Windows 10 Release

Thu Jul 30 03:49:35 UTC 2015

> >> http://www.metzdowd.com/pipermail/cryptography/2015-July/026136.html
> > 
> > Which appears to be about 25% crap, 30% FUD, and the remainder consists
> > of concerns of varying levels of validity.
> 
> really?  read the legal fine print
> 
> https://edri.org/microsofts-new-small-print-how-your-personal-data-abused/

Again, a lot of crap and FUD mixed in there.  It's legalese designed to
cover their arses, because they default the options to "On" and assume
most people will take the default.  You CAN shut off the sharing.  The
legalese doesn't mean that the information is shared despite the fact
that you configured your box not to share it.

The real problem is that so many people have outsourced their problems
to ${THE_CLOUD} that those of us who run our own services are now in 
the tiny minority.  I'm disappointed (but hardly shocked) to discover
that Microsoft doesn't support arbitratry CalDAV or CardDAV services
with their built-in apps, for example.

I realize I'm probably in another minority here, but as a Windows-hater,
I nevertheless find that there's a bunch of stuff I need to do that only
really works on Windows.  What I really want is an up-to-date version
of Windows 98 or maybe XP.  I don't need all the Microsoft-added cruft
for other things.  I don't use their e-mail, or their calendar, or their
contacts, or their web browser (usually).  Or pretty much any Metro app.
I understand why a lot of that crap is there, especially as they now
need to try to make Win10 workable and usable on multiple device types,
so I don't mind that they added it, and I understand that using any of
that crap could mean that ${MICROSOFT_CLOUD} gets involved.  Doesn't 
mean you have to use it!  Windows 10 turns out to be fairly useful once
you take a hatchet to it and bludgeon out all the stuff obviously 
intended for the average home user or the average phone user that is
just supposed to "magically work."

The legal fine print for most software is atrocious these days.  This
isn't shocking, sadly.  I can find egregious crap in lots of license
agreements and privacy statements out there.  

You don't actually *HAVE* to use a Microsoft Account to sign into
Windows 10.  If you DO sign in using a Microsoft Account, you're going
to be hooking your Windows box up to a bunch of cloud services that
you might not want or need.  For many people, this may actually be the
right choice, because how else do you sync things between your desktop,
your laptop, your tablet, and your Windows phone?  That carries with it
a lot of benefits for the average non-techie user, but is a privacy 
issue as well.  If you do that and then don't use any of their apps,
because maybe you browse the web with Chrome and you're heavily invested
in Google or Yahoo for mail, contacts, and calendar, you're still not
sharing the data ... with Microsoft.  But that data's still out there
in someone's "cloud".

I could be very cynical (and yet probably come frighteningly close to
the mark) by noting that Microsoft is following in Google's footsteps
in amassing a wealth of data about users by providing these add-on
cloud services to users, and that the users are slowly becoming the
product instead of being the customer, which makes it even more 
attractive to do the sorts of data collection and mining pioneered by
some of those other companies.

Yet none of this commits you.  You don't have to share information.
You don't have to use a Microsoft Account.  You don't have to use any
of their programs or apps that would share data.  Screw them.

So, again, I say, the quoted article contains about 25% crap, 30% FUD,
and the remainder consists of concerns of varying levels of validity.
This isn't the apocalypse.  People have willingly been exchanging 
their privacy for free services on the Internet for many years.  Those
of us who prefer not to rely on those services are also able to navigate
that maze.

... JG
-- 
Joe Greco - sol.net Network Services - Milwaukee, WI - http://www.sol.net
"We call it the 'one bite at the apple' rule. Give me one chance [and] then I
won't contact you again." - Direct Marketing Ass'n position on e-mail spam(CNN)
With 24 million small businesses in the US alone, that's way too many apples.