I'm fine with making a deal with a "devil" that simply means making a copy of content I legally purchased. My conscience is clear, even if the law technically says I'm doing something wrong.
I keep hoping one of these days publishers will wake up and figure out that they don't need to be our adversaries - that we want to reward those who create interesting stories for us to lose ourselves in, because that likely means we'll get more stuff like it in the future. Anyone who wants to get a free copy can do so easily enough right now, even with all the DRM and onerous controls they can think up. Just make it reasonably priced and convenient, and you'll keep selling your product.
Just getting people in the door once is a tried and true strategy for businesses. The other day I got my vehicle's state emission tests done at a local gas station that's a lot closer than the one I used to go to (thanks Google!). They gave me a free car with it, and I may go back there every once in a while to get my car washed now, as I discovered the basic wash is only three bucks. I'm certain I never would have discovered or used that place otherwise.
Online retailers or services use the same principle - they'll give you a free gift just to get you to sign up and go through the checkout or purchasing process with no risk to you, just to get you comfortable with the process.
Microsoft is only committed to maintaining Windows 7 and 8 for a fixed length of time. It costs them exactly the same to pay developers to patch and maintain that old code no matter how many or how few people are using it. Beside which, Microsoft has already been paid in advance for that support when people purchased those OSes.
There are plenty of legitimate reasons for them to want to move everyone to Windows 10, of course: There's the store, which they control and earn revenue with. Windows 10 is built on a unified OS core, making it easier to patch vulnerabilities across all their devices. Universal Windows apps can be easily ported across all Windows 10 devices, making their ecosystem more attractive to developers. Windows 10 has a lot of cloud and service integration built-in, which they see as the future for them, etc, etc.
All that being said, I tend to doubt this is deliberate (and there are fixes and work-arounds available). It's not like this is the first time an update has accidentally bricked user's computers. Unfortunately, Microsoft doesn't have a lot of good faith built up with Windows 7 or 8 users right now due to the incredibly pushy way they're trying to encourage upgrading to Windows 10. So, it's not like I can blame people for being suspicious.
There's an app installed by default called "Get Office" that causes these occasional popup notifications that are advertising Office 365.
You can just delete this app or disable notifications for it in particular (it's also good to know you can control notifications on a per-app basis) and you won't see those "Get Office 365" popup notifications anymore. You certainly don't have to disable *all* notifications, as I actually like them for things like news, mail, etc.
It's annoying that they make you do this, but not nearly as hard to fix as the GWX thing. Some people have claimed that it comes back after you delete it, but that hasn't been my experience. Sigh... Microsoft is really bound and determined to make sure their users hate their guts with this heavy-handed crap. I completely agree that users shouldn't have to do this to make their system usable.
Or, having learned a valuable lesson, we could instead fix the problems with the technology and make it more reliable.
That's generally how engineering works, after all, and it seems to do pretty well by us for the most part. It's why we know how to build buildings, bridges, airplanes, etc that generally don't randomly fail. When we do see a failure, we analyze what went wrong and try to learn from the sometimes painful lesson, and the next generation of products then takes what we learned into account.
2) You could download apps for all sorts of things, and you could write your own apps.
A lot of people forget, but you could NOT originally write 3rd party apps for the iPhone. Apple originally intended to write all the apps for it, and figured any 3rd party applications would be web-based. It was only after tremendous pressure did Jobs finally relent and open up the SDK to external developers. Any success you attribute to the original iPhone really can't have anything to do with 3rd party apps - although it certainly contributed to later successes.
I've always presumed it was to prevent states from getting into commerce wars amongst each other, but I've never cared enough to actually research the matter.
I hope you're only kidding and you're really not that bitter of a person. Anyhow, where are a few reasons that may not happen:
First, there are no local monopolies for streaming video services, so unlike cable, it's not a "take it or leave it" offering. There's also more than one streaming service, and they have to directly compete with each other, as well as with cable. In fact, I predict you'll actually see substantial price cuts in cable services as more and more people start ditching them altogether and they get increasingly desperate. Or, they'll start charging more for ISP-related services, because they suck like that.
Second, anyone can get almost any digital media for free using bittorrent. Streaming services offer an advantage in convenience, but if they start charging ridiculous prices like cable, people will get pushed to the digital black market.
Third, I can never hate another company as much as I hate Comcast. No, really... they'd actually have to do something pretty amazing to top Comcast, who's managed to piss all over their customers at almost every opportunity all while charging absolutely insane rates and providing lackluster service to boot.
It's not so much about doing the work of auditing all the source yourself. It's about the source being open so as to prevent someone from slipping in a backdoor in the first place, and trusting that at least one person among the many millions who care about this would spot it and let everyone else know.
I'm not rabidly anti-corporation or anti-government, but you have to understand that at their cores, neither of those entities has a vested interested in allowing you to maintain your privacy. Corporations are concerned about profit, while governments are concerned about control. There's nothing inherently wrong with that. It's just what they do. We can deal with them and make use of them, so long as we understand the nature of the beasts.
Apple only cares about your privacy because they want to maintain your loyalty as a customer. That's the positive side of economics - when powerful entities side with your interests because they have a strong motivation to do so. But it's important to remember that it can also be turned against you - there are also economic advantages for exploiting your personal data. And keep in mind Apple who was fighting against in order for you to maintain your privacy.
I'm not arguing that we would be better off living in a world without corporations or governments - that's clearly not the case. But it's important not to blindly put your faith in them either or offload responsibilities for your own well-being. No one will care about your own well-being as much as you do.
Fingerprint readers are not perfect, but they're good enough for 99.99% of the population for whom there's not much chance that a government or underworld thug will forcibly compel us to unlock our phone. The idea that a fingerprint reader puts you in any more physical danger than you are now is rather far-fetched. Sure, there are a handful of people in this would to whom that might actually apply, but it's highly likely that neither you nor I are among them, despite your dystopian ruminations.
I'm looking forward to getting a fingerprint reader on my next phone, so I can say goodbye to PIN numbers which are arguably even less secure. Don't let perfect be the enemy of good.
As far as Heinlein is concerned, 'Stranger in a Strange Land' and 'The Moon is a Harsh Mistress' are worth the effort. You either love or hate 'Time Enough for Love' - either it scratches where you itch or it doesn't...
Unfortunately, my introduction to Heinlein was "Number of the Beast", which was so unbelievably awful, it made me seriously regret that I couldn't get those hours of my life back and purge that literary vomit from my brain. I've since heard that was about the worst introduction to his work possible, but it's hard to get past that bad of an experience. "Starship Troopers" was not terrible, but I can do a whole lot better than 'meh'.
That being said, I've heard so many people recommend "Moon" that I may have to just give it a shot... we'll see if I hate myself afterwards for giving him a third chance.
I think the trick in any sort of subjective ranking is to find a person or group of persons that tends you match your own personal tastes. Subjective ranking certainly isn't worthless when I recommend a book, movie, or TV show to my parents. That's because I can more or less accurately judge how well they'll like something since I know their tastes.
I think this is where most algorithmic approaches tend to fail (like on Amazon), at least from what I've been able to see. I think they tend to find general correlation - that is, "those who like book x would also like book y", but I think a much more effective approach would instead be to search for other customers who's general ranking patterns tend to match your own most closely, and build a personalized recommendation group from which to mine predictive data. In this way, the predictions would be more or less tailored for each individual customers based on similar likes and dislikes, rather than being based on general popularity trends.
For better accuracy, the algorithm should pay even more attention to statistical outliers. For instance, I generally love space-opera-y science fiction (Honorverse, Lost Fleet), as well as "harder" works, like The Martian. But I didn't care for the Heinlein I've read, so would wish to avoid more of him, and more important, more books in that general style. So, a clever algorithm would notice that trend of mine and find sci-fi fans who *also* didn't care for Heinlein, and give their recommendations a slightly higher bias based on that data point.
Generally speaking, any sort of non-personalized "ranking" is going to simply be a popularity contest within the target audience you select. There's nothing wrong with that, so long as people understand that's all it can ever really be. Which, of course, they won't.
You have to weigh that against the fact that a greedy corporation can ultimately do nothing to you, while the government has the power to fine you or send you to jail, and they can send a group of heavily armed men to break down your door to force you to comply with their decisions. Moreover, there is only one government, meaning it's a de facto monopoly that you *must* interact with, while you can typically choose to do business with a different company, or avoid doing business with it at all.
It's important to keep the profit motive in mind when dealing with corporations, but the best businesses understand that a part of making long-term profits means engaging in a mutually-beneficial, long-term relationship with their customers. There are plenty of businesses I've interacted with in which this is the case - they just don't make the news.
Don't mistake this as belief that we need to abandon all government oversight or regulation, any more than we need to abandon our civil laws just because most people are fundamentally decent. However, the same principles apply in keeping as light a hand as is practical - it's important not to weigh businesses down with excessive regulations or taxation, because that hurts the economy as a whole and stifles innovation in the private sector.
But we see here a very legitimate case in which the government may wish to consider additional rules and regulation in what is a very deliberate and obvious abuse of existing commerce laws. I'd support additional regulation stipulating that a company can't legally keep customers on hold for hours on a time when they're trying to quit. If you can sign up online, the company should legally be required to allow you to cancel online as well. Something simple like that would probably do at a minimum. I know California was already proposing a similar law - at least for certain industries, if I recall.
Yes, that's no surprise at all. I'd imagine Cortana.exe is simply the name of the local service responsible for handling user queries and talking to the "real" Cortana, which lives in MS's cloud. When you tell Windows to only search locally, the service probably is simply put into a limited "local only" mode, but it's still required to interact with the user. I don't see this as being anything nefarious.
Also, of course Windows 10 will connect to MS servers for all sorts of stuff no matter what settings you use - again, I'm not sure I buy the argument that MS is doing anything sneaky there. Windows has a lot of services that make use of internet connections - location and time services, Windows activation, Windows Update, notification updates/status, code-signing certification validation and expiration updates, and yes, probably a few stupid things that shouldn't be mandatory, like start menu queries (news, weather, etc). But people are acting like this is somehow new. Windows has been chatting with MS servers on a pretty regular basis since XP.
My feeling is that if you believe that Microsoft is going to spy on your and steal your data, then you'd be insane to run Windows. I tend to view the issue pragmatically: I simply feel there's too high a risk and no real profit in it for MS to do something like that. Others disagree, and that's fine with me - Linux and OS X are fine alternatives.
The prioritization doesn't really seem like the best example for this new functionality. It appears that the most useful trigger is the "on connect" or "on disconnect" notifications of personal devices, and it's really only handy if you already have a crapload of IoT devices hooked up in your home as well that can serve as command targets. Take for instance, an electronic front door lock (what could possibly go wrong there?)... You can have your door automatically unlock when you get home, and lock when you leave, or enable or disable a security system. A lot of the other examples were in the "cute but very gimmicky" sort of category, such as turning on party-style lighting when x number of different phones connect at one time.
So, mildly interesting, but I'm still not touching IoT crap with a 10' pole until I'm convinced they're taking long-term security and support a bit more seriously.
The only problem is if you're substituting a pretender like Bing for results you would have gotten from Google then you are providing consistently "bad" results. If people wanted to use Bing, they would. People choose Google because it is better and meets their needs. Only through underhanded evil acts such as this can MS trick people into using their search engine. I will be sure to point this out to every person I have influence with regarding computer stuff and that's quite a few people.
I agree. Note that I never said "good" results. I said "consistent", which was absolutely intentional.
For instance, take their "Pizza Hut" example. Say that Pizza Hut pays for a sponsorship with MS. Now, when you say "I want to order a pizza", you might see Pizza Hut as the first result (okay, dammit, now I'm thinking about pizza for dinner). Had that gone through another search engine, they couldn't guarantee those results, and more importantly (to them), they'd lose out on that sponsorship revenue.
Honestly, I don't have a real problem if companies try to earn ad revenue this way. I mean, if I want a pizza, then by all means, suggest a pizza place for me. But don't try to pretend you're doing me some favor by locking out anyone else from doing the same thing simply because they have a better search engine.
If Microsoft was serious about trying to improve the customer experience, I'd be able to simply dictate to Cortana:
Me: Cortana, I'd like to order a pizza. Cortana: Would you prefer Papa John's or Pizza Hut? (note: the two places I actually order from) Me: Papa John's. The usual. Cortana: That would be a Papa John's large pizza with... (blah blah)... Shall I order this for you now? Me: Yes. Cortana: Your pizza has been ordered, and should arrive approximately 40 minute from now.
When a digital assistant gets that useful, I'll think about turning it on again. But WTF Microsoft... is it that hard to open a web browser and type "pizza hut"? Does anyone need help figuring out how to shop for a black dress on Amazon? It feels like they're shooting so low right now it's utterly pathetic.
Hi, are you stupid? Are you deliberately trying to make decisions that make you look as terrible as possible?
I sort of understand the technical reasons for wanting to do this. It's a lot easier to provide consistent results if you control all the pieces to all the tech. But a "consistent experience" is not why people use Windows. If that's what people wanted, they'd already be using a Mac.
Here's an alternative: Propose an open framework that permits intelligent agents to integrate with and work across search engines and other services, and create a useful, open source implementation that shows how Cortana integrates with Bing and Edge. Start creating some innovative software solutions instead of playing in your own little pond with your own toys, and you might actually find yourself relevant to a broader audience again.
It looks like I was right to simply turn off Cortana and internet-enabled searching from that bar as the first thing I did after installing Windows 10. What makes you think this is going to entice me to ever turn it back on? Maybe arrange a little "accident" for my registry settings on the next update, I suppose?
"Techno-elites"? By that you mean "experts in their given field", like people who have written papers, books, actual security algorithms, etc? Those "techno-elites"? You'll forgive me, but are we seriously expected to dismiss their evaluation of a given piece of legislation, when this is what they do? That's a nice little ad hominem yourself, in case you weren't aware.
Feinstein et al have proposed a new federal law. So you'll forgive me when I don't really care about listening to them try to spin it or talk about their intentions, because what matters is what is actually written in the bill.
Being "ignorant" regarding a particularly complex topic like encryption and security isn't a personal insult. It means you're not fully versed on that particular topic, and it can be easily fixed by *learning*. You're reacting as though someone someone called Feinstein (whom it sounds like you admire and/or support and seem to be instinctively defending) "stupid", which is not the same thing. Now, if a lawmaker find herself ignorant regarding a certain topic, and tries to create and pass a law without seeking and applying the best advice from experts in that field, then... well...
These days I'd recommend the freeware utility Never10, which uses the officially sanctioned MS method to disable the update, just wrapping it up in a tiny, easy-to-use utility. It provides some additional functionality as well, such as making sure you have the pre-requisite patches to do that, as well as optionally cleaning up any files previous downloaded by the Windows 10 update process.
Let's just say that while there is "technically" a way to disable these popups, an administrator following best practices is simply keeping the machine patched, which introduced this behavior in the first place. If they had done the "wrong" thing and left that Windows 7 (presumably) machine unpatched, then this wouldn't have happened. Microsoft is eroding the trust of their patching system by abusing it to deploy non-critical patches that users don't want. Yes, one would hope that their IT dept is keeping up with news and should probably have anticipated this, but they shouldn't have HAD to.
Even as a Windows user/developer myself, there's no way I'd possibly try to justify how Microsoft is treating their users with such disrespect. It's insanely stupid, because Windows 10 is actually a pretty decent OS at its core, especially if you turn off the cloud fluff and advertising crap. Microsoft has done such damage to these products with their over-aggressiveness in this upgrade nagware and by foisting telemetry on older OSes. I'm not one that subscribes to the belief that Microsoft is "spying" on people, but they really should have given their users who don't feel that way a clear way of opting out globally.
It really astounds me how some companies are so willing to burn away customer goodwill for such short-term gains - like how Comcast pisses off a customer when they try to disconnect service by making the process as painful as possible - apparently in the hope that they'll give up and allow them to keep billing? This is the same sort of short-sighted idiocy, but of course, it's not like these CEOs are asking *my* opinion.
People with short hair (i.e. most guys) tend to discount the utility of a hair dryer, but if you or your significant other has long hair, you know it's not really optional. Long hair takes an annoyingly long time to dry on its own, even after using a towel. That being said, the $15 model seemed to work just fine for its intended purpose.
Also, what is this "sun" you speak of? I live in Seattle, you insensitive clod.
True, but on the other hand, I would think etching technology certainly has the potential of becoming more efficient than it is now, reducing that current advantage. I recall a story here a while back about some new "5-dimensional" etching techniques (three spacial dimensions plus two additional properties per point) that could show promise in the future regarding improved density:
Slashdot Mirror
I'm fine with making a deal with a "devil" that simply means making a copy of content I legally purchased. My conscience is clear, even if the law technically says I'm doing something wrong.
I keep hoping one of these days publishers will wake up and figure out that they don't need to be our adversaries - that we want to reward those who create interesting stories for us to lose ourselves in, because that likely means we'll get more stuff like it in the future. Anyone who wants to get a free copy can do so easily enough right now, even with all the DRM and onerous controls they can think up. Just make it reasonably priced and convenient, and you'll keep selling your product.
Just getting people in the door once is a tried and true strategy for businesses. The other day I got my vehicle's state emission tests done at a local gas station that's a lot closer than the one I used to go to (thanks Google!). They gave me a free car with it, and I may go back there every once in a while to get my car washed now, as I discovered the basic wash is only three bucks. I'm certain I never would have discovered or used that place otherwise.
Online retailers or services use the same principle - they'll give you a free gift just to get you to sign up and go through the checkout or purchasing process with no risk to you, just to get you comfortable with the process.
Microsoft is only committed to maintaining Windows 7 and 8 for a fixed length of time. It costs them exactly the same to pay developers to patch and maintain that old code no matter how many or how few people are using it. Beside which, Microsoft has already been paid in advance for that support when people purchased those OSes.
There are plenty of legitimate reasons for them to want to move everyone to Windows 10, of course: There's the store, which they control and earn revenue with. Windows 10 is built on a unified OS core, making it easier to patch vulnerabilities across all their devices. Universal Windows apps can be easily ported across all Windows 10 devices, making their ecosystem more attractive to developers. Windows 10 has a lot of cloud and service integration built-in, which they see as the future for them, etc, etc.
All that being said, I tend to doubt this is deliberate (and there are fixes and work-arounds available). It's not like this is the first time an update has accidentally bricked user's computers. Unfortunately, Microsoft doesn't have a lot of good faith built up with Windows 7 or 8 users right now due to the incredibly pushy way they're trying to encourage upgrading to Windows 10. So, it's not like I can blame people for being suspicious.
There's an app installed by default called "Get Office" that causes these occasional popup notifications that are advertising Office 365.
You can just delete this app or disable notifications for it in particular (it's also good to know you can control notifications on a per-app basis) and you won't see those "Get Office 365" popup notifications anymore. You certainly don't have to disable *all* notifications, as I actually like them for things like news, mail, etc.
It's annoying that they make you do this, but not nearly as hard to fix as the GWX thing. Some people have claimed that it comes back after you delete it, but that hasn't been my experience. Sigh... Microsoft is really bound and determined to make sure their users hate their guts with this heavy-handed crap. I completely agree that users shouldn't have to do this to make their system usable.
Or, having learned a valuable lesson, we could instead fix the problems with the technology and make it more reliable.
That's generally how engineering works, after all, and it seems to do pretty well by us for the most part. It's why we know how to build buildings, bridges, airplanes, etc that generally don't randomly fail. When we do see a failure, we analyze what went wrong and try to learn from the sometimes painful lesson, and the next generation of products then takes what we learned into account.
Self-driving cars are now at the drivers-ed level, then?
2) You could download apps for all sorts of things, and you could write your own apps.
A lot of people forget, but you could NOT originally write 3rd party apps for the iPhone. Apple originally intended to write all the apps for it, and figured any 3rd party applications would be web-based. It was only after tremendous pressure did Jobs finally relent and open up the SDK to external developers. Any success you attribute to the original iPhone really can't have anything to do with 3rd party apps - although it certainly contributed to later successes.
I've always presumed it was to prevent states from getting into commerce wars amongst each other, but I've never cared enough to actually research the matter.
I hope you're only kidding and you're really not that bitter of a person. Anyhow, where are a few reasons that may not happen:
First, there are no local monopolies for streaming video services, so unlike cable, it's not a "take it or leave it" offering. There's also more than one streaming service, and they have to directly compete with each other, as well as with cable. In fact, I predict you'll actually see substantial price cuts in cable services as more and more people start ditching them altogether and they get increasingly desperate. Or, they'll start charging more for ISP-related services, because they suck like that.
Second, anyone can get almost any digital media for free using bittorrent. Streaming services offer an advantage in convenience, but if they start charging ridiculous prices like cable, people will get pushed to the digital black market.
Third, I can never hate another company as much as I hate Comcast. No, really... they'd actually have to do something pretty amazing to top Comcast, who's managed to piss all over their customers at almost every opportunity all while charging absolutely insane rates and providing lackluster service to boot.
It's not so much about doing the work of auditing all the source yourself. It's about the source being open so as to prevent someone from slipping in a backdoor in the first place, and trusting that at least one person among the many millions who care about this would spot it and let everyone else know.
I'm not rabidly anti-corporation or anti-government, but you have to understand that at their cores, neither of those entities has a vested interested in allowing you to maintain your privacy. Corporations are concerned about profit, while governments are concerned about control. There's nothing inherently wrong with that. It's just what they do. We can deal with them and make use of them, so long as we understand the nature of the beasts.
Apple only cares about your privacy because they want to maintain your loyalty as a customer. That's the positive side of economics - when powerful entities side with your interests because they have a strong motivation to do so. But it's important to remember that it can also be turned against you - there are also economic advantages for exploiting your personal data. And keep in mind Apple who was fighting against in order for you to maintain your privacy.
I'm not arguing that we would be better off living in a world without corporations or governments - that's clearly not the case. But it's important not to blindly put your faith in them either or offload responsibilities for your own well-being. No one will care about your own well-being as much as you do.
Fingerprint readers are not perfect, but they're good enough for 99.99% of the population for whom there's not much chance that a government or underworld thug will forcibly compel us to unlock our phone. The idea that a fingerprint reader puts you in any more physical danger than you are now is rather far-fetched. Sure, there are a handful of people in this would to whom that might actually apply, but it's highly likely that neither you nor I are among them, despite your dystopian ruminations.
I'm looking forward to getting a fingerprint reader on my next phone, so I can say goodbye to PIN numbers which are arguably even less secure. Don't let perfect be the enemy of good.
As far as Heinlein is concerned, 'Stranger in a Strange Land' and 'The Moon is a Harsh Mistress' are worth the effort. You either love or hate 'Time Enough for Love' - either it scratches where you itch or it doesn't...
Unfortunately, my introduction to Heinlein was "Number of the Beast", which was so unbelievably awful, it made me seriously regret that I couldn't get those hours of my life back and purge that literary vomit from my brain. I've since heard that was about the worst introduction to his work possible, but it's hard to get past that bad of an experience. "Starship Troopers" was not terrible, but I can do a whole lot better than 'meh'.
That being said, I've heard so many people recommend "Moon" that I may have to just give it a shot... we'll see if I hate myself afterwards for giving him a third chance.
I think the trick in any sort of subjective ranking is to find a person or group of persons that tends you match your own personal tastes. Subjective ranking certainly isn't worthless when I recommend a book, movie, or TV show to my parents. That's because I can more or less accurately judge how well they'll like something since I know their tastes.
I think this is where most algorithmic approaches tend to fail (like on Amazon), at least from what I've been able to see. I think they tend to find general correlation - that is, "those who like book x would also like book y", but I think a much more effective approach would instead be to search for other customers who's general ranking patterns tend to match your own most closely, and build a personalized recommendation group from which to mine predictive data. In this way, the predictions would be more or less tailored for each individual customers based on similar likes and dislikes, rather than being based on general popularity trends.
For better accuracy, the algorithm should pay even more attention to statistical outliers. For instance, I generally love space-opera-y science fiction (Honorverse, Lost Fleet), as well as "harder" works, like The Martian. But I didn't care for the Heinlein I've read, so would wish to avoid more of him, and more important, more books in that general style. So, a clever algorithm would notice that trend of mine and find sci-fi fans who *also* didn't care for Heinlein, and give their recommendations a slightly higher bias based on that data point.
Generally speaking, any sort of non-personalized "ranking" is going to simply be a popularity contest within the target audience you select. There's nothing wrong with that, so long as people understand that's all it can ever really be. Which, of course, they won't.
You have to weigh that against the fact that a greedy corporation can ultimately do nothing to you, while the government has the power to fine you or send you to jail, and they can send a group of heavily armed men to break down your door to force you to comply with their decisions. Moreover, there is only one government, meaning it's a de facto monopoly that you *must* interact with, while you can typically choose to do business with a different company, or avoid doing business with it at all.
It's important to keep the profit motive in mind when dealing with corporations, but the best businesses understand that a part of making long-term profits means engaging in a mutually-beneficial, long-term relationship with their customers. There are plenty of businesses I've interacted with in which this is the case - they just don't make the news.
Don't mistake this as belief that we need to abandon all government oversight or regulation, any more than we need to abandon our civil laws just because most people are fundamentally decent. However, the same principles apply in keeping as light a hand as is practical - it's important not to weigh businesses down with excessive regulations or taxation, because that hurts the economy as a whole and stifles innovation in the private sector.
But we see here a very legitimate case in which the government may wish to consider additional rules and regulation in what is a very deliberate and obvious abuse of existing commerce laws. I'd support additional regulation stipulating that a company can't legally keep customers on hold for hours on a time when they're trying to quit. If you can sign up online, the company should legally be required to allow you to cancel online as well. Something simple like that would probably do at a minimum. I know California was already proposing a similar law - at least for certain industries, if I recall.
Also... "saving synergies"? I'm presuming that's marketdroid speak for "we don't have to pay royalties to each other on these patents now".
Yes, that's no surprise at all. I'd imagine Cortana.exe is simply the name of the local service responsible for handling user queries and talking to the "real" Cortana, which lives in MS's cloud. When you tell Windows to only search locally, the service probably is simply put into a limited "local only" mode, but it's still required to interact with the user. I don't see this as being anything nefarious.
Also, of course Windows 10 will connect to MS servers for all sorts of stuff no matter what settings you use - again, I'm not sure I buy the argument that MS is doing anything sneaky there. Windows has a lot of services that make use of internet connections - location and time services, Windows activation, Windows Update, notification updates/status, code-signing certification validation and expiration updates, and yes, probably a few stupid things that shouldn't be mandatory, like start menu queries (news, weather, etc). But people are acting like this is somehow new. Windows has been chatting with MS servers on a pretty regular basis since XP.
My feeling is that if you believe that Microsoft is going to spy on your and steal your data, then you'd be insane to run Windows. I tend to view the issue pragmatically: I simply feel there's too high a risk and no real profit in it for MS to do something like that. Others disagree, and that's fine with me - Linux and OS X are fine alternatives.
The prioritization doesn't really seem like the best example for this new functionality. It appears that the most useful trigger is the "on connect" or "on disconnect" notifications of personal devices, and it's really only handy if you already have a crapload of IoT devices hooked up in your home as well that can serve as command targets. Take for instance, an electronic front door lock (what could possibly go wrong there?)... You can have your door automatically unlock when you get home, and lock when you leave, or enable or disable a security system. A lot of the other examples were in the "cute but very gimmicky" sort of category, such as turning on party-style lighting when x number of different phones connect at one time.
So, mildly interesting, but I'm still not touching IoT crap with a 10' pole until I'm convinced they're taking long-term security and support a bit more seriously.
The only problem is if you're substituting a pretender like Bing for results you would have gotten from Google then you are providing consistently "bad" results. If people wanted to use Bing, they would. People choose Google because it is better and meets their needs. Only through underhanded evil acts such as this can MS trick people into using their search engine. I will be sure to point this out to every person I have influence with regarding computer stuff and that's quite a few people.
I agree. Note that I never said "good" results. I said "consistent", which was absolutely intentional.
For instance, take their "Pizza Hut" example. Say that Pizza Hut pays for a sponsorship with MS. Now, when you say "I want to order a pizza", you might see Pizza Hut as the first result (okay, dammit, now I'm thinking about pizza for dinner). Had that gone through another search engine, they couldn't guarantee those results, and more importantly (to them), they'd lose out on that sponsorship revenue.
Honestly, I don't have a real problem if companies try to earn ad revenue this way. I mean, if I want a pizza, then by all means, suggest a pizza place for me. But don't try to pretend you're doing me some favor by locking out anyone else from doing the same thing simply because they have a better search engine.
If Microsoft was serious about trying to improve the customer experience, I'd be able to simply dictate to Cortana:
Me: Cortana, I'd like to order a pizza. ... (blah blah)... Shall I order this for you now?
Cortana: Would you prefer Papa John's or Pizza Hut? (note: the two places I actually order from)
Me: Papa John's. The usual.
Cortana: That would be a Papa John's large pizza with
Me: Yes.
Cortana: Your pizza has been ordered, and should arrive approximately 40 minute from now.
When a digital assistant gets that useful, I'll think about turning it on again. But WTF Microsoft... is it that hard to open a web browser and type "pizza hut"? Does anyone need help figuring out how to shop for a black dress on Amazon? It feels like they're shooting so low right now it's utterly pathetic.
Dear Microsoft,
Hi, are you stupid? Are you deliberately trying to make decisions that make you look as terrible as possible?
I sort of understand the technical reasons for wanting to do this. It's a lot easier to provide consistent results if you control all the pieces to all the tech. But a "consistent experience" is not why people use Windows. If that's what people wanted, they'd already be using a Mac.
Here's an alternative: Propose an open framework that permits intelligent agents to integrate with and work across search engines and other services, and create a useful, open source implementation that shows how Cortana integrates with Bing and Edge. Start creating some innovative software solutions instead of playing in your own little pond with your own toys, and you might actually find yourself relevant to a broader audience again.
It looks like I was right to simply turn off Cortana and internet-enabled searching from that bar as the first thing I did after installing Windows 10. What makes you think this is going to entice me to ever turn it back on? Maybe arrange a little "accident" for my registry settings on the next update, I suppose?
Sincerely,
-A Windows User / Developer
"Techno-elites"? By that you mean "experts in their given field", like people who have written papers, books, actual security algorithms, etc? Those "techno-elites"? You'll forgive me, but are we seriously expected to dismiss their evaluation of a given piece of legislation, when this is what they do? That's a nice little ad hominem yourself, in case you weren't aware.
Feinstein et al have proposed a new federal law. So you'll forgive me when I don't really care about listening to them try to spin it or talk about their intentions, because what matters is what is actually written in the bill.
Being "ignorant" regarding a particularly complex topic like encryption and security isn't a personal insult. It means you're not fully versed on that particular topic, and it can be easily fixed by *learning*. You're reacting as though someone someone called Feinstein (whom it sounds like you admire and/or support and seem to be instinctively defending) "stupid", which is not the same thing. Now, if a lawmaker find herself ignorant regarding a certain topic, and tries to create and pass a law without seeking and applying the best advice from experts in that field, then... well...
These days I'd recommend the freeware utility Never10, which uses the officially sanctioned MS method to disable the update, just wrapping it up in a tiny, easy-to-use utility. It provides some additional functionality as well, such as making sure you have the pre-requisite patches to do that, as well as optionally cleaning up any files previous downloaded by the Windows 10 update process.
Let's just say that while there is "technically" a way to disable these popups, an administrator following best practices is simply keeping the machine patched, which introduced this behavior in the first place. If they had done the "wrong" thing and left that Windows 7 (presumably) machine unpatched, then this wouldn't have happened. Microsoft is eroding the trust of their patching system by abusing it to deploy non-critical patches that users don't want. Yes, one would hope that their IT dept is keeping up with news and should probably have anticipated this, but they shouldn't have HAD to.
Even as a Windows user/developer myself, there's no way I'd possibly try to justify how Microsoft is treating their users with such disrespect. It's insanely stupid, because Windows 10 is actually a pretty decent OS at its core, especially if you turn off the cloud fluff and advertising crap. Microsoft has done such damage to these products with their over-aggressiveness in this upgrade nagware and by foisting telemetry on older OSes. I'm not one that subscribes to the belief that Microsoft is "spying" on people, but they really should have given their users who don't feel that way a clear way of opting out globally.
It really astounds me how some companies are so willing to burn away customer goodwill for such short-term gains - like how Comcast pisses off a customer when they try to disconnect service by making the process as painful as possible - apparently in the hope that they'll give up and allow them to keep billing? This is the same sort of short-sighted idiocy, but of course, it's not like these CEOs are asking *my* opinion.
People with short hair (i.e. most guys) tend to discount the utility of a hair dryer, but if you or your significant other has long hair, you know it's not really optional. Long hair takes an annoyingly long time to dry on its own, even after using a towel. That being said, the $15 model seemed to work just fine for its intended purpose.
Also, what is this "sun" you speak of? I live in Seattle, you insensitive clod.
True, but on the other hand, I would think etching technology certainly has the potential of becoming more efficient than it is now, reducing that current advantage. I recall a story here a while back about some new "5-dimensional" etching techniques (three spacial dimensions plus two additional properties per point) that could show promise in the future regarding improved density:
http://www.gizmag.com/superman...
It's a pretty common misconception that glass flows like a liquid