On Sun, 21 Feb 2016 09:09:36 -0700, Don Y
wrote:

On 2/21/2016 8:31 AM, Vic Smith wrote:
On Sun, 21 Feb 2016 07:47:47 -0700, Don Y
wrote:
I have no problem with Win10. I can't imagine the so-called "spying"
affecting me. You can easily make it "look like" Win7. So you don't
see any effect of it "spying."
I see zero ads. That's zip, zilch, nada ads.

Do they guarantee you won't see them in the future? Or, that they
won't gleefully share whatever they collect (odd that they are
so unwilling to share the details of that, eh?) with the spooks,
other marketeers?

I've heard *that* before.
No guarantee, but why would they commit suicide?

How is it suicide? If MS decides to charge you by the hour to run
your PC, what options do you have? Try to fish your old PC out
of the trash? Live with unmaintained OS? Learn a FOSS OS??
Even if they aren't the 800 pound gorilla they used to be, they
still are, pretty much, the only game in town! Even if you found a
manufacturer willing to build a machine that used *old*, existing
drivers, you wouldn't legally be able to acquire new (older OS)
licenses to run on that machine!

And, MS wouldn't be doing anything illegal *or* immoral (you pay for
minutes on your phone; aren't you paying or a service? isn't your
OS providing a service to you??)


Then why don't they do it? Why don't they charge by the hour?
Because they're benevolent? Because they're generous?
Why on earth don't they charge by the hour or minute of use?
You tell me. I say it would be suicide. Linux would then become
the main consumer operating system. Free.
And MS could no longer sell an OS to the masses, as it now does.

If I'm on-line, I assume the spooks and marketeers have plenty of
methods of "collecting" my habits without the aid of MS.
So what? I suppose I could distrust Comcast too.

I've a friend who claims he has nothing to hide.
I mentioned to him that his bank statements come in envelopes,
instead of on the back of postcards. And, I notice that he picks
them up off the table and "hides them away" before we sit down.
Hmmm... I wonder what he's HIDING??

I am overly sensitive to privacy issues as I see how easy it is
to play the big data game and generalize observed behaviors
("Hey, the 9/11 perps were *all* arabs so we should be suspicious
of arabs!")

In automating the house, I had to think hard about what data I
wanted to risk "leaking" to the outside world. Surely, no one
would care about BATHROOM HABITS! Or, how often the refrigerator
is opened. Or, how much laundry we do.

Or, would they?

Wanna bet that if it was easy for someone to collect this
data, they'd *find* a use for it? Just by running the "big numbers"
and seeing what unexpected patterns emerge! Wanna bet there's a
buttload of information to be had in telephone "metadata"?
No doubt more bang for buck (byte) than in actually listening
to all those calls!

"Gee, this phone only gets used twice a month and always on these
days for about 3 minutes. Isn't that unusual when compared to the
'norm' defined by these hundreds of millions of OTHER phones users??"


Did you ever get your walls painted with anti-RF paint?

snip

Probably an issue with how the OS handles memory in relation to the
app. I've run into that before.

More physical memory in the laptop than in the machine on which I normally
use the tool. Laptop hangs indefinitely. In my book, that's called
a bug. A bug that wasn't present in XP or W2KS. A bug that directly
interferes with my productivity (I have to restart the app -- after
killing it via task manager -- then recreate everything that *it*
lost since my last "backup")


I had an app (Ghost) that hung doing a simple directory look-up on a
machine after I added 8gb of memory. It never hung until I added the
8 gig. At first I thought it was a permanent hang, but found that it
took a full 2 minutes to resolve its answer. Every time.
I quit using it when I found a suitable replacement.

And, I want this behavior because it is offset by WHAT feature,
specifically? :

I'm also resistant to change when the ROI is wrong. But I've had no
issues with Win10. It so happened that I put together a new box when
Win10 came out.

I built an HTPC last month. Installed XP on it. Boots in 30 seconds
and has video available within 10 seconds after that. Would it
be any better with 7even? Or W10? Doubtful.


Well, my Win10 machine boots in 25 seconds. So there. (-:

I've got a LOT invested in software -- both in terms of license costs
and "experience". So, an OS *really* needs to show me that it can do something
THAT I WANT in a better/faster/more accurate/robust/reliable manner than
what I have already.

E.g., it takes me several days to reinstall (from scratch)
everything on *one* of my workstations. Then, a few more
days to install the tools for the *other* (different tools)


I never reinstall anything. Just recover an image.

snip

I have a shoebox of 80G drives in this desk -- one for each of my
machines. On it are images of the "system" for a particular
machine at different points in the installation process:
- after windows
- after drivers
- after updates
- after basic utilities (WinZIP, PowerToys, UltraISO, EMACS, etc.)
- after basic tools (Acrobat, Tbird, Ffox, etc.)
- after custom tools (whatever the workstation is intended to do)

Each image is compressed so takes very little space, compared to
the original; and, "empty space" doesn't need to be stored in the
image at all!

The real pigs are some of the tools that have huge "libraries".
E.g., my multimedia authoring station has ~250GB of "stuff"
that is useful in creating a MM presentation but takes a
really long time to reinstall.


Yes, that's a lot of data to install. But I would image it at today's
HD/SSD prices.