[batou]

Absolutely no one wanted it. No one asked for it.

We were spun a load of marketing disguised as listening and attention. This turned out to be exactly what Microsoft wanted which was another aggressive move against customers both business and consumer. Despite all this the noise and confusion and dubious love for the products is shining out of the arses of every non technical news source.

What did we expect?

I've left the party now. Closed my MS accounts, cancelled MSDN and AP subs, rolled out CentOS 7 on my laptop and have moved the remaining windows dependencies I have to a VM. If you don't like it, now is the time to make it known.

This is after using MS products since about 1993. No more loyalty or milking.

The software industry is moving away from the model of servitude to a vendor. Good riddance.

[x5n1]

Now if can only do the same with Google and Android, we'd be all set. Why does Google get a get out of jail for free card in this? Android is like the spying on everything you do operating system. Your location, your voice, your pictures, your passwords, I mean fuck... There is nothing Android doesn't know about you that it doesn't share with Google and on request the US government.

[batou]

Google are just as bad. I've moved to a dumbphone and an IMAP mailbox at an independent company. I tried Android but that was pretty much impossible to keep control of (Moto G 2, Android 5.0)

[rhaps0dy]

I want a Jolla. Sailfish is probably better in this respect (or at least the company is smaller).

That said, all that data harvested and used to customize the interface for you is indeed convenient.

[batou]

I'm using Nokia 106. Calls. Texts. Nothing else. I turn it off at 6pm and on at 9am.

Doesn't have data, GPS, Bluetooth or WiFi so that's not a problem. The best it gives is rough triangulation data from cell towers but I can leave it at home and do nefarious things to my own heart's content if I so desire (not that I intend to).

[scholia]

Also makes decent voice calls, which seems to be more than most smartphones can manage ;-)

PS Are you sure it doesn't have Bluetooth?

[batou]

Yes. It's as dumb as a 3310.

[briandear]

Are you really this paranoid? You must be loads of fun at parties. It's interesting though because your British government is tracking your phone, your texts and watching you as you traverse London on CCTV. But luckily Microsoft doesn't know about your affinity for Yorkshire Terriers and love of Bass Ale.

Don't get me wrong, I value privacy, but all things in moderation, including paranoia. I personally don't think most peopke's lives are that controversial to be so concerned about their privacy that they'll avoid the grid altogether lest some lewd fact trickle out amongs the billions of other lewd facts trickling out about everyone.

[batou]

I spent a number of years working for nefarious defence contractors so the paranoia is somewhat justified. My paranoia is clearly required as I've been responsible for the security architecture at a number of financial companies and have a lot of experience dealing with both the human and technology aspects of data.

Safety in numbers is only valid if it's difficult to discern facts from the flock. But it's not. The technology logs and correlates specific data for fast retrieval rather than collecting noise and then discerning the signal later on.

Oh and I'd never drink Bass; maybe an Abbots or two ;)

[ionised]

> I personally don't think most peopke's lives are that controversial to be so concerned about their privacy that they'll avoid the grid altogether lest some lewd fact trickle out amongs the billions of other lewd facts trickling out about everyone.

This sounds suspiciously like 'nothing to hide nothing to fear'.

I don't think batou is being overly paranoid at all. Especially not with the last year or more of news.

If anything, this is massive tech company overreach on the part of Microsoft, Apple and especially Google and Facebook.

More protection in law is what is needed, not for people to suck it up and accept it.

[vetinari]

> Your location, your voice, your pictures, your passwords,

However, it will ask you first about that. And it is not actually Android, it is Google Play Services. For snitching your pictures, you have to download an extra app by yourself.

If you don't like that and you don't want to say 'no' when asked, use Cyanogen without Gapps. That way, you'll get non-spying vanilla Android. (That means without Play Store too).

[ackalker]

To add: you can use software like Raccoon: http://www.onyxbits.de/raccoon

Use it with a throwaway Google account to download apps from the Play Store, then use adb to install them on your device. This works fine for apps which don't rely on specific Google libraries or services being installed on your device.

[Qwertious]

Why does Google get a GOoJF card? Well, they don't.

I'm going to ditch Android for a free-er OS when I have the money, although if possible I want to get a [Fairphone](https://www.fairphone.com/) (tl;dr 1. no shady business practices/exploitation, 2. modular with replaceable parts (bonus points for having an integrated protective case), 3. Fairphone V2 will be 100% Free Software (or at least, the firmware/drivers will be), 4. costs $800 as a result).

I'm actually really interested in seeing the Fairphone be a thing.

[e12e]

It's a little better if your device can run Cyanogen. Not great, but a little better.

I'm hopeful that Firefox OS and perhaps Ubuntu/Full GNU/Linux on phones will help. Canonical hasn't got a perfect record when it comes to privacy or openness -- but if they manage to invest the resource to develop a truly open stack that works on real hardware, I expect people to make other distributions that do pretty much whatever one wants.

[ManFromUranus]

You were always free to not use new MS operating systems. Nobody forced you to make any MS accounts or use Window 8,10 or whatever, so if you installed Windows 8 and didn't like it, that doesn't make MS evil, just don't use it. Anyone who inclined to use CentOS as their daily driver probably was never going to like MS OS's anyway. You probably only ever installed it just to find out what you hate about it.

[batou]

I'm actually not free to not use it. I have to test our product on these systems and therefore I will need at least a virtual machine instance of it. I have no option not to use a Microsoft account because the majority of the functionality has shifted to behind the privacy wall.

Actually I installed it to test our desktop windows product against it as well as our web application in Edge.

This was a decider for us: do we move it to Windows Runtime or move it to Qt/JavaFX, to the web or something else?

We're evaluating Qt and JavaFX going forwards.

As I said I've been using Windows since 1993 as my primary operating system. I've used Unix (Solaris, HPUX, Linux, FreeBSD, OpenBSD) over the years but never in a desktop capacity.

Also one of our clients, a big financial company has rolled out RHEL6 as a desktop platform instead of windows 8/10. They are not trend-setters either.

[FireBeyond]

That's pretty specious. Your work requires you to use it. So presumably you'll only be testing on your VM instance. And if you are using at work, then use the Enterprise version, which doesn't use a Microsoft account whatsoever. And lets you control all of these privacy concerns, including telemetry.

You bitching that your job requires you to test a product against Windows in a VM is not the same as Microsoft holding you personally hostage to give up all your personal information, however you try to spin it.

[batou]

I assure you this is not specious.

We have to test against the lowest common denominator so we're not using Enterprise or VL for this nor are the machines domain members.

The privacy policy changes violate our network AUP, security policy and compliance with a number of regulations. We handle confidential financial, insurance and medical data.

That's where the catch-22 is. There is no possiblity for us to use this and remain in compliance.

Not only that, every version of windows since 8 has called home. There is a lot of traffic outgoing from our network we block from machines. And that is with a heavily locked down GPO and custom WIM deployment.

[bittercynic]

The argument "Don't use it if you don't like it." certainly applies to many things, but when a company gets to the scale of Microsoft, Google, Apple, etc, the context is not the same. It seems reasonable to hold these behemoths to a higher standard than scrappy startups.

[mondoshawan]

This argument is specious at best. We must hold all parties involved to the same level of standard as any, at all levels because a breach of trust at any size is seriously damaging to the consumer. It doesn't matter about the size of the Corp.

[wpietri]

It does matter for a couple of reasons.

One is having approximately equivalent alternatives. If something is wrong with a particular kind of chewing gum, I can easily switch to the next brand over. But when that's not the case, standards should be higher, because normal market forces no longer constrain players in the same way.

The other is the size of the potential impact. If one corner-store merchant keeps their credit card receipts in a box under the counter, it's a much smaller problem than, say, Target or Home Depot keeping them in a poorly secured network.

[saint_fiasco]

I think it matters, if only because it's more efficient to complain about the big corporations that everyone is familiar with than about some unknown startup few people care about.

If you only have limited time and energy for activism, you have to go for the bigger targets (to make it easy to collaborate with other activists) or go for the most local targets (because you may have a comparative advantage).

[anon4]

Imagine if we could bring them to court over bundling malicious software with their OS and not giving the user a choice.

[Silhouette]

You were always free to not use new MS operating systems.

Are you also free not to have your private information (personal data, trade secrets, whatever it might be) given to Microsoft by others you interact with who do use Microsoft's new operating systems?

[cm2187]

I am hearing the "if you don't like it don't use it" loud and clear. I did that for Windows 8. Looks like I will do that again.

[sliverstorm]

I don't know about no-one. I have three laptops, one desktop, one media PC, one server, one tablet, and one phone. The cloud movement has been helpful to say the least.

Obviously I don't speak for everyone, but I think "no one wanted it" is a stretch.

[batou]

No one wanted this implementation. There are plenty of ways of solving exactly the problems without the amorphous concept of the cloud without introducing any burden on the user.

I have a 3 desktops, 2 laptops, a NAS and 2 servers and have solved the problems transparently without any cloud services.

[dlp211]

Yes you did, you just did it at a personal level. Most consumers are not that tech-savvy. Windows may not be for you, but it is for the masses.

[jsz0]

> Absolutely no one wanted it. No one asked for it.

How so? Billions of people choose to pay for services/software with their privacy these days. Microsoft isn't to blame for that. If anything they were really late to the party

[batou]

I think that's not true. They do not consider their privacy nor understand the consequences.