In older versions of Windows, uninstalling a program wasn't all that straightforward -- you had to go through the Programs and Features menu in the Control Panel. But in Windows 10, uninstalling a program (either a desktop program or a Windows 10 app) is much simpler.

Microsoft will automatically download Windows 10 to millions more PCs in a "recommended" Windows update early next year.

Then early next year, Windows 10 will become a free "recommended" update – meaning it will be immediately downloaded by any PC or device that automatically installs "important" and "recommended" updates.

Despite some early indications that the operating system has a bright future in the enterprise, many administrators are distrustful of the software giant for its lack of transparency concerning the content of Windows 10 patches. Concerned about their organizations' privacy and security, they fault Microsoft for not publishing a comprehensive list of bug fixes and feature additions.

"People that care about their PCs have to know what is included in the updates, especially admins who need to validate and confirm updates," Bradley told eWEEK in an email statement today. "Then we have numerous examples of where firmware and drivers have caused issues. We can't just have control over after they update, we need control before they install."

Red Hat today announced that it is acquiring privately held IT automation vendor Ansible, whose open-source platform is well-known and deployed in the DevOps community and is competitive with both Chef and Puppet.

Red Hat plans to use Ansible's technology to complement its existing IT management tools, including CloudForms and Satellite. The decision to acquire Ansible does not, however, mean that Red Hat will abandon its use of Puppet.

Red Hat already has a clear idea of where Ansible fits in. "We will integrate Ansible playbooks into CloudForms automation and orchestration," Fitzgerald said.

AdBlock said yesterday that it has been acquired by an unnamed purchaser, and that it is now participating in Germany's Adblock Plus Acceptable Ads system, which sets the criteria for whether publishers and websites can be unblocked.

"As a result I am selling my company, and the buyer is turning on Acceptable Ads. My long-term managing director will keep working with the new company. I believe this is a great time for you users."

Microsoft confirmed Wednesday that a suspicious-looking update pushed out to Windows machines globally in the early hours was nothing more than a test gone errant.

It's not immediately clear what was inside the patch, or whether it modified any Windows files. In any case, the Windows Update system is a core and vital part of keeping computers around the world up-to-date. Shaking confidence in that system is going to have a lasting effect, especially in a day and age of almost daily hacks and ongoing government surveillance.

Released on Tuesday, Firefox 41 for the desktop now offers a built-in instant messaging feature via the browser's Firefox Hello feature. Introduced last October, Firefox Hello lets you initiate free video or audio chats with fellow Firefox users.

Mozilla continues to try to enhance Firefox with each new version. But the browser has seen better days in terms of overall use.

Microsoft has confirmed that Windows 10 is being downloaded to computers whether or not users have opted in.

"I know of two instances where people on metered connections went over their data cap for August because of this unwanted download. My own internet (slow DSL) was crawling for a week or so until I discovered this problem. In fact, that's what led me to it. Not only does it download, it tries to install every time the computer is booted."

Microsoft told us: "For individuals who have chosen to receive automatic updates through Windows Update, we help upgradable devices get ready for Windows 10 by downloading the files they’ll need if they decide to upgrade.

Apache Spark is an open source data processing engine built for speed, ease of use and sophisticated analytics. Spark is designed to perform both batch processing and new workloads like streaming, interactive queries, and machine learning.

“One of the things is it improved on what was out there in two dimensions at the same time," he said. “So it was both a lot faster—like 10 to 100 times faster—and a lot quicker to program with and easier to use. So you could write 10 times less code. It’s very uncommon that you have something that’s better in both dimensions," he said.

With a pull request systemd now supports a su command functional and can create privileged sessions that are fully isolated from the original session.

Lennart Poettering's long story short: "`su` is really a broken concept. It will given you kind of a shell, and it's fine to use it for that, but it's not a full login, and shouldn't be mistaken for one." The replacement command provided by systemd is machinectl shell.