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France Drops Windows 10 Privacy Case After Microsoft Changes Telemetry Settings (betanews.com)
Reader Mark Wilson writes: There have been lots of complaints about invasion of privacy since the release of Windows 10. Microsoft's telemetry lead to several lawsuits, including one from France's National Data Protection Commission which said Windows 10 was collecting 'excessive personal data' about users. But now the Commission Nationale de l'Informatique et des Libert's has decided to drop its case against Microsoft. The commission is happy that sufficient steps have been taken to reduce the amount of data that is collected and users are now informed about data collection.
Another lawsuit?
First?
Someone(s) was paid off!
WTF is a libert? The noise frogs make, perhaps?
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
> Microsoft's telemetry lead to several lawsuits
Led. The past tense of lead is "led."
"Microsoft's telemetry led to several lawsuits."
Visitors to the upcoming Los Angeles Auto Show will see supercars, hoverboards, self-propelling luggage and all manner of new transportation options.
But they’ll be hard pressed to find a clutch pedal or a stick shift. Available in nearly half of new models in the U.S. a decade ago, the manual transmission is going the way of the rumble seat, with stick availability falling to about a quarter this year.
Once standard equipment on all motor vehicles, preferred for its dependability, fuel efficiency and sporty characteristics, the four-on-the-floor is disappearing from major car manufacturers’ lineups — and subsequently from the sprawling auto show’s floors.
Live updates from the 2016 L.A. Auto Show
This is as true of everyday sedans as of souped-up sports cars. Mercedes-Benz, Ferrari, Lamborghini, Alfa Romeo, Volvo, Lexus, Chrysler and Buick no longer offer a single model with manual transmission. Audi, Jaguar, Cadillac and GMC offer only one.
“It’s a disgrace,” said driving enthusiast and Kelley Blue Book senior analyst Karl Brauer. “Yes, it’s more troublesome and expensive for the automakers. But it’s completely inexcusable that Ferrari doesn't even offer a manual.”
In 2006, 47% of new models offered in the U.S. were available with both automatic and manual transmissions, according to a study by Edmunds.com. By 2011, that number had dropped to 37%. This year, the number has fallen to 27%.
The actual sales figures are even lower. Edmunds senior analyst Ivan Drury said fewer than 3% of current U.S. car sales are manual vehicles — compared with 80% in some European and Asian countries, and down in the U.S. from 7% in 2012 and 25% in 1992.
“That number is never going to go back up,” Drury said. “The trajectory is down, headed for zero.”
It’s a disgrace. Yes, it’s more troublesome and expensive for the automakers. But it’s completely inexcusable that Ferrari doesn't even offer a manual. — Karl Brauer, Kelley Blue Book senior analyst
The auto show, open to the public at the Los Angeles Convention Center from Nov. 18 to 27, will offer gear heads and prospective car buyers a look at 1,000 different vehicles — 50 of them making their first U.S. appearances — from 41 automakers, spread over 1 million square feet of display space.
For decades, almost all automakers offered almost all their vehicles with a choice of automatic or manual drive trains. The stick shift had so long been the standard that a manual transmission was actually known in the industry as a “standard” transmission.
Driving enthusiasts and bargain hunters preferred them, because cars with three pedals on the floor tended to perform better, get better gas mileage and cost less to buy — sometimes up to $1,000 cheaper.
But as automakers perfected the automatic transmission, and learned to make it less expensive and more dependable, drivers became accustomed to the relative ease of leaving the shifting to the car. Automatics gradually became the preferred option, and automakers began offering them in fewer vehicles, saving them money because they no longer had to manufacture two drive trains.
To make cars lighter, automakers are dropping the spare tire
Ferrari’s product marketing chief Nicola Boari said the company decided to end all manual transmission production because demand was “close to zero.”
Among the reasons: Cars equipped with the modern, more sophisticated automatic transmissions now get better gas mileage than the manuals, fewer young people are driving — relying on public transportation or ride-sharing services — and fewer are able to operate manual transmissions.
Georgia Vassilakis, 21, learned to drive stick when her Ford-employee mother brought home a manual transmission Fiesta. Few of her friends, Vassilakis said, can drive a stick. All are surprised that she can.
Someone finally surrendered to France. :-)
It must have been something you assimilated. . . .
Microsoft does not intend to gather sensitive information, such as credit card numbers, usernames and passwords, email addresses, or other similarly sensitive information for Linguistic Data Collection. We guard against such events by using technologies to identify and remove sensitive information before linguistic data is sent from the user's device. If we determine that sensitive information has been inadvertently received, we delete the information.
bends over.. again.
Off.
You managed it. Seems this Mark Wilson fucktard doesn't know how to proofread. They'll probably offer him a job.
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
Telling someone your going to do something first before you do it does not legitimize the underlying action.
Amount of data required to be sent to Microsoft to ensure proper operation of Windows is 0 bytes.
Take it or leave it demands are not choices to the extent Windows is not a commodity and leaving it isn't a viable option.
Windows 10 is malware.
Wonder how many 0s those "steps" had.
Mod me down with all of your hatred and your journey towards the dark side will be complete!
I guess they finally 'contributed' enough to them then?
Given how hard the EU want after them over IE and WMP, I'm surprised how little has been done about Win10. But then I guess they learned their lesson from that about whose palms to grease...
All variants of Microsoft Windows could be malware because all proprietary software could be malware. There's no reason to point to just Windows 10 as it shares the same problems other non-free OSes and non-free programs do. The only way to get software you can trust is to only run free software on your computer—software that respects one's freedom to run, share, inspect, and modify.
When you prioritize convenience by saying "leaving it [Windows] isn't a viable option" you've narrowed the allowable terms of debate such that only proprietary (untrustworthy) software can do the job. You've come up with something that is meant to sound strong-willed ("Amount of data required to be sent to Microsoft to ensure proper operation of Windows is 0 bytes.") but it actually weak-willed because it's a condition you're willing to cave in on. The solution is to stand up for software freedom for its own sake, hire people to write the free software you need to do the job and modify the job parameters to be solved by free software that already exists by pressing free software into service, not caving into proprietary software. The moment you cave into proprietary software again you're right back at the software you cannot trust and you've solved nothing.
Digital Citizen
Microsoft is just like one of those Indian call centres that phones up to 'fix' your computer. They attempt to talk you in to installing their malware, just like Microsoft tries to talk you into installing the Windows 10 malware. In both cases, once it is installed, your computer actively acts against your interests. I have to ask how stupid anyone has to be, to knowingly accept the license agreement, and use windows 10.
The real problem I have with telemetry collection is how much Microsoft has begun to collect with Windows 10. It used to be you had a issue with Windows and it gave you a option to check for a solution. This to me is what should happen, Microsoft doesn't need a frequent telemetry collection when nothing is wrong. What Microsoft does in Win 10 doesn't bother me to the point of being a privacy issue. As much as I don't get why collecting so much data is necessary or even useful.
Especially for a typical home user, and frankly only a beta tester would even benefit that much from sending all that data.
On which exact date did most of the English-speaking world switch over to the wrong word in order to confuse the few remaining literates? Is there a list that began with the apostrophe-s on random plurals (EVERY plural--now THAT, I could understand). Oh, do tell what comes next.
In other words Microsoft finally agreed to share their "telemetry" data with the French government.
Will it still send all your key presses and search queries back to Fort Meade, er I mean Redmond :)
https://blogs.msdn.microsoft.c...
It basically scrubs all values that don't meet certain criteria with 0xAAAAAAAA. Also in patent 8,645,763.