The "no place to hide" (therefore, might as well give up!) propaganda

Credit/Source: The Register

Summary: How Microsoft propagandists are spinning Microsoft's gross and potentially illegal privacy violations as a reason to 'upgrade' to Vista 10

WE ARE a little baffled to see a whole bunch of 'news' stories about Vista 10-esque surveillance being silently/covertly expanded to Vista 7 and Vista 8 through Windows Update. This is not news. It was noted in Techrights last week and also nearly a month ago. What took the corporate media so long to notice reports of these serious privacy violations which may actually be a violation of Microsoft's EULA (hence susceptibility to legal action) and also render these operating systems inadequate (or illegal) for some firms to use, without any prior warning from Microsoft? China has banned Vista 8 or later (in government at least), but not Vista 7. Microsoft has essentially changed the behaviour of Vista 7 for more data harvesting, making the transition to GNU/Linux more urgent if not imperative. This could potentially lead to lawsuits, too.

“Windows 10 is a deliciously good operating system...”
      --Microsoft propagandistMicrosoft Peter wrote about this (joining the spin), as did IDG's Microsoft apologist (after a lot of Vista 10 promotion). He wrote in an excessively promotional fashion about this. Here is his opening: "Windows 10 is a deliciously good operating system, all things considered, but its abundant user-tracking has prompted many privacy-minded individuals to stay pat with older versions of Windows. Now, Microsoft’s providing those concerned individuals a reason to upgrade."

What?

So because Microsoft is infringing the privacy of all users now (not just Vista 10) they are urged to upgrade? Where does this spin even come from? Is this like the latest memo to come out from Redmond? It's gross beyond belief. It's similar to the previous spin from Microsoft boosters, who insisted that "privacy is dead" anyway (or something along those lines), hence Vista 10 is grand, inevitable, even a trailblazer.

The Microsoft propaganda regarding surveillance was covered here last night, laying much of the blame on Microsoft's Bot (Ed Bott). This is probably (at least partly) coordinated by Microsoft's villainous PR agencies. They study what the public wants to hear and then make up some lies (or at best spin) to fulfill expectations. That's their job. There is also a lot of AstroTurfing involved, not to mention the occasional bribery (they got caught).

Andrew Orlowski wrote about this Vista 10-esque antifeature 'expansion' to predecessors and he, for a change, was not spinning it like the Microsoft crowd does right now (in fact, he keeps mocking Microsoft for its hypocritical lobbying against Google).

This whole opportunistic spin (as described above) is utterly shameless and editors ought to be checking if the so-called journalists whom they hired are just Microsoft propagandists, serving more like moles for Microsoft, not reporters. Maybe they don't even mind as long as Microsoft buys advertising space from them (the budget grew around the time of the release of Vista 10). Maybe such 'writers' are merely a reward or a bonus to Microsoft. It's like advertising (sometimes with detailed marketing-like slideshows) in the "content" sections.

Earlier today Jamie Watson asked: "don't write and ask me what I think about Windows 10. I don't use it" (but installed on a multi-boot machine).

We are meanwhile seeing the corporate media quoting Microsoft's claims about number of Vista 10 users as fact, despite Microsoft's long history of making up numbers, lying, changing definitions to fit some propaganda, etc. A lot of so-called Vista 10 'users' don't even use it anymore. Some never boot into it. Some tested it as a virtual machine under another system. And so on...

Proprietary (i.e. secret) methods of measuring usage of proprietary software are about as accurate and honest as Microsoft's characterisations of Free software and GNU/Linux. ⬆

"There’s no company called Linux, there’s barely a Linux road map. Yet Linux sort of springs organically from the earth. And it had, you know, the characteristics of communism that people love so very, very much about it. That is, it’s free."

--Steve Ballmer

Wait, Steve, don't you guys say Vista 10 too is "free"? Like in communism?