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With Windows 10, Microsoft Disregards User Choice and Privacy

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Re: With Windows 10, Microsoft Disregards User Choice and Privacy

#211

I upgraded willingly so the deceptive upgrade practices, while deplorable, didn't really affect me. What does affect me is that Microsoft refuses to let me control my computer. - If you turn off Windows Defender Real Time Protection it explicitly tells you "You can turn this off, but if it's off for a while we'll turn it back on". It turns itself on upon next reboot, it seems. - You can't turn off Windows Update. It…

I believe Windows updates have uninstalled both CCleaner and Speccy without my consent.

Re: With Windows 10, Microsoft Disregards User Choice and Privacy

#212
post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>>> Apple, Google, and Amazon currently So in your world 2 wrongs make a right... because "everyone else" is doing it is a justification for you? See I was taught from a young age that just because my friends did something incredibly stupid, illegal, or immoral that dis not give me license to commit the offense.

So why aren't we complaining about this industry practice? It's purely focused on MS.

Put simply, Apple and Google allow users to opt-out.

You can run Android and not send Google a single byte of information. You can't run google's _apps_ and do that-- gmail, google calendar, the google play store, and so on. But it isn't mandatory. Telemetry is in the apps, not the OS.

Even if I set telemetry to "basic" (the lowest it will go), turn off Cortana, and don't use IE or Edge (or any other MS app), Windows 10 sends telemetry to Microsoft. That's not OK.

Re: With Windows 10, Microsoft Disregards User Choice and Privacy

#213
post #138

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Yes, a byte is 8 bits Unless it's 7 bits aka ASCII 0 - 127. Some systems even used 6 bits and where case insensitive.

ascii is a representation of bits in the range you specified. It doesn't change the unit of measure byte and its value when converting to the bit unit of measure. Extended ascii uses the full 8 bits (unsigned) to value of 255 and values 0 through 31 are reserved for control codes.

No, byte simply meant the number of bits needed to represent a single character in a fixed width encoding.

From Wikipedia: The byte (/ˈbaɪt/) is a unit of digital information that most commonly consists of eight bits. Historically, the byte was the number of bits used to encode a single character of text in a computer[1][2] and for this reason it is the smallest addressable unit of memory in many computer architectures. The size of the byte has historically been hardware dependent and no definitive standards existed that mandated the size.

PS: 16 bit bytes are now common with UTF-16 with fits a large chunk of Unicode. On the other hand UCS-2 is not a fixed width encoding so different rules apply. However, we stuck with 8 bit bytes for long enough it's become a viable alternative definition, until we byte the bullet and go back to a fixed 32 bit format.

Re: With Windows 10, Microsoft Disregards User Choice and Privacy

#214
post #2

Some highlights: Microsoft installed an app in users’ system trays advertising the free upgrade to Windows 10. Not satisfied, the company eventually made Windows 10 a recommended update so users receiving critical security updates were now also downloading an entirely new operating system onto their machines without their knowledge. This is essentially equivalent to saying: You've been running whatever version of Win…

As a Microsoft employee, this W10 force upgrade things is the single thing that pisses me off the most by far... It goes against everything that we are trying to promote/change. Sometimes I'm really wondering if we work for the same company (I'm not in the Windows division). I feel like all the effort we put in investing in open source, being more open, and just generally a more empathic company is totally destroyed…

I've been in this business a long time, and sadly the whole episode is entirely in line with the general level of competence and empathy that I've come to expect from the Windows division. SQL Server is really good, hugely impressed by .NET Core, but I can say nothing good about Windows today, and haven't been able to for an age.

Disclosure: I was one of the people that signed the petition to ask the EFF to get involved. The stories from people whose computers were taken out by upgrades that they were tricked into just got too much. If you think that this kind of thing is totally surprising, though, I'll refer you to the disaster that was the Windows 8 UI changes, and the swamp that has been the Windows Update experience lo these many years.

Re: With Windows 10, Microsoft Disregards User Choice and Privacy

#215
post #2

Some highlights: Microsoft installed an app in users’ system trays advertising the free upgrade to Windows 10. Not satisfied, the company eventually made Windows 10 a recommended update so users receiving critical security updates were now also downloading an entirely new operating system onto their machines without their knowledge. This is essentially equivalent to saying: You've been running whatever version of Win…

So all the talk about the "new" Microsoft has been for nothing.

That should have been no surprise at all.

http://www.catb.org/esr/halloween/

Leopards don't (generally) change their spots.

Re: With Windows 10, Microsoft Disregards User Choice and Privacy

#216
post #8
post #2

Some highlights: Microsoft installed an app in users’ system trays advertising the free upgrade to Windows 10. Not satisfied, the company eventually made Windows 10 a recommended update so users receiving critical security updates were now also downloading an entirely new operating system onto their machines without their knowledge. This is essentially equivalent to saying: You've been running whatever version of Win…

I think this slightly understates just how sleazy Microsoft were about it, if anything. Before the dialog that interpreted closing it with the X in the corner as agreement to install Windows 10, they rolled out a similar-looking dialog where that was the only way to avoid install Windows 10 - clicking on any of the buttons in the dialog would cause it to be installed.

My freaking cat installed Windows 10 on my laptop - he pressed enter on one of those dialogs with his paw and Windows started updating.

I was more or less resigned to do so anyways, so he didn't do anything I wasn't going to do eventually, he just hastened it.

I wonder if EULA's accepted by a cat have any validity though :)

PD: I googled that and Slashdot has a story on a hardware to have cats accept EULAs :)

https://hardware.slashdot.org/story/09/02/18/1817221/dont-li...

But no, it's not a good anti-lawyer method, a comment says, regarding children and cats "The child is an instrument of your will. Note - they are not acting as your agent, as a child cannot be an agent. Instead, they are your instrument, much like a pen signing your name or a cat clicking a button for you is an instrument. "

Re: With Windows 10, Microsoft Disregards User Choice and Privacy

#218

Earlier quoted context omitted.

On the flip side, I run Ubuntu on my htpc, and have for several years now... there have been a couple times where the updates broke audio, and the fix took on average 2 days, though I can imagine some people having worse experiences... Getting an MCE remote (arguably the most common PC remote type) working with Kodi (formerly xbmc and very popular full screen media player) took some cumbersome steps. On average one a…

Both are subpar (and osx or whatever Apple call their offering is no better). I've been stuck in an update hell with windows where security updates simply would not install the only solution I could find was a full re-install. I've been in a similar situation with Ubuntu and was able to fix it - but only because I understood it - otherwise I would have had to do a re-install. The key with Ubuntu updates is to stick t…

Interesting that you claim that OS X is not better when you are not even sure about the name…

Re: With Windows 10, Microsoft Disregards User Choice and Privacy

#219
post #121

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>While true, this also gets into the ethical, moral and legal obligation a company has when for all practical purposes they have a monopoly on a market segment. First off, companies do not have ethical or moral obligations at all. Corporations are purely amoral. It's up to customers to penalize them for unethical or immoral actions by refusing to support them. If the customers refuse to stop throwing money at them, i…

>>First off, companies do not have ethical or moral obligations at all. Corporations are purely amoral. It's up to customers to penalize them for unethical or immoral actions by refusing to support them. If the customers refuse to stop throwing money at them, it's the customers that are to blame. I completely disagree with this, and believe this type of belief is one of the core problems in society. Corporations are…

>I completely disagree with this, and believe this type of belief is one of the core problems in society.

That's a perfectly valid opinion, however the law states otherwise; our society and legal system both reward amoral thinking in corporations.

>Corporations are just a social organization of people, and the people of that organization absolutely have ethical and moral obligations.

You can believe this all you want, but the people who run the largest corporations disagree, and have no ethics or morals; they're sociopaths. As a society, we reward this by continuing to support companies run by sociopaths, and also by voting for sociopaths to lead our governments. So you can believe whatever you want about how corporations and the people who run them should act, but most people disagree with you implicitly, based on their voting and buying decisions.

>Choosing to join a social organization like a corporation does not absolve you of those obligations.

You can claim this, but you have absolutely no way of enforcing your belief. Similarly, I could claim that you are personally obligated to buy me a house, and that I think it's the moral thing to do, but I have absolutely no way to enforce this opinion.

>For most government regulating entities a monopoly is created when a company reaches over 80/90% market share in a given product category, in the 1990's Microsoft was a clear monopoly in the personal computing market. Today that is debatable if you include Smartphones, Tablets and other devices in the Category of "Personal Computers"

If you include those, then MS is nowhere near a monopoly. Windows Phone is a joke. But if you narrow things down to PCs, then it's murkier, but even here last I heard they had less than 90% thanks to the rise of Apple mainly.

>However simply saying "There is an alternative" does not in fact legally mean there is not a monopoly.

That's true, but the other thing you're missing, just as you missed with your stuff about ethics above, is enforcement: how exactly do you propose to enforce your opinion? You have no way to; all you can do is hope the government will agree with you and act accordingly. There is zero evidence of this, and instead plenty of evidence that MS will be able to do whatever they want, within reason. So your only choices are to suffer and whine, or switch.

>Most people do not actively seek an Operating System, they use what ever operating system is supplied by the manufacturer of the devices

Then why are people actively seeking out Macs and iPhones? People who shop for Macbooks don't even bother looking at alternatives, because they do NOT want to run Windows.

>MS was charged with was using Vertical Conclusions to lock out alternative operating systems like Linux

They were charged, but what happened? Nothing.

> Car makers did similar things in the early day with Maintenance, accessories and parts. this resulted in MASSIVE regulation of the Automotive manufacturing industry and passage of the Magnuson–Moss Warranty Act which electronics companies today like to pretend does not exist

A lot of car dealerships pretend that doesn't exist too, but at least there's some legal teeth there. But M-M has almost nothing to do with MS or operating systems or the topic at hand. There is zero evidence that the government is going to pass any legislation to deal with MS's market dominance, so you can either suck it up or find an alternative.

>Sadly with Windows 10, they have back peddled even on these provisions, no longer are browsers able to automatically set themselves as default, a user must navigate to the Default Applications Settings and manually change these.

Ok, so what are you going to do about it? This just proves my point: hoping for any kind of relief from the government is foolish in the extreme. You can either remain a victim, or you can leave.

Re: With Windows 10, Microsoft Disregards User Choice and Privacy

#220
post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>I'd be annoyed if my home builder occasionally came through my house while I was gone in an attempt to analyze how I was arranging furniture and using my space. They could, undoubtedly, use that data to better their future work - but I'd still feel violated. Too bad. If you sign a contract with your builder allowing him to do this, or you sign a contract allowing him to change your agreement and force new terms on y…

> Too bad. If you sign a contract with your builder allowing him to do this Did we? There's a quite a bunch of lawsuits going on right now regarding that topic.

There's some lawsuits over MS forcing/tricking people into "upgrading" to Windows 10. This is something entirely different; this is MS not providing software updates in the way that some people would prefer. Customers don't have a right to tell their vendors exactly how to provide ongoing services. If you don't like it, find a better vendor.

Also, the only successful lawsuit I've heard of against MS recently was the one where some woman sued them in small-claims court over the forced upgrade. $5k or $10k or whatever is a nice little chunk of money for some middle-class person who runs Windows Home for looking at Facebook and cat videos, but it's nothing to some company with dozens of employees or more that relies on their computing systems for running the business. MS just let that one slide because the cost to send a lawyer out wasn't even worth it, and the forced upgrades are pretty much all over at this point anyway; they're making more money now with people "upgraded" than they lost in a few piddly small-claims lawsuits. For a larger company that tries to sue because one of the bundled updates screws up their ERP system, MS isn't going to just pay out millions on that, they're going to crush that company in litigation costs, using their EULA which has been proven in court.

Relying on the threat of a lawsuit against MS to keep your business alive is suicide; MS will win and your company will lose. If you don't like the way their software works, get different software.

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