Your options for "send details to M$oft" are "Basic, Enhanced or Full (Recommended)." Enhanced is selected by default. How thoughtful of them.
No explanation. This is hostile computing.
Microsoft reveals details of Windows 10 usage tracking
251–260 of 272 posts
Re: Microsoft reveals details of Windows 10 usage tracking
#252Let's start gathering statistics on how many times people open their refrigerator, or use the toilet, or take a shower. What's more concerning about these data aren't these specific numbers, but what other data that implies that they have, what they can do with it, and what they can infer about you from it. Privacy and anonymity aren't (reasonably) possible on a Windows 10 operating system. Any entity knowing that I…
Such statistics would be very useful to society. Tracking people as a group to figure out how they behave. Its only when the tracking targets individuals that it get creepy. "New York'ers goes to the toilet x times a day" is fine vs "John Doe goes to the toilet x times a day" is not.
I'm not arguing that they aren't useful---they are, and quite fascinating.
But they should always be opt-in.
Re: Microsoft reveals details of Windows 10 usage tracking
#253Earlier quoted context omitted.
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…
So far as someone fairly new to linux, I'm liking Linux Mint Cinnamon.
My second choice would be Elementary https://elementary.io/ but it was running a little slow on my laptop.
Re: Microsoft reveals details of Windows 10 usage tracking
#254Earlier quoted context omitted.
Both the enterprise and educational versions offer you full control. Consumer versions offer what I consider to be enough control, but obviously that's subjective. If you offer the option to disable telemetry, some people will disable it. If there is any pattern to which people do this, and we all know there is, it introduces sampling bias and casts aspersions on any conclusions you draw from that data.
It seems like they're trading one bias for another. I suspect that the population of users likely to disable telemetry have a lot in common with the population of users likely to just stick with Windows 7 and remove the updates that added telemetry collection. Personally, I'd probably be satisfied if Microsoft gave me the tools to examine the telemetry that my computer wants to send. Not making that available to user…
Yes they're definitely trading one bias for another in this case. Users who value privacy simply won't use Windows 10 to begin with. And you can't collect telemetry data from non-users.
Users who turn off telemetry can still give you one crucial data point: the percentage of users who do care enough about privacy to turn off telemetry. But this data point is something they simply can't capture because of their insistence on making telemetry mandatory. And any future decisions they make with regards to privacy and telemetry usage will now have to be based on speculation instead of hard data.
In addition to biasing their telemetry data to the subset of users who don't care strongly about privacy, this decision also has a real cost in terms of adoption rates, market share, and damage to the goodwill they've slowly built up over the years in other areas. I just can't see why they'd think this is a worthwhile tradeoff.
Re: Microsoft reveals details of Windows 10 usage tracking
#255Earlier quoted context omitted.
I use Xubuntu on Work PC, Home PC, Media PC and Laptop. I love XFCE, It's fast, stable, easily configured, uses normal GTK stuff so fits with the Gnome apps, is a regular plain old desktop (main menu, window buttons/taskbar). Mostly the thing I like about XFCE is I don't have to think about it, it just does it's thing, stays out of my way and doesn't break a user interface covenant I'm used to all the way back to Win…
Exactly. I'm not a fan of any of the "popular" desktop environments. I liked Gnome 2 and didn't mind using it (RHEL desktops) but for several years XFCE has been my favorite. It has all the features I need but isn't too intrusive and stays out of my way. I'm not really a big Ubuntu fan either but I can't complain too much about Xubuntu.
It's also the only one I've tried that allows me a taskbar per screen with only window entries from that screen, something I've done since Gnome 2, You can sorta do it with plugins with Gnome but they break all the time, KDE can do it in theory but KDE is awful (I'd like to like but never have).
Re: Microsoft reveals details of Windows 10 usage tracking
#256Earlier quoted context omitted.
I assume you mean the Enterprise version? Last time I checked that wasn't something individual consumers can just go out and buy. But regardless of that, from Microsoft's perspective, does it make any sense to not offer the option to disable telemetry on all versions? From what I see, all it's doing is giving them bad publicity while driving potential users away to other platforms. And for what? Probably a few basis…
Both the enterprise and educational versions offer you full control. Consumer versions offer what I consider to be enough control, but obviously that's subjective. If you offer the option to disable telemetry, some people will disable it. If there is any pattern to which people do this, and we all know there is, it introduces sampling bias and casts aspersions on any conclusions you draw from that data.
> If you offer the option to disable telemetry, some people will disable it. If there is any pattern to which people do this, and we all know there is, it introduces sampling bias and casts aspersions on any conclusions you draw from that data.
This is true enough, but consider this: Giving the option to disable telemetry will result in users users who would disable it. Not giving the option to disable telemetry will result in users who who simply won't use Windows 10 because of mandatory telemetry.
With the former option they still get a data point in terms of the percentage of their users who care enough about privacy to turn off telemetry. With the latter option they don't get this data point, but in return they get some telemetry data from users who would disable telemetry if it was available, but don't care enough about privacy to use a different OS because of it (i.e. the telemetry data they have available is still biased to the subset of users who don't care very strongly about their privacy).
Is the data from this latter group of users important enough to be a worthwhile tradeoff for getting data on the percentage of your users who do care strongly about privacy and the damage to their market share and the damage to the goodwill they've built up over the years? My answer would be no.
Re: Microsoft reveals details of Windows 10 usage tracking
#257Earlier quoted context omitted.
Remote debugging is actually quite simple when using QtCreator, gdb and gdbserver. MISRA-C is not just "more rigurous" checking, it significantly restricts the way C is written. It is also a commercial standard that must be bought by implementers. IMO Windows is a primitive development platform out of the box, one needs to install many tools, a lot of them commercial to replicate what's available on Linux. I've done…
There is nothing even remotely "primitive" about Windows as a development platform. You let the air out of your own argument when you say things like that.
> Windows is a primitive development platform out of the box
I think it'd be hard to argue that a fresh, clean install of windows isn't an absolutely primitive development platform.
Not that I think it's too relevant of an argument in this discussion, as no developer runs an "out of the box" install as a dev platform, but countering arguments that were never made doesn't seem too productive.
Re: Microsoft reveals details of Windows 10 usage tracking
#258Earlier quoted context omitted.
Is it my machine, or is it theirs? If they want to do research they can use their own resources.
Why can't you be collaborative for mutual benefit?
If they asked nicely, I might consider it. Microsoft is not asking nicely, with Windows 10, so far as I can see; they're just... taking what they want.
Re: Microsoft reveals details of Windows 10 usage tracking
#259Earlier quoted context omitted.
One reason I do most of my programming from Windows is because I find Linux programming tools to be either very bare-bones, UI/UX-wise or some kind of ill-fitting cross-platform Java thing. I'm talking about run of the mill stuff like a Git UI, Diff Viewer, Text editors, Icon editors and other specialty image and file editors...and also bigger apps that people usually name. Maybe you prefer a terminal and maybe your…
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 web-related file types that I need to edit like LESS/SCSS/Coffescript/etc. Beyond Compare is my diff/patch utility as I mentioned somewhere else. It's totally worth the very low price-tag. Some other stuff I use: Greenshot, Postman, ScreenToGif, IcoFx (free version), Paint.NET, Pencil, yed, mIRC, VirtualBox for my *nix VMs, Putty, WinSCP, 7+ Taskbar tweaker, KeePass. I have also run PostgreSQL, Redis and MongoDB directly on Windows in the past. If I'm using Linux to run code that I'm editing, I can edit it right in the terminal or use the WinSCP feature of keeping a directory in sync so that I can edit everything on Windows but have it stored directly in the Linux VM when I hit the save button.
There are some pain points and growing pains. It could take a while to put together the kit that works for whatever you're doing. One thing that really annoyed me about VS was that it was adding UTF-8 BOM and CR/LF to every file. I had to install and configure extensions like "line endings unifier" and "fix file encoding" to change it. But I always just stop what I'm doing and lookup how to change VS or Windows if it does stuff that I don't want and I usually find an acceptable solution.
Re: Microsoft reveals details of Windows 10 usage tracking
#260Earlier quoted context omitted.
It also makes it clear that they do have quite a few options and the reason they don't have the rest is because they don't pay for them.
> It also makes it clear that they do have quite a few options and the reason they don't have the rest is because they don't pay for them. Won't let you pay for them. Or please do point me to where I can buy that individual license for Windows 10 Enterprise.
Bizspark or dreamspark.