"I'd put the Linux phenomenon really as threat No. 1."

--Steve Ballmer, 2001

Summary: A reminder to readers that Windows is going dark and GNU/Linux awaits as a potent substitute

WITH Vista 10 (see the relevant articles in our Wiki), contrary to promises from Microsoft, after the so-called 'upgrade' people start paying to be spied on. As [1] below shows, these hidden costs are phased in quite gradually but shockingly (at least to some) and privacy violations are only getting worse [2], as people inside Microsoft privately confirmed to us (some of them have even been experimenting with GNU/Linux and may be ready to defect). Windows won't be 'fixed'; it won't be -- as the slogan about Vista 7 used to say -- "my idea". It's all just Microsoft's and the NSA's ideas. Users have been rapidly turned into the products, just like in Facebook. They're the commodity being sold by the millions, in bulk, to spies and advertisers. That's Microsoft's vision of Windows.

"Inevitably, judging by the popularity of Android and Chrome OS (now outselling Windows laptops), people will probably use GNU/Linux anyway, almost anywhere."Anyone reading Techrights from home without a Free (libre) operating systems such as BSD or GNU/Linux would be wise to give a quick go to at least one of the several major distributions just released. The entire *buntu family was released about two weeks ago, but worth considering are also the two distributions which come in numerous 'flavours', as they got released just earlier this week. At this moment of time we can't recommend any of these in particular (for different reasons), but we hope our readers realise that Windows is only getting worse -- not better -- especially when it comes to digital rights. Inevitably, judging by the popularity of Android and Chrome OS (now outselling Windows laptops), people will probably use GNU/Linux anyway, almost anywhere. Moving to GNU/Linux these days is moving ahead of the curve. ⬆

Related/contextual items from the news:

1. Microsoft Didn’t Know You’d Take OneDrive's 'Unlimited' Storage This Far

   A year after its launch, Microsoft is making some changes to its OneDrive cloud storage plans—including eliminating the unlimited storage offered to Office 365 subscribers, because according to Microsoft, some people got greedy.
   
   In a post to the OneDrive blog, Microsoft wrote: “Since we started to roll out unlimited cloud storage to Office 365 consumer subscribers, a small number of users backed up numerous PCs and stored entire movie collections and DVR recordings. In some instances, this exceeded 75 TB per user or 14,000 times the average.”





2. Microsoft confirms Windows 10 is harvesting more data than ever

   MICROSOFT HAS ADMITTED that Windows 10 is collecting more data than any of its predecessors, and there's not much you can do about it.
   
   In an interview with PC World, Microsoft corporate vice president Joe Belfiore defended the collection of what the company refers to as "basic telemetry", explaining that it is a necessary part of improving Windows' functionality.
   
   Windows has always collected information like this. Every blue screen of death creates an error report which is uploaded to Microsoft. But so much more is collected now and, yes, this does mean that search terms that you enter into Windows as well as anonymous machine gibberish is going up to the cloud.