On 2/20/2016 1:33 PM, rbowman wrote:
On 02/20/2016 09:37 AM, Don Y wrote:
Finally, how much risk these students will later be at
(for it to reintroduce itself to their machines) as they
accept future updates.

Considering the Whack-A-Mole game you need to play to keep 10 off a 7 machine,
I see no way a relatively naive user is going to avoid MS re-introducing the
spyware.

The XP machines were relatively easy, by comparison, to "control".
As all the updates -- that would ever exist -- were already released
(by MS), it was safe to install them and disable the update service
entirely (there's nothing more to update, why even try??)

[Yeah, maybe root certificates, eventually]

Students who were too-smart-by-half and tried to update using
a copy of a Win7 CD that a friend happened to have were
essentially "on their own". If I received a call about a "broken
computer", I simply repeated the instructions that I provided with
each machine: "reboot, press this, click on that, wait 4 minutes"
and they'd soon "discover" that I'd undone all of their changes
and restored the machine to the state it was in when they
received it (from me).

It doesn't take long for them to realize that there's no support
for the upgrade that they think they want -- at least, not from
the freebie computer guy! :

[At the same time, there was nothing that prevented them from
trying this! Or any *other* use/OS/etc. *I* just don't want to
be taxed with supporting their adventures!]