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Microsoft Admits Windows 10 Automatic Spying Cannot Be Stopped

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Re: Microsoft Admits Windows 10 Automatic Spying Cannot Be Stopped

#11

Post by vardump »

Microsoft arbitrarily cripples or how it's called in business lingo "market segments" their products. Maybe their marketing felt Windows 10 was too good of a product and needed to make it artificially less desirable? Surely no professional or business user wants to be spied on?

There are a lot of examples in the past too. Arbitrarily limiting 32-bit consumer versions to just 4 GB RAM. Letting just one user having an interactive login in the same time. Not having remote desktop server in consumer versions.

Microsoft, please just make one version of Windows. If you must, make a separate server version. But please stop this segmentation madness.

Re: Microsoft Admits Windows 10 Automatic Spying Cannot Be Stopped

#13

Post by MichaelGG »

Does anyone know the status of using the Windows Firewall to block this stuff? Since Search and other parts of the OS are actually apps it seems, if you set a default deny, then whitelist only certain parts, wouldn't that sort itself out?

And any idea why MS is acting this way? Certainly offering a hidden opt-out registry key would satisfy a lot of customers, and not impact the telemetry data in a meaningful way. For Office, they literally discarded/sampled the telemetry data as it was simply too much to use.

Re: Microsoft Admits Windows 10 Automatic Spying Cannot Be Stopped

#15

Post by bitL »

Microsoft has essentially forced me to turn off Windows Update on all my Windows 7 machines/partitions and migrate everything I can to Linux. All I am waiting for is SteamOS delivering AAA games to Linux and I won't need to touch future Windows ever again.

How can you justify using Windows for enterprise work if due to new policies you can't be assured you can keep anything you work on secret? I am not willing to keep the possibility open of sharing my competitive advantages with whomever is in bed with Microsoft's management to capitalize on my ideas. Can somebody please tell them to get back to their senses and become trustworthy again?

Do I need a dedicated NUC running super-secured *BSD/Qubes filtering out traffic towards known Microsoft servers while using Windows 10?

Re: Microsoft Admits Windows 10 Automatic Spying Cannot Be Stopped

#16

Post by korethr »

vardump wrote: post #11

Microsoft arbitrarily cripples or how it's called in business lingo "market segments" their products. Maybe their marketing felt Windows 10 was too good of a product and needed to make it artificially less desirable? Surely no professional or business user wants to be spied on? There are a lot of examples in the past too. Arbitrarily limiting 32-bit consumer versions to just 4 GB RAM. Letting just one user having an…

I disagree that the 4GB RAM cap is entirely arbitrary. Guess how many GiB of memory you can address with 32 bits? 4. Now, x86 CPUs have been capable of addressing more memory since the Pentium Pro [1]. But even then, not all motherboard chipsets supported that, probably because back in 1995, RAM was more commonly measured in megabytes, not gigabytes. Then consider that Microsoft discovered that some drivers became unstable when addressing more than 4GiB of RAM.

From a tech support perspective, the decision makes sense. Most target consumers probably aren't going to have enough RAM to hit the limit, but are going to notice and complain when their computers become extra-crashy. I may well have made the same decision.

1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Physical_Address_Extension

Re: Microsoft Admits Windows 10 Automatic Spying Cannot Be Stopped

#17

Post by xorblurb »

korethr wrote: post #16
vardump wrote: post #11

Microsoft arbitrarily cripples or how it's called in business lingo "market segments" their products. Maybe their marketing felt Windows 10 was too good of a product and needed to make it artificially less desirable? Surely no professional or business user wants to be spied on? There are a lot of examples in the past too. Arbitrarily limiting 32-bit consumer versions to just 4 GB RAM. Letting just one user having an…

I disagree that the 4GB RAM cap is entirely arbitrary. Guess how many GiB of memory you can address with 32 bits? 4. Now, x86 CPUs have been capable of addressing more memory since the Pentium Pro [1]. But even then, not all motherboard chipsets supported that, probably because back in 1995, RAM was more commonly measured in megabytes, not gigabytes. Then consider that Microsoft discovered that some drivers became un…

IIRC correctly PAE was used anyway on the editions of windows limited to 4G. And legacy drivers are always managed by putting their dma buffers in safe zones. This was purely a limitation for market segmentation.

Re: Microsoft Admits Windows 10 Automatic Spying Cannot Be Stopped

#18

Post by pdkl95 »

newman314 wrote: post #9

I posted this in a different thread but am reposting here for the folks that do move to Win10. -- PSA: For people with Windows 10 installed, I've found the following tool quite useful in shutting down the large amount of information collected and transmitted. http://www.oo-software.com/en/shutup10

Please, don't use these tools. Yes, they may fix the immediate problem, but you're still rewarding Microsoft with money and/or market share. You're sending them the message that you are loyal even when they abuse their power in obvious ways. By continuing to use their platform, you're conditioning[1] Microsoft to continue with stronger spyware in the future.

Unless they see an actual reduction in revenue and fewer people using their platform, this problem is only going to get worse.

[1] operant conditioning (Skinner )

Re: Microsoft Admits Windows 10 Automatic Spying Cannot Be Stopped

#19

Post by coolnow »

pdkl95 wrote: post #18
newman314 wrote: post #9

I posted this in a different thread but am reposting here for the folks that do move to Win10. -- PSA: For people with Windows 10 installed, I've found the following tool quite useful in shutting down the large amount of information collected and transmitted. http://www.oo-software.com/en/shutup10

Please, don't use these tools. Yes, they may fix the immediate problem, but you're still rewarding Microsoft with money and/or market share. You're sending them the message that you are loyal even when they abuse their power in obvious ways. By continuing to use their platform, you're conditioning[1] Microsoft to continue with stronger spyware in the future. Unless they see an actual reduction in revenue and fewer pe…

Okay, tell me how i can play all my Steam games then (no, not just the Source Engine ones).

Re: Microsoft Admits Windows 10 Automatic Spying Cannot Be Stopped

#20

Post by lvs »

What's amazing about this telemetry issue and the forced upgrade path is that, at the same time, they're trying to fight the PR problem by claiming that they might soon have a more reasonable FOSS (or at least OSS) mentality, will contribute to openssh, etc., all as part of their new "customer-oriented culture." It's really just a carrot-and-stick, isn't it?
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