Let's say I'm a politician at a restaurant. I just want to eat. But even without opening the menu, you've had the chef call every person in town to let them know you're here.
It's just, gross.
It's just, gross.
It's more like the politician goes to a huge public event with livestreaming and everyone filming everything and then obviously everyone knows.
I am not defending Microsoft. I just don't get why people would use software they don't like or even trust.
A better analogy would be this:
let's say I'm a politician at a restaurant. I just want to eat. But, without even opening the menu, the waiter needs to know that I'm there so they can bring the menu to me and greet me. They also bring water in case I am thirsty right now.
BY FAR (if not entirely) this is what Windows does. Do you need updates? Are you an Autopilot machine used in the enterprise? Do any of your installed applications need updates from the Windows Store?
These are all normal things, but people who don't understand how Windows handles these things consider them all spyware. None of them seem to be aware that you can install a telemetry viewer application and see everything sent to Microsoft from your PC if you're so concerned with what is being collected. You can also, from that application, delete the stuff Microsoft has collected about you from that machine. They go straight to "oh I can get views if I complain about Microsoft and sound very offended by it!" So, that's what they do.
It's just annoying.
I set up a VM and installed Windows 11 Home on it and captured all traffic after initial setup and a reboot. I saw nothing going to any non-microsoft domain.
when I boot up a Win11 Home VM and capture all traffic, I don't see any traffic to that host at all, so I can't tell you where that comes from.
However, your statement is not correct. It's true that most system diagnostics / telemetry flow through this application; however, that's only one part of the network requests going out of your system.
There are network requests being made every time you type a character in the start menu (whether or not you have web search enabled). That is not considered telemetry so it does not show up in the Diagnostic Data Viewer. It is also not possible to disable it (there were various group policy and registry settings that worked at some point in time, none of them do any more on latest versions of Windows 11).
Similarly, when the "recommended" container of the start menu refreshes itself, it does a lot of network traffic, none of which is recorded in DDV. And of course, any applications that come with the system but are not core OS (OneDrive, Office, Store, Xbox, Cortana, Explorer, etc.) will send their own telemetry (and other network requests) which do not go through DDV.
[1] https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/privacy/diagnostic...
might as well compare Win11 to MS-DOS if you're thinking along those lines.
It's pretty hilarious to see history repeat itself at every new Windows launch. Rinse and repeat.
"Am I so out of touch? No, it's the children who are wrong!"
edit: This is probably too glib; certainly more recent Windowses are superior for application developers, which end users benefit from indirectly. It's the user-facing parts of the OS that seemed to have gone in the other direction.
All right, but apart from the sanitation, the medicine, education, wine, public order, irrigation, roads, a fresh water system, and public health, what have the Romans ever done for us? (Besides, they're just improvements on what we had before so they don't count).
Apart from the drivers, screen res, multiple monitors, virtual desktops, Windows Defender, updated DirectX, newer hardware support, hypervisor isolated secure password store, app store, WiFi, audio stack with per-program volume control, OCR engine, voice recognition engine, Cortana, online backup and file and settings sync, touch UI and the $8Bn/year Surface line it enabled, improved security, hypervisor backed WSL Ubuntu and Android engines, Windows Sandbox, SSD TRIM support, Bitlocker full disk encryption, ClearType and improved fonts for screen reading, GPU accelerated compositor, face recognition biometric login, QR codes on BSODs, all of...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Features_new_to_Windows_7
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Windows_Vista#New_or_changed_f...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Features_new_to_Windows_8
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Features_new_to_Windows_10
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Features_new_to_Windows_11
... what have Microsoft added or changed in Windows since XP? btw I don't even use windows and I didn't want any of those things anyway.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_features_removed_in_Wi...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_features_removed_in_Wi...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_features_removed_in_Wi...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_features_removed_in_Wi...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_features_removed_in_Wi...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_features_removed_in_Wi...
Are there? MS even released a fix quite recently for it.
On the other hand, I bet there are plenty more vulnerabilities in Windows 11 that still haven't been discovered yet.
There probably are, but I'd rather have a bunch of vulnerabilities that nobody knows about yet, and that will be patched once people do learn, than slightly fewer vulnerabilities that everyone is constantly trying to exploit and that will be there forever.
Don't be so certain --- the enthusiast community will fix them if they're important enough, even more so if they're ones that "everyone is constantly trying to exploit". Also, no one who knows what they're doing is going to be facing the Internet without a NAT or firewall that blocks incoming connections by default.
"Updates" for XP POS Edition and the like are mostly support filler and don't bring it up to the same security level as a modern OS. I.e.: There's still a bunch of logical vulnerabilities present.
I feel like every time I "upgrade" Windows I hate it. And that hatred doesn't go away, it just gets normalized.
- “copy file path” in the context menu
- More Window tiling options
They took it away a long time ago, but i missed the option to arbitrarily arrange icons in folders (as you can on the desktop). It used to be very easy to sort through lots of files by moving them into piles of icons and then moving the piles into folders for example.
Also the ability to move items in the taskbar wherever you want. (for example, I want one of 8 open notepad documents moved to the end of the taskbar next to one of the 6 browser windows while all other notepad and browser windows are on the other side)
>At Microsoft, we make every effort to respond to customer feedback, so when we received this feedback from Blizzard and other developers, we decided to act on it. Microsoft is pleased to announce that we have ported the user mode D3D12 runtime to Windows 7. This unblocks developers who want to take full advantage of the latest improvements in D3D12 while still supporting customers on older operating systems
You could have an Active Directory domain full of Windows XP machines in 2001.
Considering how much work it took to get wrangle 10 LTSE into a usable Win environment I'd much prefer the simple OS that stayed out of my hair than one that "does so much more" I didn't ask for.
I hope someday software is regulated as tightly as other consumer goods. Abusing one's position as the issuer of security updates to force choices, undesired changes, and bloat down user's throats shouldn't be possible; users should have the option to separate the two.
I'm aware that that seems like a tall ask given the state of "modern" software development, but that's its own can of worms.
If the checking for updates for anything is happening without my consent, that's bad.
> None of them seem to be aware that you can install a telemetry viewer application
Or, more likely, they don't trust it.
because you will not update until forced in most situations.
you simply are not aware of every security fix or vulnerability found, and therefore can't know when you should update.
in the early 2000s there a few very large profile windows viruses that spread like crazy, despite patches being released months or years earlier. the viruses took out networks across the globe and caused considerable mayhem for days.
congress had hearings and several tech companies testified, including Microsoft. congress wanted to know why users weren't forced to update their computers, and Microsoft said that they can't control what their users do.
congress blamed Microsoft for users not patching their systems.
so this happened a few more times and Windows Update was improved continuously going forward.
now you're forced to update, because people who thought they knew all about security failed to update when they should have.
now, users blame Microsoft for forcing them to patch their systems.
It updates when I say it updates, and not a moment before. Congress and Microsoft can GFT if they don't like it.
If you choose to stop hiding icons in the notification area, windows will tell you days in advance of any forced reboot. It does for me, anyway. I don't know why the default is to hide icons down there, but it's probably because a lot of apps like to stay running for some reason and pollute the notification area.
If you unhide all icons there and occasionally glance down at it, you'll see when Windows wants you to reboot. It is only after days of you not interacting with that icon that the reboot is forced. That's how it's been for me, anyway.
You all just want to complain about Microsoft. None of you have anything of value to say. I wish you would all just admit that to yourselves.
That sounds made up. Happy to be proven wrong, but I doubt congress demanded to know why people aren't being forced to update Windows. It's too weirdly specific.
In the early 2000s, nobody was forced to do anything. Even for games, patches were uncommon because people bought the CD-ROM. If the game had bugs, the process of finding the patch, if it existed, was not accessible to most people.
"how did this happen?
> Bugs were found in windows systems which allowed this.
"can you not fix those?"
> we can.
"why didn't you fix them?"
> We did, the patches have been available for months in the worst case.
"then why are computers running your operating system still affected?"
> Because users have not downloaded and applied the patches.
"why not? are they not encouraged to do so?"
> We make them available but a user must choose to do it.
"Why do you not force this? This seems like an easy way to address the issue of unpatched operating systems."
> We cannot control what the users of our operating systems do.
"Not good enough. Clearly your current stance is not sufficient given the state of the Internet right now."
> Ok.
========
Very much paraphrased, but that's how I remember it going. I watched the thing live on C-SPAN and I don't know if it was blogged about anywhere. Even then the internet hated Microsoft even though most of its users ran Windows.
This is blatantly, flat out wrong. Even the implicit premise here is wrong.
It is not Microsoft’s prerogative to update my device. They don’t own my device. They don’t get to decide when I decide to install new software. That right exclusively belongs to me. Even congress doesn’t get to have a say in this. Users have private property rights. And this, what Microsoft is doing, is bordering illegality.
I can't be why windows updates are forced, because I haven't used windows since 7. I can update a system package, a library or even a kernel without losing a process.
Tell me again why windows needs to force the user to update?