4 ms·

> nothing you do on a computer connected to the internet should be considered private That doesn't excuse Microsoft and others for becoming more and more invas

> nothing you do on a computer connected to the internet should be considered private That doesn't excuse Microsoft and others for becoming more and more invasive. And voting with your wallet works.

brudgers 11y ago
I think Windows 10 is pretty much free as in beer for most ordinary users so the wallet threat is pretty flat. I read Microsoft's policy as more legal cover for the reality that data gets stored all over the place. The internet is full of caches and nobody can guarantee that they can identify all of them, much less control them. The nature of people's complaints show how vulnerable Microsoft is to some jury believing "they should have known." If you want privacy, don't turn on your internet connected devices. TANSTAAFL.
- danieldk 11y ago
  I think Windows 10 is pretty much free as in beer for most ordinary users so the wallet threat is pretty flat. Why is it free? First of all because they are scared to death that iOS and Android will eat their lunch in the consumer space. Secondly, because they want to sell services and SaaS (Office 365, etc.). For the latter part, you can certainly vote with your wallet.
  - brudgers 11y ago
    Andriod and iOS are probably not very good evidence that the road to fat quarterly returns is paved with sales services and SAAS subscriptions over a free operating system base layer...at least in the consumer space. I'd say RedHat/Fedora/CentOS ecosystem is probably a more likely business model. Microsoft was already in that space (e.g. Mono).
- bad_user 11y ago
  I think at this point, most people have a really screwed notion of price ... 1. preinstalled / bundled Windows is not free, the "Windows tax" being very real 2. this upgrade is not free for XP / Vista users 3. Windows 10 is not free and will probably cost about the same price as Windows 8.1, which is $120 for the Standard version or $200 for the Pro version - it might turn out to be cheaper this time, but that's only because they are changing the license to be tied to a particular device 4. Windows being a platform, is a complementary to Microsoft's Office 365, OneDrive, the Windows Store, Exchange, etc... the Windows Store in particular charges a revenue fee and is the only source possible for "modern apps" 5. personally I can't use the standard version, as it is missing features I need, like BitLocker or the ability to make a bootable USB drive - things that with the other operating systems I get for free So in case I haven't been hibernating to wake up in some weird future in which a beer costs $200 and comes with strings attached, yes, voting with your wallet is significant.
  - brudgers 11y ago
    Linux with support from Redhat costs money, too. On the other hand, I've got four Windows licenses at the house that I can upgrade for the price of Ubuntu...which I will do, even though only one machine doesn't primarily run Ubuntu.
kbenson 11y ago
How much more or less invasive is Microsoft than other companies for comparable services? Without a good way to assess this, you run the risk of moving to a worse service, by whatever definition you want to use for worse. The market is very inefficient due to lack of comparable information to do with privacy policies. You can read all the policies of the services you want to use, but keeping that straight and making a decision based on it is quite a large task.
- bad_user 11y ago
  If you don't encourage alternatives based on things like privacy or security, then nobody will be left to develop those alternatives. The thing with voting with your wallet is that it works in two ways - it discourages these monstrous companies like Microsoft, Google, Facebook, Apple, etc. from doing invasive things and it encourages smaller players into developing the better alternatives that we need. Any of the popular Linux distributions are much less invasive than Microsoft's Windows 10, plus if you have the resources, you can audit it for backdoors (e.g. my government can certainly audit a Linux distribution, but they'll never be able to audit Windows). A Linux distribution is currently the only reasonable choice for privacy and security. Also take disk encryption. The way Microsoft is doing it lately is for the encryption keys to be sent to their servers, tied to your Microsoft account. On Linux you've got dm-crypt, ecryptfs, battle hardened firewalls and SELinux/AppArmore, all open-source and open for inspection, free as in beer as well. Of course, you've set myself up for failure by demanding "comparable services". You know what, I could live without things like Cortana, Google Now, or Siri for a long time and while I get the potential, for now there is no benefit. Google Now somewhat helps with my traveling or daily commute, but that's a task for my phone, not for my laptop. Microsoft is continuing to break the utility of the desktop. That's too bad because all of this post-PC craze is misunderstood and I hope others will jump on the created opportunity.
  - kbenson 11y ago
    I didn't mean "comparable services" to imply that the the competition had to match all services, just that when comparing, you match the services you actually plan on using. I think we are of a similar mind on this, I just wanted to highlight that lambasting company X as bad without showing how it compares to it's competition is less useful than that same assessment with comparisons. I ranted about this yesterday elsewhere in this same submission. I'm firmly of the belief that at least some of the lack of importance put on privacy by consumers is how hard it is to compare between providers on this feature.

> nothing you do on a computer connected to the internet should be considered private That doesn't excuse Microsoft and others for becoming more and more invasive. And voting with your wallet works.

brudgers 11y ago

I think Windows 10 is pretty much free as in beer for most ordinary users so the wallet threat is pretty flat. I read Microsoft's policy as more legal cover for the reality that data gets stored all over the place. The internet is full of caches and nobody can guarantee that they can identify all of them, much less control them. The nature of people's complaints show how vulnerable Microsoft is to some jury believing "they should have known." If you want privacy, don't turn on your internet connected devices. TANSTAAFL.

danieldk 11y ago
I think Windows 10 is pretty much free as in beer for most ordinary users so the wallet threat is pretty flat. Why is it free? First of all because they are scared to death that iOS and Android will eat their lunch in the consumer space. Secondly, because they want to sell services and SaaS (Office 365, etc.). For the latter part, you can certainly vote with your wallet.
- brudgers 11y ago
  Andriod and iOS are probably not very good evidence that the road to fat quarterly returns is paved with sales services and SAAS subscriptions over a free operating system base layer...at least in the consumer space. I'd say RedHat/Fedora/CentOS ecosystem is probably a more likely business model. Microsoft was already in that space (e.g. Mono).
bad_user 11y ago
I think at this point, most people have a really screwed notion of price ... 1. preinstalled / bundled Windows is not free, the "Windows tax" being very real 2. this upgrade is not free for XP / Vista users 3. Windows 10 is not free and will probably cost about the same price as Windows 8.1, which is $120 for the Standard version or $200 for the Pro version - it might turn out to be cheaper this time, but that's only because they are changing the license to be tied to a particular device 4. Windows being a platform, is a complementary to Microsoft's Office 365, OneDrive, the Windows Store, Exchange, etc... the Windows Store in particular charges a revenue fee and is the only source possible for "modern apps" 5. personally I can't use the standard version, as it is missing features I need, like BitLocker or the ability to make a bootable USB drive - things that with the other operating systems I get for free So in case I haven't been hibernating to wake up in some weird future in which a beer costs $200 and comes with strings attached, yes, voting with your wallet is significant.
- brudgers 11y ago
  Linux with support from Redhat costs money, too. On the other hand, I've got four Windows licenses at the house that I can upgrade for the price of Ubuntu...which I will do, even though only one machine doesn't primarily run Ubuntu.

kbenson 11y ago

How much more or less invasive is Microsoft than other companies for comparable services? Without a good way to assess this, you run the risk of moving to a worse service, by whatever definition you want to use for worse. The market is very inefficient due to lack of comparable information to do with privacy policies. You can read all the policies of the services you want to use, but keeping that straight and making a decision based on it is quite a large task.

bad_user 11y ago
If you don't encourage alternatives based on things like privacy or security, then nobody will be left to develop those alternatives. The thing with voting with your wallet is that it works in two ways - it discourages these monstrous companies like Microsoft, Google, Facebook, Apple, etc. from doing invasive things and it encourages smaller players into developing the better alternatives that we need. Any of the popular Linux distributions are much less invasive than Microsoft's Windows 10, plus if you have the resources, you can audit it for backdoors (e.g. my government can certainly audit a Linux distribution, but they'll never be able to audit Windows). A Linux distribution is currently the only reasonable choice for privacy and security. Also take disk encryption. The way Microsoft is doing it lately is for the encryption keys to be sent to their servers, tied to your Microsoft account. On Linux you've got dm-crypt, ecryptfs, battle hardened firewalls and SELinux/AppArmore, all open-source and open for inspection, free as in beer as well. Of course, you've set myself up for failure by demanding "comparable services". You know what, I could live without things like Cortana, Google Now, or Siri for a long time and while I get the potential, for now there is no benefit. Google Now somewhat helps with my traveling or daily commute, but that's a task for my phone, not for my laptop. Microsoft is continuing to break the utility of the desktop. That's too bad because all of this post-PC craze is misunderstood and I hope others will jump on the created opportunity.
- kbenson 11y ago
  I didn't mean "comparable services" to imply that the the competition had to match all services, just that when comparing, you match the services you actually plan on using. I think we are of a similar mind on this, I just wanted to highlight that lambasting company X as bad without showing how it compares to it's competition is less useful than that same assessment with comparisons. I ranted about this yesterday elsewhere in this same submission. I'm firmly of the belief that at least some of the lack of importance put on privacy by consumers is how hard it is to compare between providers on this feature.