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2015: The year that Microsoft started getting the benefit of the doubt

arstechnica.com

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Re: 2015: The year that Microsoft started getting the benefit of the doubt

#101

Post by _pmf_ »

petke wrote: post #76
martythemaniak wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Public opinion changes when mainstream entities (people/organizations) validate something new. Microsoft has been coming out with good stuff for several years now, but that opinion has been restricted to a subset of technophiles. If in 2014 you told someone about tablets and styluses, you'd either get a dumb look or the standard Jobs like ("you're doing in wrong") So what happened in 2015? Well, Apple validated (copi…

For me it was about 2012. Herb Sutter (at MS) wrote his famous "Welcome to the jungle" article ( http://herbsutter.com/welcome-to-the-jungle ). It seemed if anyone was adapting, their platform, development tools, and languages to match the revolution in hardware, it was MS. (Given this revolution, on the language side MS changed focus from managed languages to the previously neglected native C++)

> It seemed if anyone was adapting, their platform, development tools, and languages to match the revolution in hardware, it was MS.

C#'s async/await certainly the most accessible way of doing asynchronous operations in any mainstream language. The same for PLINQ and (simple) parallelism.

Clojure, a language that supposedly has concurrency as a main focus, is awkward and arcane in comparison.

Re: 2015: The year that Microsoft started getting the benefit of the doubt

#102

Post by marbiru »

Zikes wrote: post #68
Nelkins wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I agree that the outrage over Windows 10 seems a little...inconsistent. For Android users (could be on iOS too, not sure), open up Maps. Open up the options menu in the upper left hand corner and choose "Your timeline." This will literally show you every place you have traveled, WHETHER OR NOT YOU EVEN SEARCHED FOR A PARTICULAR LOCATION (i.e. it just shows where you've been walking around). You can delete the data an…

Location History is opt-in, and Google sends you frequent email reminders that you are opted in. I have email reminders in my gmail account dating back to 2011 when it was still called Latitude. If you want to see this info and/or enable/disable it: https://www.google.com/maps/timeline

can you say a little more about what these "frequent email reminders" that you receive look like, and how frequent they are? I've just discovered that I was opted in, had no idea I was opted in, and have never received an email saying I was opted in -- I'm genuinely curious what I missed. (Maybe somehow I opted out of the emails without knowing it either...)

Re: 2015: The year that Microsoft started getting the benefit of the doubt

#103

Post by sroerick »

raesene9 wrote: post #95
frik wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It's easy to run Windows 10 without any calling home at all. Not true at all! It's impossible, without a hardware firewall. Their kernel network driver whitelists several microsoft domains and IP address ranges. What's worse Microsoft back-ported that phone-home crap and ships them as updates to Windows 7 and 8.x (of course the coincidentally stopped writting descriptions for their Windows updates). Not even mentio…

Why do you think ordinary users should try to disable all the cloud based features of their OS? Surely a lot of the features they want (e.g. Google Now, Siri, Cortana) are based on the OS provider knowing about the users and having information about them. If your threat model is that the OS provider is hostile, no amount of changing of settings will protect you from their actions...

"Our research shows that users WANT these features that require us to constantly monitor microphones for certain phrases."

Maybe the OS provider should stop being hostile.

Re: 2015: The year that Microsoft started getting the benefit of the doubt

#104

Post by sroerick »

lstamour wrote: post #72
frik wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It's easy to run Windows 10 without any calling home at all. Not true at all! It's impossible, without a hardware firewall. Their kernel network driver whitelists several microsoft domains and IP address ranges. What's worse Microsoft back-ported that phone-home crap and ships them as updates to Windows 7 and 8.x (of course the coincidentally stopped writting descriptions for their Windows updates). Not even mentio…

It can be turned off in version 1511 for Enterprise and Education editions, under Group Policy: https://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/mt577208(v=vs.85... See screenshot and guide at http://www.ghacks.net/2015/07/30/windows-10-and-privacy/ Alternatively, disable this service if concerned: http://www.ghacks.net/2015/11/19/microsoft-rena-and-telemetr...

Why isn't this a feature that consumers can have?

The line I always hear from Microsoft apologists is that "You can turn these features off at any time", but everything I've seen suggests this is only true for Enterprise and Education.

Re: 2015: The year that Microsoft started getting the benefit of the doubt

#105

Post by Sir_Substance »

ifdefdebug wrote: post #43
deanclatworthy wrote: post #5

They've done some brilliant things for developers this year, but sadly shipped a giant spyware operating system at the same time. From what I've read people are still trying to determine everything it's calling home.

It's easy to run Windows 10 without any calling home at all. Just don't use a Microsoft account. Just chose custom configurations during setup. Doesn't a default Android phone also do a lot of calling home? And Apple phones? Why is it so special when it's Windows?

>It's easy to run Windows 10 without any calling home at all. Just don't use a Microsoft account. Just chose custom configurations during setup.

That's completely wrong and only the willfully ignorant would believe that.

http://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2015/08/even-w...

http://www.disclose.tv/news/a_terrifying_traffic_analysis_of...

Or from the horses mouth:

http://www.forbes.com/sites/gordonkelly/2015/11/02/microsoft...

Re: 2015: The year that Microsoft started getting the benefit of the doubt

#106

Post by sroerick »

TruthSHIFT wrote: post #47
ifdefdebug wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's easy to run Windows 10 without any calling home at all. Just don't use a Microsoft account. Just chose custom configurations during setup. Doesn't a default Android phone also do a lot of calling home? And Apple phones? Why is it so special when it's Windows?

Apple has a history of avoiding the storage of personal data when possible. They also have a history of failing to comply with the demands of authorities to release personal information. On the other hand, Microsoft has a history of complying with government authorities.

There was also a story that broke a while ago that text files in text editor would get stored in the cloud by default, even if they were not saved.

Re: 2015: The year that Microsoft started getting the benefit of the doubt

#107

Post by eco »

Zikes wrote: post #20
deanclatworthy wrote: post #5

They've done some brilliant things for developers this year, but sadly shipped a giant spyware operating system at the same time. From what I've read people are still trying to determine everything it's calling home.

There are some things I love about Windows 10, like virtual desktops (welcome to the 90s Microsoft!) but there are some things that irk me: * Pretty login screen photos, with a link at the top-right saying "Like what you see?". I click the link expecting to get the source for the image, instead I get "Cool, we'll show you more like that." So much for that nice new desktop background I was hoping for. * Automatic upda…

You wouldn't happen to have a Killer Network chipset, would you? There has been a bug in it for a long time (since Windows 8, at least) that causes it to gobble up memory in a particularly frustrating way because the utilization doesn't show up in Task Manager. Installing the latest version of the Killer Networking driver fixes it [1].

You can also prevent the bug by disabling the Windows Network Data Usage Monitoring Driver by changing the registry key HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\ControlSet001\Services\Ndu to "4" (disabling it).

1. http://www.killernetworking.com/support/driver-downloads

Re: 2015: The year that Microsoft started getting the benefit of the doubt

#108

Post by hueving »

raesene9 wrote: post #95
frik wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It's easy to run Windows 10 without any calling home at all. Not true at all! It's impossible, without a hardware firewall. Their kernel network driver whitelists several microsoft domains and IP address ranges. What's worse Microsoft back-ported that phone-home crap and ships them as updates to Windows 7 and 8.x (of course the coincidentally stopped writting descriptions for their Windows updates). Not even mentio…

Why do you think ordinary users should try to disable all the cloud based features of their OS? Surely a lot of the features they want (e.g. Google Now, Siri, Cortana) are based on the OS provider knowing about the users and having information about them. If your threat model is that the OS provider is hostile, no amount of changing of settings will protect you from their actions...

>If your threat model is that the OS provider is hostile, no amount of changing of settings will protect you from their actions...

No, the threat model is that centrally collected data will be pilfered by the government or the company itself. If it's just not collected in the first place the temptation won't be there to abuse it.

It's like saying, "if your threat model is that the government is hostile, there is nothing you can do to prevent them from getting information from you."

There are lines the government won't cross (e.g. US govt torturing your family members in front of you) and there are lines Microsoft won't cross (e.g. secret exfiltration of your files).

Re: 2015: The year that Microsoft started getting the benefit of the doubt

#109

Post by magicalist »

raesene9 wrote: post #95
frik wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It's easy to run Windows 10 without any calling home at all. Not true at all! It's impossible, without a hardware firewall. Their kernel network driver whitelists several microsoft domains and IP address ranges. What's worse Microsoft back-ported that phone-home crap and ships them as updates to Windows 7 and 8.x (of course the coincidentally stopped writting descriptions for their Windows updates). Not even mentio…

Why do you think ordinary users should try to disable all the cloud based features of their OS? Surely a lot of the features they want (e.g. Google Now, Siri, Cortana) are based on the OS provider knowing about the users and having information about them. If your threat model is that the OS provider is hostile, no amount of changing of settings will protect you from their actions...

> If your threat model is that the OS provider is hostile, no amount of changing of settings will protect you from their actions...

I'm not sure what this even means in this context. It's not about protecting against a threat model that may someday manifest, it's actual, specific actions that are known to be occurring currently and that can't be opted out of (let alone opted in to) that are being objected to.

And certainly nothing to do with "cloud based features" of Windows 10.

Re: 2015: The year that Microsoft started getting the benefit of the doubt

#110

Post by puranjay »

Well that's nice and all, but all these years later, I still don't know how to buy a Surface in India. Buying Windows is still a royal mess (the local eCommerce stores have wildly different pricing for different variants, which is again different from the local MS store, which is different from the US store).

MS might be making cool products, but it sure as hell isn't keen on making them easy to buy.

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