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  • tynopik - Wednesday, March 18, 2015 - link

    "it was not always idea."
  • close - Wednesday, March 18, 2015 - link

    Now that 3D printing has gone mainstream how hard is to model a person's facial features based on pictures and print out a 3D model? It's certainly not a walk in the park but definitely easier than guessing or brute-forcing a good password.
  • CharonPDX - Wednesday, March 18, 2015 - link

    The new system Intel has developed doesn't get fooled by that, either. It uses IR to ensure it sees "signs of life" in addition to just a physical match.
  • Azurael - Wednesday, March 18, 2015 - link

    I've never been a fan of using something I can't change for a password....
  • squngy - Wednesday, March 18, 2015 - link

    You can always use both.
  • LKV1 - Wednesday, March 18, 2015 - link

    This brings up a good point. What is someone is disfigured in an accident? Does that lock them out of their computer permanently?
  • ifrit39 - Wednesday, March 18, 2015 - link

    Most other biometric credential systems use passwords as a back up. In fact, the Galaxy S5 requires that users create a password to register fingerprints. I don't own an apple device, but I'd bet that touchID works the same way and so will any other biometric system Microsoft uses.
  • FlushedBubblyJock - Wednesday, March 25, 2015 - link

    It's "locked" to your (one) device.
    No more access "wherever you go"...
    I'm going to hate cracking their OS when no doubt the camera fails... and they forgot their password... or worse, I'll have to figure out if it's the motherboard ID they are using, or a combo of hardware ID's to lock the "passport" - as when one of any fails - what happens - HDD/SSD/Mboard/CPU - which is it ?
    People already constantly refuse the "dual authentication" microsoft is trying to push on everyone already for email - I suspect people will really, really like the "I sit down it knows it's me" camera aspect (if presented as vaguely as possible for the paranoid).
    Yes, they will love how important they are if their computer recognizes them automagically.
  • eanazag - Thursday, March 26, 2015 - link

    So soak the 3D printed head in water that is 98 degrees.

    Two factor authentication is still necessary.

    Yet, the biometric is only locally stored so the security concerns are only in cases where the attacker has physical access to a machine.
  • tionls21 - Saturday, March 21, 2015 - link

    It was not always like Windows 10 to be such a nice computer. I can't wait to install it to my Windows pc. I love this Windows OS than Mac. At last, I find Windows Password Key is such a nice tool to reset Windows 10 login password.
  • antihelten - Wednesday, March 18, 2015 - link

    Quote from Insider Hub:

    "
    We’ve heard your feedback asking for more frequent builds—and as Gabe mentioned in his recent blog post, we’ve probably been too conservative about pushing builds to the Fast ring for Windows Insiders. So we’re preparing to speed up the build releases for those who want to live life in the Fast lane.

    The good news is that Insiders who choose Fast will be getting fresher code, with all of the features and fixes, more often. The potential downside is that as we go faster, the builds will likely include more bugs with fewer workarounds. If this doesn’t sound like something you want to deal with, now is your time to switch to Slow.

    On your PC, you can change this option in Settings > Update & recovery > Advanced options:

    On your phone, you can change this setting in the Windows Insider app:

    Going forward there will be a more discernable difference between the cadence and level of polish of preview builds sent to our Fast and Slow rings. Insiders who choose to keep the default setting of Slow will still receive preview builds, however they will arrive less frequently and with a higher degree of polish."

    I tried changing to "fast" updates and updating, but nothing except an update for windows defender and a system hardware update popped up.
  • Shivansps - Wednesday, March 18, 2015 - link

    I hope the evolution of wimboot is good, wimboot on Windows 8.1 is a dissaster, it saves you maybe 1gb of space on a x86 install and performance IS affected.
  • FlushedBubblyJock - Wednesday, March 25, 2015 - link

    More hidden inaccessible partitions or files - you don't have permissions, man I've got to say I just hate it.
    Quite a long time ago I had to load up some secret hidden WIM reinstall/recovery deal on a laptop to get the OS back - I had to go hunting for the MSFT loader files from some IT package, then dos text the whole deal to load it up and suck the giant gigs of OS out - what really surprised me is "the WIM file was reported as taking up no space".
    Now, we know it took up space eve when hidden, but the drive free space reports never indicated that - but load that puppy up off the harddrive, and sure enough the massive gigs it used suddenly were deducted from the free space checks...
    So that crazy hidden WIM thing is just another way IMO to lock end users out and hide from 99%+ of the public what they really have on the end users system.
    Millenium had a 3mb hidden secret partition as I recall (perhaps incorrectly) win 7 grabs 100MB for it's secrets that I know of, and then win 8 suddenly desired 350MB ... I scoped out the win 7 hidden 100MB once though I forget what it was because I found nothing of interest.
    Anyway, pulling out the sharp daggers with some "Take Ownership" progs ready is already required, and sooner or later, mostly sooner, accessing your own hard drive is going to be some kind of crime it seems.
    I'm exaggerating but not by all that much.
    All that above explains why saving 1GB is such a great thing...wimboot - so important in the age of terabyte drives - yes I'm sure it's for security... against the terrorist hackers...
  • BittenRottenApple - Wednesday, March 18, 2015 - link

    They better fix all of those bugs they've created with the January update since it was just offensive. As someone who's tested every possible bit of software for Microsoft from Vista on, I've never been more infuriated with an OS than I was with 10. Aesthetically, their initial release which was just Windows 8 with a Windows 7/8 hybrid start was lovely, then the got uglier as it went on and less usable. They started grouping things by letters which took up unnecessary space. Then they got rid of multi-column view in the full page start so you had the Modern App tiles on one side and a tiny column of apps on the left. The new 10 icons are horrendous and too blown out so they look even worse on crappier monitors or poorly calibrated ones. It's just terrible what they did. PC Settings is now strictly a Modern App that has added 800 clicks to get to things. Charms is disabled even though that was really helpful. Windows+P takes forever to load since it's now looking for wireless displays to connect to. Clicking the wifi icon no longer brings up a mini menu that allows you to pick your connection from that location like it did in 7 and 8. Instead you have to go through that piece of shit PC Settings. Also they decided to do away with update install history so you can't see what's fucking up your computer. The roll back feature didn't work on my prior Windows 8.1 PC, so I had to nuke everything and lose hundreds of gigs because of it. Got 90% back thanks to Recuva. I just really fucking hated Windows 10. It looks ugly and is just a cluster fuck of shit. I hate Cortana, hate that the Windows 7 search that was present in the beginning of the Tech Preview isn't there anymore. Too much unused spaces, and too many non-modern apps now being forced into modern, like PC Settings and Calculator. God it fucking sucks.
  • kingpotnoodle - Wednesday, March 18, 2015 - link

    Sounds like you make the rookie mistake of installing incomplete software for testing on a PC without taking a proper backup first. OS testing shouldn't end with Recuva no matter how unsuccessful it was...
  • close - Wednesday, March 18, 2015 - link

    You're infuriated that a piece of beta software (an OS even) isn't 100% stable and some features are changed every once in a while or are not really "finished", right? I don't know what kind of "tests" you do with "every possible bit of software for Microsoft from Vista on" but you don't seem to grasp some basic concepts: at this stage of the development the OS is still very much work in progress. It's like complaining that your kids don't bring in the big bucks.

    Rookie indeed.
  • mkozakewich - Wednesday, March 18, 2015 - link

    In his defence, I felt much the same about the stable release of Windows 7. They took out useful features and loaded it up with space-taking cruft. They removed even more features with Windows 8, but at least they added some good things (like the Charms bar).
  • BrokenCrayons - Friday, March 20, 2015 - link

    I can understand being upset about the changes and disliking the direction Microsoft is taking their OS. In fact, the idea of reading data about my face is a little alarming. I really don't want biometric information about me to be accessible on a device that is connected to the Internet because of the risk of it being captured by a third party. I really don't even like the idea of a camera being constantly connected to my computer much less something that can create 3d models of me on the fly. Yeah, yeah, I know it's a little tinfoil-ish to think that way, but the number of sickos who turn on web cams remotely on computers in bedrooms makes me a little worried about even sitting down behind a computer without a top, much less leaving one laying around where it can see me going from like a bath to my dresser. There's a lot of perverts out there and some of them are working very hard to get access to cams to do disgusting things or create vids to post all over the web that follow you for the rest of your life. So for me, passwords and non-biometric, non-camera equipped systems are totally preferred. If something goes wrong with my password, I'll take responsibility for it. The other thing I really dislike about modern Windows OSes, which isn't just a MS thing because Google is millions of times worse with their software products, is the heavy pushing of linking local access to your Hotmail/Live/Outlook account which has lots of scary implications too. All that is not at all good stuff or I think worth the trade-offs in having the extra features which is what drove me to go try Linux distros. Yeah they have their own problems too, but I've been happily learning (slowly for like the last year which has been a kinda struggle) how to do everything I wanna do in Mint and Lubuntu. It's pretty much the last bastion of operating systems that aren't invasive data logging monsters and I really hope it stays that way.
  • FlushedBubblyJock - Wednesday, March 25, 2015 - link

    I agree, they will have everything connected, then when one gets compromised, it's all going bye bye.
    The NSA and Homeland Security love it though - makes theirs and the other criminals jobs easier.
    They keep wailing about scams and hacks and people losing their accounts( but they want it all baked into one gigantic cookie) so that any single used site or service smokes the entire sausage...
    That always works out well...
  • FlushedBubblyJock - Wednesday, March 25, 2015 - link

    Thanks for the update and opinions, I've been just diddling around with 10 and don't always let them update - but I'm certain by your explanation of things they haven't got clue one and would prefer we all let them control everything - as they justify their code writing by further embedding every setting deeper and deeper within revolving door pop up windows...
    Nothing user friendly must remain - soon "it"(whatever setting you need to change) will be back in the dialog it resided in under windows98, but yeah, it will take 15 clicks to get there, 25 when you're trying to remember their last 5 changes from their last 5 OS'es.
  • Shadowmaster625 - Wednesday, March 18, 2015 - link

    So people are just going to continue to invest time and money into biometrics security, even though it has been proven to be completely unsecure and even more easily hacked than a typical pasword that contains one uppercase and one number? It is rare to see the "nothing to see here, move along" attitude so prevalent in politics make its way into tech. But of course we all know biometrics is a political creation anyway. I was just hoping that since it is proven to be insecure and thus a technological dead end, the tech community should be at the forefront of pushing it out of the mainstream.... before it is too late.
  • menting - Wednesday, March 18, 2015 - link

    you mean "current iterations" of biometrics security as being worse than passwords. And that is precisely the reason why more time and money needs to be invested in it, because passwords as it currently stands now, aren't sufficient anymore.
  • cboath - Wednesday, March 18, 2015 - link

    So, because it hasn't worked in the past means it should simply be abandoned completely? Who's to say someone can't make it work properly? Passwords will not last forever. There will be a 'next thing'. Not sure what you have besides biometrics. DNA? gotta swab your mouth to login? Once the DNA's degraded X% it's invalid so you have to get it to the scanner inside of 20 seconds?

    It's very easy to simply say 'that won't work'. It's also pretty unproductive. For a hacker, i'm not sure any amount of protection/password/biometrics/etc is a stopper. Just a delay. For the protection they're really after (personal systems/phones/average guy/disgruntled employees/etc) they actually are better. There are numerous people here who write their company pw's down on post it's and stick in their unlocked desks. If my parents had pw's when I was a kid i'd have been able to get around them PDQ....If it was a biometric setup, I wouldn't have had a chance.

    I'm not saying they don't have their issues, but you have to allow for the fact that they've improved it. You also have to allow for the fact that it's not MS pushing it but rather enterprise. Regardless - hard to trash it before it's tested in a final form.
  • Hrel - Wednesday, March 18, 2015 - link

    The biggest change I'd like to see from Microsoft would be to release only ONE version of Windows. Anything else just feels like they're nickle and diming us, which no one enjoys.

    SysAdmins can easily and quickly deploy Windows with various features and functions turned off as they see fit. So the only thing Microsoft accomplishes by releasing a "business" version of Windows is taking those choices away from SysAdmins.

    Furthermore, in a market with ever increasing competition, easily the most competition Windows has ever faced, they are only hurting themselves by exposing ANYONE to anything less than "full windows".

    The one caveat being, low power/mobile devices. I'd prefer "full Windows" to just be as little resource intensive as possible, but if that would require cutting features then it should only be done on mobile platforms. I'm talking backend here, not front end. Your average user should still think there is only one version of Windows.
  • extide - Wednesday, March 18, 2015 - link

    Well, they usually remove the ability to join a domain from the "Home" versions -- and make you buy a "Pro" version if you need to join a domain. That, at least, makes sense.
  • FlushedBubblyJock - Wednesday, March 25, 2015 - link

    Doesn't make any sense when the end users buy "the pro version!" and have absolutely no idea what a domain is and would never, ever use one, and never ever have - but boy they gots them that PRO version and are they ever a great person and a smart user cause of it...

    I'm telling you man, these are people that brag about their IQ's.
    It's shiny, it's PROFESSIONAL...
    They should market one with a racing stripe on the box
  • zodiacfml - Wednesday, March 18, 2015 - link

    Sigh, when I was just about to finish working on a WimBoot Image. But yeah, I'm still figuring out if it there's significant space saved as the default applications, drivers, and windows updates for my image are huge.
  • TallestJon96 - Wednesday, March 18, 2015 - link

    Don't see why passwords are suddenly outdated. Been working fine for quite a while.
  • mkozakewich - Wednesday, March 18, 2015 - link

    As computers become better, brute force attacks become easier. At this point, you need more than 8 characters to be safe, and that number will only increase. Soon we'll all need 12-character alphanumeric passwords. They may work now, but there *will* be a time when passwords just don't work for the majority of humans.
  • Etsp - Wednesday, March 18, 2015 - link

    Um, no.

    You're forgetting an aspect of it. The effectiveness of brute force methods relies on the number of possible combinations (password length/complexity) AND how much time it takes to generate the cryptographic hash.

    As time moves on, we will use higher-strength hashes, or use more iterations. A password hashed in 1995 is trivial to brute force compared to the same password hashed in 2015 (assuming typical strength hash functions of the time).

    The real problem with passwords is that people cannot remember a separate password for every online service they use, and when the same password is used in multiple places and is broken (due to one of the sites using cheap hashes and poor security), suddenly they are open to attack on MANY fronts.

    Having a password for a device, and having that device authenticate the user to the online service mostly resolves that issue.
  • moozoo - Wednesday, March 18, 2015 - link

    WIMBoot sounds great... until you download and install 800MB of patches and a couple of service packs. At which point a lot of system files are no long compressed.
    It only works if you repeatedly regenerate the WIMBoot file over time.
    I have a Pendo Windows 8 tablet. It has 16GB of storage and that is what I have had to do.
    In the end it does work. But I had to buy a third party tool in order to achieve that.
  • Wolfpup - Thursday, March 19, 2015 - link

    I’m with Brett about being really skeptical about optical recognition. It would be AWESOME if it worked reliably, but I’d personally be worried it would unlock for other people or could be fooled some other way.

    It SEEMS like it works on the Xbox One, but then I’m the only person using it, and I’ve never actually tested…plus of course I turned off Kinect anyway LOL. But when it was on it at least SEEMED like it was grabbing my face.
  • Brett Howse - Friday, March 20, 2015 - link

    Oh no it's completely broken on the Xbox One with Kinect. My son is almost always recognized as me (he's 8 btw) and I'm never recognized no matter how many times I train it. Best update on Xbox One was when they removed the Kinect sign-in and allowed other forms of sign in to be the default.
  • TheDarkKnight - Friday, March 20, 2015 - link

    "Regardless, it is hard to deny that the password has outlived its usefulness, so any research and advancement in this area can only be a good thing."

    Just like water has outlived its usefulness? Your retarded. That's all.
  • tionls21 - Saturday, March 21, 2015 - link

    I or one am excited about trying Windows 10. I follow an article from SmartKey Password Recovery software website, which is telling us how to install Windows 10 to our pc or Mac. You can Google Search " How to Install Windows 10 on Your Windows and Mac PC posted by Michael Eric" to find it out.
  • twotwotwo - Tuesday, March 24, 2015 - link

    For folks arguing about biometrics: imperfect auth can still be worth it, especially if it's easy enough more people will use it or you'll be able to use it more often. If your average teenager could get in after watching a 5-minute YouTube tutorial, OK, that's not so great, but I'm not really worried if there's just some reliable but troublesome way to clone my fingerprint or something; it still helps with the common cases of casual snoops and typical laptop thieves.

    And if competent professionals really are after ye Lucky Charms, you should control physical access to the box anyhow, especially if it's running with only a lockscreen in front of your data.
  • FlushedBubblyJock - Wednesday, March 25, 2015 - link

    ".....they have instead gotten rid of the recovery partition......The new reset and refresh functionality will rebuild the operating system in place using runtime system files."

    Great... for mobile dweebs with tiny 32 and 64 memHD's - while the rest of 97% of us have gigantic hard drives and or exceeding space... and WHAT tiny little msft windows mobile had a restore anyway? All for the failed windows slate ?

    Man, so now hackers can attack windows files and trash the whole windows and the digndang restore that is all mixed in on the same partiotion, not locked on another inaccessible by default partition... GREAT THAT WILL SURELY DO WONDERFULLY....

    Man...oh crud... same partition, same infected viral repository... WAY TO GO LESS IS BETTER...
    i'm so mad
  • JonnyDough - Friday, March 27, 2015 - link

    I'm glad that we got a Win10 update but this article is horribly written. Very short sentences and some extra fluff. Could we get an editor please? I understand somewhat if English is not your first language but that's what editors are for.
  • JonnyDough - Friday, March 27, 2015 - link

    Ok, so really it was just the first two paragraphs and a few things I noticed after that. Sorry, it took a bit to get to the meat I think.
  • JonnyDough - Friday, March 27, 2015 - link

    I reject Windows 10, not only are they data mining us and moving stuff to the cloud more and more, but now they have my biometrics too. No thanks. Anonymity is biting the dust and I really don't care for it. This movement (especially with the current administration) is something we should fear - we don't need to be classified and sorted in a database. That's what Hitler did with his IBM counting machines.
  • Shadowmaster625 - Tuesday, August 4, 2015 - link

    And yet there will still be some retarded winsxs folder containing 14 different copies of mshtml.dll, each one varying only slightly. Better compression could consolidate all those 20MB copies of mshtml.dll into one single 30MB archive, instead of occupying 250 MB and using dumb compression to mtake it down to 180MB.

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