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To the shock of no one, Windows 10 users who upgrade to the Anniversary Update (scheduled for release next week), will not be able to disable Cortana using the settings.
If you compare the start menu settings of Cortana of the current version of Windows (version 1511) with those of the Anniversary Update (version 1607) you will notice that Cortana's off switch is no longer available (thanks Ian Paul @PC World for spotting that)
Cortana, the digital assistant that Microsoft touts as one of the major features of Windows 10 supports interaction via touch, typing, ink and voice.
Microsoft integrated Cortana deeply with the native search functionality of Windows 10. While linked to search, Windows 10 users may turn off Cortana currently to use search without it. While you might have to turn off web searches on Windows 10 as well, doing so ensured that you got search functionality that matched those of previous versions of Windows.
Windows users who turned off Cortana had two main reasons for it: either they did not need Cortana functionality, or they did not want it because of privacy implications.
[...] It is still possible to turn off Cortana, but not by using the preferences. The policy to disable Cortana is still available and you may use it to turn off Cortana on the device.
Please note that the Group Policy Editor is only available in professional versions of Windows 10. Most notably, it is not available in Windows 10 Home.
The linked article goes into detail on how to disable Cortana using the Registry in Windows 10 Home, and Group Policy Editor in Windows 10 Pro. However, Microsoft no longer makes disabling Cortana anywhere near as easy as it was.
(Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday July 27 2016, @10:38AM
I actually installed win10 to try out Cortana, but it wasn't possible to enable her without also enabling the thing that sends your searches to M$ and all the other spyware, since apparently she's a frontend for those services.
If Cortana can't be disabled on basic win10 starting next week, does that mean that the spyware she depends on will also be mandatory?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday July 27 2016, @11:29AM
Who knows? Windows *is* the spyware... There are so many things in it that monitor your activity and report back to Redmond/NSA that it doesn't really matter if you turn one of them off. The whole thing should be considered compromised. Just switch to Linux Mint and be done with it. Plus, it's well known that using Linux will make you more popular and get you laid more!
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday July 27 2016, @01:48PM
But with Windows you really get screwed.
(Score: 2) by rts008 on Wednesday July 27 2016, @05:17PM
No surprise here, as I heard from a reliable source that goatse.cx was a long-time Windows user and beta-tester. ;-)
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday July 27 2016, @02:46PM
I believe that is why they offered a free upgrade, and why they pushed it so hard. The new market is user data, companies spend billions to capture users, not for the software or dev assets, though those are a bonus. Making cortana mandatory makes no sense except through the idea of data capture.
(Score: 2) by Grishnakh on Wednesday July 27 2016, @03:24PM
If Cortana can't be disabled on basic win10 starting next week, does that mean that the spyware she depends on will also be mandatory?
I sure hope so. I also hope they make the spyware mandatory for corporate PCs too. MS should have full access to all data on corporate, government, or personal PCs; if people don't like that, then maybe they should find a better vendor.
(Score: 2) by Hairyfeet on Wednesday July 27 2016, @09:01PM
Apparently you missed the memo as now any business can get Enterprise for $7 a month per user [dabcc.com] which lets them just flip a switch and kill the spying. Basically Home is now for the suckers...errr beta testers, pro is for suckers with more money (as it'll let them flip a few more switches and delay updates hopefully until MSFT is done fixing all the broken ones the Home suckers find) and Enterprise is what those that don't want the horseshit will have to rent.
Of course you'll probably have a "Win 10 Pirate Edition" released in a couple months that will gut all the spying, usually under the "Gamer edition" banner and that is what those that want to run windows without the shit will use. Ironically for the past 4 releases the pirate edition has been waaay better than the legit product, XP Tiny, Vista Tiny, 7 Tiny, and 8 Gamer Edition are all better on CPU, memory, and have all the BS stripped out.
ACs are never seen so don't bother. Always ready to show SJWs for the racists they are.
(Score: 2) by Grishnakh on Wednesday July 27 2016, @09:27PM
Apparently you missed the memo as now any business can get Enterprise for $7 a month per user which lets them just flip a switch and kill the spying.
You're right, I missed that. That's too bad. I hope MS changes their mind and forces enterprise users to accept spying too (and even requires them to modify their firewalls to allow it, or else make their PCs non-functional if they can't phone home). MS is in the perfect position to do this; what are enterprises going to do, switch to another OS? Sure, technically they could, but we all know they aren't going to. MS could even require governments with classified networks to connect these to the internet for MS spying; it might sound preposterous at first, but do you really see the government switching to Linux when faced with this requirement?
(Score: 2) by Hairyfeet on Thursday July 28 2016, @08:10AM
After Berlin tried going to Linux? They aren't about to do that, not when they can charge them all rent on their PCs from now until the end of time. This also gets governments off their back because they can say "Hey anybody can have the version that is spying free, its only $7 a month" and keep right on being as douchebag as they want to be.
Personally I'll still with win 7 until its EOL, then switch to 8.1 if Nutella hasn't been punt kicked by then. Hopefully by 2023 someone will have gotten their shit together and make a viable replacement, if not I'll be running "Win 10 Pirate Edition" as I simply have too much money invested in software that simply will never run on Linux.
ACs are never seen so don't bother. Always ready to show SJWs for the racists they are.
(Score: 2) by Grishnakh on Thursday July 28 2016, @04:49PM
This also gets governments off their back because they can say "Hey anybody can have the version that is spying free, its only $7 a month" and keep right on being as douchebag as they want to be.
Yes, and how long will that spying-free version be only $7/month? Or spying-free? This is the whole problem with putting your essential infrastructure into the hands of a private (and foreign) corporation that has demonstrated, over and over for literally decades, that they are a bad actor. Just like Darth Vader, they can change the deal at any time, and just pray they don't change it further.
Hopefully by 2023 someone will have gotten their shit together and make a viable replacement, if not I'll be running "Win 10 Pirate Edition" as I simply have too much money invested in software that simply will never run on Linux.
You're assuming you'll still be able to stick with Win7 or 8.1 until 2023. They can alter the deal at any time, just like they've altered the deal with Cortana. They can force updates into old versions (as they already have) with spyware, and make it increasingly more difficult to keep them out. You'll eventually have to disable updates altogether. As for "Pirate Edition", they can make that harder and harder too. Just how much time and energy are you prepared to invest in constantly dicking around with Windows to make it work for you without spyware and other problems?
(Score: 2) by Hairyfeet on Saturday July 30 2016, @09:59PM
Actually they can't "alter the deal" as the EOL dates are published and used by corporations (who will sue the living hell out of them) to plan massive deployments. They don't have to add new features (like I care, I download my WUs from a third party just to make sure I don't get "new telemetry features" with my updates) and they don't have to backport features like DX12 (which will bite them on the ass just as it did with DX11, which didn't even become standard for nearly 5 years after release because it wasn't backported) but they have to provide security patches until the dates listed.
And I'm sorry but I'm just gonna spell it out...Linux sucks and it 10 years hasn't gotten any better, just different. You still have Linux devs shitting on the OS with regularity, ripping out well vetted and functioning components for half baked alpha quality shit, oh yeah and now you have Red Hat spreading SystemD cancer and with the #1 customer being USSA three letter agencies? I trust anything with SystemD about as much as I trust MSFT.
At the end of the day more than 90% of the commercial software on the planet runs ONLY on Windows, as long as that is the case? Linux will never go anywhere, as nobody wants ersatz crap like Gimp and GnuCash, they want PhotoShop and Quicken. If it gets to the point I can't strip out the spying? I'll just keep the windows unit on an isolated subnet, still do the majority of my work on it, and use a Mac for anything that has personally identifiable info in it. Because like 95%+ of the population I have thousands of dollars in software that won't run anywhere else and will NEVER be ported, this is why the network effect [wikipedia.org] insures nobody will ever beat MSFT on the desktop, there is simply too much mission critical software that will only run on Windows. In my case everything from my printer to my A/V gear, both software and DACs, from the wife's Paintshop Pro to my video games, all are Windows only.
Oh and one last thing....you haven't ever actually TRIED any of the Windows Pirate Editions, have you? Because you really have to give them suckers credit, they do some seriously low level voodoo to strip out all the crap MSFT adds. Hell they have a version of Windows 7 that takes less resources than a clean install of RTM XP and their version of Vista? Is actually quite snappy, even on netbooks which even MSFT could never pull off. Look around the net and pick yourself up a copy of "Tiny 7" or "Windows 8 Gamer Edition" both of which fit on just one CD BTW, and load them up in a VM and see for yourself, its really quite amazing how much they were able to strip away while still leaving the OS compatible with all the Windows software out there. Oh and MSFT has been trying to stop them since the days of WinXP and are no closer now than they were then.
ACs are never seen so don't bother. Always ready to show SJWs for the racists they are.