Dr. Bill | The Computer Curmudgeon

These warnings are not only annoying, they are disingenuous! I hope Microsoft will keep them out of the final release!

Microsoft Windows U-turn removes warning about installing Chrome, Firefox

c|net – By: Stephen Shankland – “Microsoft has apparently reversed course on a Windows 10 test feature that sought to warn people from installing Chrome, Firefox and other browsers that challenged Microsoft’s own Edge.

A new ‘fast-ring’ test version of Windows, Insider Preview Build 17760, no longer interrupts the installation of rival browsers, a CNET test shows.

Earlier this week, an earlier test version of Windows would warn people who tried to install the Chrome, Firefox, Opera or Vivaldi web browsers, ‘You already have Microsoft Edge — the safer, faster browser for Windows 10.’ The dialog box presented two options: ‘Open Microsoft Edge’ — the default — and ‘Install anyway.’

The feature raised some hackles and brought back memories of Microsoft’s strong-arm tactics promoting its old Internet Explorer browser in the first browser wars two decades ago. But Microsoft isn’t alone in such tactics: Google promotes its Chrome browser as faster and safer to people who visit its own websites with other browsers.

Microsoft didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment about the change of direction.

The company is struggling to reclaim even a shadow of the dominance it once held with its Internet Explorer browser. For years, Google’s Chrome has steadily eaten away at IE’s share of usage, according to analytics firm StatCounter, and Microsoft’s Edge hasn’t even outpaced IE despite its more modern design.

Years ago, IE dominance got Microsoft in trouble, with the US Justice Department and the European Commission dragging the company through antitrust proceedings. The browser and operating system markets look very different now, though, with Microsoft Windows absent on mobile phones and with Chrome dominant on personal computers.

Edge accounts for 2 percent of usage today compared with 3 percent for IE and 60 percent for Chrome, but its usage share has actually dropped a fraction of a percentage point compared with a year ago, according to StatCounter.

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Due to all the user uproar and complaints Google has decided to restore the “www.” to the addresses in the Google Chrome address bar. This is only a short time fix, however, because they plan to take it away again when Chrome Version 70 comes out.

A lot of the complaints originated due to phishing schemes that would be more successful by hiding the “www.” subdomain in the address. There is also concern about the “m.” subdomain, but for the time being, both have been restored and will go away again with Chrome Version 70. The Safari browser also hides subdomains, but not very many people have said anything about that. I guess we’ll stay tuned to see what happens!

This is pretty cool! This is a feature I have wanted for a LONG time!

Windows file sharing comes to Chromebooks

ZDNet – By: Steven J. Vaughan-Nichols – “You can run Android apps on Chromebooks. You can run Linux programs on Chromebooks. Heck, you can even run Windows programs on Chromebooks. But one thing you couldn’t do natively on a Chromebook is read and write files on a Windows PCs or Windows and Samba servers. Things change. With the forthcoming release of Chrome OS 70, you can access network file shares from Chromebooks.

To do this, once Chrome OS 70 is available to all users, open Settings, look for ‘Network File Shares’, click the ‘Add File Share’ button, and enter your user name and password. Then, click ‘Add’ button and open the Files app to browse your newly mounted shared folder. That’s all there is to it.

Today, canary Chrome OS users can test it out. This version may not be the shipping one. Chrome OS developer Zentaro Kavanagh said on Google+, ‘We are still working on improving the UX flow.’

Kavanagh also wrote, ‘devices that only support the old SMB1 version of the protocol are not supported.’ SMB (Server Message Block) 1 is insecure.

Microsoft deprecated the SMBv1 protocol in 2014. Starting with Windows 10 Fall Creators Update and Windows Server, version 1709 and later versions, SMBv1 was no longer installed by default. Nevertheless, many Network Attached Storage (NAS) file servers still support SMBv1. Whether or not you use Chromebooks, set your servers to use SMBv2 or newer.

The Chromebook’s code is based on the Samba file server. Samba is a set of Windows interoperability programs that provide secure, stable and fast file and print services for all client operating systems using the SMB/Common Internet File System (SMB/CIFS) protocol. Samba is also commonly used on almost every NAS device.

Chromebooks already work with Active Directory (AD). Intel-based Chromebooks have done so since the Chrome OS 61 release. But they couldn’t work with AD file resources.

It does not appear, at this time, that Google will be using Samba to enable Chromebooks to work with SMB/CIFS-compliant printers. However, while it’s not well known, Chromebooks can now use some newer local printers. This is done with the open source Internet Printing Protocol (IPP)/CUPS. To see if your Chromebook can already work with your legacy printers, follow the instructions in Google’s latest set up printers guide.

While there is an extension that enables Chromebooks to use SMB file shares, it’s — not to put too fine a point on it — bad. By fully supporting SMB/CIFS, Chromebooks will be one big step closer to being full-fledged members of Windows-based offices.”

Do we care? “www” is kinda traditional, but is it really a big deal?

Chrome 69 kills off www in URLs: Here’s why Google’s move has made people angry

ZDnet – By: Liam Tung – “With the launch of Chrome 69 this week, Google promoted new features and a new look. It gave users months to prepare for Chrome dropping ‘Secure’ from HTTPS sites and adding ‘Not secure’ in red to HTTP sites from Chrome 70.

But for some reason Google decided against mentioning that as of Chrome 69 the world’s most popular browser will no longer show the www. or m. on websites in the address bar because they’re just a ‘trivial subdomain’. As a result, www.zdnet.com is now displayed as zdnet.com.

For now, users can force Chrome to display the full address by disabling the flag ‘Omnibox UI Hide Steady-State URL Scheme and Trivial Subdomains’ at chrome://flags/#omnibox-ui-hide-steady-state-url-scheme-and-subdomains.

The HTTPS is the ‘state-state URL scheme’ while Chrome now considers the www to be a ‘trivial subdomain’ that the address bar would look better without.

You can still reveal the full URL in Chrome 69 by double-clicking the address in the address bar, and if you copy the simplified address and paste it elsewhere it will display the full address.

Chrome 69’s treatment of www in the address bar is similar Apple’s Safari, but the change in Chrome has caused greater concern over Google’s motivations.

After it all, it went to great lengths to warn users about new ways it would communicate HTTP and HTTPS in the address bar, but stayed silent about dropping an equally important indicator that users expect to see.

In a bug report spotted by The Register, critics have pointed out several instances where two different sites will now look the same, potentially exposing users to phishing attacks.

For example, m.tumblr.com, which is not Tumblr’s site, is shown as tumblr.com, and it’s not immediately clear that https://www.pool.ntp.org and https://www.pool.ntp.org are two different sites. Also, in the case of a domain like ‘www.www.2ld.tld’, the www is hidden twice.

The issue has sparked a debate on Hacker News, where some argue that the change is part of Google’s long-term plan to hide its AMP subdomain and make it indistinguishable from the actual domain.

‘And then suddenly the whole world funnels through AMP,’ the commenter noted.

Just as Chrome 69 was released, Google told Wired that URLs are failing to convey a site’s identity, so they’re looking for something else that offers more convenience and greater security.

Nonetheless, the impression it’s given is that Google is trying to kill the URL and assert its dominance over the web.

Security expert Scott Helme reckon the change is good, at least from a phishing standpoint, since most users will understand a padlock better than https:// while removing the www means there’s less information to interpret.”

Well, for Windows 10 Enterprise, that is! It is about time! This is why Linux has always been more robust in the major LTS distros!

Windows 10 Enterprise customers will now get Linux-like support

ZDNet – By Ed Bott – “Microsoft’s release cadence for Windows 10 has been the stuff of nightmares for IT pros. New feature updates (the equivalent of full Windows upgrades) arrive every six months and are supported for only 18 months. When you’re accustomed to deploying major Windows versions every five years or so, the idea of having to make those large, coordinated moves every year is daunting, to say the least.

Effective this month, for enterprise customers willing to pay the Enterprise edition premium, Microsoft is granting an extra year’s support. The new changes are designed to encourage slow-moving enterprises to pick up the upgrade tempo for hundreds of millions of Windows 7 PCs, before that older OS reaches its retirement date in less than 500 days.

Today’s announcements are the latest twist in a series of changes and extensions in the three years since Windows 10’s initial release in 2015. In November 2017, Microsoft extended support for version 1511 by six months, to April 2018. (The blog post announcing that change is no longer online.)

Then, in February 2018, Microsoft announced similar six-month ‘servicing extensions for Windows 10,’ but this time with a noteworthy gotcha: The new, 24-month support lifecycle applied only to Enterprise and Education editions. If your organization has devices running Windows 10 Pro, they need to be updated every 18 months or sooner.

For all intents and purposes, Microsoft is adopting a release cadence that is strikingly similar to what Linux users are already familiar with. Ubuntu Linux, for example, has a nearly identical twice-yearly release schedule, offering Long Term Support (LTS) versions in the spring and interim releases in the fall.”