obobski

Random shot in the dark (the picture is kind of hard to see): archive invalidation incorrectly/not applied?

The red boxes mean there's missing textures/meshes and the engine can't draw whatever you're asking it to draw - if you added custom weapon, armor, etc mods they will need their textures and meshes (or associated bsas), not just an esp, to work. The UI problems it's tough to say without a screenshot, but you likely misconfigured a UI mod or have multiple things conflicting. Overall I think the easiest solution at this point is to completely uninstall New Vegas, and start over. Instead of just trying to install every mod you've ever seen all at once, go one at a time until you get the game to where you'd like it, and that will also help you pinpoint which mods are potentially problematic (not all mods are created equal, and some will conflict with each other, some just don't work very well, etc). I would also suggest using LOOT to sort your load order as you re-install the game.

If a new/clean save works, you likely have corruption due to pulling mods out or [x-files factors]. You can try a utility to fix, or try rolling back to an older save (IME its rare for *all* of the saves to be corrupted), if you'd like to continue on with your character.

From doing a bit of searching about the web, these kind of "booster" applications tend to make no difference for performance. Here's a performance benchmark example: http://www.howtogeek.com/171734/benchmarked-will-a-game-booster-improve-your-pc-gaming-performance/ You can largely achieve everything that the Razer application is doing by yourself, but if you like the convenience of a launcher like that, there's nothing wrong with it. It will not allow your computer to perform better than the sum of its hardware, however.

I think, and this is purely an opinion, that because it is banned and taboo it draws attention to itself, whereas if it was just not mentioned at all I would assume there would be very little discussion about it (because how many people *actually* would want that content?). However it comes back to a small minority or individual "ruining things" for everyone else. Because someone/someones *did* mention it and so forth, a rule had to be created, and then you get the much larger group of people questioning the rule after the fact. Like speed limits on roads. Technically it should be common sense that driving at 200 mph through a residential area is bad because the car can't handle, stop, etc very well in those conditions and its a recipe for disaster, and for the most part I think you could get away without having a rule, but then you get someone deciding that because there is no stated rule they can do whatever they want, and going 200 mph through a residential area and hitting poor grandma as she walks down to get the mail. And that's how you get speed limits. Someone was inconsiderate so now everyone has to be subjected to more rules. Of course that's an over-simplification, but honestly that's how I imagine this kind of debate/discussion comes to transpire - I'd like to believe that there's not a big group of people out there who want to do harm to children, or create virtual content that depicts it. However there's certainly a big group of people who'd like to know why they were told "no" about something, even if it's something they likely never would do/want/etc.

Ah yes, Barbara Streisand and her precious house. That's the "other side" of censorship which may even explain why topics this like thread seem to be relatively common. Why do I say "relatively common?" - because most mods that I've seen which deal with children or sex will have huge disclaimers and FAQ items (usually in 40 point bolded red font or some such) about how they will not be producing mods that sexualize children. I even remember this being the case for mods that added children to Morrowind, so it's certainly not a "new" discussion.

This isn't actually different from Windows 8. Or for any other version of Windows apart from certain editions of 7. Windows 7 is the only version of Windows that included free DVD playback software (and it isn't Microsoft being "evil" there - they have to pay licences to Fraunhofer IIS, DVD-Forum, etc to implement various non-free codecs, and DVD playback was commonly one that got the axe). In Windows 98 through Vista they would provide links to third-party software that you could purchase (and there are freeware alternatives like VLC; it was also not uncommon in the early 2000s for higher-end graphics cards to include free DVD decoder software as an add-in as a result of this policy either), but in Windows 7 they gave the codecs away for free to customers of Home Premium and above. Windows 8 started charging for a Microsoft-branded plug-in, at the user's option. If I remember right their explanation was to cut costs, as many Windows 8 computers/devices do not even have DVD drives, so why pay (or charge the user for) the decoding package that quite literally can never be used? The removal of games also happened in Windows 8, as a lot of the default Microsoft games were removed from 8, and available as part of a Microsoft download (some paid), or from third parties (usually always paid). Again, nothing really new here. Of course, it's almost become a tenet of modern journalism (especially tech journalism) to ignore history if it makes your article more sensational (gotta pump your SEO and push those CTRs!), so the Forbes article isn't surprising either. Wikipedia on Win8: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Windows_8#Removed_features https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_features_removed_in_Windows_8#Games Microsoft on DVD playback in Windows: http://windows.microsoft.com/en-US/windows/dvd-playback-help The DVD player application also appears to be a free included upgrade from any version of Windows that previously could play DVDs natively: http://winsupersite.com/windows-10/windows-dvd-player-app-released-windows-10-will-be-free-some

There's a lot of potentially good things to this post, couched with a lot of politically motivated anti-corporatism and Linux fanboyism. Don't misunderstand, I'm not saying Linux is bad, or that people shouldn't use Linux - it's a fine platform for what it is. The same goes for Windows, OS X, BSD, etc. They all have their pros and cons. You, or anyone else, is certainly welcome to their opinion, but with hedged statements like "a real system..." or "the fact is..." or "there is a way out..." it pretty much mutes any discussion that disagrees with your opinion. I would also contend that it is naive to assume that simply using Linux will eliminate "spying" (and/or be a magic bullet for "privacy concerns") - as bben said, if there's something you don't want floating around in the wild world, don't put it on a computer, and especially not one connected to the Internet.

And this is the bigger piece imho (and I think I said this before); even if whatever they wanted to do wasn't technically illegal, if it attracts enough negative publicity it will still have the same effect (censorship).

I just wanted to point-out and/or ask: you joined just to post inflammatory anti-Windows content in this thread, while also promoting Linux (including providing links to a specific, and obscure distro (as opposed to, for example, linking to Distrowatch or some other general website))? I certainly understand having a preference for a given platform, but your motives seem highly suspect. Just because your friend has an opinion doesn't make it a fact, nor is it a good reason to make accusatory or defamatory statements about people who disagree with your friend's opinion. Personally I would encourage you to form your own opinions based off of experience and knowledge, but if you must rely on the opinions of others to inform your choices and decisions, please don't try to represent them as indisputable facts. As far as "this Windows 10 icon" - it is related to the GWX.exe application that was made available to Windows 7 and Windows 8/8.1 systems via Windows Update. It checks your computer for compatibility with Windows 10, and then provides information about how to reserve your free copy of Windows 10. It is not trying to force you into anything, it is simply acting as a notifier. It can be safely removed or disabled if you would like (and Microsoft has provided directions for this on their website (this is not a hallmark of spyware), you can also find information about it via a web search, and I would assume that any competent "computer mechanic" (never heard that one before) could also figure out how to remove it). Not all eligible systems received the GWX.exe application, this was covered back on the first page and in other places; Windows Update settings, licence status and type, and (seemingly) dumb luck play a factor in whether or not it deploys correctly. Broadly the application is similar to the "Windows Upgrade Advisor" applications that have been released since Vista, but also provides access to the free upgrade promotion (which is new for Microsoft). Again, there should be no reason to upgrade to Windows 10 unless you truly want to, as Windows 7 and Windows 8 will continue to receive updates for many years to come, and developers are unlikely to abandon them as a platform anytime soon, especially with many large organizations and companies only just making the switch to Windows 7.

In menus is a mouse accel variable in the ini (see the links) - just turn it up and it will move faster. You might also look at UI mods too, like MTUI, which will allow more text/menus to be shown on screen at once, which can make things feel less clunky. This is separate from the 3D side, which may be the jerkiness/stutter problem (admittedly I've never experienced this myself, even across multiple machines). From the linked articles it seems this is the result of a disconnect between the physics and 3D components; I would guess that if you had tons of mods running for physics or 3D enhancement it could create/exacerbate such a problem.

When you say "mouse lag" do you mean something that you can legitimately observe/measure (e.g. the game is skipping/jerking), or is this driven more from the realm of "some online guide said vsync makes tons of lag and I want buzzword compliance"? (sorry if that seems combative I'm not sure how else to ask). As far as "fixing screen tearing issues" - that's what vsync is for. The first one may be fixable with ini tweaks, see here for more: http://www.tweakguides.com/Fallout3_3.html (yes there's a lot to read; scroll down to the bolded "Note" section, and also see the Advanced Tweaks sections) That guide suggests this mod, which I've never tried (or had cause to try): http://www.nexusmods.com/fallout3/mods/8886/? Might be worth a shot if ini tweaks don't fix it. Also if the "mouse lag" is just on the 2D segments (menus, pipboy, etc) that's another variable that you can directly address from the ini (covered in the Advanced Tweaks sections of the tweakguides link). You may also want to do that (and/or consider a UI replacer) if you have a higher resolution monitor. If instead it's just "some guide said vsync is awful" I'd probably just bin the guide and enjoy the game. :blush:

My point is that it's essentially all arbitrary (or to put it more nicely, "culturally relative") from an objective standpoint, because there is no universalizing criteria to judge things like "civilized-ness" or "moral correctitude." Because games are tending to be released internationally more often these days, debates like this thread (competing cultural values; not specifically cultural treatment of children) are more likely to become more common - different cultures will have different standards of acceptable behavior, and some things that may seen innocuous to one person may be entirely unacceptable to another. As these cultures come into contact with one another, you will see friction. For example Fallout 3's experience in Japan (you can read about that here: http://gamecareerguide.com/news/25670/interview_zenimax_asias_.php). This isn't to say that these taboos or rules are externally applied/artificially constructed. Taboos and laws are the product of the culture that creates them, and the culture in this case is against these things. In this case a gamer/user/etc may be located somewhere in the world where a given "thing" is not taboo and/or is acceptable, but Nexus cannot host it or promote it because it violates UK law, or Bethesda cannot host it or promote it because it violates US law. The relationship with ratings/censorship organizations like ESRB, CERO, and PEGI is also going to factor into this. For example if you remember the "Hot Coffee" mod for GTA: San Andreas - that game feature wasn't actually illegal in the US, but it pushed the game from ESRB Mature to ESRB Adults Only, which creates commercial problems for the publisher (because a lot of US retailers will not stock or distribute ESRB Adults Only titles), so despite not breaking any laws, there's an economic disincentive to producing such content commercially. On the point of the Vatican City (because I looked it up), the age of consent is certainly higher than twelve; Wikipedia has a concise summary, with full-text links to the applicable laws, if you're interested: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ages_of_consent_in_Europe#Vatican_City Also interesting fact: the Vatican City has around 450 citizens; I couldn't find a population breakdown but I'm going to guess that it's largely skewed towards adult males. On the point of slavery, it has featured in all installments of the Fallout series in their base configurations, and Fallout 3: The Pitt DLC features it as a major storyline component. It has certainly been done in other games and media formats too.

Something else I thought of, and realized I did not post: If you're going to go with two cards from the same manufacturer, for example nVidia + nVidia, they will need to run a common driver (at least this has consistently been my experience). This generally is not a problem within reason, but it may restrict your ability to get updates if you want to run a relatively old card, and there will be compatibility issues at the "outer edges" (e.g. lets say you want to run a GeForce 6800 and GTX 980 together) as there won't be a common driver. I'm not sure how this would play out with an AMD APU + Radeon graphics card, but it's worth keeping in mind if that's the kind of configuration you want.

Good point on the APU and latency - I wish I could find the AMD presentation from a few years ago (its probably buried somewhere on their developer site), but they demonstrated one of their old-ish APUs (Trinity I think) against Radeon HD 5870, and showed significantly lower latency - the 5870 only had an advantage when the task exceeded the APU's computational abilities (e.g. running Skyrim). For decoding HD video or DVDs and so forth any semi-modern graphics solution (from the lowliest Intel IGP on up) should provide full h/w acceleration, as long as the software behind it is working and configured correctly. That last bit is important to keep in mind, because IME "just works" is still kind of an idealized scenario when dealing with different media players, codec packages, media containers/formats, etc. Trial and error is still necessary, at least to some extent. Something else to consider if you're adding another graphics card for a modern system - ensure that it is new enough to support said decoding features; there are cases where a newer, slower card has a leg-up here over something faster but somewhat older. Generally the cutoffs for discrete cards are GeForce 8600 and above and Radeon HD 4000 series and above; for IGPs the Radeon 3000 series and above (must have UVD2.x; some do and some do not), Intel 4500HD and newer (the "plain" 4500 is not the same), and all of the AMD APUs should be suitable.

I rather see these promised gains as the proverbial carrot. Microsoft targets the PC gaming community with the magic word "performance gain". There is another interesting article, which theorizes that probably the DX11 -> DX11.1 scenario will play out again in terms of backwards compatibility and enhanced features that do require purchasing new hardware. (http://www.pcworld.com/article/2873545/dont-panic-directx12-wont-require-a-new-graphics-card-after-all.html). The other part of the Windows user pool is apparently lured into upgrading by the 1-year free upgrade offer. If something is offered for free (as in free drinks), it's a 100-percent certainty that you will be paying for it with something else. And I strongly suspect, it's your personal data. By the way, AMD has already shelved Mantle in favor of DX12 (https://community.amd.com/community/gaming/blog/2015/05/12/on-apis-and-the-future-of-mantle The key sentence: " However, if you are a developer interested in Mantle "1.0" functionality, we suggest that you focus your attention on DirectX® 12 or GLnext."). Another interesting article that reviews Win 10 from a Windows 7 user's point of view: http://wccftech.com/windows-10-review-for-windows-7-user/ As to Windows Defender: I've just installed a third-party Antivirus on my old notebook that I use to test Win 10. Indeed, installing a third-party AV application disables Windows Defender. It is no longer running, and it's startup is set to "Manual". Completely agree on the first part. Thanks for the link on Mantle (I honestly expected something like that to happen; but hadn't heard anything). Thanks for confirming on Defender.

I've not done this with a CPU-built-in-GPU (haven't had a need to...yet), but I've done this kind of configuration in the past with multiple graphics cards, IGPs, etc and here's roughly my experience/opinion on the matter: - Historically speaking the dedicated GPU will run coolest by itself driving one or two monitors, unless the second GPU doesn't impact airflow (e.g. is built-in to the chipset), however that second GPU will produce heat of its own. Modern GPUs don't align with this as closely though - their dynamic clocking will change behavior in single or multi-monitor configurations, and they tend to run a little warmer when driving multiple displays (it should be nothing to worry about but it's just something to keep in mind). - Adding a second GPU that isn't from the same maker as the primary GPU will not work in Windows Vista, but it will work in XP and 7 (I do not know if it will or won't work in 8/10). It will require drivers for both. This can increase memory usage and create some conflicts having two different graphics drivers installed; it's nothing that can't be managed (well, okay, 3DLabs drivers really DESPISE sharing a machine with anything else, but you're unlikely to have a 3DLabs card), but it can be annoying sometimes. Much better to go all from the same maker (e.g. nVidia + nVidia). - A lot of games will not handle losing focus for some application/stuff for whatever is on the second monitor, no matter what GPU is driving what display or handling the game. Bethesda games are probably among the worst for this. This has to do with how DirectX handles application focus and loss of focus, and some games simply do not recover from it very well. There are other games that do very well with this (e.g. Empire Total War will let you minimize it), however you will still have to deal with the limitations of DirectX (the renderer has to re-initialize when focus is regained; ETW will show a loading screen while this happens, some games will just show a blank screen, etc). Running the game in a window may help this for some games, so that may be worth looking into. - Depending on what you're doing on monitor #2 may also heavily impact performance, for example if you want to watch a Blu-ray, play a videogame, browse the web, and have video chat open all at once, you're going to likely have performance issues with at least some of those applications (e.g. sometimes you may have stutter in the game or frames dropped in the video as the machine load balances all of that). Having multiple GPUs can help if you're doing stuff that's GPU accelerated, but it's not foolproof. - If you just want to drop secondary outputs from the primary GPU onto another card in the hopes of gaining performance, I wouldn't bother - it usually makes no nevermind if the secondary outputs aren't being used (even if they're just drawing the desktop but not disabled), at least based on my experience. Some other stuff to consider: - If you have nVidia, you can add another nVidia card and use it for secondary monitors and also throw PhysX onto it. This may or may not help performance depending on specific hardware and what you're doing. It's "free" though, if you have two nVidia cards. - The iGPU being enabled in your CPU may increase CPU temperatures and it will also share memory bandwidth with the system, this could lead to a performance hit depending on what-all you're asking the machine to do at once. - Having an Intel iGPU enabled may cause conflicts with some games that try to specifically block Intel GPUs. I don't actually know too much about this overall, I've just read of some games over the years explicitly trying to block any Intel GPU, and imagine it could be a potential problem even if you're trying to get the game to run on your nVidia/AMD card. - nVidia will block PhysX if third-party GPUs are supported, broadly speaking. - Having multiple separate graphics drivers installed can make configuring some games interesting, as the game may want to default to an adapter/monitor/etc that isn't where you'd like it, or it may not properly identify all of your available output options. Some games also really just do not like multi-monitor configurations. Overall I would say there isn't a definitive "yes do this" or "no don't do this" that I could give you. It can be an entirely workable solution, but it isn't the only way to achieve what you're wanting, especially in the era of graphics cards commonly having 3-6 output channels. I would suggest looking at what you already have, hardware wise, and seeing what kinds of other options are available (e.g. buying another PCIe card, upgrading your current graphics card, etc) and going from there. It's also worth considering what games you're primarily wanting to do this with - some are more friendly to it than others. Finally, a completely off-the-wall idea: While I've experienced problems with many games trying to run on a multi-monitor system and multi-task while gaming, I've not had problems with any game I've tested and InputDirector hooked up with a second machine. In that configuration you'd have PC A running your game into Monitor A, and PC B running whatever you want into Monitor B, and you just run the mouse pointer off-screen (you can lock it on-off screen with hotkeys to prevent "losing control" in the middle of gaming) and do whatever you need on the secondary machine. Even Skyrim seems to have no problem with this, and I've happily watched many a DVD while dungeon crawling. The downsides here are that InputDirector only supports Windows 2000 through Windows 7 (I've heard a lot of mixed things about Windows 8), and will require multiple PCs. Just food for thought.

Some reviews seem to suggest that the performance gain will be substantial compared to Dx11: http://www.pcworld.com/article/2900814/tested-directx-12s-potential-performance-leap-is-insane.html Yeah I've seen those Futuremark things too, and they do look very promising. But we've yet to see any games take hold of it (at least that I'm aware of). It'd be awesome if DX12 did take off and did deliver performance like that, but at the same time I doubt it's anything we'll see in the immediate future. This is 100% a guess on my part, mostly based on how quickly/slowly (depending on how you view it) DX9/10/11 came about. I think the big "gotchas" here, however, are that DX11.3 is supposed to offer similar functionality to DX12, and nVidia and AMD have provided pretty significant commitments for backwards compatibility with 11.3/12 on existing hardware (and neither of these has ever happened before), so maybe DX12 will be helped along by those things. On the other hand, it may end up in the same boat as Mantle as an "alternative choice" for users with appropriate hardware/software. Again, just guessing here - only time will really tell.

To play devil's advocate to your devil's advocate: "Killing" (or "taking a life") and "murder" are distinct practices that are defined culturally, and Skyrim actually does enforce this distinction within its own created/fictional culture. As the player you can kill characters like bandits, and this is allowable, however killing/assaulting Jarl Elisif is not allowable, and will be punished. There's a distinction between guys you can hit, and guys you can't (killing vs murder). Real-world cultures make similar distinctions. For example soldiers killing other soldiers in a war is not the same as a civilian walking into a bar and killing another civilian (Skyrim actually enforces this same distinction too). All cultures/societies have a taboo on murder, but they all define murder in different, socioculturally mediated, ways. Within the medieval period, there were similarly enforced taboos on murder as distinct from killing within contemporaneous cultures. The concept of werguld, for example, comes out of the middle ages (Skyrim actually enforces/demonstrates this too, albeit in a limited fashion). It wasn't just "do as you will" with respect to violence, however by many modern sensibilities it may appear that way. Marriageable age is another culturally relative topic, and can be thought of in a largely similar way. There will be variable definitions of what is and is not acceptable as you go from culture to culture. Arguably the fictional culture of Skyrim largely reflects modern-day beliefs on the topic (if you treat "vanilla game" as canon). The same goes for conceptualizations of personal rights or self ownership. As far as why some "bad" things are allowed within current law/culture and other "bad" things are not - again, it's all culturally relative (even thinking about actions in terms of a value-weighted dichotomy is culturally relative). And the great part about cultural beliefs and practices is they don't have to make any logical sense whatsoever - they're cultural beliefs and practices after all, not natural laws (however to cultural participants they very well may feel or appear to be rigidly fixed points, or "just the way it is"/"the way of the world"). In other words, it's not like Nirn will break/unravel if you were to kill/attack Jarl Elisif, even though you're really not supposed to, and Bolgeir Bearclaw will happily explain to you the error of your ways (as he's there to tell you which guys you can, and can't, hit). Now as far as "morality" or "ethics" - that's an entirely different discussion. :teehee:

Windows 7 and Windows 8 are not scheduled to "stop updating soon" - extended support for Windows 7 continues until 2020, and Windows 8.1 until 2023 (Windows 8 "base" is unsupported and has been since the 8.1 release, however, so you would need the 8.1 update) based on current Lifecycle documentation (they could always extend those dates further outward, as they did with Windows XP). Support for Windows 10 is scheduled to end in 2025, only two years after Windows 8.1. DX12 has only been "in the wild" for about 72 hours, and as far as I know no game supports it, let alone requires it, and it's probably nothing to worry about in the near future (and depending on how well Windows 10 is adopted, it may not ever be a "big deal" - like DX10 with Vista).

I think the better question to ask is "does SLI mobile support Skyrim" - and this isn't just "will SLI work with Skyrim" but also "will the machine do it without overheating and cooking itself to death." As far as I'm aware SLI and CrossFire do still work with Skyrim (I had CrossFire working a few months back; haven't tried SLI), although it isn't great (you can get odd stuff like the "flickering menus bug" and some benchmarks don't show very good scaling), and wanting to run everything 4K all the time at high frame-rates is an extremely tall order even for a desktop system; I agree with billyro on just turning some settings down. The biggest issue I could see with two GTX 980Ms or similar would be significant throttling under load, due to how much power they will draw and how much heat they will therefore dissipate, and you're wanting all of that shoved into a small package. I also wouldn't consider any of those SLI-equipped DTRs to be very mobile systems - they tend to be heavy, bulky, and have awful battery life. I'd say stick with what you have, and lower some settings to get performance where you want it. As far as scaling goes, here's a somewhat older review that has a few multi-GPU solutions in Skyrim: https://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/NVIDIA/GeForce_GTX_780_SLI/18.html They "scale" but it's fairly minimal. I've never seen any reviews like this that cover ENBs or extensive modification, but it should at least give you some data to ponder.

There are different iterations of 2011 and they are not universally inter-compatible. The modern high-end Intel platform is based around the X99 and 2011-3, and would not support the 4820, nor would the X79 support modern 2011-3 CPUs. For gaming performance I honestly wouldn't bother with 2011 though - the i5-4690 is top of the back along with the "faster" i7 CPUs in most gaming benchmarks, and the i7 chips only really distinguish themselves elsewhere (e.g. multi-threaded rendering and video encoding, where having more than 4 cores helps). Going with 1150 also means no problem for going with DDR3. I would not go with the SLI in lieu of a newer GPU as an upgrade path - in a few years your money would be much better spent on a (at the time) brand new GPU as it will offer better performance. GTX 760 should not have any problems today though, and will probably be fine off into the future as well (it will support DX12, it supports DX9/10/11, its fairly powerful, it still receives driver updates, etc). Pair it up with something like the 4670 or 4690 and you should be good to go.

Imgur link (still) works fine for me, but Imgur does go down from time to time. To the rest I think we'll just have to agree to disagree as this seems to be drifting towards a philosophical/speculative discussion (which I want absolutely no part of). I will say that given how loud and widespread complaints about these features/components of Windows 10 seem to be, I would not be surprised if Microsoft makes changes in the near future in response.

Both of the board configurations you've picked are relatively dated - the X79/4820 would probably work with no fuss, but going with a Z87 may require BIOS updates to run Haswell or Haswell Refresh CPUs. Out of curiosity why not just get a Z97 and i5 4690? If you need >4 cores (e.g. you care about more than gaming performance), you'll either have to dump the RAM (2011-3 is DDR4 only), settle for older hardware (like the 4820), or settle for Hyperthreading (like i7-4790). Depending on your budget and what you're after, all of those could be acceptable solutions.

I read that to mean that if you don't update to (hypothetically speaking) v1.1 they will lock v1.2 out until you make the previous updates. Basically that it will force you to come current in an all-or-nothing manner (and I'm guessing that "force" is only for required updates, not recommended updates). From another article on Forbes it looks like it may mean that they'll treat a non-updating machine as a non-supported machine, so if you refuse security updates it will refuse you other updates as a "stick" to update. However they seem to be incredibly vague on this, and the exact meaning of "life of the product" in their licencing for free upgrades. It'd be nice to have an official ruling on what exactly they mean or do not mean. Overall I don't think having Windows Updates running like this is explicitly a bad thing, especially since various regulators will prevent Microsoft from forcing their own software on top of Windows (e.g. Internet Explorer), so all it should be doing is handing out updates for Windows itself. I think most people probably already rely on Automatic Updates for that. Removing the choice is an annoyance, but I can't think of a scenario where you'd want updates disabled for a web-connected machine (and if the system is fully offline who cares if it gets "blocked"?).