I've been unsuccessful in my attempts to recover from the November 2015 Windows 10 Upgrade. I was a child prodigy when it came to computers in the 60s and I was taking college Computer Science courses in high school. I have an engineering degree in Computer Science. I was using IBM 360/65 and Univac 1108 as personal computers, developing the ability to enter programs via the light panels. I invented the first programmable spreadsheet program 2 years before Dan Brickman released VisiCalc for the Apple II. I've been working with and developing software for Windows since before Windows 1.0. Let's just say I am not a novice.
When Microsoft announced Azure at a TechNet meeting a few years ago, it reminded me of three things;
1) In the 60s and 70s, Service Bureaus ( worked at UCC, CSC, and others at that time) would provide many tools to customers which made their computer use easier, but the aim was really to tie the customers to our systems. It wasn't easy to move off of UCC's systems and onto CSC's. Make it as difficult and expensive as possible to change Service Bureaus. Azure promises to lower the total cost of ownership by dynamically adjusting the footprint to the business's needs. Let Microsoft add some more system backbone and capacity for Holiday shopping and then shrink the footprint when the needs allow. Why tackle capacity planning, backup and recovery, and network security when you can just let Microsoft deal with it all.
2) Azure gave me a flashback to the James Bond movie, "Tomorrow Never Dies" with Jonathan Pryce as the bad guy and Michelle Yeoh as the heroine. The bad guy owns an immense world wide data and information network and want to use it to rule the world. Watch the Movie again. Microsoft's promotion for Azure doesn't say they want to take over the world. Satya Nadella wants to take over the planet. Is this just a semantical overstatement? Wrap your heads in aluminum foil and think about it.
3) Cracking the security on Azure is the golden goose of organized crime. There are others with my skills but with their ethics chromosome missing. The NSA already demands unfettered access by federal laws deemed to be well known government secrets. Sometimes conspiracies are real.
The other side of the coin;
Ten years ago or so, I was designing processes and procedures for Wells Fargo Bank to test vendor updates before they were let loose onto the core business systems. Norton, McAfee, Microsoft, and others were all guilty of letting poorly tested updates into the wild and we were all experiencing system outages caused by a vendor update. Imagine to costs to Wells Fargo if their bank teller systems were all down.
While we were trying to mitigate the damage caused by bad updates, vendors (and most prominently Microsoft) were getting more secretive about what was in an update and what problem was it addressing. They claimed acknowledging a bug, security vulnerability, and the fixes would cause a more serious security vulnerability because it would give criminals the information needed to penetrate security. I always believed that was a weak argument because by then the problem was resolved by the update. With Azure, Microsoft is telling us to trust them. Which the last few Microsoft operating systems it's been near impossible to find the information needed to evaluate an update. Try tuning off automatic updates applied without administrative approval, and Windows will just revert those settings without telling you.
Will we ever find out the real cost for the blunderous November 2013 upgrade to Windows 10 1511 10386.3? Microsoft has rereleased this upgrade at least three times in the last couple weeks and finally pulled it. I've spent two grueling weeks trying to isolate the problem and find a work-around. I've hit the wall when it repeatedly breaks viewing the event log. In my youth I admit to trying voodoo debugging, but I don't think it ever worked. My inner voice, which is supposed to be suppressed by my medications, is telling me to revert to Windows 7. Remember how Windows 7 Professional allowed seamless execution within an XP virtual machine?
Let me close my editorial by reminded everyone that Microsoft cancelled to TechNet program just after announcing Azure. Who is guarding the henhouse now? The gods of Azure?
