I fully agree with the complaints, but I never understood why this outrage doesn't happen about e.g. Gmail (or all of ChromeOS for that matter). Lots of people virtually live in Google Apps, which certainly does a lot more tracking than Windows 10 does. The argument that "it's OK because it's on the web" just doesn't cut it anymore guys. An application is an application. We should just be as angry about browsers that…
I'm not happy about Gmail tracking, but the information Gmail has access to is limited to what ends up in that email account. An OS's access is potentially everything on the computer. To me, privacy is about control (deciding who gets to see what) and having an OS that phones home with who knows what information means I have no control once information touches my PC.
> but the information Gmail has access to is limited to what ends up in that email account.
Which is often enough to completely divorce you from your identity legally, steal all your money, and possibly incriminate you.
That's all. But hey! My porn browsing habits are SAFE ON MY OS.
I think the newer agile software development process requires companies to focus more on monitoring rather than testing, in order to understand how software is being used and also to figure out what needs to be improved/fixed. Microsoft is just implementing such processes in their products just like every other company. We would be hypocritical to say that we can make use of that processes but not Microsoft, just bec…
I would rather that while we realize we don't want Microsoft to do it to us, we shouldn't do it to others either. Golden Rule: If you don't want to be tracked, stop writing software to track others.
> Can you cite a single widely used software that doesn't have a FOSS alternative which works on Linux. Yes. Photoshop and Lightroom. And before you all jump in and slather me with suggestions of Darktable, Shotwell, GIMP, ASP, RAWtherapee et al please know that NONE of these are a true substitute for Lightroom and Photoshop. Individually you can put together a decent work flow with Linux programmes but it's slow. Pa…
> Individually you can put together a decent work flow with Linux programmes but it's slow So... you're saying that there are substitutes, but that they aren't as fast, you don't want to use them and that (getting back to the discussion) you don't view the privacy concerns with commercial OSes as sufficient incentive. If so, why not just say that and avoid all the pointless flamage.
It looks like you literally read his first three sentences, thought of a retort, and stopped reading any further so you could start typing.
If you'd kept going, speed was only his (comparatively minor) opening bullet-point. Most of his comment discussed quality issues.
When your start menu (or whatever the hell it's called now) serves you ads you know you can give up on that OS and that the vendor does not care about the user.
There are ads in the fucking start menu? Everything I hear about Windows 10 confirms my choice to steer clear.
Generally: no. By default the store app MIGHT show some logos for featured apps, but that's as far as it goes.
The live tiles for stores can show pictures of products. You can elect to remove them if you don't like them.
Live tiles are one of the most powerful and useful features of the windows start menu. Like any feature, it's conceivable they could be misused. Unlike notifications, the user has complete, simple, and quick control over offending input.
You're missing out. Win10 is very good to developers these days.
Microsoft is pretty good at catering to the desires of enterprises, so you're right, but in the linked article I see at [0] that with a typical consumer license of Windows, I can reduce the "telemetry" level, but only to "Basic" from the default level of "Enhanced" (side note: how is it "enhanced" if it's the default?). While the Enhanced level accounts for a lot of the usage-specific statistics detailed in TFA, Basi…
I'm objecting to the claim that users are "powerless to stop this [data collection] even if they knew what was happening, and they don't." To the contrary, it's very clear what is being collected and how to turn it off. As well as what you can't disable in cheaper versions, and which versions you need to buy in order to get that option. Obviously consumers would like Microsoft to sell them a product with more feature…
Not having your privacy violated is not a feature, it's a form of extortion. Being violated is not the default state, they specifically added code to the product I pay for to do so. I should be able to disable or remove it.
That's the core of Stallman's point. He's an extremist, but there's merit. If it's my software, I need to be able to turn parts of it off.
Not parent, but W10 convinced to me commit to using only Linux at home. Used to be Linux-exclusive for years in college, so I figure why not. My work and portables are all OS X, which is still far more privacy conscious than W10.
I agree. At work I'm forced to use windows and osx (supporting enterprise users), but I've begun testing various linux os's (mint,arch,elementary) as preparation to leave windows behind for personal use. I've actually found it to be liberating in a weird way.
Have you found a favourite distro? I started using Ubuntu a couple of years ago on my home laptop, but when that new design came out with that horrible big side bar, I kind of gave up on it.
I also ended up buying a new laptop that came with Windows 7 so the Ubuntu one sits in the attic rotting. Still, I'm still tempted to move back to a good GUI based Linux distro if I can find one. I just haven't got the time these days to start installing different ones and testing then out.
I went the other way around. I started with your conclusions and have been migrating to the Apple ecosystem and am tempted to move to Windows. I had become tired of the dearth of issues that crop up to maintain an Arch desktop distribution. While the privacy collection issues should be addressed and be transparent to end-users I think open source is not the way to go for these devices. I'm tired of each device being…
> Open-source, meanwhile, has struggled to provide a basic desktop environment to rival the best from five years ago. Open-source is pretty young on the desktop arena. Consider that Microsoft ruled the entire nineties and tried all tricks in the book to sabotage linux. Despite this, the fact that linux desktops are even available today is nothing short of a miracle! IMHO, the GNOME and Unity desktops are mature enoug…
I tried using a fully Open Source desktop from 1998 to 2007. I finally gave up, because things were "better" but still far worse than windows. It's only gotten worse since then. One of the biggest examples I can see right now is the support compiler chains give in terms of the development process. Visual Studio makes simple what open tools like emacs make near impossible. Remote debugging on windows is a matter of downloading and running the remote debug server, and connecting to it with the local copy of windows. Visual Studio will install any requisite dependencies, transfer app over, and run it all with just pushing debug remotely. For the things I'm working on, where I need access to various hardware devices, such availability is a godsend, and as far as I can tell, any Linux based development environments make such difficult if not impossible to replicate. Other things I notice are Free Software checkers for things like MISRA-C compliance, which puts C programs through much more rigorous checks for safe usage and avoiding poor design decisions. Being open source shouldn't be an excuse for the software to have a fraction of the features other environments have.
I still can't imagine why Microsoft would think it's worth the bad publicity to not offer the option to disable telemetry, considering how few people tend to deviate from defaults in general, and how tiny a percentage of their users even care about privacy to begin with (evident from the commercial success of Windows 10). They've been getting so much goodwill for all the other great things they've been doing lately.…
I agree with this comment and your responses in the following discussion to it. Microsoft has made such huge strides, and it's costing them a lot of that because of their hardline attitude on this. And it actually stands contrary to their own advertising, where Microsoft highlights themselves as a more privacy-respecting alternative to using Google products which track you.
The cost/benefit decision here for Microsoft just makes no sense.
From the headlines that have been popping up lately about Windows 10 usage I believe the news cycle is about to produce 'Windows 11 Beta is around the corner!' type of headlines any day now.
I hear that Win10 is the last "version" of windows. They'll just continually patch it instead.
Likely kinda how Mac OS X has been X or version "10" forever, but has actually had a decades' worth of version updates. At the end of the day it's just a branding change and a change in expectation management.
Makes me wonder how much other kind of data they didn't reveal...
Coming next week...
75% of our users watch pornography at least twice a week. On average it takes 4.73 minutes for males between 28 and 33 years of age, with a household income of between $65-75k pa, who work in the advertising industry and who are married with 2 or more children and personal debt over $25k and at least one car, and a search phase of "mature big tits" to finish watching it.