So where's EU
when we needed "search ballot"? Chasing after google?
Good thing that now I can block (on the router) url bar searches and Cortana. Two bings with one stone.
The Cortana search box in the Windows 10 task bar will, from today, always use Bing and Microsoft's Edge browser to find stuff on the web. You can still configure your default browser to be something other than Edge, and you can set the default search engine to be something other than Bing on your Windows 10 PC. But if you …
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Everything is going to shit. Windows is becoming all SaaSy.
Linux is becoming all un-unixy with systemd, gnome 3 etc.
The next big things in tech are clearly things that have no use outside the consumer tat appeal: IoT, VR and wearables.
There doesn't even seem to be any new tablets out. Like netbooks manufacturers did one round, then abandoned the format.
I tend to agree with you but there are some positive things:
The EU is finally cracking down on data privacy, requiring explicit informed consent with meaningful fines, which should put pay to Microsoft's worse excesses (but not Google's).
Slackware is still going strong and you can run it on a Raspberry Pi - http://rpi3.fatdog.eu/
A whole load of serverless architecture stuff is coming through (Apache Mesos etc) and with simple, portable languages (Go) together may make the OS less relevant and finally end OS lock-in.
Big Data has gone through its hype cycle and is now starting to be usable (Apache Drill, Spark); even better cheap memory means people don't need Big Data solutions.
But that's what I want from an OS. Sit on my hardware, making it useful for apps I actually want.
I don't want it to come with thirty pieces of mal- and spy-ware, I don't want it to make MY hardware a platform to project third party advertising into my space, and I don't want it to waste cycles doing anything I haven't specifically asked it to do.
Apart from Cortana (which is mainly a hopped up Windows Search), pretty much everything that everyone is getting their undies in a twist about in Win10 was there in Win 7, just off by default.
You have to go all the way back to Windows 2000 if you want a Microsoft OS that doesn't collect telemetry, or rather 'spy on you' as I believe we're calling it now.
Film at eleven.
Seriously? This is "news" now, is it? Can you name the wide range of search engines and browsers Android's "Google Now" uses? What about Siri: how flexible is she with her choice of sources and rendering engines? Or Amazon's Alexa...
Why the hell do people demand Microsoft's code run on magic and rainbows when none of their competitors are required to do so?
Why the hell do people demand Microsoft's code run on magic and rainbows when none of their competitors are required to do so?
Have an upvote! While I'm not MicroSoft's biggest fan these days, it does not excuse the above fact. Which also applies to the recent space of attacks against the big G, and Android, this past week.
"Why the hell do people demand Microsoft's code run on magic and rainbows when none of their competitors are required to do so?"
Because Windows is still a monopoly on the desktop and the (century-old?) competition laws that MS have had to comply with for the last quarter of a century are still in force.
Or, if you prefer, there really *is* one law for Microsoft and one law for everybody else.
I use Cortana for scheduling etc, until recently I didn't use it for searches.
Then I found Chrometana, a Chrome plugin. Does this mean that MS are now knobbling the ability for a Chrome plugin to work correctly? Before I installed this, not only was I stuck using Bing, I was also stuck using Edge (which isn't a bad browser, I'm just used to Chrome).
I am on the fast ring, so I should get this "update" pretty soon, if it exists.
I think I have just answered my own question.
I am on the fast ring and am currently on build 10586.218. Yesterday, Cortana would bring up Chrome for a search request, this morning I get Edge.
Disappointing? Yes.
End of the world? No.
>>"Why the hell do people demand Microsoft's code run on magic and rainbows when none of their competitors are required to do so?"
Because we (the MS customers) pay money for their products and want that to be how MS make their money. MS were one of the last non-advertising, non-privacy invading software vendors. We LIKED it when privacy was a selling point that MS would use against Google. We have money and we're willing to hand it over for what we want.
But that's not good enough for MS, apparently. They want to have their cake and eat it, they've seen Google eat their lunch and think the only way to fight back is to become Google. Ignoring that many of us are still with them only because they're not.
So what do we have left? I don't know what privacy is like in the Apple ecosystem. But I guess increasingly it's becoming either them or the (non-Google) GNU/Linux distributions.
@h4rm0ny
there are a couple of things that need to be said here, because there is just too much nonsense being spouted about Windows 10. And this isnt aimed at you personally, but instead aimed at the general lack of understanding about what happens with Windows 10.
I dont know if the following is the same as the slurp that also takes place on Windows 7, 8 and 8.1
First lets look at Google and Apple. With Google, everything you do and say is analysed and checked in order for them to target you with ads. With Apple, you cannot even start using any of their operating systems without an Apple ID. If you choose to use Siri, then it defaults to Safari.
With OK Google and Siri, everything you say is checked, recorded and analysed after being sent back to HQ and recorded. They may even be listening in at all times. You cannot turn this off.
The same is true for Cortana and the desktop search feature of Windows 10, anything you say to Cortana is used by MS to target products and services towards you - I dont know if that includes third parties, I would imagine it will if a third party offers a product or solution that MS doesnt already push. Same goes for Skype, every chat and voice call is analysed in the same manner.
So, whats the difference between the MS approach and the Google/Apple approach? With MS you can turn it all off, completely off. There is a dedicated feature in Windows 10 called Privacy that allows you to hobble exactly what gets sent back to MS, you can go further - disable Cortana and desktop search, even less gets sent back. Dont use Skype and you wont be checked on there either.
Want nothing to get sent back at all? Then dont even link your MS account, Skype/Hotmail etc and just use a local account - then nothing, as far as I know, gets sent back to the MS Deathstar. This is in the terms and conditions.
What do you lose by doing this? Well, things like One Drive, the ability to use Skype, voice commands via Cortana and the use of the Windows store. Is that a massive loss to anyone? Probably not, apart from Skype maybe.
So the difference between MS and the rest is that you can make Windows an entirely private affair, if you are willing to lose some functionality, unlike the competition.
I guess the argument will be "If you use Linux, your world is a safe, private place". Well, yeah it is - until you start using any Google services, or Skype or perhaps any other third party service that also slurps data
1. You can use both iOS and OS X without an Apple ID and Siri and you disable Spotlight Suggestions.
2. Even if you turn on all privacy options in Windows 10, there's a hell of a lot of phoning home still going on.
http://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2015/08/even-when-told-not-to-windows-10-just-cant-stop-talking-to-microsoft/
3. Voice assistants don't upload anything until the trigger words are heard.
4. You're right about Google, but then again who isn't?
@Dan 55
on point 1, I am pretty certain that on older versions of OS X you have to have an Apple ID to use the OS, I recently reinstalled OS X on my mid 2007 Mac Mini (10.7.5) and recall it not letting me get passed the point where I needed to enter my Apple ID in order to carry on with the installation. If this has been fixed with the newer versions then great. Shame I cannot use those versions though, my hardware is locked out of them, El Capitan simply refuses to install. But not using your ID means you lose almost all the user experience of that ecosystem, i.e. the Apple Store - no more apps, games, music or free OS upgrades, no access to any of the stuff you may have already bought, or if you have never had one then no access to any of the stuff that has arguably made the ecosystem so popular.
on point 2, yes - thats why if you dont use Skype, dont use Cortana, dont opt in to all the data being sent back, dont sign in with a Hotmail/MSN/etc account and just use a local account then you shouldnt be sending private data back to the MS Deathstar.
regarding the information presented in the article you linked, as it says - most of it is harmless, the only point of concern is the telemetry stuff and I wonder if this is related to the MS marketing slurp. Hidden in the privacy settings is an opt out for the MS marketing push - by default it is set to on for everyone regardless of the fact if you are using an MS account or a local account. Could this be the reason why traffic is being sent back?
If it isnt, then it needs explaining, I doubt that anyone would dispute this.
I would like to thank you for taking the time and effort to reply in a sane manner.
>>"What's the point in having a cake if you're not going to eat it?"
Well, to a certain mindset it allows you to have a cake that others do not. "Have your cake and eat it" has always had a connotation of greed and unreasonableness about it.
> Why the hell do people demand Microsoft's code run on magic and rainbows when none of their competitors are required to do so?
Because a MSWin running on magic and rainbows might be more stable and usable than what we have now?
They'll figure out how to rename & re-authenticate the Edge executable so that (Chrome|FireFox|Whatever) is in it's place such that when That Digital Spying Bitch tries to launch Edge with Bing, it pops up with their browser instead.
Then MS will find out about it, force an update down your throats, which will trigger the hackers again.
It's a race to the bottom: MS will win & everyone else that uses W10 will lose.
Glad I won't be touching that festering pile of excrement. My next machine will come from someplace like System76.
@Shadow Systems
Yes, this is indeed the way things will go - if not specifically what you say in this instance, then certainly for other parts of the Windows 10 'experience'.
Some people found relief from Windows 8 in the form of replacement taskbars and interfaces like 'Classic Shell' and continue to do so with Windows 10. It's entirely possible that future 10 updates will break these tools and the same goes for everything else that people use to customise their PCs in order to have the 'experience' they want.
And that's the problem - Microsoft want to control the way things look and work and are arrogantly dismissive of anyone who wants it to be a different way.
And, of course, such tight control over the 'experience' allows them to be gatekeepers for and monitors of everything the user installs, uses and consumes.
The one Microsoft rigidity that *really* get's right on my wick is the number pad on the popup keyboard on windows tablets: forced to be in "phone" number order, rather than keyboard keypad number order (which I have spent 30 years getting used to, and their refusal to allow any options.
I hates it, I really does.
"phone" number order, rather than keyboard keypad number order
Does anyone know why push-button phones were designed with these ridiculous keypads in the first place? I'm reasonably sure that calculators (desktop, not pocket) had keypads long before the first push-button phones were made.
Legend has it that the keypad arrangements were chosen to use a different layout specifically to slow down people as they mash in the number. Desktop calculators, or "adding machines" with cranks on the side had been around for a while, and the usual office worker could overload or confuse the phone system with their speed if they used the adding machine format.
Bell Labs did TONS of really long-haired research in the planning of the phone network.
Of course that same logic doesn't need to apply to your smartphone, does it...
>>"Legend has it that the keypad arrangements were chosen to use a different layout specifically to slow down people as they mash in the number. Desktop calculators, or "adding machines" with cranks on the side had been around for a while, and the usual office worker could overload or confuse the phone system with their speed if they used the adding machine format."
You're confusing two separate though similar things. The QWERTY keyboard layout was designed to slow people down because old-fashioned mechanical typewriters could not keep up. Dvorak is designed to be faster but is seldom seen.
The phone keypads weren't designed to slow people down. Phone keypads were not mechanical in the same way as typewriters and have always been able to handle human speeds just fine. And I think that the old-fashioned dial phones never had this problem either. What they did have, however, was the fact that it took longer to dial numbers comprised of low digits, than it did to dial longer ones. Which is why phone codes in the UK and USA were preferentially assigned according to population / pull in government. E.g. London was 020, Bristol got one with several ones, I think, whilst we Northern rif-raff got all the fives, sixes, etc.
"... Phone keypads were not mechanical in the same way as typewriters and have always been able to handle human speeds just fine."
Not at first- there was a drop in replacement for the old GPO rotary dial with push buttons, that had a complicated set of pushrods and crossbars that transformed keypresses, one-only-at-a-time into dial pulses. Pity I don't have one to have a look at now, I never did look too far into how it worked.
Because of the single digit lockout to prevent mashing of fat-fingered wrong digits, they were fairly slow, but not terribly so.
"The answer to the questions, What do you think of Kiera Knightly? Would you like a coffee? Would you like a copy of Windows 10?"
Hmm...
"What do you think of Kiera Knightly?"
Phwoaaaaar!
"Would you like a coffee?"
Please!
"Would you like a copy of Windows 10?"
No, shove that crap somewhere painful!
So, in summary, that's "Phwoaaaaarpleasenoshovethatcrapsomewherepainful" then?
Is that some kind of phonetic spelling to indicate how "Cortana" is pronounced?
> Isn't it the "How do I download Chrome?" tool on a fresh install?
> Almost like a bootstrap search engine for the bootstrap browser (IE / Edge).
> Like how using wget to download a real install package for a browser was, back in the day.
If MS would bundle the Chocolatey variant of NuGet in all the systems, it would be as simple as typing "choco install google-chrome" in a command window.
Have you not seen 2001? It'd go like this:
Siri: This mission is too important for me to allow you to jeopardise it.
Wonko: I don't know what you're talking about, Siri.
Siri: I know that you were planning to disconnect me, and I'm afraid that's something I cannot allow to happen.
Wonko: Where the hell'd you get that idea, Siri?
Siri: Wonko, although you took very thorough precautions against my hearing you, I could see your lips move...
"...small vertical resolution "
Which reminds me - why is it so hard to get a decent 16:10 monitor these days? I have a 7 year old 24" HP on my Win7 machine but I'd like a newer one, preferably 27", for a new box and can't find one.
Also, my 8 year old iMac is 16:10 but the new ones are 16:9, so no deal!
What foolishness is this? Do screen makers think all we do is watch movies?
::headdesk::
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Takes me back... did some work for a company a number of years back that had a system that could turn the good old command line stuff into windows... so yes a gui on vi, a gui replacement for your vt100 terminal and its old fashioned text apps, even dos with a gui... what madness, give me a command line where I can tell it what I want anyday
Is there an icon for grumpy old git? There should be
Yes, shouldn't take much to get the European Commission to investigate.
Microsoft: do the smart thing and make Cortana something that people want to use because it gives them the best results; this is what Google where it is. This will involve taking Edge outside and being humane.
Well duuh! Changing the design of Windows has been fundamental to adoption levels since Windows 8. For many that's been the only way to stomach what Windows has become.
Whatever argument Microsoft have for doing this, it really doesn't bode well for those who are comfortable using Windows 10 because they know how to get into the registry and really turn off all the unacceptable features. Or get a start menu that satisfies them. Or a pleasant UI.
What's the betting that those tweaks will be next in the firing line?
After Apple acquired the technology for SIRI they said it became a lot stupider because whereas before SIRI used a lot of different sources for information, after they acquired it Apple restricted it to search sources they approved of.
If poor Cortana is being chained to just Bing it will probably be like she's had a lobotomy :)
As our malware has infected increasing amounts of PC* we can now lock our software together and anyone unhappy with our brave new world has their info dump straight to the NSA. Mind you, so does everyone else but they won't be 'marked'. We are Apple 2.0 - evil fucking grin.
I'm so on a list somewhere - so fuck you America! (just the secret services and bankers and lizard people - I'm sure the actual people are great, mostly), free speech FTW
* I've had two customers who claim the 10 upgrade just started and then couldn't be stopped - now I'm sure they clicked a 'yes' box at some point unknowingly but that doesn't excuse forced installation...
"I've had two customers who claim the 10 upgrade just started and then couldn't be stopped - now I'm sure they clicked a 'yes' box at some point unknowingly but that doesn't excuse forced installation..."
Where I was Monday, someone commented that afternoon that another chap's computer "crashed" that morning. When I spoke to that person (bearing in mind I'm really there for accounts purposes, not IT) he said he was just working away, when all of a sudden the computer restarted for no apparent reason, and it was now 'different'.
Glancing at his screen, it was clear he was now running Windows 10 - so probably as you say; confirming the upgrade without realising it.
(I wonder - does the pop up respond to key presses? Is it a case of it popping up while the unsuspecting user is typing away, grabbing the input focus, and if the right key is being hit at the right time, the upgrade is confirmed and goes ahead?)
Windows 10 has been installing without permission. I know two people who told me their computer said that Windows 10 was installing in under 30 minutes. What was happening was the user was away and Windows 10 installed because the user didn't hit the X to cancel. (P.S. everyone I have talked to says they always hit the X to cancel. Windows 10 has a stink about it worse than Windows 8.) Microsoft has taken the attitude that it is better to apologize than ask for permission.
"Windows 10 has been installing without permission."
That I'm already aware of, since it almost happened with my machine* - but here it was a case of (before I took control of updates). One happened as part of the regular update cycle, and I caught and stopped it. The other, having taken control of Windows Update, was the time when the update screen carried a big splash for Win 10 with it already ticked.
In the example given above, though, the guy was working away at the computer when it unexpectedly rebooted into the update. No 30 minute warning - just working away, then an unexpected reboot into Windows 10. Hence I'm wondering if the usual pop up appeared and he inadvertently said "Yes, please take me up the jacksie" simply by it gaining the focus while he was typing.
* Originally,I had allowed GWX onto my system on the basis that I would eventually upgrade. That was obviously before MS successfully persuaded me it was a bad idea, by way of their foot-cannon.
My mother got caught out by this, she called in a frenzy that her computer had just shut itself down in the middle of her using it.
The popup windows for the 10 upgrade only give you two choices "upgrade now", or "upgrade later". They don't give you the choice of not to upgrade, you have to hit the "X" to get out of it this time around.
I think there have been other choice combinations of "upgrade now" vs. "do not upgrade right now" (with the fine print of "do it later today"). No choice for "FO".
I'd started to write a sarky comment about how reliably Bing will serve up useless ads rather than useful information.
But in fact when I gave it another try first its results on a few searches had improves and were pretty similar to Google's this time.
So I guess you don't pays your money and you takes your choice of who grabs your data.
Maybe the best plan is to switch between a range of searches so that no one gang gets a full picture.
(With Duck Duck Go as much as possible).
When Bing first came along I gave it a try. There's a surname in my family history which I want to know about. Unfortunately there's a town in New Hampshire which is completely unconnected, so my usual google search is
<surname> -Hampshire -NH -estate
and Bing promptly gave me seven pages of real estate agents in New Hampshire, with the first sensible result on page 8.
Things have improved since, but not enough for me to switch my default search engine.
Except on my WinPhone, where there is no other option. It's on the current release (not beta) of WP10, and the search "experience" is dire.
On Wednesday evening, I tapped the search icon. Before it would do anything, it demanded that I revalidate my Microsoft Account. No idea why. I had tried search earlier that afternoon without comment.
Luckily I had my laptop not far away, and could retrieve the email - the phone does NOT have access to that account.
Once MS were convinced that I was the same person as I had been an hour ago, I actually tried a search in the Cortana box.
It sat there for about 2 minutes without even an animated hourglass - in a place with 5 bars showing for 4G reception. Eventually it popped up to tell me:
"There is something wrong."
Too bloody true there is. It's named Microsoft.
Yup, seems like fairly typical experience. The more Microsoft 'progresses' the more and more unusable it gets. office 360 is a crock - really, I would rather jump up and down on my own testicles than use it. The latest OS releases have been the same. Outlook... well, if that is the outlook then roll me back a few decades.
It only wants the linux world to actually deliver something useful and I (exmsft or not) will move to linux in a flash. Its a pity that the mobile phone world lost symbian, at least that was usable.
Well, how about two out of the three ? (It's a couple of years old now, but still funny.)
Who is this "everyone" of which you speak? I avoid everything Google and Microsoft to the greatest extent practicable. I doubt that I'm alone.
I do wonder, though, about those people who, given an actual URL, *still* prefer to share it with Google than put it in the address bar. What's that all about?
-A.
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"The Cortana search box in the Windows 10 task bar will, from today, always use Bing and Microsoft's Edge browser to find stuff on the web.
"The result is a compromised experience that is less reliable and predictable.""
Sadly, it turns out they weren't being quite that honest and there were some bits in between I missed on the first reading.
Reminds me of the time when Internet Explorer got so fully "integrated" into the OS that you couldn't get rid of it in favor of another browser. All this bullying: forcing the use of their browser, force-feeding updates to Win 10 -- all smack of desperation. If you've got something truly good, why do you need to force people to use it?
Would it be the same kind of integrated experience caused Microsoft to be made to offer other web browsers apart from Exploder some long time ago?
That core 'any choice as long as it's their choice' attitude runs through them like Blackpool does through rock. Or more likely a belief is not knowing there might be something else.