Put down your coffee and admire the sheer amount of data Windows 10 Creators Update will slurp from your PC Next week Microsoft will begin the slowish rollout of its big update to Windows 10, the Creators Update. Right now, it's doing a little damage control, and preempting complaints about privacy, by listing the types of information its operating system will automatically and silently leak from PCs, slabs, and laptops back to …
The document only get sent if you choose to send all your data.
I always have left all this turned on, as I have no care if my documents are used to fix something. Or if my personal habits are used to improve products...
What would bother me was if my data was used to build personal profiles and then sold to advertisers. Hence I try not to use anything made by Google...
I always have left all this turned on, as I have no care if my documents are used to fix something. Or if my personal habits are used to improve products...What would bother me was if my data was used to build personal profiles and then sold to advertisers. Hence I try not to use anything made by Google...
Hilarious!
"What would bother me was if my data was used to build personal profiles and then sold to advertisers. Hence I try not to use anything made by Google..."
This is the most idiotic thing I have ever heard as a defence of windows 10 mining all your data with out your explicit permission or a way to opt out. Did you also not notice the bit about allowing other people to log into your computer remotely with our your permission... I am quite sure google doesn't (at the moment).
If you want a tool to help it stop, grab Anti-beacon software from safer-networking the folks who make Spybot Search & Destroy.... and even then minor updates from Microsoft reset some of your settings to allow telemetry.
I would like to see a full investigation into MS's conduct (by the EU Data Protection Commissioner) and some hot fiery coals for them to tread so they don't try to do it again.
says Marisa Rogers, the Windows and Devices group privacy officer.
"The Windows 10 Creators Update is a significant step forward, but by no means the end of our journey," she said.
...where the "step forward" is into the abyss Wile E. Coyote style, and the end of this journey is being of course, to be relegated to the history books as soon possible.
@Jeroen Braamhaar
There's one small problem with this. Considering the market share currently enjoyed by MS as desktop OS and business software supplier of choice, the cost of moving from a Microsoft dominated technical architecture would be astronomical. You may well find that some tier 1 governments consider MS as "too big to fail".
You can set the diagtrack service to Disabled in services.msc, or remove it completely with sc delete diagtrack.
In services.msc, you will find it under DIagnostic Tracking Service or something like that. There will be a few DIagnostic this or thats, but the one you are looking for is called diagtrack as the service name.
There are also a number of scheduled tasks you may want to delete that collect data for diagtrack... I don't have the list handy, but it's out there for the Googling (be careful here; standard disclaimers apply).
Oh, they're working quite hard to make sure Win 7 and 8.1 have full telemetry backported, but we still do have a choice. The security only updates that are issued each month don't have the telemetry, while the Security Quality Rollups do. I presume the only reason they still do this is that they are obliged to by past commitments, so these should remain viable for the full six years of life left in 8.1 and the full three left in 7.
If not, you can always "sc delete diagtrack" at the command line and remove the telemetry service from 7 and 8.1. It's just tacked on by an update, not built in, and removing it reportedly causes no problems at all (for the user). I don't know, as I've been using the security-only updates ever since the rollups got the spyware.
Interestingly, MS keeps trying to push the discrete spyware updates out to me also. I've been screening updates one by one since there have been Windows updates, and I'm sure not going to stop now,
Simple. They FULLY grasp the concept of a CAPTIVE MARKET, as most people are held hostage by their applications which have no acceptable substitutes. Especially people like enterprises with custom jobs (meaning jumping risks them going under in the attempt) or gamers (just compare the compatibility lists, especially for newer games; they simply DO NOT compare).
Indeed... I've already migrated to Windows 8.1. It takes some aftermarket tools and tweaking, but it can be made to be very decent in terms of UI... far better than Windows 10 can be, modified or not, and quite close to Windows 7-- no apps, no tiles, Metro reduced to a rarity (work continues on excising it completely), even a return to Aero transparency if that's what you want.
For all of the much-deserved criticism of 8 and its bizarre dual-mode interface, it becomes apparent that it's just classic Windows with some Metro crap tacked on, and you can get along just fine with that stuff blocked, worked-around, or removed.
It used to be that if you do anything Metro, you get catapulted back to the Metro mode, and that you started in Metro at boot time... well, Classic Shell and 8.1 itself both delivered the ability to boot to the desktop, and if you remove all references to apps so that they never run (or take the added step of eradicating them completely as I have, with no ill effects), you'll be in desktop all the time. Classic Shell will kill the hot corners that trigger the worthless charms, and you're left with a desktop that is largely free of Metro ugliness.
The only Metro-themed bits I still see are the Windows login screen, the Ctrl-Alt-Del menu, and the "these programs are preventing Windows from shutting down" screen. They're plain white text on a background color of my choosing (I chose a blue color that closely matches the blue in my custom theme). The default "choose a wireless network" dialog is in the same style, but I've bypassed that by using the Intel ProSet network manager that comes with the driver instead.
There are all kinds of things you can do to eradicate the Metro taint of Windows 8... in day to day use, it's simply not there except for the short time I am entering my login password or telling Windows to go ahead and shut down all these programs to sign off.
Full-screen menus with text on a blue background replacing full-screen menus in the blue aero-ish Windows 7 theme are less objectionable to me than the Settings App in Windows 10 (which exists also in Win 8... but in 8, I can ignore it and use Control Panel instead. MS has taken that option away in 10, given that their latest hobby is taking options away, so you can't get away with ignoring the Settings in 10, or any of the other random areas they seemed to randomly sprinkle UWP badness into the OS.
Win 8.1 has a few minor improvements over 7, but I would not go as far as some of my fellow Win 7-appreciating compatriots in saying that modified 8.1 can be better than 7. I'd say it can be almost as good, but I place heavy weight on the quality and consistency of the UI.
Functionally, it has a few advantages above 7. It seems a little snappier, boots faster, shuts down faster, has better file copy/filename collision dialogs, supposedly better SSD optimization, better/much faster CHKDSK that so far has never needed a reboot to perform repairs, less aggressive file locking semantics (Win 7 often left files locked long after the program that locked them was closed), and some other stuff I am sure I'm forgetting. It's stable as a rock... no crashes, no hangs, no bluescreens.
I am a UI purist... so much so that the disjointed half-phone, half-PC UI of Windows 10 is almost as big an objection as the forced updates and the spying. Even so, after having given 8.1 a try (with a triple boot, Win 7/Win 8.1/Linux Mint setup), I decided that I could live in 8.1 as my fulltime Windows, and I've willingly made the jump three years before I really have to give up 7. Modified 8.1 is good enough that I didn't feel the need to wait. (Of course, I still do have my Win 7 system images, "just in case", but I am fanatical about backups and backups of backups).
Isn't windows 8 today, after all updates since its launch, on the same level of illegal data slurping as its younger bastard? For once in my life, having recently bought my new laptop, I very diligently read the whole win 10 EULA. And since I did not agree to it and my greatest desire being not to offend anyone in Redmond, I deleted win 10 and use ubuntu.
There is a real problem with that.
On a 3 year replacement cycle then we ought to have a replacement for Win7 by now to be moving to. We haven't got that alternative, and Microsoft seems viciously opposed to maintaining their OS monopoly by renaming Win7 to WinClassic and offering it for £1 p/m on a subscription basis with bug fixes out to ~2100.
Originally, mainframes dominated. These were destroyed by the cheaper client/server wintel alternative. We are now headed back to a mainframe style environment with the "cloud" largely as a result of everything being priced to a point where it's cheaper to go with the cloud than buy the desktop software because the prices keep getting jacked up.
I do wonder if the next move is going to be back to a client/server model to eliminate constantly increasing licensing costs. When you think about it, I could probably move about 60% of my staff to running on Rasberry PI's running Nix with OpenOffice right now given how even CMS's are accessed by webbrowser these days. The equipment cost is a tenth that of a desktop with basically no licensing fees and honestly the latest generation pi's are probably faster than the desktops staff had a decade ago. The biggest problem is availability of software.
"The biggest problem is availability of software."
That's where Microsoft gets you. They've dominated the OS atmosphere for so long that most software has no viable substitutes outside Windows. Combine this with hardware ONLY supported in Windows and you've got the recipe for a captive market. Now they're trying to pull everyone into the repeat business of a subscription model, using all the Windows lockdown as hostages.
@Charles9 - 'They've dominated the OS atmosphere for so long that most software has no viable substitutes outside Windows.'
I'd argue that this is, in a large proportion of cases, a bullshit statement. While there are some use cases where the only viable software has only ever been written for the Windows platform, for a very large proportion of use cases the wheel has definitely been reinvented elsewhere. The problem isn't lack of software alternatives, the problem is lack of will to change. 'Change', that thing too many of us are very bad at.
Instead of exploring, learning, adapting, even doing something new from scratch (perish the thought) we become 'Whiners'.
The whiner always seems to want the new to be the same as the old: 'Why isn't <software/app/car/nation I'm not used to> like <preferred software/app/car/nation>; <unfamiliar x> is crap! In fact this is the whiner's justification/smokescreen for their own refusal to put any effort in. They want life handed to them on a plate because they are too stupid/lazy/arrogant to shift themselves. Such creatures generally ensure their own extinction earlier than might otherwise have occurred.
Having had my little rant, I will cheerfully admit that in some instances there are grievous gaps in the software libraries of other OS's, but that applies across the board.
Please show me how to play Mass Effect:Andromeda on anything other than Windows without jumping through stupidly complicated hoops that may result in a running game but with much reduced performance? Same for Fallout 4, Witcher 3 and the list goes on and on. No other OS is a viable option as a gaming OS unfortunately.
I agree completely with this statement. I use my computer for many other things than gaming (although I am an avid gamer too).
I have no started hitting DX12 "only" walls yet but I'm sure it's coming. When I do, I will likely dual boot W7 for everything else and W10 for games (after removing any external drives and denying read writes on my network shares).
I also block all incoming/outgoing traffic to the rather large list of M$ telemetry server IP addresses through my hardware firewall, and I try to update that whenever possible.
I'm quite sure W10 would still be a little "leaky" since I can't be 100% sure the list is complete, but at least if W10 talks in this scenario it can only report on itself and a few video games.
Cortana shall never glimpse my shares. Ever.
"When did playing some childish game become a reason for making a committal decision that could destroy your privacy and eventually cost you a lot of money?"
Some people play games for a living. Think professional gaming clans. If they need to earn their daily bread by competing in Overwatch, guess what that means for their rigs?
Odd points but OP states Mass Effect:Andromeda, Fallout 4 and Witcher 3. Except they are all single player campaigns.
Unless OP also plays other competitive games or just does streaming or has a youtube channel, then he or she could be playing games for a living. Then again, if he or she does any of the above, he or she probably has a few consoles and likely not care if their desktop is Windows 10 until it does something stupid (hint: Steam's survey showed that Windows 7 slightly increased in the past months).
Then you purchase two PCs. One PC is a gaming rig with W10, it has nothing but games. No financial, work, documents, pictures, phone sync or web surfing occurs on that machine. Games are purchased elsewhere and installed, work is stored elsewhere, the logons have NO rights to NAS or shared resources on your network. It plays games that is all.
You have a second machine and put Linux on it. This cheaper second machine is your workhorse, it does everything EXCEPT play games.
The point is that if "playing some childish game" is what the PC user want's to do on their machine (and it's not your place to decide what a user should and shouldn't do on their PC, not everyone wants to use their PC just for "office work". Many want to use it for entertainment too) then they have no choice but to use Windows.
Linux at this point in time is not a viable alternative.
@Patrician Please show me how to play Mass Effect:Andromeda on anything other than Windows
This thread started with a post saying "I could probably move about 60% of my staff to running on Raspberry PI's running Nix with OpenOffice". I don't know what business the OP is in, but I'd be surprised if it involves an office full of people playing Mass Effect:Andromeda.
I posted a list of software that I use that requires Windows (or a Mac) a few months ago. You always get some armchair pundit without a clue who thinks that GIMP is a suitable replacement for Photoshop or Postgres for SQL Server Analysis Services.
Not that Adobe's privacy policy is any better than Microsoft's, of course.
"... GIMP is a suitable replacement for Photoshop or Postgres for SQL Server Analysis Services."
Depends what you do and claiming it's irrelevant puts commenter firmly in 'armchair pundit'-category.
SQL Server isn't anything special by itself and can be replaced with MariaDB or PostgreSQL in 10 minutes, no-one will notice. Some service on top of it might be a bit harder but those aren't tied to the database underneath except for commercial reasons. It's not hard to find an extreme case where using OS, any OS, is mandatory. But claiming it's the norm, is a lie.
Microsoft owns one of them, so that's not an option. Plus for professional gamers, consoles are not an option because most games separate players by platform due to control differences (Blizzard has explicitly stated this is the case with Overwatch). That's why, unless the game is exclusive to consoles, professional gaming leagues stick to PCs, and since most PC games are Windows-ONLY, guess where that leaves them?
"...as a gaming OS unfortunately."
Logical fallacy here: Of course Windows games aren't available to other OSes.
But multiplatform games are, so no such thing as 'gaming OS' exists: Some games are available on some platforms and some other games are available to some other platforms: Same situation as in console games with divided market.
No, often the problem is exactly the lack of alternatives. A software that "somewhat looks to have almost the same features" is not an alternative. In a business environment, changes are evaluated against costs. If a "change" means higher sw/hw costs, more time spent for a given task, lower quality, compatibility and interoperability issues, retraining costs, etc. the change is obviously "bad".
Then there's custom software written for Windows only, and which is simply too expensive to rewrite for a different platform.
For example my small personal example, I have a large number of RAW images which are managed, processed and printed in Lightroom. I could switch to macOS (but look at the state of Mac Pros, and their costs), but I won't switch to any platform for which Lightroom is not available natively because I really have nor the will nor the time to re-process thousands of images from scratch again.
I'm not saying nor Windows nor Lightroom are the "best choice" - just it's what I deemed a "good one" years ago, and now the investment is simply too large to allow for an easy change.
And in many similar ways, I guess many business have similar situations. MS knows this and is trying to exploit it - I hope eventually it will be unsuccessful, and real alternatives arise - but developing alternatives is expensive too.
"Whiners" are also those who spend too much time telling others they have to switch to <put your preferred software here>, and can't understand why they may not want to switch to the obviously perfect choice they made - of course under completely different conditions...
@LDS
There you have stated perfectly the tarpit that proprietary software offers to its customers/victims.
You made the best choice you could at the time you made it, but now (partly because, perfectly sensibly, you have stuck with 'what works', both economically and productively) you now find yourself facing a very difficult predicament. You are literally trapped.
There's no point whining about it; you/we have to suck it up, unless we set in motion a process, however painful and costly, of extricating ourselves from the situation so that we are 'free' of the clutches of an agent who, benignly or otherwise, has us over a barrel.
FOSS, whatever its drawbacks, and like everything else it certainly has them, at least offers the possibility, and the opportunity to get the job done out from under the control of an irresponsible self-serving entity. But there's that 'change' thing, and the whining sound of those who will die, or pay and pay and pay... rather than do that.
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