating systems, such as different flavors of macOS and Linux.

[...]

Taking an average of the last three months, StatCounter has Windows 10 overtaking Windows 7 in December, while NetMarketShare doesn’t have that happening until next September.

Neither agree with Microsoft’s figures, which claimed the big event happened 10 months ago.

We'll know in a couple of months whether StatCounter is right on the money, or completely out to lunch; it's possible that Windows 7 could lose enough users to Linux to put them at parity with Windows 10, without Windows 10 actually growing much. This shift in the market is being widely reported as Windows 10 "catching up" to Windows 7, but it might be more a case of Windows 7 running out of gas, while Linux comes up quickly from behind to catch both of them.

When people tell you that Windows 10 is making huge gains in the marketplace, though, remember that there is no evidence yet to support that conclusion. It is, in a word, hype. Never believe the hype.

Windows 10 continues to lose Steam

Continuing a tradition that's been going for a while now, Steam's user base continues to run contrary to the overall OS market. Just like last month, while Windows 10 continues to make slow gains in the OS market overall, Steam's users seem to be switching back to Windows 7 at a brisk pace, according to the Steam Survey for the end of September.

Interestingly, all versions of Windows except 64-bit Win7 declined last month. Presumably the shift from Win10 to Win7 would be linked to recent revelations about the way that Windows 10's Game Mode actually breaks games; it's less clear why users would be switching from 64-bit Win8 and 8.1 to 64-bit Win7 now, since none of those Windows versions has changed significantly for years.

The nascent Linux Shift is missing here, too. Why is Ubuntu 16.04 gaining market share, while the newer 17.04 sheds users? Why is Linux slumping overall among gamers, but gaining market share rapidly on a global level?

Part of the answer could lie in the nature of the Steam Survey itself: it's a voluntary survey, whose respondents are basically self-selecting, rather than a random sampling of the overall marketplace (which is what NetMarketShare and StatCounter are doing). Survey sampling bias may well be at play here, and the Steam Survey numbers should always be taken with a grain of salt.

Déjà vu, all over again

So, just like last month, when NetMarketShare balked at reporting what their data was clearly telling them, they've once again massaged their stats and reposted them. And, as expected, the result is a slightly smaller swing than their earlier posted stats indicated.

The old version put Windows' overall OS market share at 82.2%, and "Other" (a.k.a. Linux) at 13.04%. The new version looks like this:

This version of the numbers puts Windows at 86.21% overall, with Windows 7 declining to 46.22% (-2.21%), and Windows 10 increasing to 28.65% (+0.66%). Linux, meanwhile, gained 2.15% to finish at 9.99% overall. That 86.21% number is especially interesting; it's almost exactly what NetMarketShare had originally reported as Windows' overall market position in their first version of last month's stats.

While this new analysis of their data shows a smaller swing from Windows to Linux, it still does show a swing from Windows to Linux, and a big one. Especially in light of Satya Nadella's recent remarks, downplaying the importance of Windows to Microsoft, it seems that the Linux Shift is actually a thing. We're not left wondering whether or not it's happening, only how quickly... and, of course, why now?

I fully expect that next month's stats will show a continuation of this same trend. Windows 10's growth is still sluggish; breathless reports that it would overtake Windows 7 in a matter of months are missing the point. Yes, Windows 7's user base appears to be changing operating systems, but they're not migrating to Windows 10 -- they're migrating away from Windows altogether, and trend which Microsoft are already trying to downplay the importance of. We could be months away from a market in which Windows 7, Windows 10, and Linux split the market more-or-less evenly between them.

What impact that might have on the world of desktop computing is impossible to say. Microsoft's Windows has been so dominant on desktops for so long that it's difficult to imagine what the world of desktop PCs will look like when that dominance comes to an end. One thing is becoming increasingly clear, though; Windows' dominance on the desktop is coming to an end, and sooner than anyone ever thought possible.

Once again, I will preserve both of my posts on this topic, in order to preserve NetMarketShare's originally-posted evidence of the nascent Linux Shift as it progresses. I have the feeling that this same sequence of events will play out again in November, and in December, and in January, and at some point, the limitations of regression analysis will simply not be able to mask the evidence of the Shift anymore. How Microsoft's supporters react on that day will be interesting to see.