Windows 10 is officially a spyware and an adware

[VoodooMystic]

Thanks for the heads-up. I disabled the collection mostly thanks to you.

[florian]

Thanks for the heads-up. I disabled the collection mostly thanks to you.

The technology news blog Ghacks - founded 2005 - also provides information.

[milon]

Having literally just installed 10 Pro in a VM, I can assure you that if you don't use "Express Settings", you can turn all of that tracking stuff off. Now, whether or not it's actually 100% off is another question; also how protected those APIs are...

The "Express Settings" part only addresses 1 page of Privacy features, out of several (forget how many). And it doesn't turn them all down to the lowest setting either (no such thing as "off" really). You still have to go in and tweak it after install. And DO NOT sign in with a microsoft/live/outlook/hotmail account - that alone will block most of the stupid stuff like wifi sharing, etc.

[karlexceed]

DO NOT sign in with a microsoft/live/outlook/hotmail account

I figured that went without saying!

That said, that's one thing I wish Microsoft would do something about - If I've got a laptop joined to a domain, don't let the damned user take over the machine with their MSFT account!! My time as an IT tech should be better spent than pulling control back from Microsoft's silly need to have everyone ID'ed individually using their own credentials.

[dsp8195]

More "happy" news:

http://imgur.com/gallery/8OJ4t? - Windows 10 is going to invalidate your license if you'll do any changes to the hardware and will force you to buy entirely new license.

http://www.myce.com/news/76883/ - Microsoft is going to apply invasive updates that will render potentially pirated software, games and Chinese hardware clones non-functional.

[EmuandCo]

http://pxc-coding.com/de/portfolio/donotspy10/

Who still knows XPAntiSpy? ^^

[florian]

http://pxc-coding.com/de/portfolio/donotspy10/

Who still knows XPAntiSpy? ^^

Unfortunately neither XPAntiSpy nor Xpy (includig former Vispa) have been updated to Win 10.
Thank you for yor link to DoNotSpy10!

[Z98]

Major hardware changes have always required reactivation. In most such cases you just call Microsoft support and they reactivate for you after you explain what you did. Inconvenient, but they are not attempting to be outright asses, they're a business and they're trying to make sure that you're not trying to cheat them by reusing your singular license on multiple systems, a license you agree to if you buy any version of Windows save Enterprise. Conversely with the OEM license you're only supposed to be able to use it for one system and can't move it off, that's why it's cheaper. Europe has slightly different rules regarding the OEM license due to court precedent, but that's not the case in the US.

Bottom line, criticize Microsoft for its actual problems, but don't try to demonize them just because they don't do what YOU want.

[dsp8195]

Dear Z98, if the company does not abide its customers' wishes, sooner or later it will get kicked off the market. If the company tries to enslave its userbase, it will eventually get shut down (both literally and figuratively speaking). It's impossible to "demonize" devil nor justify what he's doing. If Microsoft wants to bury itself alive - let it go, don't be its advocate. This thread was started as a mere digest of controversial and outright unwanted changes that were brought under Windows 10 "brand", and I hope people who will read it get informed enough to make their own choice.

[Konata]

This all reminds me of how mad everyone was when IE 4 was included with Windows 98. I'm really used to people nitpicking new versions of Windows.
I'd just like to remind everyone that OS X, iOS, Android, and Ubuntu (Unity Desktop) all have these super scary spying features, and you can't turn them off. I feel like this is an example of "it's easier to say sorry than to ask for permission". Microsoft goes though the trouble of actually letting you turn off these spying features, but the simple fact that they let you know about them by asking for them is apparently their real sin here.
I will say the forced updates are annoying though. I might deactivate the update service because of that. It's not the end of the world though, I'll just turn it back on when I want to update. Apparently I'm the only person who knows how to do that.

[Z98]

It's impossible to "demonize" devil nor justify what he's doing.

That you would regard Microsoft as a 'devil' is from my perspective more than a little problematic. To undercut Microsoft requires the ability to objectively separate out the good bits it has done from the bad. If your mentality has already cast Microsoft in such a light, we and the other developers would have more than a little trouble trusting the technical merits of what you claim are bad parts about the NT6 series because, ultimately the NT architecture is Microsoft's creation. Don't mistake me, there are problems with Windows 10, but under the hood it comes with many impressive improvements. If you cannot see that, if your focus is solely on what you dislike about it, then your ability to productively take part in a discussion about the future of ReactOS, which will eventually have to retarget to NT6, becomes constrained, because kneejerk objections to adopting NT6 are not going to find any traction amongst the developers.

Moving this to off topic. It has little to do with ReactOS itself.

[erkinalp]

No mandatory update in ReactOS please.

[dsp8195]

Z98, since you've moved this to off-topic, I'll be as straight as possible - if you'll mix a barrel of strawberry jam with a bucket of sh*t, you'll get a barrel of sh*t.

The Microsoft which created NT 5.x and the Microsoft which turned it into NT 6.x are in fact not the same companies. While the brand has retained, none of the key people are still there, and the goals are entirely different. NT 5.x was made by software engineers. NT 6.x in most of its part was fabricated by CEOs and marketers. As an example I've experienced firsthand - I've spent some time learning differences between DirectX9 and DirectX11 SDK. Changes for the sake of changes is all I can see:

This is how the diffuse texture was set in dx9:

Code: Select all

     g_EffectList[k].Effect->SetTexture("diffuse", tex);

And this is how the code transformed when it moved to dx11:

Code: Select all

     ID3DX11EffectShaderResourceVariable     *shadertexture=NULL;
     ID3DX11EffectVariable     *param=NULL;
     param=g_EffectList[k].Effect->GetVariableByName(st.ParameterName);
     if (param)
     {
          shadertexture=param->AsShaderResource();
          if (shadertexture)
          {
               hr=S_OK;
               ID3D11ShaderResourceView     *tex=(ID3D11ShaderResourceView*)st.Texture;
               hr=shadertexture->SetResource((ID3D11ShaderResourceView*)tex);
          }
     }

Can you feel the difference? CAN YOU FEEL IT?

There's nothing wrong with targeting NT6's "under the hood" improvements, but please keep all the sh*t out. This includes the mandatory symlinks (which made NT6 impossible to install on FAT32/exFat or easy data backup with simple file copying), insane WinSxS, mandatory run-as-admin for every damn application, mandatory interface changes and sleep-instead-of-shutdown mechanism - all of them are causing more problems than everything. See how the word "mandatory" is placed there several times in a row?

[erkinalp]

Can you feel the difference? CAN YOU FEEL IT?
There's nothing wrong with targeting NT6's "under the hood" improvements, but please keep all the sh*t out. This includes the mandatory symlinks (which made NT6 impossible to install on FAT32/exFat or easy data backup with simple file copying), insane WinSxS, mandatory run-as-admin for every damn application, mandatory interface changes and sleep-instead-of-shutdown mechanism - all of them are causing more problems than everything. See how the word "mandatory" is placed there several times in a row?

It is not symlink, it is hard link. I confirmed it using a shell extension which makes FS-level links visible within Explorer. You can technically install Windows 6+ in a FS which does not support hard links, Windows will work correctly in these setups if you disable Windows SxS assembly functionality, it is the Windows installer (both OS setup and MSI thing) which limits you to NTFS.

[Konata]

I'm not particularly intimate with the Windows API, but I'd just like to chirp in here and say 1. The DirectX API is not the Windows API and is not run by the same team at Microsoft that takes care of the kernel and 2. The ROS wiki recommends Windows Internals 5th Edition which is written about Windows NT 6.0 AKA Windows Vista, so the devs are probably already well aware of whatever changes happened between NT 5 and NT 6. I'm also pretty sure ReactOS has a few NT 6 APIs or something or other, I don't know for sure, I just know the devs aren't completely ignoring post-NT 5 versions.

Also Dave Cutler is still at Microsoft. Don't know what he's in charge of, but he's still there.