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Microsoft reveals details of Windows 10 usage tracking

bbc.co.uk

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Re: Microsoft reveals details of Windows 10 usage tracking

#261

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They already made that trade by allowing enterprise customers to turn it off. They also tell you exactly what types of data they collect, along with where and how. That's not consistent with wanting to hide the extent of their telemetry.

> They also tell you exactly what types of data they collect, along with where and how where?

In the official documentation for the feature that critics never want to read.

Re: Microsoft reveals details of Windows 10 usage tracking

#262

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You can "configure how the software works" to some extent even if you only get the free version. As a rule, more expensive licenses give you more features. If you don't think windows 10 pro is a good enough value, that's fine. But characterizing it as some kind of immoral violation of your rights makes me not take you seriously. I use VS Pro and wish it had the testing tools that Enterprise did. Not enough to pay tha…

I pay for Pro. Still can't set Telemetry 0. And no, consumers can't buy Enteprise.

For an stupid, arbitrarily chosen definition of consumer. Microsoft primary business is selling enterprise licenses.

Complaining that the professional license doesn't have all features available in response to my own analogy with VS makes me think you have no interest in the actual truth and just want to argue for its own sake. Is that accurate?

Re: Microsoft reveals details of Windows 10 usage tracking

#263

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That list looks less like valuable user data and more like basic telemetry data that is mostly useful to anyone trying to provide a good OS experience.

Is it my machine, or is it theirs? If they want to do research they can use their own resources.

Have you ever worked on consumer software?

Re: Microsoft reveals details of Windows 10 usage tracking

#264

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

> I had become tired of the dearth of issues that crop up to maintain an Arch desktop distribution. I'm glad to hear this "out there." I've run Linux on the desktop for 20 years now, and just concluded, as of today, that I was done forever. It was my main OS at home AND work for probably 15 of those years. I've done many years each with Slack, RedHat, SuSE, Gentoo, and Ubuntu. I know them all very well. When I ran th…

After hopping through every distro you mentioned, I ended up with Arch, which I've been running happily for several years now in VMs, desktops, laptops and even my retina macbook pro. Up to date kernels and drivers means I no longer have to deal with the pain of proprietary GPU drivers (Mesa3d is already better than the OSX drivers and rapidly improving).

The initial setup takes about an hour if you've never done it before (I keep the installation guide open on my tablet and go through it step by step.) Once you've done it once, reinstalling takes maybe 15 minutes on a fast internet connection.

That said, if you've decided your tinkering days are over, then your best bet is OSX. Myself, I have to use OSX, Windows and Linux for dev work, and Arch is the only distro I can tolerate these days. The lack of a graphical installer means it's certainly not for everyone, however, once the initial setup it's a breath of fresh air, compared to the constant buginess of Ubuntu and ($god forbid) Fedora.

Re: Microsoft reveals details of Windows 10 usage tracking

#265

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> They also tell you exactly what types of data they collect, along with where and how where?

In the official documentation for the feature that critics never want to read.

In the interests of providing a better answer than "In the official documentation":

This is the Windows 10 retail EULA: https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/Useterms/Retail/Windows/10/U...

It links to "aka.ms/privacy", which takes you to: https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/privacystatement/default.asp...

There are some good examples of the categories of data that they collect and some information about which features, programs, and apps might collect that data. There are examples within the categories, but not an exhaustive list. Maybe there are more complete lists available for each separate feature. I'd be interested in seeing an explanation, collected into one place, of which pieces of data are influenced by which settings, which ones can't be controlled, etc.

Re: Microsoft reveals details of Windows 10 usage tracking

#266

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I pay for Pro. Still can't set Telemetry 0. And no, consumers can't buy Enteprise.

For an stupid, arbitrarily chosen definition of consumer. Microsoft primary business is selling enterprise licenses. Complaining that the professional license doesn't have all features available in response to my own analogy with VS makes me think you have no interest in the actual truth and just want to argue for its own sake. Is that accurate?

No, it's that your constant defense of Microsoft makes no sense. It's not a logical decision for Microsoft to make. It's hurting their business and their reputation, for almost no appreciable gain. Microsoft has the best chance in the last decade of retaking their market share and their position of power in the tech industry, but they're shooting themselves in the head.

It doesn't matter what their 'primary business' is. What matters is that their reputation plays into decisionmaking. What someone has to deal with at home is going to remind them of their irritation when it's time to make up their mind on a purchase at the office.

Re: Microsoft reveals details of Windows 10 usage tracking

#267

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What apps do you use? I'm just switching over from Linux to Windows and I've been a bit 'lost' without the terminal. I'd love to hear what you're using whatever it is, doesn't matter if it's not specifically for what I'm doing, it would just be great to get a bit of knowledge of what's available for Windows.

Depends on what I'm doing. TortoiseGit is my preferred Git UI. Notepad++ (used with "Notepad replacer") is my quick text-file editor, but mostly I use the free Visual Studio 2015 edition for working on whole projects. When I'm doing Node.js projects I use Microsoft's Node.js Tools extension which has really nice autocomplete and debugging features. Also the WebEssentials extension includes editors for all sorts of we…

Thanks, I'll take a look at what you've mentioned. Much appreciated.

Re: Microsoft reveals details of Windows 10 usage tracking

#268
post #174

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Can you cite a single widely used software that doesn't have a FOSS alternative which works on Linux. Woah, really? There are plenty. Photoshop & Lightroom debatable, but I can agree — nothing FOSS really substitutes them, unfortunately. AutoCAD & ArchiCAD. Solidworks. Pretty much all specific 3D modelling tools like Poser (though I don't really need that last one). Ableton, Cubase, everything from NativeInstrument…

> Ableton, Cubase, everything from NativeInstruments, including sample libraries which sometimes are the reason why you need KONTAKT, and not some other sampler. U-he Zebra. Hundreds of various VST plugins from different developers: reverbs, phasers, limiters, etc. Often this stuff is quite trivial, but there just is some amount of domain knowledge which random opensource developer just doesn't possess. That's why fr…

> much worse than they actually sound

UI is usually bad indeed, but I wouldn't really care that much if the actual effects would be done alright. They are not.

> I'd personally like to see a real contender for open source clone of Propellerhead Reason

Well, doesn't really matter: the point still is there's no decent FOSS DAW. Ardour is not terrible, but… just no. And there still is no real use for DAW without any instruments or effects anyway.

But, as a side note, I've never heard of a musician writing some more or less sophisticated music (that is not Prodigy) with Reason. I've used it for a while, and it's pretty nice, all this "hardware interface" concept is really cool, but it's very limited and very limiting. It's like, well, using Mac or Windows vs using Linux — what I can do is strictly defined by the developer, no much freedom out there. Cubase is complicated and glitchy as hell, but with it I really can do pretty much whatever I want. Simpler (and much cheaper) alternative to Cubase I would say might be Reaper, but not Reason.

> Sample libraries aren't "source code"

No, that's not the problem. Sample libraries for KONTAKT are sample libraries for KONTAKT. It is not a bunch of .wav files, it's a proprietary format, which wouldn't work with some other sampler out of the box — unless you specifically make it to, which (I guess) might be not trivial, as it's made specifically to avoid competition. So even if you buy sample libraries for that, or download it from torrents or whatever — it's not about library licensing, it's about being unable to use it with anything but KONTAKT.

Re: Microsoft reveals details of Windows 10 usage tracking

#269
post #231
post #174

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Can you cite a single widely used software that doesn't have a FOSS alternative which works on Linux. Woah, really? There are plenty. Photoshop & Lightroom debatable, but I can agree — nothing FOSS really substitutes them, unfortunately. AutoCAD & ArchiCAD. Solidworks. Pretty much all specific 3D modelling tools like Poser (though I don't really need that last one). Ableton, Cubase, everything from NativeInstrument…

IIRC Blender went open source due to an generous gesture by its proprietary owner and a crowdfunding effort that was years ahead of Kickstarter.

Oh. That really explains a lot and reinforces the point. But still it's very successful open source project.

Re: Microsoft reveals details of Windows 10 usage tracking

#270

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is it my machine, or is it theirs? If they want to do research they can use their own resources.

Have you ever worked on consumer software?

Yes, but it's not my preference.
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