No war is lost. Average consumers are more privacy conscious then ever before. Some are very unconscious, and some are just technically challenged. With proper tools (strong encryption being one of them) and by not using Windows, you can be completely anonymous on the internet and make your data uncrackable. So, with that in mind, I wouldn't say any war is lost. A war being lost would mean that there was no technical way to safeguard your data.
In what way are this tread helpfull in this part of the forum? I am impressed on how many people here in this Windows 10 tread complain about windows
And look where Windows 8.x's market share is. Consumers drive the market, not the "embrace, extend and extinguish" company.
Tell that to all of the mobile users who have their privacy invaded by google and apple. MS is just copying what all the other companies are doing.
The way people like to look a gift horse in the mouth is highly revealing of human nature... Ho-hummm...."It's free, therefore it's a conspiracy!" "It's free, so it can't be any good!" "How dare they presume that I'd want targeted advertising--don't they know that I'm too dumb to use an ad-blocker, and so stupid that I routinely buy things I don't want/need because of browser ads I cannot resist?" Seriously, as to that last, how is Microsoft supposed to know you're that stupid?... Why is it that the armchair critics of Microsoft are so arrogant that they believe anyone who doesn't agree with them that Microsoft is rotten is ignorant? People sure have a lot of animus against a software company that has never done anything in its life to them except to commit the heinous crime of offering them a free x86 OS for life. Yea, sure, we should lynch 'em for that! And, gee, what's Microsoft doing here except following suit with Apple & Linux vendors who've been giving away their client OSes for years? The problem for the erstwhile Microsoft critic is that he cannot explain why it's A-OK for Microsoft's so-called competitors to do certain things, but it's not OK for Microsoft to do them. Ever. That's a truly thorny dilemma... FYI, there was a time when there was no IE and Netscape had 100% of the mainstream browser client & server business locked up tight. Yep, it wasn't Microsoft with the monopoly, it was Netscape long before... Enter Microsoft, with IE, the first mainstream competition to Netscape's browsers--and suddenly, Microsoft is this huge villain for daring to compete (according to Netscape.) IE took years to overtake & surpass Netscape in the market and the only reason that happened is because Netscape just flat gave up & stopped innovating after Communicator--and Jim Barksdale & company decided their time was better spent trying seduce Congress into destroying Microsoft than in trying to compete with IE. But, today, we know that was the wrong strategy precisely because Microsoft is thriving while Netscape is no more. Enter Chrome & Firefox to name a couple of successful competitors to IE to conclusively prove that Netscape and the DoJ were both horribly, tragically wrong in their attempts to tar & feather Microsoft. I like to think of it as poetic justice. It's something that should never happen to any company anywhere... Unless...of course...you'd rather have DoJ attorneys writing your software...! God help us....
You are a dishonest liar. You've made a differentiation without a difference. Emphasized the "over-collection" of the data while studiously ignoring what MS is doing to do with it. It's a stupid statement to make, and I don't think you are stupid. I think you are a dishonest liar. We can all imagine WHAT MS might do with that information, but you don't want to mention that infinite universe, because then the "down-side" of having "massive data collection" becomes more obvious. You tell only half-the truth, and pretend that the other truth doesn't exist, or isn't important. That's dishonest. You're dishonest. And a liar.
True Yen but there are better and other options in the current market to bring back some piece of mind example start educating yourself on a slew of other options within the Linux Community I get it its not all mouse clicks you have to do some work but Linux is where its at and where everyone is going, you will see more and more Linux Forums and accurate reports coming down the pipe in the very near future. (we don't have to analyze and go over again, the frog in boiling water over and over again)
You are also a dishonest liar, and making a mass appeal to the stupid. Telling half-truths and maligning the character of anyone that doesn't accept the social engineering. An infected USB thumb drive thrown down onto the pavement in the parking lot of a business is also a "gift horse" and your point here is that there's something wrong with anyone that would consider it stupid to insert it into their work computer. It's free, and anyone that looks at this free USB thumb drive critically is "crazy", "stupid", both or something else. None of that is true. You are just a dishonest liar. trying to infect other people with your lie.
It depends on their size, but MS has already been infiltrated from top to bottom by NSA. If I were to take a guess, I'd opine that using Apple products is a little bit of a safer bet but still unsafe. Although most news articles have stated that the new iPhone's encryption scheme is pretty strong. The FBI is complaining that they want access to the keys, so that says something. We can't say whether or not any version of Windows has backdoors in it because we can't view the source code. Microsoft has started open sourcing some of their software suites as of late, so maybe one day Windows' source code will be opened up. But I'm not holding my breath. If the source code to WIndows 10 were opened up, developers would be horrified to find out what it's actually doing.
Since you believe that, then you must also doubt the character of this Evil Corporation, as the history of Microsoft's theft of other people's intellectual property, their illegal business practices, and the special deal they made with the US Department of Justice (being willing to spy on americans in exchange for being allowed to continue as an illegal (under US law) monopoly. In short, you've just stated that their amoral character of their past is the same amoral character of their present. Who distributes malware and call it an Operating System? Evil Corporations with amoral characters.
I think they would be equally horrified at every OS since the internet became a thing. Does that mean we should all use linux? Remember that open source is a double edged sword. You can see what the OS is doing, but so can all the bad ppl. Do you believe that the NSA does not know how to exploit linux?
At least With Android you can root your phone and unlock the boot loader, and then install whatever you want with it. It's way safer because the source code is open for inspection. Sure, slip ups happen such as with OpenSSL, but now that project is getting mega funding. The same can't be said for Windows Phone. You are stuck with whatever bits MS gives you, and you can't really modify it much.
Linux Mint all the way Vladimar as you all ready know very easy if you want to learn and have some piece of mind. On Mint posting this message and all the possible goodies working better then any Windows OS (example M$ Office and every other required and useful app Just takes some time to educate yourself and knowing to get around there are 12 year olds like my daughter who knows to get apps running in 2 mins hands down
The more people use something, the more the govt will infiltrate and create weaknesses in the code for things that are open source.
It's not a binary dynamic. There's no either/or here, i.e. either you are a microsoft "fanboi" or a linux "fanboi". Fanbois are weird. They are the extremes, and in most cases, they're just extremely stupid. Most people don't care what the brand is, as long as they get good value. You describe the most extreme 2% of the Bell Curve as if that's all there is. Plus I don't believe there is such a thing as a microsoft "fanboi". No one loves microsoft. Microsoft pays people to say positive things about it and to try to obfuscate the conversation when the truth of the bad things are mentioned. There are no bona fide MS "fanbois" here, just superficial people getting paid to lie to people about the new malware Microsoft is calling an Operating System. If anonymous scary hackers from the Ukraine gave away software that modified a safe operating system to have this level of data collection and surveillance, everyone on the planet would be crystal clear that it's malware. The 98% of us that are not being paid by Microsoft understand that there is no difference between Microsoft infecting an Operating System, and anonymous "bad guys" infecting an Operating System. The only people that pretend to believe in a difference are people that are paid to pretend to believe in a difference.