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You Can't Turn Off Cortana In the Windows 10 Anniversary Update (pcworld.com)
Microsoft will release Windows 10 Anniversary Update next week. Earlier this week we listed some of its best features. PCWorld is now reporting about a major change that may annoy some users: once you've installed the update, Cortana can no longer be disabled. From the article: Cortana, the personal digital assistant that replaced Windows 10's search function and taps into Bing's servers to answer your queries with contextual awareness, no longer has an off switch. The impact on you at home: Similar to how Microsoft blocked Google compatibility with Cortana, the company is now cutting off the plain vanilla search option. That actually makes a certain of amount of sense. Unless you turned off all the various cloud-connected bits of Windows 10, there's not a ton of difference between Cortana and the operating system's basic search capabilities.
Challenge accepted!
"When information is power, privacy is freedom" - Jah-Wren Ryel
There are quite a few articles out there already on how to cripple it by changing registry entries or modifying the exe name
I don't want to do this Microsoft but you force my hand again and again
In some ways this is more honest, it's been demonstrated that the OS will talk to 107 domains whether or not some switches are toggled in the Control Panel to give the illusion of privacy.
I wish Microsoft would've been more up front about this last year, and not two days before the "free" "upgrade" is scheduled to be concluded.
"You Can't Turn Off Cortana In the Windows 10 Anniversary Update"
Of course not- that might interfere with their advertising schemes and the ability to monitor whatever they like in order to better monetize your entire existence.
Welcome to the Brave New World of surveillance, brought to you by the same forward-thinking folks that brought you Windows ME, the Zune, and PlaysForSure.
Just cruising through this digital world at 33 1/3 rpm...
Why would anyone run this thing? "New, shiny" seems to be the only argument I have heard that has any relationship to reality.
HBI's Law: Frequency of calling others Nazis is directly correlated with the likelihood of the accuser being Communist.
Just don't connect to the Internet. Computers can be used for more than surfing the web and twittering.
"Transparent" is a shit show that trades on every stereotype going. A man in drag is NOT a transsexual.
Courtesy Martin Brinkmann
http://www.ghacks.net/2016/07/26/you-will-use-cortana-says-microsoft/
Does this mean I can finally try out cortana?
Or does it still require login?
Minimum threshold fixed. Thanks!
That's it. That's all that we need. If we could somehow figure out a way to get a good gaming experience on Linux then the fabled Year of the Linux Desktop(tm) would manifest in reality.
Windows would be relegated to the office (and even that can change since more and more apps are web based) and we would finally be free.
Switched to Mint, won't upgrade past Win7.
Fuck you, Microsoft.
You want an OS that works your way? Tell ya what - get a bunch of your fellow technically-oriented geek friends together and make your own! (Actually, I'm sure this has been done. I think such systems are called "GNU Linux"?) Otherwise, as long as they don't outright break what they sold you, you can deal with MS's heavy-handed management of your systems. Frankly, with all the moaning about MS security and unpatched MS OS's in the wild, how did everyone expect them to respond? They're still the de facto business OS of choice and their primary customer is extremely security conscious. MS is listening to the bucks, not the users. Since their software is proprietary, that is as it should be. Unless you actively find a way to prevent it, Microsoft pretty much insists on their right to make every licensed MS OS instance reasonably uniform. That way, both security and reliability can theoretically be maximized for the entire user base.
In short - deal with it or run something else. Just don't expect Microsoft to waste any time or money trying to do things your way unless you're big business with big bucks.
That's the anniversary surprise!!
Seems like yesterday that they tried to integrate IE into Windows.
What if I don't want their connected/desktop search... what if I just want an operating system?
--Hired Net Grunt
If you don't like Cortana, you can make it go away and never use it.
From TFA: Microsoft told PCWorld. "If you like, you can also easily hide Cortana and the search box in the taskbar altogether."
Cortana is simply a browser searchbar that uses Bing, re-located to the taskbar, and can talk. Siri reaches out to Apple servers when you use it, OK Google goes to Google servers. Microsoft is simply playing catch-up. The only news here is you can no longer give Cortana a lobotomy by cutting off its access to Bing.
But to say "Cortana can't be disabled" is inaccurate, misleading FUD. There may be many reasons to shit on Microsoft, but this isn't one of them.
Instructions:
1. change default browser from Edge to anything else... except IE. Be sure your new Browser does not use Bing as its search engine.
2. Right-click on the Taskbar, choose to Hide Cortana.
3. (optional) Install ClassicShell, Start8, or equivalent to provide a convenient basic search functionality.
4. (optional) Still paranoid? Try Spybot Anti-Beacon.
5. Proceed as before. Run Steam or something.
Take it easy, Charlie, I've got an Angle...
Didn't they remove Bob a while back because virtually everyone hated it? I guess Redmond's take was that people would like it if only it was more intrusive.
If I understand correctly, your question is if Windows 10 has some self-destruct sequence if it's gone a certain amount of time without contacting a certain domain.
I would think not, since there's plenty of legitimate reasons to have a permanent offline computer besides avoiding the surveillance. It would open up a lot of nasty lawsuits on Microsoft's end.
Then again, it's certainly not impossible.
All I have to say about this (yet another f_over by M$) is:
HA! HA! HA! HA!
LOL!
There are a lot of windows partners that sell hardware that BARELY runs Windows 10 as it is. In the race to make cheaper and cheaper hardware, there are products like the HP Stream notebook that comes with only 2GB of RAM and Windows 10 pre-installed. By the time you're done booting up, you have maybe 500mb of RAM available to run *A* application. (do not try and run multiple applications)...
And that's with most of the crap turned off. My guess is that people with minimal hardware who choose to update, won't even get to the desktop before running out of RAM.
If telephones are outlawed, then only outlaws will have telephones.
Poorly constructed haiku is poorly constructed.
Microsoft's new hell Cortana records your pain Winter comes for 10
"Prediction: within 10 years, Windows will be a Linux distribution." Me, 7-6-2016
Microsoft's new hell
Cortana records your pain
Winter comes for 10
"Prediction: within 10 years, Windows will be a Linux distribution." Me, 7-6-2016
Not exactly on topic but without BITS ...windows won't update.
As you already know if you simply disable BITS Windows will automatically re-enable it and turn it on again whenever it feels like it.
The solution is to create a user account, disable the user account and then configure BITS service to run as that disabled user. This will cause it to permanently fail. Microsoft isn't yet checking for this.
I would comment further but anything I say would be obvious and repetitive like arguing with Natas over the finer points of running Microsoft.
I upgraded to windows 10 imagining that it would be a good idea to accept a free offer to extend the lifetime of my windows license. I assumed Microsoft had sorted out their shit, and wasn't going to piss everyone opff after the bad press of windows 8. Afterall windows releases go good (XP) bad (Vista) good (7) bad (8) good (10), right?.
I've been using windows 10 for about a year now. It seems ok I guess. The one super annoying thing is that file transfers on my dirves are super slow for me. I spent a couple hours trying to fix this. As per the suggestions on the internet including microsoft, I tried turning off write cache flushing, adjusting the page file size, disabling remote differential compression, disabling the anti-malware, etc.
The only thing that sort of worked was disabling write cache flushing, which sped up my transfers from 20 MB/s to about 35 MB/s, but it should be at least like 120 MB/s because that's what I remember getting in windows 7.
I am not a windows hater. I use lots of different operating systems. But I honestly can't figure this one out and it's starting to get annoying. At this point I'd rather have an OS that's going to reach end of life that sooner if it doesn't have bad data transfer rates.
Or if anyone out there knows how to fix this please let me know.
A saucepan for Cortana to boil your pet bunny in if you accidentally call her Siri.
I block Bing and the rest of the phone-home servers at the router level.
"there's not a ton of difference between Cortana and the operating system's basic search capabilities."
Yeah, except the standard search bar doesn't listen to every word I say within earshot.
It wouldn't surprise me, I've seen it happen on Windows 7 so I'm sure they've included the feature in 10.
I did some consulting for awhile at a tool manufacturing company. They had been with some garbage MSP who convinced them to outfit their sales reps with a fleet of Dell Latitudes running Windows 7 Home Premium (don't get me started). Now these sales reps were mostly grizzled old guys, many of them had been using printed catalogs, pen and paper, pocket calculators, calling in their customers' orders over the phone for 20+ years and saw no reason to change.
These guys would go out on the road for 2, 3, maybe more weeks at a time and they weren't using the laptops like you or I would. They stayed in the trunk of the car. However, each rep was required to submit a monthly mileage report through a third party website in order to get paid for their mileage. So once a month these guys would fire up their laptop and invariably they were greeted with the same bullshit, a message at boot saying "This copy of Windows can't be verified as genuine" and Windows dropped back to some limited functionality mode. One of the things it won't do in that mode is connect to the internet, so the reps couldn't submit their mileage reports.
Now these were legit machines with legit OEM Windows licenses. I saw the Dell invoices. There was no reason at all for these machines to behave this way. Oddly enough, the reps who did regularly use their laptops on the road, connecting to hotel wifi all the time, never experienced this problem. Windows, despite being both genuine and activated, was deactivating itself because it couldn't phone home, having not been connected to the internet for some time. I'm not sure what the timeout was but I assume 14 days.
Ultimately I had to lay hands on each laptop, get the install ID out of SLUI, and call Microsoft for a manual activation key for each machine. This seemed to fix the problem permanently. But it was very clear that the laptops with frequent internet connections never deactivated themselves, only the ones that sat around offline had the problem. The mother ship doesn't like it when you don't check in on the regular.
Ask Cortana. She probably knows all the best brands and how to apply them.
Most ACs are not even worth the keystrokes to insult them. Be generically insulted by this and ignored otherwise.
Another thing ive noticed about Windows 10 is that the network layer has deadlocks in it! The more data going through it the more deadlocks it gets, causing complete system stuttering since this is in kernel components.
1mb a second = 1 stutter every hour or so.
10mb a second 1 every 10 minutes or so
Doesnt matter which network card or wifi dongle you use, its NDIS and TCPIP kernel drivers that has the deadlock somewhere.
clever you are not
your penis has many AIDS
please die in a fire
"Prediction: within 10 years, Windows will be a Linux distribution." Me, 7-6-2016
Block all of Microsoft's servers in my router. Can't bypass what you don't control.
Still waiting on Serviscope_minor to wake up to fucking reality and realize that Jessica Price isn't going to fuck him.
Intel and Microsoft joining hands in making a Windows 7 unfriendly ecosystem – SpeedStep to add support for RAM and more
http://wccftech.com/intel-skyl...
Skylake users given 18 months to upgrade to Windows 10
"And next generation processors, including Intel's Kaby Lake, won't be supported in old Windows."
http://arstechnica.com/informa...
I can turn off Windows 10 install with Never10. Eat it MS
You're wrong---whether it is lying, ignorance, or missing details is beyond me to figure out.
If Microsoft required phone-home connectivity for Windows 7, you'd still have problems after entering the confirmation ID.
Also, network connectivity isn't restricted when the activation grace period expires. You get a black background and annoying prompts, but that's it.
You clearly know jack about Windows activation.
Windows, despite being both genuine and activated, was deactivating itself... I'm not sure what the timeout was but I assume 14 days.
Windows is not activated at the factory. A user must complete the activation process online or over the phone after acquiring it.
The activation grace period is 30 days from first boot.
Once a MAK-licensed system is activated, it stays activated unless someone resets the activation store or makes major changes to the hardware.
Since Windows looks and acts normally within the grace period, that "deactivation" was likely the expiration of the grace period.
But it was very clear that the laptops with frequent internet connections never deactivated themselves, only the ones that sat around offline had the problem.
I assume the frequently-connected laptops completed the activation online without fanfare. By default, they'll prompt the user and be done with it in less than a minute.
---
According to the latest ruleset, this post should be modded as Vorpal Flamebait +5.
https://superuser.com/question...
JUL.. Thats also my cure for the MS "disease" called "Windows NSA Edition".....
THANK YOU, Edward Snowden!! Americans owe you a debt of gratitude (whether they know it or not..)
Find a 15 step workaround on reddit
Find the downvoted comment that has a 16th step that is vital and left out, but got democracied down by fools.
Perform all the steps
Test with wireshark to be sure it worked
Discover a 17th step
Perform that, post it as reply so randos can downvote it
Or maybe just install an OS that doesn't fucking hate you.
If one has a router through which all internet traffic must pass, is there any way to configure the firewall on the router to block outbound requests that come from cortana without blocking all outgoing connections from a windows machine's MAC?
File under 'M' for 'Manic ranting'
Every time I think Microsoft has been as shitty about Windows 10 as possible, it finds a way to be even shittier.
The laundry list of what you can and can't do with Windows 10 is so noxious and Windows control so pervasive, someone with a new Windows 10 installation needs to effectively root the machine. Some URLs (MS telemetry) cannot be blocked by firewall. The administrator/user will not have access to the hosts file. (Boot under Linux and edit hosts file? Maybe or maybe not.) The owner/administrator needs a further level of root privilege (or just REAL root status in the first place) to prevent MS and its corporate industry partners from setting non-modifiable advertising and and hosts.ini to default settings via hardware-- if Intel were on board even running Linux could be subject to mandatory privileges blocking no one could avoid. We have to realize what is happening- MS is turning into Verizon and intel PCs are locked-down Verizon phones. Do we want to have to root each new PC we set up, or go en masse to Apple? That may be how it is lining up. Is there anything at all we can do? At this point with the Win10 handwriting on the wall I see nothing but converting to Linux or Apple as a group. MS is apparently getting ready to sign its own death warrant. We need to get really angry and DO something? (It's Apple with VMs for me.)
Those are my principles, and if you don't like them... well, I have others.
Is this the future of Windows? You will allow us to monitor your every keystroke and sound or bugger off!
That would be my guess....
THANK YOU, Edward Snowden!! Americans owe you a debt of gratitude (whether they know it or not..)
You can't turn off Microsoft in Windows ? News at 11. JUL.
(Just Use Linux=)
Yeah! Just install Ubuntu.
(There's a joke in here somewhere.) .. or you could use Android!
(Actually now there's two.)
This is why I run windows 7 for my games. But considering dumping windows and going linux only gamer. Well, that and my old consoles, I have plenty of games I can play on those also. Very few new PC games do it for me anymore. Doom was a great disappointment. It's Quake III with better graphics. Which is cool if you are into arena shooters, but I'm not. Maybe I'm getting too old, but PC games suck these days for the most part.
Linux before Windows 10 for sure.
Be seeing you...
And I want to keep Cortana turned off, too.
O&O shutup 10 and is disables the registry keys. I also have a router ports and domains blocklist wich prevents cortana from reaching M$.
I wonder if M$ can circumvent these blocks. Just a matter of time and we'll know.l
Bach says it all.
No joke, I do receive about 10 unsolicited tech recruiter emails per day. This is why when I was looking a few years ago I set up a different email account for it. Tech recruiters are some of the biggest spammers out there and most of them haven't got a clue what they're doing. They're worse than estate agents in my view. And their fees are shocking. I honestly don't know why employers use them.
www.fuckyoucortanaididnotwantyoutolookforthat.com
www.shutupcortana.com
www.whyisthatpieceofjunkstillactive.com
and a few more. I foresee they will get a lot of traffic in the near future!
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
Backup your files. Go back to Windows 7, then restore.
Where you are seeing steam, all I can see is vapor.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
Mostly 'cause it's easier to avoid them. Don't like Google? Use a different search engine, a different mail provider, use a different kind of cellphone if you don't like Android.
Ubuntu? C'mon, don't tell me there is any way you could NOT avoid using Ubuntu.
Avoiding MS? Way harder to pull off.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
Leave it to the French to aim at easy targets.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
I won't be doing. Or maybe I will and just block microsoft, bing etc. at my firewall. Then there's the option just go Ubuntu and the fuck with Windows forever.
about rampancy.
about rampancy.
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