I’m really hoping this shit is banned on all government and corporate computers. But, with how poor IT competence is…such a ban will be sporadic at best.
A couple years ago it wasn’t thoroughly and transparently sucking off every bit of personal data it could get, and gearing up to put adds on the desktop on top of that.
Seems the consensus is that telemetry started with Win7, but I swear I remember privacy people freaking out about Win95 or 98 sending system specs or something back with out telling the user. It’s been a slow boil for a long time.
Yeah I think 7 was when it was a big blip on the radar. But 100% they had to start laying that foundation beforehand, so I wouldn’t be surprised if it was either always there or started making its way in 98.
95 was relatively groundbreaking and a part of me thinks the PC was so new they hadn’t thought of it yet or if it was even possible given the nature of internet, but you can’t put anything past the marketing guys that would probably love to know what colour your shit is.
From what I remember from that time it wasn’t really a lot of people going on about privacy at that time. We were more concerned with how they just grabbed the BSD networking stack without saying anything about it.
There were a few things w/rt activation that people were pissed about. That was more towards the XP era though.
Though maybe someone else remembers it differently than I do since I wasn’t paying attention to privacy at that point and I don’t remember seeing anything about it in PCMAG or G4
I vaguely remember something from TechTV or Slashdot. Searches only turn up more recent discussions though. The old stories are getting buried by the more recent shit going on.
I remember when Windows 10 first came around, and people were trying to bring attention to the privacy issues in the TOS. Now it’s been widely adopted just about everywhere, and this is probably going to be the same.
I’ve always trusted them to do what they’re great at… which is get a product nearly 100% perfect, then back it up about 20%, and polish it off by shooting themselves in the foot.
Which I’ve always found it insane that EVERY product they ship is like that. The only exceptions (IMHO) to that were Office, DOS5, Win7, (Maybe XP)
I think that the article does a good job highlighting how much of a trainwreck this is, because Microsoft is not to be trusted. The Windows users hysterically complaining about this are not expecting Microsoft to behave in some outrageous way; they’re expecting Microsoft to behave as usual.
I see no broken backs here. People have been composing songs about Bill Gates being a faggot (I’m not homophobic, that was just the climate back then) since he entered the general conscience. Microsoft being both clumsy and criminal has been the butt of too many jokes since Windows 95 at least.
I’m too young to remember anything older than 98SE, but I remember that when XP came out, people were complaining that it’s slow ugly shit as compared to 2K, and it felt that if MS doesn’t change the general direction, people will remain on older stuff or move to alternatives, Vista was hated so badly that everybody suddenly forgot the hate for XP, 7 was first advertised as something sky cool and impossible, then turned out to be kinda mundane, but usable. Actually with every Windows OS new brand there’s an outrage. With every MS big news there’s an outrage. They always deliver the opportunity.
TL;DR - Hoping that MS will kill itself is stupid.
The thing is, during the 95/98/ME/XP/Vista days Microsoft had less competition in the consumer computing space, smart phones weren’t really a thing, and a PC was “the” way to get online. Nowadays everyone and their dog has an iPhone or Android device instead, and ever dwindling numbers of people even bother to have a PC anymore. So in modern times, there is a nonzero possibility that on a consumer level at least, Microsoft might finally slide into irrelevance. That’s not to say they’ll go out of business anytime soon, but they might not be able to remain the Microsoft we’ve known so far for too many more years.
Nerds use Linux. A lot of people who want to buy an off the shelf computer that “just works” buys a Mac. And everyone else just uses their phone for everything.
Microsoft doesn’t actually do anything (except make the XBox, I guess) that non-corporate users give a shit about except “make computer machine go” and “stupid subscription ribbon bar program I need to use to open files work sends me.”
This is why M$ has been so gung-ho about their path to enshittification in recent years, I’m sure. This is a profitability thing. They see the writing on the wall that just selling operating system and office suite licenses to rubes is not going to remain a profitable business model much longer. Instead, they have to scrape and datamine and sell adds and push subscriptions and all the rest of it for alternative recurring revenue, because no member of the public will willingly pay for a Windows license anymore. I sure as hell won’t… If I need Windows, I’ll pirate it. And there’s no way they are shifting as many OEM licenses as they were in the early 2000’s. People aren’t buying computers like that anymore.
They make their money in azure now. AzureAD, cloud services, intune (managing win/mac/android even Linux). Windows and office are just hobby projects compared to the revenue those generate.
For those of you that don’t know about this OS and are tired of Microsoft’s bullshit, you can look into supporting ReactOS as a true Windows alternative which needs it, and you feel you want to give the middle finger to Copilot, Copilot+ PC initiative, and Windows Recall. It can even be made to look like you have went back in time to the Windows XP era with the use of a theme and yet its not Windows, and could run things that you could already run in Windows 10. If even says you can fork it on Github, meaning you could choose to labor for months using it and Linux Technology to build a better OS to replace Windows using it and Linux Technology. And if you already going going FOSS by using Libra Office instead of Microsoft Office, LibraWolf instead of Firefox, and are currently looking to FOSS for your paint program and other things you use, why not look into going FOSS with your OS as well.
Yeah this. Fed up with sensationalist headlines that are far from reality. Us Lemmy users have a better understanding of what’s going on but we shouldn’t be falling for this journalism as it’s nonsense.
Sweet! I was just being funny with my GIF, but I do honestly love the OS ecosystem, and think that everyone will like it more than Windows if only they’d give it the proper opportunity.
Im running a manjaro+openbox disto called MABOX linux on my chromebook. It’s fantastic for the low spec nonsense machine. But def considering fedora for the surface. Its come a long way apparently.
I’m actually having issues with fedora silverblue not updating. It’s pretty frustrating, but a risk I knew going into immutable. I don’t have time right now to figure out a fix. Regardless, I would totally do fedora again and recommend it to nonbeginners. It’s an awesome variant, even coming into it from debian-based distros with only cursory knowledge of dnf.
Ok, I’m gonna be perfectly honest, Microsoft recall, copilot, hello… I don’t know what any of these things are. And I’m pretty sure I like it that way.
I do use Windows every day, (windows 10 and 7), but I haven’t heard any reason to ever upgrade from these. All these “services” do not seem like a “value add” to me.
Recall is a proposed feature that would screenshot the Windows screen periodically, OCR the screenshots and store the results. Ostensibly supposed to be a “remember things you did” feature for the user but suspected to be a data collection tool for Microsoft to train its AI systems. Security researchers have also warned that it puts users at significant risk if their computers are breached by malware.
Copilot started as a programming AI tool which used open source software off the popular development site GitHub as training for its AI and as source of code samples. It’s already caused Microsoft to be sued because it offers code verbatim to users without mentioning or obeying its licensing. Nowadays Microsoft is expanding the Copilot brand to include other kinds of AI assistance, for example one that helps you write emails in Outlook etc.
Hello is an authentication method for Microsoft accounts using biometrics and TPM chips.
What about the right to be forgotten? Where is that feature? Why isn’t Microsoft making and marketing a version of Windows with something like “Windows Forget”?
I’ll tell you why: no opportunity to double dip by collecting and selling your personal data.
So someone looking to buy a new machine has a few options. They have MacOS, Windows, Chromebook, or Linux. And there’s a high probability that when they’re at a shop be it online or in person looking for a Linux machine it’s probably going to be Ubuntu.
You don’t get to tell the user, “well you picked the wrong distro, lol” when all they wanted was something that runs the software and hardware they want. The vast majority of users want something that just works, not have to become some expert.
And also, it’s rather dismissive, I show an example of Linux doing the same thing that Apple and Microsoft do… Ubuntu is still Linux.
Users have the right to choose the Linux distribution that best suits their needs. Different Linux distributions offer different features and user experiences. To downplay these differences and claim that all distributions are the same is ignorant. Anyone who wants to get the most out of Linux should be aware of the wealth of options available.
It’s like buying shoes - if someone says they’re too tight, you can say, “You picked the wrong size, lol.” Each pair of shoes is different in many ways.
So, if you can’t understand that different Linux distributions provide different experiences, it’s better for you to stick with Windows, which offers a uniform experience, and not argue about it.
To downplay these differences and claim that all distributions are the same is ignorant. Anyone who wants to get the most out of Linux should be aware of the wealth of options available.
That’s the definition of not being user friendly. And it’s not like shoes. Because trying on a pair of shoes takes minutes, at a store that generally has hundreds of shoes available. And shoes literally do one thing. Your average user does not have nor want to spend nights and weekends troubleshooting the distro they’re ‘trying out’ to see if it works best, then to continue troubleshooting it down the road.
But I do like how you ignored a lot of what of what I said, because it didn’t fit your response. Because unlike you apparently, I think of people besides myself. You also make wild assumptions about me. Should I show you my RHEL installation? CentOS? My Debian servers… I have dedicated hardware and VMs. And I also run Windows. Do I get to have an argument now… do I pass your weird gatekeeping threshold?
And that’s still not addressing the circle jerk where far to many people put linux on some pedestal, worship it, and assume their better than everyone because “btw, I use arch”. Like every distro isn’t going to try to milk as much money out of it as they can if they think they can get away with it. Ubuntu is the most approachable distro (that I’m aware of) and often gets suggested, especially to new uses. Linux is not immune to the problems that plague MacOS or Windows.
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