SoylentNews is people
SoylentNews
from the trying-to-get-the-scoop-on-what-they-scoop-up dept.
The Electronic Frontier Foundation has accused Microsoft of disregarding user choice and privacy with Windows 10. In a scathing editorial, EFF employee Amul Kalia calls on Microsoft to "come clean with its user community" over a growing number of Windows 10 privacy concerns. "Windows 10 sends an unprecedented amount of usage data back to Microsoft," explains Kalia, noting that enabling Cortana increases the amount of data passed to Microsoft. Privacy advocates have argued that Windows 10 sends back location, text input, voice input, touch input, websites you visit, and other telemetry data to Microsoft.
"While users can disable some of these settings, it is not a guarantee that your computer will stop talking to Microsoft's servers," says Kalia. "A significant issue is the telemetry data the company receives." Microsoft has previously insisted it anonymizes telemetry data, but the EFF is concerned the company hasn't explained exactly how it does this. "Microsoft also won't say how long this data is retained, instead providing only general timeframes."
While telemetry data is clearly a concern, the EFF focuses on Microsoft's confusing link between this data and security patches. "Microsoft has tried to explain this lack of choice by saying that Windows Update won't function properly on copies of the operating system with telemetry reporting turned to its lowest level," claims Kalia. "Microsoft is claiming that giving ordinary users more privacy by letting them turn telemetry reporting down to its lowest level would risk their security since they would no longer get security updates."
The story then proceeds to blast Microsoft's Windows 10 upgrade tactics, as well.
(Score: 3, Funny) by Snotnose on Tuesday August 23 2016, @04:19AM
Is for Valve to work on Steam/OS to support the latest version of Direct X under Linux, then have Valve be the main supporter for subsequent versions of Direct X. I'm guessing 90% of Microsoft's home community are those like me that run Windows so we can run GTA V and other top of the line games. We don't run Windows because we want to or need to, we run Windows because we don't want to buy a console that will be obsolete in a year to play current games.
Yeah, I understand a lot of pushback will come from the graphics card makers. Fuck em. First one to fully support Steam gets my $$$.
As for the rest of the Windows users? A very large percentage will be forced to use it at work. A smaller percentage will not understand the issues and just use Windows for email and WWW.
When the dust settled America realized it was saved by a porn star.
(Score: 2) by Capt. Obvious on Tuesday August 23 2016, @05:04AM
Ummm... no. Most people use Windows from inertia. Maybe 90% of Windows users on SN use it for games. But even then, there are a lot of Windows only programs. Heck Visual Studio used to be the most important reason to run Windows, and there are a still a lot of dev tools that are windows only. If you need one of those, you need Windows.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday August 23 2016, @05:38AM
She just asked to have the linux partition expanded to be her primary OS, since her Windows partition (8 or 8.1) is only necessary for browser based online education that attempts to block you from cheating by looking up the answers in another window. Which is silly, since everybody has a phone with internet now, and a second computer device is cheap enough to do it side by side with no way for them to figure it out. Maybe they should focus on making tests that are difficult to find answers to without knowing the material instead?
The key point here is she was a Windows user until about 10 years ago, then a Mac user for about 4, then after that computer became unreliable she moved back to Windows, and in just the past year or so (having previously dabbled with a linux desktop for web browsing in the early '00s, with a slew of complaints about it), she asked to have ubuntu put on it after I showed off the Unity desktop to her. While I'm not a big proponent of Ubuntu/Unity/systemd at this point, the 'average person' mindshare about using windows is definitely shifting. Linux distros have gotten good enough technically as well as having UIs that work similiarly enough to Windows/Mac OSes to make users feel at home immediately, rather than feeling like they are making a transition as they had in the past. Left with automatic updates on, Ubuntu/Fedora/SuSE, etc is just as (un)reliable as Windows or OSX, but with the bonus of getting to reboot on your schedule, since only the kernel upgrade usually requires a reboot, and since most users shut their computers off daily, it isn't much of a risk to let them wait and do it during their normal routine rather than *NOW* like Windows often does by default.
My only questoin at this point in time is if we will see Microsoft roll a debian distro, take over Debian, or as many of us had been joking about since the 90s, if they will finally buy out/merge with Redhat and live up to their legacy as the 'Microsoft of the Linux world.' Which as many people will tell you systemd seems to be working hard on transitioning their OS and by extension the majority of the Linux ecosystem towards.
(Score: 3, Funny) by Gravis on Tuesday August 23 2016, @05:25AM
You know what's funny? Thanks to Vulkan, this is now possible! Sure, it'll take a lot of dev, only work on new graphics cards and might be slightly less performant than native support but it would work with any graphics card that implemented Vulkan. WINE can actually run the latest dotnet horseshit but I think DRM might get in the way.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday August 23 2016, @07:43AM
WINE can't run anything properly except for very basic programs from the 9X era. There will always be anomalies that get in the way, DRM or not. Most of the best-rated stuff on WineDB that I tried running through WINE screws up in subtle but notable ways if you use it for a while, which suggests people rate it that way solely because it doesn't crash.
(Score: 2) by NCommander on Tuesday August 23 2016, @11:31AM
Someone hasn't run WINE this decade. Off-hand, this is stuff I've regularly used in WINE within the last year
* Steam
* Fallout: New Vegas
* BioShock I and Infinity
* OBS (to test Windows port)
* Firefox for Windows
TeamViewer for Linux is built on WINElib as well as a fairly complicated app working flawlessly.
Still always moving
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday August 23 2016, @02:49PM
Eh, I've last ran WINE a couple of month ago, and it's still as shitty as always with the software I've thrown at it. Even really generic shit like printing doesn't work.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday August 23 2016, @09:26PM
We need a moderation -1 stupid.
I seriously can't think of a more brain dead proposal, ever.
You want to compromise the security of your entire system to get better graphics performance?
Windows is made for you. Wallow in it.