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Windows 10's Privacy Policy: the New Normal?
An anonymous reader writes: The launch of Windows 10 brought a lot of users kicking and screaming to the "connected desktop." Its benefits come with tradeoffs: "the online service providers can track which devices are making which requests, which devices are near which Wi-Fi networks, and feasibly might be able to track how devices move around. The service providers will all claim that the data is anonymized, and that no persistent tracking is performed... but it almost certainly could be." There are non-trivial privacy concerns, particularly for default settings.
According to Peter Bright, for better or worse this is the new normal for mainstream operating systems. We're going to have to either get used to it, or get used to fighting with settings to turn it all off. "The days of mainstream operating systems that don't integrate cloud services, that don't exploit machine learning and big data, that don't let developers know which features are used and what problems occur, are behind us, and they're not coming back. This may cost us some amount of privacy, but we'll tend to get something in return: software that can do more things and that works better."
According to Peter Bright, for better or worse this is the new normal for mainstream operating systems. We're going to have to either get used to it, or get used to fighting with settings to turn it all off. "The days of mainstream operating systems that don't integrate cloud services, that don't exploit machine learning and big data, that don't let developers know which features are used and what problems occur, are behind us, and they're not coming back. This may cost us some amount of privacy, but we'll tend to get something in return: software that can do more things and that works better."
WTF? Question #1, WTF wants to use Microsoft software? Every damned thing that I want to do, there is *nix software available for. If not - well, I can write my own script to do it. Games? WTF does gaming have to do with computers? The basement dweller plays games 22 hours per day - and he can't set his console aside to log into a real computer to do his online banking?
"also, at least some time ago"
WTF does that even mean? WTF does it have to do with anything? "some time ago" people thought the sun revolved around the earth. Get with the times, you neanderthal - this isn't 1258, nor is this 1998, or even 2010. Today, it's 2015, and for the most part, Linux just works, out of the box. Windows? Yeah, Windows always works - except when it doesn't, right?
"Windows is like the faint smell of piss in a subway: it's there, and there's nothing you can do about it." - Charlie Br