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Windows Telemetry Rolls Out
ihtoit writes: Last week came the warning, now comes the roll out. One of the most most controversial aspects of Windows 10 is coming to Windows 7 and 8. Microsoft has released upgrades which enable the company to track what a user is doing. The updates – KB3075249, KB3080149 and KB3068708 – all add "customer experience and diagnostic telemetry" to the older versions. gHacks points out that the updates will ignore any previous user preferences reporting: "These four updates ignore existing user preferences stored in Windows 7 and Windows 8 (including any edits made to the Hosts file) and immediately starts exchanging user data with vortex-win.data.microsoft.com and settings-win.data.microsoft.com."
I'm going Linux as soon as I have a chance. Currently enjoying Linux Mint /w Cinnamon for general use.
Laws are rules for the court, but merely a bottom bar to hit for life. Think beyond laws in your actions always.
against those 2 hosts M$ has setup to receive the data.
Or some script kiddies to figure out that format the data is in, and flood M$ with fake data :)
Lawyers, MBA's, RIAA? A jedi fears not these things!
surely they know what they're doing and it's all for a better customer experience.
Oh, absolutely! Windows 10 is great!
So far, Windows 10 has reminded me repeatedly that I should: (1) Consider getting Office 365! (2) Consider installing Skype! (3) Should collect and use Bing Rewards! (4) That I should look into getting an Xbox! (5) That I should buy things from the Microsoft Store!
If I didn't like to play PC games, I'd have gotten a Mac instead. Microsoft is displaying some of the most ballsy behavior I've seen since the 1990's. The outright obnoxious behavior and contempt they're showing for their users astonishes me. I feel like the old anti-competitive, monopolistic Microsoft is back.
So much for Windows 10 being a good release. *sigh*
There will be one, right? Or will Microsoft's executives risk arrest and charges of espionage when they travel overseas?
Have gnu, will travel.
will MS Windows be used in this household nor at work. This is the straw that broke this camel's back. Damn you to Hell Microsoft ... bless you (insert flavor here) linux. Moving on.
No kidding. Windows 10 is basically taking a page right from Microsoft's 1990s playbook and then amping it up to eleven. It is a blatant attempt by MS to leverage Windows to try to lock people into their other software and services, all of which except for XBox would be rightfully be abysmal marketplace failures.
- Attempting to force excrement like Cortana, their "cloud" service crap, the shitty Windows store, subscriptions, etc. down user's throats by basically attempting to tie them into the OS.
- For good measure, rename what should really just be called Internet Explorer 12 into Edge, and act like people won't notice.
- Spyware ingrained into the OS on every level, and sticking basically advertisement shit right onto the miniaturized start screen that they are trying to pass off as a start menu.
- Holding DirectX 12 hostage, because most power users would otherwise not bother upgrading from Windows 7. Then basically backporting the Spyware into Windows 7 in an attempt to get the holdouts to say "I may as well upgrade since they're spying on me anyway.
This is the same shit that almost got MS broken up in 2000. They should have been broken up then, had justice actually been done. The United States no longer has the cojones to go after Microsoft again, but I hope that the EU catches on and smacks MS down hard for this. Not holding my breath though.
Google "Get Office Notifications" and you'll see that plenty of people ARE getting those notifications. Perhaps you have a different edition or missed an update.
I'm just waiting for the first malware that will co-opt all the telemetry to spy on users...
--- Reality doesn't care about your opinions, it happens anyway and if you are in the way you'll get squished.
I know this is stupid. But one of the things I don't like about Windows 10 is how it talks to me. Christ I must be getting old but I HATE the fake "I'm trying to talk to you like a friend" language that seems to pervade the system.
One that actually made my blood boil was the "restart needed due to updates" language. I'm paraphrasing here but it was something like "Hi, I need to schedule a restart of windows to complete the upgrade. I was think about a time you don't really seem to use your computer much. How does 3am sound?"
I obviously have some wiring wrong but that just annoys me so so much.
I'm not even sure it is particularly condescending as it is overly familiar / fake. It is also the pretending my machine is a person.....
Actually I just went and found the exact wording. "We'll schedule a restart during a time you usually don't use your device (right now 3:30 AM tomorrow looks good)."
Firstly, who the fuck is we? Is this like the royal We? Or does the fact that my computer has a multi-core cpu now mean that it has multiple personas inside that need to agree and they are on a par with humans?
GP probably purchased a pre-built PC from Best Buy, loaded with whatever Bloatware they felt like cramming in there. I have Win10 installed on a PC at home as well, and haven't seen anything obnoxious.
Fresh install of Windows 8.1 after I swapped mechanical hard drive for SSD. I downloaded the Windows 8.1 ISO from Microsoft.
The Windows 10 install was the automated one. The Office 365 notification app is well known on the Intarwebz. Google it.
What else is new? Every couple months I have to deal with forms from my banks and credit cards asking if they can share my person info for marketing purposes. Never mind that I've told them no every single time. Every year they ask again, and require me to re-state "no", sign it, and stuff their irregularly-sized response sheet in one of my envelopes (no pre-addressed envelope provided), pay for postage, and take the time to drop it in a mailbox. And if I forget to do it, that is assumed to be equivalent to me giving them permission to sell my info to advertisers. Because the law says they're supposed to assume I want my private info to become public unless I explicitly tell them no every year.