You can just turn off location services on android. However, we also began with almost no privacy expectations on phones from the beginning of smartphones.
The difference here is that people using Windows in the past did have an expectation of privacy, which is no longer the case. Also, privacy is being retroactively removed.
At the end of the day, it is their product and they can do whatever they want with it. People are free to migrate away to Linux.
I'm not a big fan of google or Apple and I don't think the fact that other big companies rape your privacy justifies Microsoft raping your privacy.
The NSA is making sure no one gets too outraged. You're allowed to get a little upset about windows, seeing as no matter how mad people get, Windows will still be a huge part of tech infrastructure --it won't go away--, and it also placates the masses, it makes them feel like they're rising up and accomplishing something and that they're "right". In the end the NSA is going to spy on you whether you want it or not. There is no opt-out.
>I'm not a big fan of google or Apple and I don't think the fact that other big companies rape your privacy justifies Microsoft raping your privacy.
I agree with you. I just find it curious why tech forums like this one and others appear to go gung-ho whenever something negative is mentioned about MS/Windows but same or worse privacy violations by other companies in software that is very widely used don't seem to trigger the same reaction.
Forced to use Google's cloud? Chrome OS supports local network drives[1], third party cloud providers (like Dropbox), SD cards, USB drives, etc. Nobody is forcing you to store stuff on Google Drive instead of any of those others options.
Yes, your Chrome OS settings are backed up to Google's cloud, but you can always set an encryption passphrase separate from your Google password so that Google can't decrypt your settings.
It's very telling that you get a 3 year free Google Drive storage account with 1TB or so storage instead of more local storage on Chromebooks.
The terms of service allow them to mine all your documents etc. for keywords once it's in their cloud. Otherwise why would they sell Chromebooks at or below cost.
I've installed Elementary OS to my parents home computer and I never do anything on it, it seems easy enough to use even for people without any computer knowledge. There are way better Linux distributions now compared to what it was before.
Also compared to windows, I don't need to check that they installed some IncrediBar software which is changing the homepage all the time, this is much better for me. Also I don't know how to explain that but the i18n is incredible compared to Windows and it's much more translated even in system parts, there is no english words to scare away my parents. It just feels more pure in terms of translation.
Yes. Sometimes doing the right thing to protect your rights and the rights of others requires sacrifice. Freedom is not always free (as in beer).
As long as you insist that any potential alternative have the same features, you might as well give up. The incumbent can always create and market a new "feature" guaranteeing any alternative is always playing catch-up.
As time goes on, the lock-in increases and the cost of change becomes more expensive. Do you want to pay this cost now. or do you want to pay an even higher cost in the future after Microsoft - emboldened by the profits from selling user data to their "partners" - decides to make the spying even more invasive?
Do you even want to own a General Purpose Computer? You better make a decision quickly; when Intel's SGX instructions become widespread, it will be next to impossible to disable these "important security features".
I thought I was more or less following the development of PC hardware, but I never heard of this one, and it's not very new already. Wikipedia article [1] on the subject is surprisingly concise, and only quotes Intel homepage on the subject.
Do you have any pointers to independent discussion or analysis of this technology? As with all such new technologies, it might require more than just reading its name or manufacturer's description to understand its implications: like e.g. with Trusted Execution Technology, it takes some research to form an opinion: is it actually about me, the computer's user, or someone else who is going to trust this computer?
And I think that's the biggest issue is that Microsoft makes it pretty easy to disable them.
Most of these settings are all in the same place, right where you set up the OS.
In my opinion, none of them have to be off. I understand why they're being collected, and I don't mind that information being collected, and I like the things like the predictions as features.
But I do appreciate that they can be turned off. Another OS might just add those things but not make them something you could opt out of at all.
I mean, even Ubuntu went and sent all of your search data to Amazon by default for a while without any simple way to opt out of it, which to me is worse than Microsoft itself collecting Cortana data with the ability to turn the option off at install time.
But the thing about allowing people to choose to turn those features off (or even on) means that they're aware that they're there, while other people can just slip them in as a tiny line somewhere in the privacy policy and not allow you to configure those settings at all.
i clicked your HP link. (because the 76 ones are only desktop computers disguised as laptops, really)
then clicked the laptops link.
then clicked every single one of the models and clicked customize.
every single one of the options were Windows 7, 8, 10. Only.
did you manage to go from that page to any actual product you could just enter your credit card and receive with ubuntu?
PS: i should tell you that i'm not being pessimistic. just realistic. My current personal computer is an Asus eeepc-1000, from 2007 or so. the very first netbook with SSD that shipped with linux. i replaced the asus distro garbage with debian right away, but i got it with linux for the meaning of it.
> osX invented all this. MS is just catching up. and apple don't even allow you to disable things.
I was pretty sure that I had disabled all my Mac's and iPad's "phone home" behaviours. (Of course, technically, iPad and iPhone are iOS, not OS X.) There are certainly a lot of dials to twiddle, but I thought that I'd hit them all and had found a reasonable amount of privacy (at considerable expense of functionality). What are the non-disable-able features?
can't you search "osx phone home" if you're really interested?
even wired, which usually drink the apple cool aid, reported on it during Yosemite. though the app store reporting is mostly ignored by non geeks, so search deeper for that
I donated to the ReactOS Community Edition Kickstarter and I never got my password to their site to download it.
They need more developers and more money to get out of the alpha phase and into the beta phase.
In all honesty Linux + WINE runs more Windows apps than ReactOS currently does right now. Just get Play On Linux to help configure stuff: https://www.playonlinux.com/
If you don't want a Linux distro but want some alternative OS that is more finished that ReactOS try:
AROS is written to be API compatible with AmigaOS 3.X, got support from Amiga Inc and they even used parts of AROS source code for the latest AmigaOS. They even ported it to 68K Amigas with a new Kickstart ROM replacement.
Haiku and AROS won't run Windows programs, but you can run them in virtual machines and use the software that is available for them.
I am waiting for ReactOS Server where they bundle a SAMBA server, Web Server, Email Server, so it can be a free Windows Server clone and install on Virtual Machines so it has a lower memory footprint than Windows Server. But Microsoft has made Windows Server Core to run with less memory.
Fixed: Have a look at ReactOS, a free open source OS that ideally will be binary compatible to Windows if it attracts enough talented and interested developers and gets off the ground.
ReactOS is nowhere near usable as an everyday operating system; the site you linked to even says: ReactOS 0.3.17 is still in alpha stage, meaning it is not feature-complete and is recommended only for evaluation and testing purposes.
http://9to5google.com/2013/11/11/google-tracking-your-store-...
If you disable it, Google Now stops working.
Or with Chromebooks, where everything is forced to be stored in Google's cloud with very paltry storage like 32GB and 64GB even in high end Pixels.
I somehow don't see the outrage on HN about things like physical store visits being tracked by default on Android devices.