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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: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday July 28 2016, @07:52AM
The Linux developers wouldn't be interested in ReactOS. The ones who should be interested should be the large corporations with stuff that still only works on Windows. They need to protect their investment. As such sponsoring ReactOS would help make Microsoft less likely to try an Itanium on them. At one point of time Intel was actually saying the future was Itanium (and charged early adopters a premium for it). However AMD came up with an x86 CPU that was 64 bit and so Intel couldn't pull that off. Seriously, the Itanium was actually to be the upgrade path: http://www.osnews.com/story/636/A_Titanic_Story_-_The_History_of_the_Itanium [osnews.com]
In my opinion the real reasons why Desktop Linux hasn't succeeded are: 1) marketing & polish, and 2) because their own developers keep sabotaging it whether knowingly or not.
1) Marketing, positioning and polish works. OS X gained far more share in a shorter space of time. Everyone knew that if they bought a Mac it was different (and thus Windows-only printers wouldn't work with them). AND it was good enough for most buyers to overlook the disadvantages and issues.
2) My proof of the "sabotage" is the major forks. If stuff was going so well there wouldn't have been those major forks. It's probably my imagination but every time Microsoft made a major misstep (Vista, Metro) it seemed like the Desktop Linux bunch would conveniently (for Microsoft) make their stuff even worse.
The idiots who say forking is good and creates choice are part of the problem. Having more crappy choices makes things worse, because it makes it harder to make the right choice. Apple made it easy to make the "right choice" for their market and they were rewarded for it. Even too many good options can be bad for a corporate environment - they just one good enough option. That way their helpdesk and support can go through a much simpler path to fix stuff.
The Linux idiots even consider breaking backward compatibility with hardware drivers a strength. How many hardware vendors are going to open source their drivers? It's not so simple since many of them don't own (or even understand ;) ) the entire thing. If they write it once for windows xp and it works 99.99% of the time, for the next 10+ years it works 99.99% of the time. They write it for Linux and every year or so a kernel update could break it.