10 ms·

>Who wanted that for desktop computers or laptops? I did. Linux and OSX are still available for whoever wants them. You can stick with Windows 7 if you want, t

>Who wanted that for desktop computers or laptops? I did. Linux and OSX are still available for whoever wants them. You can stick with Windows 7 if you want, that's just fine. I like Cortana. I like my software knowing what I like and what I'm interested in. It makes my life easier, which is what computers were invented for. I can see why some people might not, and to be fair I use Linux on my work laptop because the work I do demands it. I would never put my client data on a Windows machine. But like I can see your side of the argument, you have to be able to see that some other people want personalization and learning and all that. Pandora and Apple Music are both heavily tailored that way. Google Now on your phone knows everything you do. Netflix can find videos for you to watch based on what you've watched before. Amazon will recommend purchases to you based on what you like. Hell, half the people on this site build these systems. You know how many machine learning articles there are on the front page every week? So who wanted that? I did. And so did several million other people. For the people who don't want it, I mean it's not even really opt-out. They ask you up front do you want the default or do you want to pick your own privacy settings. If you still don't trust it, Windows 7, OSX, and Linux are right there, just a click away.

x5n1 11y ago
This should be an optional feature. Not a feature that's the default of most computers on the planet. It's fine that you wanted it, and it's fine that it's available. It's not cool that it's the default on anything.
- chc 11y ago
  As far as I can tell, it is an optional feature. It's the default option, but still an option. On top of that, a fair argument could be made that most people who don't care enough to change their privacy settings probably do prioritize convenience over maximal privacy, so this might even be a reasonable default.
  - nivla 11y ago
    This. Majority of people don't care about having any of these privacy issues on their cell phones which infact is far more capable and something you always keep next to you. Heck I have even seen hackers here recommend ChromeOS, an operating system where everything lives on the cloud. Even though I am cautious about my privacy, I have come to learn that most are not and there is nothing wrong with it. It is just not something that bothers them enough to care about. Privacy is not black and white, some try to maintain an absolute fence while others are willing to trade some for convenience in return.
    - x5n1 11y ago
      Some is fine, all is mentally deficient. Chrome OS is mentally deficient. In the current environment being okay with sharing every single detail of your computing with a big marketing company is not a smart thing to do.
      - chinpokomon 11y ago
        It's a fine line for sure. I recently recommended ChromeOS for my mother. Her problem is that she runs programs that compromise her OS. The malware I've removed from my parent's computer is hugely invasive and it is usually tied to her account. Given the choice of Google having some of her privacy details or some unknown crackers, I'd much rather have her expose that information to some cooperation that has public scrutiny over how they handle that data.
        Vendan 11y ago
        Heh, I got one for my wife, cause all she used her computer for was Facebook. Who gives a shit if Google gets all that stuff now too, Facebook already had it in their datacenter.
  - tripzilch 11y ago
    No. That's not a fair argument at all. Just because someone is scared away by an "option" screen like this: > you get presented with a customize wizard. The first screen has a large chunk of text on it, a large and clearly visible button to proceed using the default settings, and a small hard to see text link that lets you choose your own setting values instead of the defaults. > Everything about this screen is urging me to just accept the default configuration and get on with life. Doesn't mean those people "don't care enough" about their privacy. Those people are my parents and my friends and I know that they do. We know our computers, we can fight back, many people cannot. I believe that when a piece of software tries to provide "sensible defaults" for people that fear they might break stuff, or simply not understand the "advanced options", that those defaults should be SAFE and TRUSTWORTHY. Windows 10 obviously breaks that trust, and the people who can't spend an hour digging through advanced options (for many reasons) are just pounded into submission against systems they feel slowly slip from their control.
quadrangle 11y ago
I do not consent to you and others giving Microsoft (or Google or Facebook etc…) all the personal information this necessarily reveals about me when you accept their terms and have any electronic interactions with me.
- matthewmacleod 11y ago
  I appreciate what you're trying to say, but ultimately... Sucks to be you. If you don't want others to share that data, you'll have to stop interacting with them.
  - batou 11y ago
    I've done that. They revert to traditional methods like phone calls when they want or need something. Every time. Sucks to be you if your relationships, be they business or personal, are as fragile as a volatile technology.
    - Zarel 11y ago
      And let me guess, they don't have your phone number memorized; they probably save your phone number in their phone's contacts list alongside your name, which is automatically backed up in the cloud in either Google Contacts or iCloud depending on what phone they use. Expecting your friends not to use cloud services seems a bit unreasonable and unenforceable. Are you really going to tell all your friends they should write down or memorize your phone number instead of storing it in their phone?
      - batou 11y ago
        No as that information is public. What we talk about isn't.
        Zarel 11y ago
        Oh, uh, I thought you were talking about your name. Microsoft collects your friends' names so it can spell their names correctly when you use speech-to-text or related features. I thought that's what you were objecting to. What kind of data are you talking about?
cbd1984 11y ago
> You can stick with Windows 7 if you want Not indefinitely. It will get EOL'ed, and at that point it might not be possible to opt-out of the upgrade. Which isn't bad given that MS isn't going to keep supporting W7 forever: It's a genuinely bad thing to have unpatched OSes with known security holes (zero-decade, I suppose?) out in the hands of non-technical users. That kind of thing was moderately acceptable when Average Windows User was behind a dial-up line, but those are going away, too.
- Silhouette 11y ago
  Not indefinitely. It will get EOL'ed, and at that point it might not be possible to opt-out of the upgrade. It's always possible to opt out of the upgrade with Windows 7. I have a perpetual licence to use it, and I can turn off any automatic updates that would break it. The worst that will happen, short of Microsoft as a business going under or similarly dramatic changes, is that I will only enjoy free security updates from Microsoft until the end of the guaranteed support period (still several years away) and then I will have to use alternative means to secure my systems against any remaining threats. As demonstrated by the large organisations still on XP, one of those means may simply be paying more money to Microsoft to continue supporting an older platform you want to keep using.
- userbinator 11y ago
  a genuinely bad thing to have unpatched OSes with known security holes If the OS is popular enough, once they get known, they will be fixed by the community if not MS. Look up "Windows 98SE Unofficial Service Pack" and "KernelEx". In fact the 98SE community is still very much alive... and has added support for a lot of things that MS didn't. Gradually, I predict the same will happen with XP, and possibly 7 when MS stops supporting it.
edoloughlin 11y ago
I like my software knowing what I like and what I'm interested in. So do I, but I don't like my software vendors knowing it too.
- briandear 11y ago
  I especially don't like trusted partners knowing.
  - cm2187 11y ago
    Or the guys who will hack the trusted partners
    - Caprinicus 11y ago
      Once something is somewhere it will eventually be everywhere
userbinator 11y ago
I like my software knowing what I like and what I'm interested in. It makes my life easier, which is what computers were invented for. Philosophical question: is it really your life, if your software may be subtly persuading you in a different direction than what you would've taken if it hadn't been making the suggestions to influence you? There is no doubt it will make things easier for you if all you do is effectively accept and follow everything others want you to with no resistance. However, that's not what I'd consider "your life" anymore.
- 9872 11y ago
  How's that different from listening to any other human you interact with? Is it somehow worse because it's a computer rather than a human? That's the kind of bigotry that gets you robot uprisings.
  - proveanegative 11y ago
    I'll bite. Your mind is wired by evolution to assess, evaluate and react to human behavior. It is equipped to defend you another humans' attempts to influence your behavior for their own ends when you interact with them in person. Software that you run daily should be able to bypass those built-in protections in a more subtle and personalized manner than traditional advertising or propaganda could ever dream of. In an untrained mind it won't meet resistance but the mind can be trained; the "bigotry against 'robots'" (really, human organizations acting at a distance) on the part of humans who read enough stories like this one emerges as a result and is completely justified.
    - 9872 11y ago
      By evolution, or by socialization? And if it is by evolution, that immediately presents the trivial solution that we will naturally evolve to relate better to machines, making this a nonissue.
  - Filthy_casual 11y ago
    Are you saying that listening to what you have to say and writing what you have to say on wikipedia is the same thing?
ams6110 11y ago
I would never put my client data on a Windows machine. But how many people will?
teaneedz 11y ago
There's a danger of looking at things from within the tech bubble. Perspective is everything and I'm not convinced mainstream will be so accepting when the privacy concerns gain greater visibility. The same drive that is making ad blockers a concern will probably come into play. It'll take one successful hack for reality to set in for many. I personally don't want that type of personalization or targeting.
johnchristopher 11y ago
> I can see why some people might not, and to be fair I use Linux on my work laptop because the work I do demands it. I would never put my client data on a Windows machine. How do you handle business e-mail ? Only on the linux laptop ? Is the windows device only for personal and entertainment purposes ?
- freehunter 11y ago
  Correct. I have all my work stuff on my work laptop and the Windows desktop is just for Netflix and games and reddit and stuff that happens when I'm done with work. In fact I can't even have business emails on my personal computer because you need to be connected to my work's VPN to get email and you can't connect to the VPN with Windows without getting in serious trouble.
johnchristopher 11y ago
> But like I can see your side of the argument, you have to be able to see that some other people want personalization and learning and all that. Pandora and Apple Music are both heavily tailored that way. Google Now on your phone knows everything you do. Netflix can find videos for you to watch based on what you've watched before. Amazon will recommend purchases to you based on what you like. Hell, half the people on this site build these systems. You know how many machine learning articles there are on the front page every week? But that's the thing, right ? People want their computers to be more intelligent, reactive, adapted to their needs. They don't want Google, MS or Apple to know everything about them. How did the first came to automatically imply the second ? Apple, Google, MS and others could deliver the same products (software that learn user behaviour and adapt accordingly) without sacrificing privacy, invading personal space and storing private documents on the cloud in order to parse it to deliver relevant ads. Machine learning should keep on trying to be machine learning and not solely data scraping for marketing tuning and exploitation. What does it bring me that MS or Google knows my search terms of the day ? I want my quad-core CPU to know that when I browse HN it should automatically split the screen in half and open my media player to listen to radio music because that's what I do most morning. Why do I have to do that by hand ? Can't it know or guess my routine by now ? Or is all the tech just a glorified lexical parser to fine tune ads to increase their efficiency ?
- richmarr 11y ago
  It's not just about advertising. By looking at customer data in aggregate you can learn more about behaviour patterns and support the things your customers might be interested in doing. Buying products is one of the things you might be interested in doing. That said, this whole thing gives me the creeps and I'm glad I'm no longer a Microsoftie.
  - restalis 11y ago
    "By looking at customer data in aggregate you can learn more about behaviour patterns and support the things your customers might be interested in doing." That could be done locally, without sharing the private data. The local computing agent can then look up in the public (like the pool of those who deliberately published content for all to see) for information that may be of interest to the user. That would have been a moral solution to please everyone. What we see happening now is a nightmare!
Qwertious 11y ago
Windows 7 but with more features would be nice.
- tdkl 11y ago
  Windows 7 with speed of 8.1 and virtual desktop support is all I ever wanted. Not the Metro abomination.

x5n1 11y ago

This should be an optional feature. Not a feature that's the default of most computers on the planet. It's fine that you wanted it, and it's fine that it's available. It's not cool that it's the default on anything.

chc 11y ago
As far as I can tell, it is an optional feature. It's the default option, but still an option. On top of that, a fair argument could be made that most people who don't care enough to change their privacy settings probably do prioritize convenience over maximal privacy, so this might even be a reasonable default.
- nivla 11y ago
  This. Majority of people don't care about having any of these privacy issues on their cell phones which infact is far more capable and something you always keep next to you. Heck I have even seen hackers here recommend ChromeOS, an operating system where everything lives on the cloud. Even though I am cautious about my privacy, I have come to learn that most are not and there is nothing wrong with it. It is just not something that bothers them enough to care about. Privacy is not black and white, some try to maintain an absolute fence while others are willing to trade some for convenience in return.
  - x5n1 11y ago
    Some is fine, all is mentally deficient. Chrome OS is mentally deficient. In the current environment being okay with sharing every single detail of your computing with a big marketing company is not a smart thing to do.
    - chinpokomon 11y ago
      It's a fine line for sure. I recently recommended ChromeOS for my mother. Her problem is that she runs programs that compromise her OS. The malware I've removed from my parent's computer is hugely invasive and it is usually tied to her account. Given the choice of Google having some of her privacy details or some unknown crackers, I'd much rather have her expose that information to some cooperation that has public scrutiny over how they handle that data.
      - Vendan 11y ago
        Heh, I got one for my wife, cause all she used her computer for was Facebook. Who gives a shit if Google gets all that stuff now too, Facebook already had it in their datacenter.
- tripzilch 11y ago
  No. That's not a fair argument at all. Just because someone is scared away by an "option" screen like this: > you get presented with a customize wizard. The first screen has a large chunk of text on it, a large and clearly visible button to proceed using the default settings, and a small hard to see text link that lets you choose your own setting values instead of the defaults. > Everything about this screen is urging me to just accept the default configuration and get on with life. Doesn't mean those people "don't care enough" about their privacy. Those people are my parents and my friends and I know that they do. We know our computers, we can fight back, many people cannot. I believe that when a piece of software tries to provide "sensible defaults" for people that fear they might break stuff, or simply not understand the "advanced options", that those defaults should be SAFE and TRUSTWORTHY. Windows 10 obviously breaks that trust, and the people who can't spend an hour digging through advanced options (for many reasons) are just pounded into submission against systems they feel slowly slip from their control.

quadrangle 11y ago

I do not consent to you and others giving Microsoft (or Google or Facebook etc…) all the personal information this necessarily reveals about me when you accept their terms and have any electronic interactions with me.

matthewmacleod 11y ago
I appreciate what you're trying to say, but ultimately... Sucks to be you. If you don't want others to share that data, you'll have to stop interacting with them.
- batou 11y ago
  I've done that. They revert to traditional methods like phone calls when they want or need something. Every time. Sucks to be you if your relationships, be they business or personal, are as fragile as a volatile technology.
  - Zarel 11y ago
    And let me guess, they don't have your phone number memorized; they probably save your phone number in their phone's contacts list alongside your name, which is automatically backed up in the cloud in either Google Contacts or iCloud depending on what phone they use. Expecting your friends not to use cloud services seems a bit unreasonable and unenforceable. Are you really going to tell all your friends they should write down or memorize your phone number instead of storing it in their phone?
    - batou 11y ago
      No as that information is public. What we talk about isn't.
      - Zarel 11y ago
        Oh, uh, I thought you were talking about your name. Microsoft collects your friends' names so it can spell their names correctly when you use speech-to-text or related features. I thought that's what you were objecting to. What kind of data are you talking about?

cbd1984 11y ago

> You can stick with Windows 7 if you want Not indefinitely. It will get EOL'ed, and at that point it might not be possible to opt-out of the upgrade. Which isn't bad given that MS isn't going to keep supporting W7 forever: It's a genuinely bad thing to have unpatched OSes with known security holes (zero-decade, I suppose?) out in the hands of non-technical users. That kind of thing was moderately acceptable when Average Windows User was behind a dial-up line, but those are going away, too.

Silhouette 11y ago
Not indefinitely. It will get EOL'ed, and at that point it might not be possible to opt-out of the upgrade. It's always possible to opt out of the upgrade with Windows 7. I have a perpetual licence to use it, and I can turn off any automatic updates that would break it. The worst that will happen, short of Microsoft as a business going under or similarly dramatic changes, is that I will only enjoy free security updates from Microsoft until the end of the guaranteed support period (still several years away) and then I will have to use alternative means to secure my systems against any remaining threats. As demonstrated by the large organisations still on XP, one of those means may simply be paying more money to Microsoft to continue supporting an older platform you want to keep using.
userbinator 11y ago
a genuinely bad thing to have unpatched OSes with known security holes If the OS is popular enough, once they get known, they will be fixed by the community if not MS. Look up "Windows 98SE Unofficial Service Pack" and "KernelEx". In fact the 98SE community is still very much alive... and has added support for a lot of things that MS didn't. Gradually, I predict the same will happen with XP, and possibly 7 when MS stops supporting it.

edoloughlin 11y ago

I like my software knowing what I like and what I'm interested in. So do I, but I don't like my software vendors knowing it too.

briandear 11y ago
I especially don't like trusted partners knowing.
- cm2187 11y ago
  Or the guys who will hack the trusted partners
  - Caprinicus 11y ago
    Once something is somewhere it will eventually be everywhere

userbinator 11y ago

I like my software knowing what I like and what I'm interested in. It makes my life easier, which is what computers were invented for. Philosophical question: is it really your life, if your software may be subtly persuading you in a different direction than what you would've taken if it hadn't been making the suggestions to influence you? There is no doubt it will make things easier for you if all you do is effectively accept and follow everything others want you to with no resistance. However, that's not what I'd consider "your life" anymore.

9872 11y ago
How's that different from listening to any other human you interact with? Is it somehow worse because it's a computer rather than a human? That's the kind of bigotry that gets you robot uprisings.
- proveanegative 11y ago
  I'll bite. Your mind is wired by evolution to assess, evaluate and react to human behavior. It is equipped to defend you another humans' attempts to influence your behavior for their own ends when you interact with them in person. Software that you run daily should be able to bypass those built-in protections in a more subtle and personalized manner than traditional advertising or propaganda could ever dream of. In an untrained mind it won't meet resistance but the mind can be trained; the "bigotry against 'robots'" (really, human organizations acting at a distance) on the part of humans who read enough stories like this one emerges as a result and is completely justified.
  - 9872 11y ago
    By evolution, or by socialization? And if it is by evolution, that immediately presents the trivial solution that we will naturally evolve to relate better to machines, making this a nonissue.
- Filthy_casual 11y ago
  Are you saying that listening to what you have to say and writing what you have to say on wikipedia is the same thing?

ams6110 11y ago

I would never put my client data on a Windows machine. But how many people will?

teaneedz 11y ago

There's a danger of looking at things from within the tech bubble. Perspective is everything and I'm not convinced mainstream will be so accepting when the privacy concerns gain greater visibility. The same drive that is making ad blockers a concern will probably come into play. It'll take one successful hack for reality to set in for many. I personally don't want that type of personalization or targeting.

johnchristopher 11y ago

> I can see why some people might not, and to be fair I use Linux on my work laptop because the work I do demands it. I would never put my client data on a Windows machine. How do you handle business e-mail ? Only on the linux laptop ? Is the windows device only for personal and entertainment purposes ?

freehunter 11y ago
Correct. I have all my work stuff on my work laptop and the Windows desktop is just for Netflix and games and reddit and stuff that happens when I'm done with work. In fact I can't even have business emails on my personal computer because you need to be connected to my work's VPN to get email and you can't connect to the VPN with Windows without getting in serious trouble.

johnchristopher 11y ago

> But like I can see your side of the argument, you have to be able to see that some other people want personalization and learning and all that. Pandora and Apple Music are both heavily tailored that way. Google Now on your phone knows everything you do. Netflix can find videos for you to watch based on what you've watched before. Amazon will recommend purchases to you based on what you like. Hell, half the people on this site build these systems. You know how many machine learning articles there are on the front page every week? But that's the thing, right ? People want their computers to be more intelligent, reactive, adapted to their needs. They don't want Google, MS or Apple to know everything about them. How did the first came to automatically imply the second ? Apple, Google, MS and others could deliver the same products (software that learn user behaviour and adapt accordingly) without sacrificing privacy, invading personal space and storing private documents on the cloud in order to parse it to deliver relevant ads. Machine learning should keep on trying to be machine learning and not solely data scraping for marketing tuning and exploitation. What does it bring me that MS or Google knows my search terms of the day ? I want my quad-core CPU to know that when I browse HN it should automatically split the screen in half and open my media player to listen to radio music because that's what I do most morning. Why do I have to do that by hand ? Can't it know or guess my routine by now ? Or is all the tech just a glorified lexical parser to fine tune ads to increase their efficiency ?

richmarr 11y ago
It's not just about advertising. By looking at customer data in aggregate you can learn more about behaviour patterns and support the things your customers might be interested in doing. Buying products is one of the things you might be interested in doing. That said, this whole thing gives me the creeps and I'm glad I'm no longer a Microsoftie.
- restalis 11y ago
  "By looking at customer data in aggregate you can learn more about behaviour patterns and support the things your customers might be interested in doing." That could be done locally, without sharing the private data. The local computing agent can then look up in the public (like the pool of those who deliberately published content for all to see) for information that may be of interest to the user. That would have been a moral solution to please everyone. What we see happening now is a nightmare!

Qwertious 11y ago

Windows 7 but with more features would be nice.

tdkl 11y ago
Windows 7 with speed of 8.1 and virtual desktop support is all I ever wanted. Not the Metro abomination.