Outside the Earth's magnetic field, radiation becomes the biggest buzz-kill. It's nasty out there. There's concern that even going to the moon and back exposes you to enough high-energy radiation to cause cardio-vascular disease. Mars could be lethal, not just in getting there, but also after you arrive, because Mars has no magnetosphere strong enough to provide a shield (Earth says, "you're welcome"). Any deep-space research has to solve this problem or manned missions will be a death sentence.
Agreed. SPARC + NeXTStep (with productivity apps like Lotus and WriteNow!) Alpha + Windows 7 (with Word, Excel). But could those machine have ever been made cheap?
The (evil) genius of NT and i386 was that i386 was commodity hardware, whereas Sun and HP and DEC and even Apple wanted (and deserved) a premium for the effort they spent on developing their platforms. I can't imagine sourcing a truckload of Alphastations for around $2500 apiece, including monitor and CD-ROM and 10-base-T network interface, but Computer Shopper was packed with deals from Packard Bell, etc. that delivered just that. NT shoe-horned a (just) decent, protected-mode OS into cheap '486 trash, and Gateway 2000 cranked them out by the thousands in wacky cow-pattern boxes. I miss my SPARCstation bad, but I never could have afforded one, much less got one for my parents.
An older programmer I worked with on the Street told me "you've got to be a whore" to make it as a developer. That was his reason for committing to Win32 back when Unix-based gear was still the clear choice for mission-critical applications. Fuck him, but he was right. Damn, this can be a weird world.
It was pretty good with a 64040 (NeXTstation Turbo), I mean snappy, even in color. Always been critical of the performance of OS X when I remember that a 68030 with 16MB RAM did a decent job with NeXTStep, and a 68040 with 32MB RAM was damn whippy.
Nonetheless, NeXTStep 3.3 did run on PA-RISC and SPARC, and successor OpenStep continued to support SPARC (but PA-RISC was dropped for some reason). BTW, you mentioned capitalization? It's NeXTStep (the "e" is a little "e", but the "step" might be anything).
I used Jobs' sleek black NeXT computers for years, and they were a joy to work and program on. For users, they offered all the stability and multi-tasking capability of Unix, but with a decent, UI and a fantastic free development environment, back when NT was in its infancy, the best Unix had was Motif (ick), and Windows 3.1 couldn't really handle things like real-time feeds or database servers or really large dynamic spreadsheets, or even large-screen displays. I truly thought NeXT was the future at the time, but Jobs couldn't crank them out fast or cheap enough, and rumors of NT encouraged people to just sit tight until Bill would make the world safe for cheap Intel PC's.
.5%? I wish that were true. My browser is set to ask before flash, and commercial web sites are constantly asking for flash to run. I hate flash, but everybody uses it, particularly for streaming content, and the boys at Chrome do not want to risk their place as the go-to browser. I only hope this step is the first of a thousand cuts that may finally kill this beast.
The disclaimer was actually there. It was shown in infrared, but it's clearly readable with night vision goggles.
...but displayed so quickly, only your subconscious is aware of it: a warm fuzzy feeling of "ah well, it's just a movie, and $9 isn't that much money..."
THIS. The linux-compatible subsystem is NOT installed by default, and a user has to go through a lot of non-easy hoops to get it installed. That is, it's not simply a matter of opening the Windows Store and clicking on a colorful icon of a skimpy-dressed female holding cash in one hand and a machine-gun in the other. There are a plurality of steps, all boring, any one of which would likely cause your typical sucker-user to lose interest.
However vulnerable this turns out to be ("hey, handsome, are you MAN enough to copy this BASH script and RUN it on your big firm Terminal?"), this net is NOT likely to catch a lot of fish.
The ones that really kill me tho are the personal questions
Absolutely correct. Those "personal questions" suck. My solution? A stock answer I can always remember: "questions like this are written by weenies" Viz: What was your first car? questions like this are written by weenies What hospital were you born in? questions like this are written by weenies What was the name of your first pet? questions like this are written by weenies Where did you go on your first date? questions like this are written by weenies What was the name of the punk who punched you in the face and took your lunch money? questions like this are written by weenies What prison does he currently occupy? questions like this are written by weenies What year did he marry your sister? questions like this are written by weenies
I encourage users to make up passwords based on some useless obsolete memory occupying a permanent place in their brains. I tell them to start with the name of their childhood dog, that's easy, but then add onto that the entire phone number for their best friend growing up.... the one you'd dial 12 times a day? that's 10 digits you can always recall, occupying some space in your head that you otherwise don't have any use for. Tag that onto your dog's name and you have a memorized 18-digit password. Your head is full of this stuff. An old gym locker combination. An weird nickname you used to call someone. The punchline from a comedy bit you heard when you were 11. There's actually a lot of defunct, untraceable fodder permanently stuck in your head you can use to construct a decent password that you couldn't forget it you wanted to.
Wish I had mod points to mod this up. I would also suggest that AC get an account and stop posting anonymously if he/she wishes to continue posting insightful posts like this. I would further suggest including links... the wikipedia page for the Thud (aka the Republic F-105 Thunderchief) shows a bad-ass looking penetrator studded with sixteen(!) 750 lb bombs on its exterior, not including an internal bomb bay with a capacity of Up to 14,000 lb (6,400 kg) of ordnance, including conventional and nuclear bombs, and AIM-9 Sidewinder and AGM-12 Bullpup missiles. It can reach speeds of mach 2.08, and carries a 20 mm (0.787 in) M61A1 Vulcan 6-barreled Gatling cannon, 1,028 rounds. This plane is no bitch.
I don't want Cortana, I don't want internet searches from the desktop and I DO NOT WANT telemetry or my WiFi passwords shared etc. etc. etc. I'm not a node in Microsofts network I'm a private business.
If I can't turn this shit off and uninstall the crap I don't want then it's not getting installed.
You can. Shared WiFi passwords has been removed with the Anniversary update. The other stuff you want can be fixed with Winaero Tweaker, including shutting down Cortana (as opposed to simply hiding it). and Classic Shell makes live tiles go away. You can even restore the Windows 7 calculator from here if you hate the Metro version. These things do a pretty good job of reducing 10 down to the non-intrusive OS, shell and app platform that 7 was.
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.
“They probably have them. I’d like to have them released. It gives me no pause, if they have them, they have them,” Trump added later when asked if his comments were inappropriate. “If Russia or China or any other country has those emails, I mean, to be honest with you, I’d love to see them.” - Wash Post.
The real estate mogul sought to distance himself from allegations that the Russian government hacked into the Democratic National Committee to benefit his campaign, which Clinton’s campaign manager suggested earlier this week.
“It is so farfetched. It’s so ridiculous. Honestly, I wish I had that power. I’d love to have that power, but Russia has no respect for our country,” Trump said.
I'd say Trump was at least half-serious. He said in no uncertain terms that he'd have no problem if Russia stepped in to do some dirty work on his behalf.
Of course, if the Russians actually deliver, Trump would owe Putin a favor. Ukraine, maybe? Disband NATO?
Dumb not-so-funny, off-the-cuff comments may be fine in reality TV, but they have consequences in international politics. An ex-KGB like Putin could make a predictable narcissist like Trump dance on a string. I'm talkin Godfather II, waking up next to a dead prostitute.
It's not a matter of whose legal team is bigger. It's only a matter of whether your legal team, budget, and will-power is big enough to sweat through the motion practice, discovery process, travel to different venues, and other inconveniences that tend to squash little people. Epic certainly has enough, as well as enough to solicit help from other affected parties, and even consider a class action.
I think they'd also have enough cash to take a prosecutor for the E.U. out for a nice lunch and round of golf. Bottom line, Epic Games can do some damage, and Microsoft has lost monopoly battles before.
my computer is from 2008, there is no point in getting w10 tied to a computer im not going to be using next winter when i get a new one, like literally no point whatsoever
Maybe there is. According to this, if you plan on building your own rig, then you might still consider reserving your Windows 10 license while the getting is still good because you may be able to transfer the license to your new machine by calling Microsoft and telling them you've upgraded your mobo. From a couple of Google searches, it appears that Microsoft tech support is pretty easy about activating licenses if you bother to call them.
On the other hand, if you're going to buy a system retail with Windows pre-installed, then yeah, probably not worth the effort.
I took the plunge and upgraded my last and more important PC this weekend, 'cause I don't want to be on the hook to pay $199 for a new Pro license when something forces me off 7.
I swear I'm not a shill; I bitch regularly about Microsoft because my job forces me to bear with it. But I was pleasantly surprised how well the in-place upgrade went. Nothing broke, even my old copy of Office 2003 (from my cold, dead hands...) The only thing the upgrade removed without asking were a couple of 3d-party diagnostic utilities like speccy, which doesn't bother me in the slightest. Even Steam fired back up without a hitch.
Now, about that ugliness. You don't have Aero transparency or rounded edges, but with Classic Shell and WinAero Tweeker, you can do a lot to make 10 more livable. A right-click on the taskbar can make Cortana go away, and ClassicShell separates Windows programs from Metro Apps in separate sub-menus, so you never have to look at them if you don't want to. Also, you do NOT have to use a Microsoft/Outlook cloud account. With this kind of setup, it's pretty much the same Windows as before.
Finally, I haven't tried this yet, but there's Spybot Anti-Beacon to address the "phone-home" issues that might be nagging you.
So, here's an idea to grab Windows 10 while its still free with the least risk. Shop for an SSD upgrade, like a 1TB Samsung Evo because damn it's gotten cheap. Clone your precious Windows 7/8/8.1 drive to the new SSD, remove it, set it aside. Then, perform an in-place upgrade as described here on the clone. Try it out. Something go wrong? Hate it? Swap back your old drive; clone again, do what you like. Your old build is safe and sound.
But here's the thing: according to the article, you have effectively retrieved/reserved your free Windows 10 license to use... whenever. If you want to try again in a few months, you can take a blank SSD and download/build Windows 10 from scratch, Microsoft will recognize your PC signature (assuming you haven't changed you mobo) and license you (just skip the part where it asks for a key). In the mean time, however, your old Windows will still work for as long as you want to keep it.
There. Assuming Microsoft doesn't wimp out and extend the deadline, you've just pocketed a $150-200 license for free to use any time you want.
So THIS explains how my Super was selling Internet to everyone in my building for $50 bucks a month (he called it the "grandfather plan"), and why the service crapped out whenever he took his mobile outside to take a phone call!
Then here's an idea: spend less on Executive pay, perks, mind-numbing advertising, monthly corporate junkets for yet again re-writing customer terms and conditions, attorney fees for fighting worker wages and suing the FCC, lobbying fees at state and federal capitols, and box seats at sports arenas, and re-invest all of that into providing a better product at a better price than its competitors.
But yeah, what's the fun in all that... it's more fun to get paid and go to exclusive bars and go Hey good lookin! Buy you a drink? I'm an Executive! So, you wanna be an actress, wow! Check out THIS gold watch. I might know a producer or two. Ever been to the Superbowl, VIP style? Corporate jet? Your sister can come along. My wife, she don't doesn't understand me.
When you use a Google product, like Maps for instance, there's something of informed consent going on. You know you're being tracked, it's right there on your smartphone screen. But it gets weird where the OS itself may be doing the snooping, regardless of whether you're using an app or not. Microsoft has this past reputation of baking things deep into the OS (*cough* internet explorer *cough*) in order to gain an advantage over its competitors, and here there's a case to be made that they're leveraging their dominance on the desktop to get with modern times and start making money through targeted ads, STARTing with their lackluster app store (heh heh, see that I did there?)
I have yet to hear a case where this collection of data was detrimental to an individual. And please, don't bring up the bandwidth usage because that's a drop in the bucket compared to what ads run on most websites.
You're right. All we know definitively is that there's a lot of traffic sent by Windows back to Microsoft, but there's little reliable data concerning what it is. We have to take on faith that the data does not include information about the contents of your C drive. But think about it. You can choose not to store anything on Google Drive if you are paranoid about their search routines, but if Windows is gonna index everything from the C drive to the "secure" thumb drive in the USB port, where are you gonna save to?
This is a big deal. Like it or not, people use Windows for work, medical records, attorney docs and shit, and not all of them can pay for a fancy Enterprise license which permits a trained Microsoft nerd some control over what's going on. A statement from Satya to the effect of "we will not spy on your shit, nor will we give up what we do have even if the FBI comes knockin" would be most re-assuring (even if non-binding), but we don't even get that!
This. Please this. There are too many posts that offer linux as the cure for all ills, the perfect girlfriend who's always in the mood when you are, never gets tired of your body or your jokes, loves sports and video games and kung-fu action flicks, and can eat endless quantities of wings and pizza without adding an ounce to her perfect figure. The Chinese government offers a linux distro. So does North Korea. Gonna consider any of them... safe?
Linux is only as good/secure as the software that runs on it. Sure, a lot of it provided through distros like Ubuntu are open source, which means people could review it for sneaky eavesdropping stuff. But how many people actually do that? And if someone finds a weakness, do they necessarily report it like a nice person would, or might they instead make an exploit and pass it around the darknet?
Open software is just and only that... open. Unless you review all the code you download from Gentoo before you build it into a system, you're operating at least partly (I'd say hugely) on faith. Maybe the faith is more well-founded than the block-box approach of closed-source (trust us, says Microsoft), but FOSS is not a guarantee (e.g., OpenSSL). An argument against FOSS might be that if Microsoft fucks up, its huge institutional customers like federal and state governments, the defense department, European governments, and (perhaps most important) Wall Street titans will call Satya directly (in bed with his perfect girlfriend) and tell him to get his shit together RIGHT FUCKING NOW or else see his company broken apart and endless, endless, endless hours in court and depositions. In contrast, the FOSS maintainer might respond to a critical bug "hey... uhh, my bad, but you know I'm only doing this in my spare time... gotta go... my old lady's on me to mow the grass." Isn't the first thing in a FOSS license a statement of absolutely no warranty? Just sayin'. Ain't nothin' perfect. Nothin'.
Has anyone seen what happens if you're not using a battery? Like on a desktop? Maybe Windows hits you with carbon footprint statistics? You could slow the melting of the icecaps if you'd just suck up and use Edge.
Will Microsoft pitch a warning that LibreOffice is stressing your hard drive more than a fresh copy of Office would? (click here to buy)
Howabout you plug in your smart phone to charge, and Windows replies with a message that Android nerds are sad losers with tight pants and bad hair, quick use this coupon and receive a lovely Lumia and join the Windows Winner's Revolution. You heard it here first. Marketers gotta monetize.
Yes, and Yahoo (remember them?) suggests you run Firefox. But these are routinely ignored, jammed somewhere on a corner of the page. Attentive users may be annoyed for a few moments before moving on, while novice users have no awareness it was ever there. I mean, the page is displaying, isn't it? It's like you drive to McDonald's, and see a sign that says "Your ride here would have been more fun in a Chevy Malibu!" Nevertheless, you've arrived, your attention turns to your craving for salty oily processed food, and you go on your way.
It's a different thing when the OS itself bitches at you. They tend to look like dire warnings, that send dumb users to the phones asking "am I doing something wrong?" Like Amber-Alert signs flashing at you to dump your ride for a Chevy Malibu cause you're wasting gas or something.
Slashdot Mirror
Outside the Earth's magnetic field, radiation becomes the biggest buzz-kill. It's nasty out there. There's concern that even going to the moon and back exposes you to enough high-energy radiation to cause cardio-vascular disease. Mars could be lethal, not just in getting there, but also after you arrive, because Mars has no magnetosphere strong enough to provide a shield (Earth says, "you're welcome"). Any deep-space research has to solve this problem or manned missions will be a death sentence.
It was called a slab, my friend. Pizza-boxes were SPARCstations.
Agreed. SPARC + NeXTStep (with productivity apps like Lotus and WriteNow!) Alpha + Windows 7 (with Word, Excel). But could those machine have ever been made cheap?
The (evil) genius of NT and i386 was that i386 was commodity hardware, whereas Sun and HP and DEC and even Apple wanted (and deserved) a premium for the effort they spent on developing their platforms. I can't imagine sourcing a truckload of Alphastations for around $2500 apiece, including monitor and CD-ROM and 10-base-T network interface, but Computer Shopper was packed with deals from Packard Bell, etc. that delivered just that. NT shoe-horned a (just) decent, protected-mode OS into cheap '486 trash, and Gateway 2000 cranked them out by the thousands in wacky cow-pattern boxes. I miss my SPARCstation bad, but I never could have afforded one, much less got one for my parents.
An older programmer I worked with on the Street told me "you've got to be a whore" to make it as a developer. That was his reason for committing to Win32 back when Unix-based gear was still the clear choice for mission-critical applications. Fuck him, but he was right. Damn, this can be a weird world.
It was pretty good with a 64040 (NeXTstation Turbo), I mean snappy, even in color. Always been critical of the performance of OS X when I remember that a 68030 with 16MB RAM did a decent job with NeXTStep, and a 68040 with 32MB RAM was damn whippy.
Nonetheless, NeXTStep 3.3 did run on PA-RISC and SPARC, and successor OpenStep continued to support SPARC (but PA-RISC was dropped for some reason). BTW, you mentioned capitalization? It's NeXTStep (the "e" is a little "e", but the "step" might be anything).
I used Jobs' sleek black NeXT computers for years, and they were a joy to work and program on. For users, they offered all the stability and multi-tasking capability of Unix, but with a decent, UI and a fantastic free development environment, back when NT was in its infancy, the best Unix had was Motif (ick), and Windows 3.1 couldn't really handle things like real-time feeds or database servers or really large dynamic spreadsheets, or even large-screen displays. I truly thought NeXT was the future at the time, but Jobs couldn't crank them out fast or cheap enough, and rumors of NT encouraged people to just sit tight until Bill would make the world safe for cheap Intel PC's.
Sure you will lose maybe .5% of users...
.5%? I wish that were true. My browser is set to ask before flash, and commercial web sites are constantly asking for flash to run. I hate flash, but everybody uses it, particularly for streaming content, and the boys at Chrome do not want to risk their place as the go-to browser. I only hope this step is the first of a thousand cuts that may finally kill this beast.
The disclaimer was actually there. It was shown in infrared, but it's clearly readable with night vision goggles.
...but displayed so quickly, only your subconscious is aware of it: a warm fuzzy feeling of "ah well, it's just a movie, and $9 isn't that much money..."
THIS. The linux-compatible subsystem is NOT installed by default, and a user has to go through a lot of non-easy hoops to get it installed. That is, it's not simply a matter of opening the Windows Store and clicking on a colorful icon of a skimpy-dressed female holding cash in one hand and a machine-gun in the other. There are a plurality of steps, all boring, any one of which would likely cause your typical sucker-user to lose interest.
However vulnerable this turns out to be ("hey, handsome, are you MAN enough to copy this BASH script and RUN it on your big firm Terminal?"), this net is NOT likely to catch a lot of fish.
The ones that really kill me tho are the personal questions
Absolutely correct. Those "personal questions" suck.
My solution? A stock answer I can always remember: "questions like this are written by weenies"
Viz:
What was your first car? questions like this are written by weenies
What hospital were you born in? questions like this are written by weenies
What was the name of your first pet? questions like this are written by weenies
Where did you go on your first date? questions like this are written by weenies
What was the name of the punk who punched you in the face and took your lunch money? questions like this are written by weenies
What prison does he currently occupy? questions like this are written by weenies
What year did he marry your sister? questions like this are written by weenies
I encourage users to make up passwords based on some useless obsolete memory occupying a permanent place in their brains. I tell them to start with the name of their childhood dog, that's easy, but then add onto that the entire phone number for their best friend growing up.... the one you'd dial 12 times a day? that's 10 digits you can always recall, occupying some space in your head that you otherwise don't have any use for. Tag that onto your dog's name and you have a memorized 18-digit password. Your head is full of this stuff. An old gym locker combination. An weird nickname you used to call someone. The punchline from a comedy bit you heard when you were 11. There's actually a lot of defunct, untraceable fodder permanently stuck in your head you can use to construct a decent password that you couldn't forget it you wanted to.
Wish I had mod points to mod this up. I would also suggest that AC get an account and stop posting anonymously if he/she wishes to continue posting insightful posts like this. I would further suggest including links... the wikipedia page for the Thud (aka the Republic F-105 Thunderchief) shows a bad-ass looking penetrator studded with sixteen(!) 750 lb bombs on its exterior, not including an internal bomb bay with a capacity of Up to 14,000 lb (6,400 kg) of ordnance, including conventional and nuclear bombs, and AIM-9 Sidewinder and AGM-12 Bullpup missiles. It can reach speeds of mach 2.08, and carries a 20 mm (0.787 in) M61A1 Vulcan 6-barreled Gatling cannon, 1,028 rounds. This plane is no bitch.
I don't want Cortana, I don't want internet searches from the desktop and I DO NOT WANT telemetry or my WiFi passwords shared etc. etc. etc. I'm not a node in Microsofts network I'm a private business.
If I can't turn this shit off and uninstall the crap I don't want then it's not getting installed.
You can. Shared WiFi passwords has been removed with the Anniversary update. The other stuff you want can be fixed with Winaero Tweaker, including shutting down Cortana (as opposed to simply hiding it). and Classic Shell makes live tiles go away. You can even restore the Windows 7 calculator from here if you hate the Metro version. These things do a pretty good job of reducing 10 down to the non-intrusive OS, shell and app platform that 7 was.
Yes! Sticky floors and the stench of stale popcorn goo are key to the theater experience!
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.
“They probably have them. I’d like to have them released. It gives me no pause, if they have them, they have them,” Trump added later when asked if his comments were inappropriate. “If Russia or China or any other country has those emails, I mean, to be honest with you, I’d love to see them.”
- Wash Post.
The real estate mogul sought to distance himself from allegations that the Russian government hacked into the Democratic National Committee to benefit his campaign, which Clinton’s campaign manager suggested earlier this week.
“It is so farfetched. It’s so ridiculous. Honestly, I wish I had that power. I’d love to have that power, but Russia has no respect for our country,” Trump said.
I'd say Trump was at least half-serious. He said in no uncertain terms that he'd have no problem if Russia stepped in to do some dirty work on his behalf.
Of course, if the Russians actually deliver, Trump would owe Putin a favor. Ukraine, maybe? Disband NATO?
Dumb not-so-funny, off-the-cuff comments may be fine in reality TV, but they have consequences in international politics. An ex-KGB like Putin could make a predictable narcissist like Trump dance on a string. I'm talkin Godfather II, waking up next to a dead prostitute.
What about GoG? Does it rely on violating security to install/run games, or do they do something different?
It's not a matter of whose legal team is bigger. It's only a matter of whether your legal team, budget, and will-power is big enough to sweat through the motion practice, discovery process, travel to different venues, and other inconveniences that tend to squash little people. Epic certainly has enough, as well as enough to solicit help from other affected parties, and even consider a class action.
I think they'd also have enough cash to take a prosecutor for the E.U. out for a nice lunch and round of golf. Bottom line, Epic Games can do some damage, and Microsoft has lost monopoly battles before.
my computer is from 2008, there is no point in getting w10 tied to a computer im not going to be using next winter when i get a new one, like literally no point whatsoever
Maybe there is. According to this, if you plan on building your own rig, then you might still consider reserving your Windows 10 license while the getting is still good because you may be able to transfer the license to your new machine by calling Microsoft and telling them you've upgraded your mobo. From a couple of Google searches, it appears that Microsoft tech support is pretty easy about activating licenses if you bother to call them.
On the other hand, if you're going to buy a system retail with Windows pre-installed, then yeah, probably not worth the effort.
I took the plunge and upgraded my last and more important PC this weekend, 'cause I don't want to be on the hook to pay $199 for a new Pro license when something forces me off 7.
I swear I'm not a shill; I bitch regularly about Microsoft because my job forces me to bear with it. But I was pleasantly surprised how well the in-place upgrade went. Nothing broke, even my old copy of Office 2003 (from my cold, dead hands...) The only thing the upgrade removed without asking were a couple of 3d-party diagnostic utilities like speccy, which doesn't bother me in the slightest. Even Steam fired back up without a hitch.
Now, about that ugliness. You don't have Aero transparency or rounded edges, but with Classic Shell and WinAero Tweeker, you can do a lot to make 10 more livable. A right-click on the taskbar can make Cortana go away, and ClassicShell separates Windows programs from Metro Apps in separate sub-menus, so you never have to look at them if you don't want to. Also, you do NOT have to use a Microsoft/Outlook cloud account. With this kind of setup, it's pretty much the same Windows as before.
Finally, I haven't tried this yet, but there's Spybot Anti-Beacon to address the "phone-home" issues that might be nagging you.
So, here's an idea to grab Windows 10 while its still free with the least risk. Shop for an SSD upgrade, like a 1TB Samsung Evo because damn it's gotten cheap. Clone your precious Windows 7/8/8.1 drive to the new SSD, remove it, set it aside. Then, perform an in-place upgrade as described here on the clone. Try it out. Something go wrong? Hate it? Swap back your old drive; clone again, do what you like. Your old build is safe and sound.
But here's the thing: according to the article, you have effectively retrieved/reserved your free Windows 10 license to use... whenever. If you want to try again in a few months, you can take a blank SSD and download/build Windows 10 from scratch, Microsoft will recognize your PC signature (assuming you haven't changed you mobo) and license you (just skip the part where it asks for a key). In the mean time, however, your old Windows will still work for as long as you want to keep it.
There. Assuming Microsoft doesn't wimp out and extend the deadline, you've just pocketed a $150-200 license for free to use any time you want.
So THIS explains how my Super was selling Internet to everyone in my building for $50 bucks a month (he called it the "grandfather plan"), and why the service crapped out whenever he took his mobile outside to take a phone call!
Then here's an idea: spend less on Executive pay, perks, mind-numbing advertising, monthly corporate junkets for yet again re-writing customer terms and conditions, attorney fees for fighting worker wages and suing the FCC, lobbying fees at state and federal capitols, and box seats at sports arenas, and re-invest all of that into providing a better product at a better price than its competitors.
But yeah, what's the fun in all that... it's more fun to get paid and go to exclusive bars and go Hey good lookin! Buy you a drink? I'm an Executive! So, you wanna be an actress, wow! Check out THIS gold watch. I might know a producer or two. Ever been to the Superbowl, VIP style? Corporate jet? Your sister can come along. My wife, she don't doesn't understand me.
When you use a Google product, like Maps for instance, there's something of informed consent going on. You know you're being tracked, it's right there on your smartphone screen. But it gets weird where the OS itself may be doing the snooping, regardless of whether you're using an app or not. Microsoft has this past reputation of baking things deep into the OS (*cough* internet explorer *cough*) in order to gain an advantage over its competitors, and here there's a case to be made that they're leveraging their dominance on the desktop to get with modern times and start making money through targeted ads, STARTing with their lackluster app store (heh heh, see that I did there?)
I have yet to hear a case where this collection of data was detrimental to an individual. And please, don't bring up the bandwidth usage because that's a drop in the bucket compared to what ads run on most websites.
You're right. All we know definitively is that there's a lot of traffic sent by Windows back to Microsoft, but there's little reliable data concerning what it is. We have to take on faith that the data does not include information about the contents of your C drive. But think about it. You can choose not to store anything on Google Drive if you are paranoid about their search routines, but if Windows is gonna index everything from the C drive to the "secure" thumb drive in the USB port, where are you gonna save to?
This is a big deal. Like it or not, people use Windows for work, medical records, attorney docs and shit, and not all of them can pay for a fancy Enterprise license which permits a trained Microsoft nerd some control over what's going on. A statement from Satya to the effect of "we will not spy on your shit, nor will we give up what we do have even if the FBI comes knockin" would be most re-assuring (even if non-binding), but we don't even get that!
This. Please this. There are too many posts that offer linux as the cure for all ills, the perfect girlfriend who's always in the mood when you are, never gets tired of your body or your jokes, loves sports and video games and kung-fu action flicks, and can eat endless quantities of wings and pizza without adding an ounce to her perfect figure. The Chinese government offers a linux distro. So does North Korea. Gonna consider any of them... safe?
Linux is only as good/secure as the software that runs on it. Sure, a lot of it provided through distros like Ubuntu are open source, which means people could review it for sneaky eavesdropping stuff. But how many people actually do that? And if someone finds a weakness, do they necessarily report it like a nice person would, or might they instead make an exploit and pass it around the darknet?
Open software is just and only that... open. Unless you review all the code you download from Gentoo before you build it into a system, you're operating at least partly (I'd say hugely) on faith. Maybe the faith is more well-founded than the block-box approach of closed-source (trust us, says Microsoft), but FOSS is not a guarantee (e.g., OpenSSL). An argument against FOSS might be that if Microsoft fucks up, its huge institutional customers like federal and state governments, the defense department, European governments, and (perhaps most important) Wall Street titans will call Satya directly (in bed with his perfect girlfriend) and tell him to get his shit together RIGHT FUCKING NOW or else see his company broken apart and endless, endless, endless hours in court and depositions. In contrast, the FOSS maintainer might respond to a critical bug "hey... uhh, my bad, but you know I'm only doing this in my spare time... gotta go... my old lady's on me to mow the grass." Isn't the first thing in a FOSS license a statement of absolutely no warranty? Just sayin'. Ain't nothin' perfect. Nothin'.
Has anyone seen what happens if you're not using a battery? Like on a desktop? Maybe Windows hits you with carbon footprint statistics? You could slow the melting of the icecaps if you'd just suck up and use Edge.
Will Microsoft pitch a warning that LibreOffice is stressing your hard drive more than a fresh copy of Office would? (click here to buy)
Howabout you plug in your smart phone to charge, and Windows replies with a message that Android nerds are sad losers with tight pants and bad hair, quick use this coupon and receive a lovely Lumia and join the Windows Winner's Revolution.
You heard it here first. Marketers gotta monetize.
Yes, and Yahoo (remember them?) suggests you run Firefox. But these are routinely ignored, jammed somewhere on a corner of the page. Attentive users may be annoyed for a few moments before moving on, while novice users have no awareness it was ever there. I mean, the page is displaying, isn't it? It's like you drive to McDonald's, and see a sign that says "Your ride here would have been more fun in a Chevy Malibu!" Nevertheless, you've arrived, your attention turns to your craving for salty oily processed food, and you go on your way.
It's a different thing when the OS itself bitches at you. They tend to look like dire warnings, that send dumb users to the phones asking "am I doing something wrong?" Like Amber-Alert signs flashing at you to dump your ride for a Chevy Malibu cause you're wasting gas or something.