back to article Windows 10 upgrade ADWARE forces its way on to Windows 7 and 8.1

Microsoft's Get Windows 10 app has started appearing on Windows 7 and 8 boxes, with a one-click option to upgrade free to the new OS from July 29. The company is keen to persuade users to upgrade, particularly following the lacklustre response to Windows 8. At Microsoft’s Build conference, Windows boss Terry Myerson predicted …

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  1. Pen-y-gors

    I'm confused

    by all this talk of 'apps' - I run Windows 7 on one machine and Win 8.1 on another. Both run programs, not apps. (win 8.1 boots to desktop and has a start menu installed, so it looks very similar to win 7). I have no idea what to do with those silly coloured squares that sometimes appear under Win 8.1 - they don't seem to serve any useful purpose.

    My phone and tablets use android - they run apps.

    How would I run a check Windows 10 app on a windows 7 machine, which only runs programs?

    I'm looking forward to getting a new laptop in a year vor so, with Win 10 installed from scratch, and hopefully without any of these silly 'apps', or Office 365.

    </grumpy old sod mode>

    1. GregC
      Pint

      Re: I'm confused

      My phone and tablets use android - they run apps.

      How would I run a check Windows 10 app on a windows 7 machine, which only runs programs?

      Have a pint on me, for saying what I think every time someone does this. I know in one sense it's only terminology, but I'm also a grumpy old sod at times and I concur completely.

      1. Neil Barnes Silver badge
        Headmaster

        Re: I'm confused

        IS there something about the modern attention span that can't get all the way to the end of 'application'? I mean, I know it's a long word, but even so...

        1. Mike Moyle

          Re: I'm confused

          2000 AD was 15 years ago.

          Get with the prog!

          1. elDog

            Re: I'm confused

            And Jesus was only 2015 years ago. What would he do?

            1. David Webb

              Re: I'm confused

              2014 years ago, year he was born in would be year 1 not year 0 /pedantic

              1. Morten

                Re: I'm confused

                He was born in year 6 BCE, if you really want to be pedantic...

                1. Anonymous Coward
                  Anonymous Coward

                  Re: I'm confused

                  To be really pedantic, there's no real evidence he was born at all, the first references to him in the historical record outside the Bible are 80 years after his supposed death.

                  1. Youngone Silver badge

                    Re: I'm confused

                    Ha! Someone gave this a thumbs down. LOL.

                  2. Geoffrey W

                    Re: I'm confused

                    <To be really pedantic, there's no real evidence he was born at all, the first references to him in the historical record outside the Bible are 80 years after his supposed death./>

                    I'm getting a bit tired with all this windows 10 griping so I'll jump on this instead. I think you will now find, if you look at some real academic researchers, that there is now not much doubt that Jesus did, indeed, exist. What there IS plenty of is doubt about his divinity. I.E. he was just a man like you and I.

                    1. king of foo

                      Re: I'm confused

                      Jesus definitely existed.

                      He brought us the Jesus phone.

                      He died and was resurrected in 2009. In 2011 he "ascended".

                      So sayeth people who drink tea in coffee shops...

                    2. BongoJoe

                      Re: I'm confused

                      I think you will now find, if you look at some real academic researchers, that there is now not much doubt that Jesus did, indeed, exist. What there IS plenty of is doubt about his divinity. I.E. he was just a man like you and I.

                      I am of the opinion that he did exist. But he was a latter-day Che Guevara, Gandhi, Mandela character with bags of charisma who was eventually put to death by the leaders of his own people who refused to got off their own gravy train and join in.

                      There's one bloke whom I know is a religious scholar and even though he's deeply religious he's also a military man and he told me how a lot of the bible was mistranslated over the years from the shorthand by those later on who didn't understand military matters.

                      Intreagued, I asked him to continue. He told me that one of the shorthand for numbering had the letter L for thousand. It was also a short hand for well trained militia. Now, if one considers stories in the Old Testament which had, for example, five thousand soldiers sneaking into opposing towns or whatever then it makes more sense if one considers that it was five well trained soldiers.

                      Then we get to the sermon the mount. Taken literally having fed the five thousand with a few loaves of bread and a couple of fishes is clearly impossible. Okay, it's seen as a miracle in the bible but let's consider that these five thousand were five members of the Roman forces with whom Jesus met and talked with bringing with him five loaves and two fishes and it now makes sense. But where was the miracle here? Well, consider this a meeting such as we had here in the UK to get the Good Friday treatment going in which Mo Molem received lots of accolades for doing "the impossible". In short, a miracle.

                      And this is what I believed happened.

                      Of course your view may and most certainly will vary on this one.

                      1. fruitoftheloon
                        Thumb Up

                        @BongoJoe: Re: I'm confused

                        Bongo,

                        thanks for that, most interesting (from my very non-religious, but curious standpoint)...

                        Cheers,

                        J

                      2. Brewster's Angle Grinder Silver badge

                        @BongoJo

                        The trouble is the old testament was written in Hebrew and the new in Greek. It seems unlikely they would use the same system. (It also sounds suspiciously like you're alluding to Roman numerals where L is 50 not 5000, and I can't see an "L" equivalent in Greek or Hebrew that has the value 5000.) It's possible this mistake happened when it was translated into Latin, but its more likely that what happened was distorted before it was recorded - much as rumours mutate today. The bible is "entertaining" gossip not factual accounts.

                        1. BongoJoe

                          Re: @BongoJo

                          The trouble is the old testament was written in Hebrew and the new in Greek. It seems unlikely they would use the same system. (It also sounds suspiciously like you're alluding to Roman numerals where L is 50 not 5000, and I can't see an "L" equivalent in Greek or Hebrew that has the value 5000.) It's possible this mistake happened when it was translated into Latin, but its more likely that what happened was distorted before it was recorded - much as rumours mutate today. The bible is "entertaining" gossip not factual accounts.

                          You are correct in pulling me up about the abbreviation "L". I apologise for that; it was my memory. The abbreviation was "lp" and thanks for pulling me up on that.

                          I found the gentleman's website and it is here where he wrote on this and it can be read here:

                          http://battlefieldreview.com/2ndAi.asp

                          The part of the page in question is this part (copy and paste coming up: I apologise for this but I think that it makes for interesting reading).

                          Some commentators have persisted in the ridiculous notion that there were 30,000 Israelites in ambush behind the hill west of Ai where the combat engineers hid, for this is what the Bible account says. However, we need to understand that the King James version of the Bible is the result of translation from Ancient Hebrew into Aramaic into Greek into Latin into English! While the main thrust of the Bible's words are not in question, some of the detail has been muddled. For instance, we know that many of the ancient Egyptian scribes, when copying numbers, for some unknown reason seemed to add an extra zero to the figures being copied.

                          Worse, the copying in much of the Old Testament was done anciently in a form of shorthand, in which it was the practice to simply drop the vowels from each word. And herein lies a problem: the word for "thousand" was elleph and the word for "warrior" or, in the Bible, a "mighty man" - meaning a regular soldier as opposed to a conscripted levy or a militia man - was alluph, and if the shorthand was employed they both became lp! Which is correct in this case? 30,000 or 30? Let's think about it for a moment - would it be possible to hide thirty thousand men less than five hundred yards (485m) from their target town with wide-awake watchers? No: the noise of their collective wriggling and belching would be heard a mile away! It has to be just thirty. Anyway, how many men do you need to set fire to a small and empty town? Again, thirty seems about right.

                          On the other hand, when the record says that Joshua sent 5000 to loop around to the right and hide behind his own command position, it only makes sense if, indeed, there were 5,000; what effect would five men have had, charging into the rear of the Ai-ites?

                          What we are saying is that to understand the records - of any war - it helps to first understand the way the records were made up, the mechanics of the recording. (For the record - pardon the pun! - it is interesting to see that the same numbers problem affects the story of the Israelites under Moses trekking across Sinai after leaving Egypt. In the Biblical book of Numbers the total of the people is given as 603,550 - and that's just the men over twenty years of age, quite apart from their families. At Elim were twelve wells; that's an average of over 50,000 men assigned water from each well. They'd die of thirst just waiting their turn to draw the water! If, however, we apply the elleph/alluph rule the figures change dramatically. This now translates that were 598 regular soldiers and 5550 other men available as instant soldiers when the need arose. Now that number, with their families, would have been able to survive the water queues at Elim. As we said, you need to understand the way the recorders worked. It also helps if you know the type of person who wrote the record; if a copy clerk in a monastery is writing about the technicalities of battle he's likely to get it wrong here and there; we need to read between the lines he ignorantly wrote.)

                    3. Anonymous Coward
                      Anonymous Coward

                      Re: I'm confused

                      Perhaps he was not the Messiah, but just a very naughty boy!

                    4. Loyal Commenter Silver badge

                      Re: I'm confused

                      I'm getting a bit tired with all this windows 10 griping so I'll jump on this instead. I think you will now find, if you look at some real academic researchers, that there is now not much doubt that Jesus did, indeed, exist. What there IS plenty of is doubt about his divinity. I.E. he was just a man like you and I.

                      There's also some pretty compelling evidence that the 'divinity' aspect of JC was back-ported from the cult of Mithras, which was contemporary to the rise of Christianity in the first few centuries CE (I'm not using AD, as nobody is my 'lord'), and has its origins at least 1400 years before then. After all, it IS historical fact that the Bible was written by several authors well after the death of the historical figure that was JC, and subsequently heavily edited by various 'official' churches a number of times thereafter to suit the social and political climate of the time.

                    5. TCMuffin

                      Re: I'm confused

                      ...or woman

                  3. Grimsterise

                    Re: I'm confused

                    As an atheist with an interest in Biblical history I have to point out that evidence for the existence of a historical Jesus is very good. He was a itinerant Jewish Rabbi with an apocalyptic understanding of Judaism and was knocked on the head by the Romans. The son of god stuff was made up later.

                  4. SolidSquid

                    Re: I'm confused

                    Technically the bible itself wasn't a contemporary source anyway, it was written decades later (I suspect the earliest book written was where you got the 80 years ago) based on the oral traditions of Christians at the time

                2. Youngone Silver badge

                  Re: I'm confused

                  Or perhaps he was never born at all. The evidence for him is pretty unconvincing really.

                3. Michael Habel

                  Re: I'm confused

                  He was born in year 6 BCE, if you really want to be pedantic...

                  Yeah it kinda figures that even the Church can't work out what the dates are...

                  Perhaps the Doctor, Doctor Emmit Brown, Bill & Ted etc... Could just pop 'round and have a noise in... And, just possibly put this whole charade of divinity to rest?

                  Though I don't know how I'd feel if they all came back, (With Pictures!, or better Phablet Movies), of that Cat turning Water into Wine feeding x number of People with just that one Fish etc...

                  1. Mystic Megabyte
                    Holmes

                    Re: I'm confused @Michael habel

                    I bet are happy to believe in the Big Bang theory. A Quantum fluctuation that did not annihilate itself a moment after it popped into existence? The technical term for this would be "a fecking miracle". Maybe the Universe willed itself to exist, stick that in your pipe and smoke it.

                    1. Spoddyhalfwit

                      Re: I'm confused @Michael habel

                      Well if you find the Big Bang hard to handle, what about the question of who created God?

                  2. Andrew Richards

                    Re: I'm confused

                    > Yeah it kinda figures that even the Church can't work out what the dates are...

                    Theologians exist largely to count angels and justify fairly obvious discrepancies that were introduced but can't be corrected.

                    What's important for dates: solar or lunar calendar? Let's have both (Christmas, Easter respectively). Creation story? Let's have two in Genesis within a few lines. Commandments? Yes, ten please. Although there's more than one list and they're not exactly the same. And there's more than ten, too.

                    Don't like gay people? Justify that nonsense on the old testament. And ignore lots of other stuff that's just as explicitly prohibited but less convenient. (Gay: no; shellfish: don't care; mixed fabrics: don't care; blatant hypocrisy: don't care, obviously.).

                    1. Kiwi
                      Angel

                      Re: I'm confused

                      Before I start, interests of disclosure etc etc etc.. Fairly "fundamentalist" Christian here - but in a different sense to most - I prefer to get right back to the basic Biblical roots of my faith, rather than the "Westboro" et al brands of fundamentalism.

                      I'm also probably more correctly ID's as "bisexual" but I am pretty much gay, certainly find guys much more attractive than gals. And yes, I did spend some of my life with a rather nasty view of "gay" people - there were many mistakes made in the church back then. Still many today, but things are getting better - and largely because people are coming to understand the concepts of grace and forgiveness over the "law" - things like that you talk about below.

                      Creation story? Let's have two in Genesis within a few lines.

                      I've heard people talk about this often but.. I've never been able to read it. I read the Bible cover-cover in a repeating sequence, ie I start at page 1 and read a small amount each day until I get to the end then start again, and also read other bits as desired whether for study, fact-checking, or pleasure (yes, some of it is quite pleasureable to read - other bits I dislike but still read). I have read Genesis 1 & 2 many times over the years, in different translations (english translations covering some 400-odd years), and do not see 1&2 as different stories. It's like reading many manuals and other texts, including newspaper articles. The first part gives a basic run-down (whether first paragraph in a newspaper article or introduction/first chapter in a computer manual) and the next chapter gives more detail on a specific subject. I am yet to see the conflict.

                      Commandments? Yes, ten please. Although there's more than one list and they're not exactly the same. And there's more than ten, too.

                      You should look into that a little more. There's only one key set of 10, which relate to how to treat God and how to treat other people (the ones like not murdering, not stealing, not cheating on your spouse and so on).

                      There are other laws, that's true. But there's ceremonial laws, and health laws, things like that. Not all apply outside of the people they're directed to. Those commonly called "The 10 commandments" are global. The rest aren't.

                      Don't like gay people? Justify that nonsense on the old testament. And ignore lots of other stuff that's just as explicitly prohibited but less convenient. (Gay: no; shellfish: don't care; mixed fabrics: don't care; blatant hypocrisy: don't care, obviously.).

                      Yeah, that sort of stuff has been a problem for a while. Still is for some people as well. Sadly only in the last couple of months I had someone giving me a bit of hassle for being gay, quoting a certain passage from the Bible. I asked him about the clothes he was wearing, and pointed out that the same section of laws cover clothes and other things as well. I also love to point out the other stuff in those passages at times.

                      Change is coming, and people are getting to see that grace, forgiveness, and most of all love, kindness and mercy are the important things. In many places in the Bible God says that He prefers kindness and mercy over sacrifice and judgement.

                      What many in the church has spouted for a long time does not line up with the Bible. It is a slow process, but things are improving. And if you want to know what the Bible says for itself, read it carefully yourself. Forget about what other people have to say, read it and let it interpret itself.

                      Hope this helps someone...

                  3. Kubla Cant

                    Re: I'm confused

                    Yeah it kinda figures that even the Church can't work out what the dates are...

                    To be fair, the dates weren't worked out until five centuries after the putative event, so it's not a bad guess. Anno Domini was invented by Dionysius Exiguus (Little Dennis) in 525 AD.

                  4. Anonymous Coward
                    Anonymous Coward

                    Re: I'm confused

                    "Yeah it kinda figures that even the Church can't work out what the dates are..."

                    They thought it was one date, but later on smart archeologist/historian types decided it was several years earlier.

                    Like Microsoft thinking Windows 8 was a great idea before the cyber villagers turned up with pitchfork and flaming torches in Redmond, then Microsoft backpeddled marginally (1/8 turn)

                4. Anonymous Coward
                  Anonymous Coward

                  Re: I'm confused

                  'He' probably never existed, uber pedant.

                5. Andrew Richards

                  Re: I'm confused

                  Depends on how you define "He". I'm sure lots of chaps were born in 6BCE and some probably called Jesus.

                  Not quite sure I'd go for one of them being son-of-god, though. (Pedantry overload!)

                6. Hans 1
                  Joke

                  Re: I'm confused

                  Was he ? Do we have evidence or a witness ?

                  Where are Jehova witnesses when you need them ...

              2. Anonymous Coward
                Anonymous Coward

                Re: I'm confused

                Jesus would use Apple

                1. Cynic_999

                  Re: I'm confused

                  "

                  Jesus would use Apple

                  "

                  No, you're thinking of Adam - and it got him into a whole shitload of trouble.

                2. Tromos

                  Re: I'm confused

                  "Jesus would use Apple"

                  Adam tried that and see where it got him.

                3. Tom 13

                  Re: Jesus would use Apple

                  Definitely not. He told the rich man to sell all his worldly goods and donate them to the poor if he wished to enter Heaven.

        2. Curtis

          Re: I'm confused

          Given the state of the US Public Edumacation System, I believe the issue is more that they can't SPELL to the end of applikayshun

          1. Anonymous Coward
            Anonymous Coward

            Re: I'm confused

            Came upon a broken down car at a rest area on US I-70 near the Colorado/Utah state line a couple of hours ago.

            A scrawled bit of paper on the dash said

            'Bok, back 5/31/15'

            The writer clearly didn't get back yesterday.

            But what struck me was that 'Bok' short for Borked or Broke/Broken?

            Ain't the US EDU System wonderful....

            {said car was being towed and was gonna cost the owner/driver at least $500 to get it back because we were 50 miles from the nearest services}

            This bit of I-70 has signs saying 'Eagles on Road'. Now that would be something worth seeing.

            1. Roj Blake Silver badge

              Re: I'm confused

              "This bit of I-70 has signs saying 'Eagles on Road'. Now that would be something worth seeing."

              It's good of them to let you know about another Eagles comeback tour.

            2. BongoJoe

              Re: I'm confused

              This bit of I-70 has signs saying 'Eagles on Road'. Now that would be something worth seeing.

              Here in Wales all we're told is that we have Mud on Road.

              Not quite the same as those FM Rockers of yours.

              1. magickmark
                Coat

                Re: I'm confused

                Ahh but you have to love those Tiger Feet!!

            3. Nigel 11

              Re: I'm confused

              was that 'Bok' short for Borked or Broke/Broken?

              Or somebody's (nick)name?

            4. MJI Silver badge

              Re: Eagles on road

              I suppose it must have crashed while on a day trip to the moon.

              http://www.scifiairshow.com/ships-eagle4.html

            5. LesB
              Happy

              Re: I'm confused

              Christoper Robin must have written that...

              GON OUT

              BACKSON

              BISY

              BACKSON

              C.R.

              (Or so Tigger told me)

            6. Wensleydale Cheese
              Happy

              Re: I'm confused

              This bit of I-70 has signs saying 'Eagles on Road'. Now that would be something worth seeing.

              Has Joe Walsh got his driving licence back?

            7. Adze

              Re: I'm confused

              Maybe it was an initialization? Bok - Bring own kangaroo? Buy our kar? Maybe it's Better off hitching and it's really a lower case h and not a k at all! The possibilities, while far from endless, are huge!

        3. John Brown (no body) Silver badge
          Thumb Up

          Re: I'm confused

          "IS there something about the modern attention span that can't get all the way to the end of 'application'? "

          My "apps" have been in c:\apps since the 80's when we only had 8.3 filenames and directories :-)

          1. Belardi

            Re: I'm confused

            Uh, only crappy 8bit computers or that very crappy MS-DOS had 8.3 File names.

            Amiga computers had 64~128 character file names (I don't remember), that could even be "###~.4.4" ie: "Great Ferrari Card.jpeg"

            Macintosh computers, also had long file names.

            It wasn't until Windows 95 (1995) - 10+ years after the Amiga and Mac, that they had semi-long file names (in the CMD window, it was back to 8.3) and WindowsXP that MS made a modern mainstream OS for the massess... 15+ years after Mac, Amiga.

            1. Kubla Cant

              Re: I'm confused

              @Belardi Uh, only crappy 8bit computers or that very crappy MS-DOS had 8.3 File names.

              The 16-bit PDP-11 operating systems RSTS/E, RT-11 and RSX-11 all used even shorter (6.3) filenames. So, IIRC, did the DEC-10 and DEC-20 mainframes. They may be old, but in no sense were they either crappy or 8-bit.

              1. Belardi

                Re: I'm confused

                I was responding more about the decade... not the 60s~70's mini-computers in which the PDP-11 used to be State of the Art.

                But by mid-80s... MSDOS was very much rooted to 70s tech since its a bastardized version of CP/M when you get down to it. How much did Bill Gates pay for that reverse engineered OS again?

                So yeah, I do get it. Lets look at the GeForce Ti 4200... a very kick ass card in its day. Yet its faster(cough) "replacement" the Geforce 5600 was obviously sub-standard (never-mind the pure crapola known as the 5200, which sold for many many years).

                I still have some of my 8bit and Amigas... I wonder if they still work?

                I'm pretty much sure the data on my 5.25 and 3.5" floppies have long flaked off... :( I'm afraid to find out.

        4. nijam Silver badge

          Re: I'm confused

          Having grown up in a medical family, I know that an "application" is like a cream or an ointment, except that it's to treat infections that are not mentioned in polite company.

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