SoylentNews is people
SoylentNews
The administrator of AE News (an online news portal for Czech and Slovak expatriates) writes a very revealing article regarding the Windows 10 collection of user data. Here is the original Czech article. Here is a Bing translation to English. Here is a English condensed version translated by a blogger. And finally a PDF of the original Czech article.
In the post the AE News administrator states:
With the advent of Windows 10, I decided to undergo several tests. The collected knowledge for someone may be alarming. The Windows operating system 10 is essentially the end terminal, more than the operating system, because many of the processes and functions of this system is directly or indirectly dependent on remote servers and databases to Microsoft.
All text typed on the keyboard is stored in temporary files, and sent (once per 30 mins) to:
oca.telemetry.microsoft.com.nsatc.net
pre.footprintpredict.com
reports.wes.df.telemetry.microsoft.com
AE News also references an arstechnica.co.uk article which states it might be impossible to stop this communication:
And finally, some traffic seems quite impenetrable. We configured our test virtual machine to use an HTTP and HTTPS proxy (both as a user-level proxy and a system-wide proxy) so that we could more easily monitor its traffic, but Windows 10 seems to make requests to a content delivery network that bypass the proxy."
arstechnica.co.uk also "asked Microsoft if there is any way to disable this additional communication or information about what its purpose is". Microsoft did not reply as to a way to disable this chatter but did respond to the 'additional communication' stating Microsoft is now 'delivering Windows 10 as a service'.
Although the original source for this story is skeptical, Smart nerds on soylentnews can easily fire up Wireshark and reveal the communication for themselves. It appears that MS has fully embraced the cloud where your OS is now a terminal. And regarding privacy? Well, according to arstechnica.co.uk: Windows 10 privacy policy is the new normal
(Score: 2) by Grishnakh on Monday August 24 2015, @02:59AM
Then they can get by fine on a tablet, but if you look at the figures even iPad sales are dropping and I would argue that those pads are ending up in the same place as my tablet did, sitting in a drawer because it doesn't run anything other than a browser,
I disagree. I would argue that the sales are drying up because *everyone who wants an iPad now has one*. Unlike PCs between 1995-2005, where people were constantly upgrading to stay caught up with technology because software kept getting slower and hardware kept getting so much faster, things aren't moving like that any more, and if you're just using your tablet to surf the web and other light work, it likely still works just fine, so why do you need to buy another? Maybe a bunch of people have upgraded their iPad1s to iPad2s, but it's probably plateaued now, and the market is saturated. The only people buying them now are people who broke theirs, or who are hard-core users who just gotta have the latest and greatest, along with a small number of new users.
(Score: 2) by Hairyfeet on Monday August 24 2015, @07:14AM
You have ignored the question, allow me to again highlight it...if your theory is correct how do you explain Linux netbooks being returned four times more than Windows netbooks because I'm betting you will continue to just bring anecdotes because IMHO the return rate is the perfect example of how your OS is of no use to the vast majority.
Again lets take myself as an example, I sank nearly a grand on this PC, FX8320E with 16GB of RAM, R9 280 3GB, 6TB of HDDs with an SSD boot, and a 27in 1080P monitor to display the results. This PC was built to do audio/video composition and editing, play a large library of AAA titles and surf the web...now what can your OS offer me? It can only do one of those tasks, the one that can just as easily be done by a $50 tablet. My AD/DA doesn't work, my recording software with the years of plugins don't work (there have been some attempts with Wine to make the big audio recording software work, but the latency makes it a pointless exercise) and the vast majority of my games will not work, not to mention the fact that on its best day Linux graphical driver stack is a bad joke, with only a handful of really old games (like Valve's HL2 series) actually running faster than on Windows, the rest? Your graphics stack would make my $150 GPU run like the $60 GPU it replaced.
And believe me I'm pretty far from being atypical, in fact its an extremely rare case that a customer that has me build them a new PC or who asks me to wipe theirs and start anew doesn't bring me a list of software or more often a stack of discs for me to install. Hell the 73 year old guy that bought an HTPC from me a few weeks ago brought no less than 4 discs, MS Office 2013 (because while being retired he still does occasional consulting for his former company and they do everything through Outlook), a calendaring program he prefers to keep track of dates, and 2 games for his grandkids...wanna guess how many of those worked on Linux?
I know truth sometimes hurts but the simple fact is that Linux holds no value to the majority because their software won't run and again what use is an OS if it won't run the programs you bought a PC to run in the first place?
ACs are never seen so don't bother. Always ready to show SJWs for the racists they are.
(Score: 2) by Freeman on Monday August 24 2015, @06:22PM
I keep hoping that SteamOS will take off and crush the behemoth that is Microsoft. We'll see soon enough, but it will highly depend on developers getting their games on the Linux platform. I would gladly run SteamOS on my main machine, if 95% + of my games worked on it. The problem is that currently only about 10% or so of my games work on Linux, excluding the older titles. Sure, there may be portion of people stuck with Windows due to specific hardware / software, but you get my games on SteamOS and I won't look back. I can build a decent gaming machine for $600 to $700 with MS Windows. Building a gaming machine to run SteamOS instead of Windows drops the price tag $120. I don't know about you, but I would love to spend that extra $120 on a second drive or something. Though, again, it's still just not quite there yet. Makes me think of the newer, better battery, that will totally revolutionize my devices, but I'm still using AAs, AAAs, etc . . .
Joshua 1:9 "Be strong and of a good courage; be not afraid, neither be thou dismayed: for the Lord thy God is with thee"
(Score: 2) by Hairyfeet on Monday August 24 2015, @10:02PM
If you wanna make wishes? Wish that the Linux devs would get off their high horses and invest serious time in ReactOS as that and ONLY that would have a chance at killing Windows because there is simply too great a sunk cost in Windows software now.
Lets say that SteamOS gets 100% of games working (never gonna happen and the Linux driver stack is still a mess, thus hurting framerates) that would take care of only one out of the 3 use cases for this PC, and not even the most important one. I bet if you talk to ANY of the PC gamers and you'll find there is more than just games they are running, be it productivity, video recording (quite popular as a LOT of gamers are recording their plays and reviewing the games on YouTube) team chat programs, there is a ton of stuff other than games that the gamers run and if it doesn't run? Again Linux might as well be FreeDOS for all the use the end user will get from it.
OTOH if you get ReactOS up and running, with API/ABI compatibility so that programs all think they are running on Windows and a Win 7 skin to seal the deal? I know a LOT of people, myself included, that would be happy to flip MSFT the bird and jump ship. I mean for fucks sake look at Windows 10, it might as well be called "Windows Big Brother Edition" for all the spying that shit does, think folks WANT to be spied upon? Think they WANT to have their data and bandwidth stolen so MSFT can make a few Shekels? Not a chance in hell, people are tied of their shit but at this point they simply have too much money sunk into software that doesn't work anywhere else.
ACs are never seen so don't bother. Always ready to show SJWs for the racists they are.
(Score: 2) by Grishnakh on Tuesday August 25 2015, @12:16AM
Why would Linux people want to work on ReactOS? That's like wondering why Mac developers don't switch to Windows: they *don't like the platform*. So they're certainly not going to want to mess around with a clone of it. I already have to use Windows a little bit at work, and it's a painful experience because the platform is so poorly designed and doesn't have any of the software I want; why would I want a clone of it? Just because it's free? No thanks.
What would make more sense is getting WINE to work better, but that's not that easy.
You keep going on and on and on and on about gamers. If you're a gamer, Linux probably isn't the platform for you, just like MacOS isn't. Apple seems to do just fine without courting the hardcore gamers.
As for the Linux driver stack, from what I've read, many times Linux beats Windows in framerates, but it's really dependent on the particular drivers. AMD drivers seem to really suck, and Nvidia's seem to be the best if you need absolute performance, but of course they're proprietary, but the distros have gotten pretty good these days at making dealing with them a seamless experience, or so I've read. Intel's drivers work just great, but of course those won't help you if you're looking for serious performance, but for more mild usage they're usable; Intel's GPUs are constantly getting better.
I mean for fucks sake look at Windows 10, it might as well be called "Windows Big Brother Edition" for all the spying that shit does, think folks WANT to be spied upon?
No, they realize most of their users are just like you, they absolutely refuse to leave the Windows platform, no matter how much Microsoft abuses them. I mean, if it came down to a choice between abandoning your investment in software and switching platforms, or using Windows 10 and having all your personal data not only sent off to MS, but also an ironclad legal license agreement that allowed them to do whatever they want with that data, including selling it to Chinese hackers so they can hack into your bank accounts and steal your money, which would you choose? (Assume that sticking with an old version of Windows isn't possible.) As for an "investment" in software, you have heard of the sunk cost fallacy, haven't you?
Finally, about netbooks, I dunno, but I don't even see people buying Windows netbooks these days, the whole market for them seems to be dead. People probably returned the Linux ones because they didn't understand what they were buying and freaked out when it was slightly different than the Windows experience they were used to. It's not like you can actually play any Windows games on a netbook anyway.
(Score: 2) by Hairyfeet on Tuesday August 25 2015, @03:49PM
Again you ignore the most important fact which if the software doesn't run your OS is useless and working in a shop I can tell you that everybody, from that 16 year old kid getting his first rig to the 73 year old guy I recently built an HTPC for all have tons of software that your OS simply will not run.
And get ready for the screams but fuck it, truth is truth...wanna know what Linux desktop software in 2015 reminds me of? You ever go to a site like Chinabuye where they have cheap knock offs like the "Wii Me" and "Polystation 4"? Because THAT is what Linux desktop software in 2015 is, its a "true believer" trying to convince you that Gimp can compete with Photoshop, Audacity can compete with Sonor (And Reason, and Acid Pro), that GnuCash can compete with Quickbooks...its sad really, as the absolute best you have to offer can't compete with commercial software from a decade ago but that is simply the truth. and forget games, hell you name the field, financial, medical, business, DTP, audio/visual creation, in every single one in every single metric other than price (again like Chinabuye) your software is simply inferior and in most cases EXTREMELY inferior, as in "can't compete with releases from the late 90s on features" kinda inferior!
So you wanted to know why you need ReactOS to run? Because the answer is simple, if given the choice of running inferior software or using Windows 10 people ARE gonna choose the latter, and if you don't get your numbers up but quick? Well in a couple years MSFT will just get the OEMs to lock UEFI "for security reasons" and you'll be stuck trying to use a Raspberry Pi for a desktop as Apple,MSFT, and Google simply split the market. All three will spy on you, all three will copy all your data, and there won't be a damned thing you can do about it...reason enough for you?
ACs are never seen so don't bother. Always ready to show SJWs for the racists they are.
(Score: 2) by Grishnakh on Sunday August 30 2015, @02:42AM
o you wanted to know why you need ReactOS to run? Because the answer is simple, if given the choice of running inferior software or using Windows 10 people ARE gonna choose the latter, and if you don't get your numbers up but quick? Well in a couple years MSFT will just get the OEMs to lock UEFI "for security reasons" and you'll be stuck trying to use a Raspberry Pi for a desktop as Apple,MSFT, and Google simply split the market. All three will spy on you, all three will copy all your data, and there won't be a damned thing you can do about it...reason enough for you?
No, that's not enough reason to bother working on a project I have no interest in. I don't want to use Windows, nor do I want to use a clone of it. There's no way in hell I'd want to help build a clone of it; that's like building a car that looks exactly like a Pontiac Aztek for a car guy. There's a reason other FOSS projects (like the Linux kernel and distros) have tons of developer support, and ReactOS doesn't: no one wants to work on it.
As for a RPi desktop, we can keep using existing PCs indefinitely. This isn't the 90s when a 5-year-old PC was too slow; software isn't getting any slower (unless you're running Adobe crapware maybe), and PCs aren't getting any faster, only more energy efficient. You can already use ARM chips as desktops anyway. The Linux users will just do one or the other, they're not going back to Windows. The Windows users will just continue to put up with MS's shenanigans and complain about them while continuing to do the same thing, expecting a different result. You can't save addicts; they have to want to change.
(Score: 2) by Hairyfeet on Sunday August 30 2015, @06:06AM
LOL use existing desktops forever....hate to break the news to ya but motherboards have caps and traces and those WILL die, no matter how well you baby your system. Now some will die sooner, some might make it to the decade mark, but as someone who has had to buy NOS computers for clients whose software wouldn't run on newer systems I can tell ya the stuff is thinning out VERY quickly and nearly all died from either caps popping or traces breaking from heat cycling.
So I hope you are good with a soldering gun, have your own reflow oven, and can make a new motherboard because what you have, especially if its originally designed for consumer or SMB instead of industrial, WILL die and the only question is when and when it does? Then you are stuck, just try looking up prices on AM2 (not +) or 423 boards, they are nearly all gone and the ones left are pretty expensive.
ACs are never seen so don't bother. Always ready to show SJWs for the racists they are.
(Score: 2) by Grishnakh on Wednesday September 02 2015, @02:57AM
hate to break the news to ya but motherboards have caps and traces and those WILL die
Huh? Electrolytic caps are easily replaced. Lots of small businesses popped up doing just that when the Capacitor Plague hit. Bad caps are still a problem because of crappy Chinese caps, but again they're easily replaced for a few bucks. Traces don't die. Traces are copper. The only way for them to "die" is if they get damaged somehow. Leaky caps don't usually cause that much damage; the cap normally fails, causing the equipment to malfunction, before anything catastrophic happens.
What eventually will kill the computer is electromigration in the ICs. But you're looking at decades for that to happen, if not longer.
and nearly all died from either caps popping or traces breaking from heat cycling.
You couldn't just replace the caps? You don't know how to use a soldering iron?
Traces don't "break" from heat-cycling on any decent PCB. Even if they did, it's possible to fix them with mod-wire as long as they aren't some high-speed serial link or something. Again, this is not a problem on any decent PCB that I've ever heard of; I've never even seen this. But I've seen lots of boards die from caps, and fixed a few when it was worth it.
So I hope you are good with a soldering gun, have your own reflow oven
Who the fuck uses a "soldering gun"? That's something they used in the 1950s before PCBs were invented. This alone shows you know nothing about soldering.
And yes, I do have both a temperature-controlled soldering station and a reflow oven.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by Freeman on Tuesday August 25 2015, @04:04PM
I have been following ReactOS for about a decade. They have improved things greatly in the meantime, but it is extremely slow going. They are open source and I think that's the only reason Microsoft hasn't snuffed them out, yet. Whenever I even mention ReactOS in FOSS circles it's usually shot down immediately. Personally, I applaud what ReactOS is doing. Though, I haven't actually put my money where my mouth is and backed their kickstarter or even bought a flash drive from their shop. ReactOS could be something great, a free Windows Clone that just works. What I really want it to be able to do is run all of my old windows software natively. That's something that Microsoft hasn't gotten right and I don't know that they have any incentive to get it right. Microsoft is quickly becoming a "social OS" and likely morphing into a "subscription based service". That is a model that I have hated as a gamer and as a consumer. Certain things work well as a "subscription based service" like Netflix which provides a library of videos I don't have to purchase. My Operating System shouldn't require me to spend $10, $20, $30+ a month or year to work. I shouldn't need to worry about my OS being the Malware on my computer. Windows has been notorious for it's security issues, but to my knowledge they haven't been actively Sabotaging your computer. Having a Keylogger that sends all of your keystrokes anywhere outside of your control is by default Sabotage / Malware. I expect for my messages I type in Steam, Facebook, Twitter, to have at least some interaction with those services. The data I type on my keyboard Shouldn't Ever be sent to Microsoft by Default or as a part of "standard practice" to improve quality / service. I am waiting for Windows to actually come out with hopefully something as good as or better than Windows 7. Assuming, they don't ever, Windows 7 could be the last Windows I ever use.
Joshua 1:9 "Be strong and of a good courage; be not afraid, neither be thou dismayed: for the Lord thy God is with thee"
(Score: 2) by Grishnakh on Sunday August 30 2015, @02:35AM
Whenever I even mention ReactOS in FOSS circles it's usually shot down immediately.
How so?
Personally, I think people should work on whatever projects they want to work on. If some people want to spend their free time making a Windows clone, more power to them. I wouldn't waste my time doing that, though, because I don't actually like Windows, so why would I want to make a clone of it? If I did like Windows, I'd just buy a copy of it; it's not *that* expensive. If I had a bunch of free time to spend on FOSS work for free, it'd be doing things *I* am interested in; maybe it'd be contributing to KDE, and cloning some select bits and pieces from Windows that I do like (it's not *all* bad...), but it sure wouldn't be with the goal of making a clone. I don't care much for GM cars either, but if I were an automotive engineer I'm sure I could find something in them I liked and wanted to copy, but that doesn't mean I want to make a car that looks as ugly as an Aztek.
I suspect most FOSS contributors are similar. They work on things that interest them; they're not trying to make a better Windows. There's a reason all the FOSS desktop environments have diverged significantly from both Windows and MacOS, while copying bits and concepts from both.
What I really want it to be able to do is run all of my old windows software natively.
I'd like a lot of things, but I don't expect people to spend millions of man-hours giving them to me for free. If they do (like with Linux, or DD-WRT), that's great, but I don't feel entitled to it, just lucky there's so many people willing to contribute to a project I like.
My Operating System shouldn't require me to spend $10, $20, $30+ a month or year to work. I shouldn't need to worry about my OS being the Malware on my computer.
You shouldn't, but apparently you do. As long as you give MS power by patronizing them, they're going to do whatever they can. The only way to break the cycle is to pull your support. But as long as so many people keep sending their money to Redmond, because they just *have* to be able to use their Windows apps, MS will keep pulling these shenanigans.
If I had a highly successful business making money hand over fist, and my customers complained about how poorly I treated them, but refused to stop buying from me, why would I bother improving? Where's the incentive?