111–120 of 153 posts
They now say this is related to the diagnostic level set to full. This is clearly not true. I have disabled ALL privacy related settings, set activity X to off and have the level set to basic since install. Microsoft still displays search queries and apps I used on the activity dashboard. Clearly someone "messed up". (Collect now, apologize later)
So Windows is sending browsed URLs to Microsoft? What exactly is "data about recently opened websites?" What data specifically?
Earlier quoted context omitted.
There's a (more than one, really) wonderful free operating system alternative that you can install on almost any PC. At the very least, you can dual boot. Critical mass starts with you.
Please don't act as if Linux was a viable alternative for everything. It's not. I appreciate trying to prod people, but this came off very elitist. -- someone who's been using Linux since 1998, Linux desktops for work stuff since ~2008 and has more machines with only Linux at home than ones with Windows, but still spends the majority of recreation time on a Win7 box because not all games run nicely with Wine, or at a…
As a longtime Windows 7 fan that refused to upgrade until I finally bought a new laptop with it I have been absolutely shocked by Windows 10's aggressive user-hostility. The way they reset settings after forced upgrades should be criminal. The way the user has no control over certain Microsoft processes unless they have been lucky enough to be allowed to pay for a Group Policy Editor license should also be criminal.…
Yeah, I just helped someone set up a new Win 10 laptop and I felt so bad for them with how unintuitive and instrusive of a process it was. It pushes you towards making/using an online Microsoft account, and making a non-internet account on the computer is a tiny text button (no outline, just text) which NO computer novice is going to know. Can only guess how many users have their online identity now permanently linke…
Or is it just not possible any more? Surely I can install the OS without creating a MS account? My intention is to disable all the nags, bloat and advertising bullying, leaving only an essential OS that doesn't bully my non-technical relatives.
As far as everything on the internet tells me, GDPR was made for exactly this reason, to prevent this kind of data collecting without the users consent. But what is happening instead is that small companies, starrups, etc. are getting fucked over by the sheer amount of "rules" they have to follow and implement while large companies can get away with collecting everything and anything, leaking personal user data all o…
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Earlier quoted context omitted.
There's a (more than one, really) wonderful free operating system alternative that you can install on almost any PC. At the very least, you can dual boot. Critical mass starts with you.
Please don't act as if Linux was a viable alternative for everything. It's not. I appreciate trying to prod people, but this came off very elitist. -- someone who's been using Linux since 1998, Linux desktops for work stuff since ~2008 and has more machines with only Linux at home than ones with Windows, but still spends the majority of recreation time on a Win7 box because not all games run nicely with Wine, or at a…
Please get over the idea that linux will ever be a 100% perfect drop-in replacement for windows. If you can't accept that their will be some pain involved and things they have to give up then you should expect to be stuck in this abusive relationship forever.
As a longtime Windows 7 fan that refused to upgrade until I finally bought a new laptop with it I have been absolutely shocked by Windows 10's aggressive user-hostility. The way they reset settings after forced upgrades should be criminal. The way the user has no control over certain Microsoft processes unless they have been lucky enough to be allowed to pay for a Group Policy Editor license should also be criminal.…
The power you rightly object to is not limited to Microsoft, or the Windows OS. That power comes from the power of proprietary software over the user. All proprietors possess that power and leverage that power largely in ways we can't describe in detail until it is too late to stop it from being used against users. But we know that all proprietary software is untrustworthy precisely because it doesn't respect a user's software freedom.
Microsoft got caught leveraging that power against their users before, this isn't new. But given how long it took us to learn about some of their abuses, it's a safe bet that there are other ways they have of using the Windows OS to report on the user without their consent and do anything else the endpoint is capable of doing. After all, Microsoft has a universal back door on every version of Windows. Since a lot of those endpoints are connected to the Internet, it is not hard to get those endpoints to do whatever Microsoft wants them to do.
https://www.gnu.org/proprietary/malware-microsoft.html has a list of Microsoft's back doors, insecurities, DRM, instances of surveilling users, and more.
Switching to Apple won't address the underlying problem -- a lack of software freedom. There's plenty we know about Apple's proprietary malware too listed at https://www.gnu.org/proprietary/malware-apple.html. But picking one proprietor over another isn't gaining freedom, it's switching masters.
Consider a free software GNU/Linux distribution (some are listed at https://www.gnu.org/distros/free-distros.html) and run it on hardware you get to control (https://www.fsf.org/ryf has pointers to such hardware), and then install nothing but free software on top of that. That will go quite a ways to keeping you in control to the degree you're willing to look into things or have others do this work for you. I find it's a big job I can't do all myself, so I have to trust others in this. There's no known guarantee against malware. But a free system is the best practical means to avoid malware, and computer security is impossible without free software. The structure of proprietary software immediately tells me that we simply can't do away with the malware you mention if we run proprietary software. You'll also need to have a stiffened spine against those who try to frame the issue around convenience -- run the software on this website, install and run this program, etc. -- because there are a lot of ways to run proprietary software on your computer these days (installed or not). Liberating yourself from forced upgrades, ignored/reset settings, advertising, nagging, surveillance, DRM, and more is all possible. But not with proprietary software.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Please don't act as if Linux was a viable alternative for everything. It's not. I appreciate trying to prod people, but this came off very elitist. -- someone who's been using Linux since 1998, Linux desktops for work stuff since ~2008 and has more machines with only Linux at home than ones with Windows, but still spends the majority of recreation time on a Win7 box because not all games run nicely with Wine, or at a…
> Please don't act as if Linux was a viable alternative for everything. It's not. Please get over the idea that linux will ever be a 100% perfect drop-in replacement for windows. If you can't accept that their will be some pain involved and things they have to give up then you should expect to be stuck in this abusive relationship forever.
Are you saying that generally or to the person to whom you responded, because it looks like you're both saying the same thing with the current wording and I find it a tad confusing.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
There's a (more than one, really) wonderful free operating system alternative that you can install on almost any PC. At the very least, you can dual boot. Critical mass starts with you.
How do you feel about critical mass for average users though? Debian updating its repositories every two years is kind of antithetical to the android and mac idea of software repositories. I've not tried elementaryOS, but I thought it was similar.
If you gave them a system and promised nothing major would change for 5 years they'd be thankful.