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About LinkBacksHow does one obtain the ISO? Is MS going to allow you to download an Windows 10 ISO at launch? The tweets don't explicitly outline this, unless I've missed something.
How does one obtain the ISO? Is MS going to allow you to download an Windows 10 ISO at launch? The tweets don't explicitly outline this, unless I've missed something.
Originally Posted by phoneme
He did say that a downloaded ISO was a proper way to upgrade, and the preview ISO's have been on the Windows site from the beginning, so it's likely they're going to offer an ISO of the RTM as well. It's not the media that matters - it's the activation key/process that matters. Just an advance notice, 2 of the earlier ISO's (both x64) were > 4gb, and wouldn't fit on a standard DVD - you either needed a DL-DVD or an 8gb USB flash drive. Not saying that will be the case with the RTM, but it is possible (depending on included base drivers, language packs, etc).insanelyapple @insanelyapple Jun 3
@GabeAul by "clean reinstall" you mean the build-in OS feature and/OR downloadable iso?
Gabriel Aul @GabeAul Jun 3
@insanelyapple Either way will work. Once you've upgraded to 10 on the machine the license will allow you to reinstall at no cost.
22 retweets 34 favorites
Yeah good point that - I wonder if you retain the ability to roll back to Win 7 or whatever if you decide you don't want Win10?
WRT iso availability - it's been fairly simple to get legit Windows isos for some time now, though with Win8 it's with the media creation tool rather than http download links.
Yeh I was wondering about that. I already bailed on Windows 8 within days and stuck to 7 lol... Although, I'm pretty sure I'll want W10 for DX12, even if I don't like the OS much. But I was wondering if you can actually run your old copy of W7 (or whatever you upgrade from) at the same time as W10, or whether you completely lose your licence to the previous OS when you upgrade. Would also be nice to know if you can revert back of course!
They've implied reverting back is fine, but it's not clear how the license works cross machine - it could be that by redeeming win 10 you end up tying the license to the machine.
Well I guess that wouldn't be such a big deal if you could revert back, assuming when you revert back, your licence works how it used to. I just hope they give us a way of upgrading our computers without punishing us for it. That's the kind of thing that will put a lot of people off buying. I know it would for me.
I was thinking the same. I work in Linux anyway, how bad would 10 have to be to force me to go back to 7 when I am only using it as a games launching platform anyway?
Perhaps I should give the preview version a try.
Well I would be cautious of the preview version. Reason I haven't tried it is that the privacy policy is horrendus.. Let's hope the final release isn't so bad for that..
Oh I wasn't going to put it on *my* machine, I have a bunch of old parts lying around I can build up into something unimpressive but usable.
It's not as bad as the print might make it seem. If something crashes (which has only happened when I force it to), I get a pop-up strongly suggesting I send the details to MS, due to the nature of the OS being a preview. I get this same pop-up regardless of if I have the machine connected to the net or not, and there is no network activity in either case without permission. The only time I've received that error notice without intentionally trying to change/break something was this am, when I got a very false positive from MS Defender while installing a freshly downloaded game from GoG (Ultima 4, if anyone cares). And yes, I let that get reported.
If you use Cortana and/or search, it will only hit the web for not-local searches, which are listed in their own section which is pretty plainly marked WEB - watching the traffic shows that the requests go to Bing, which isn't unexpected - I haven't found a way to change the internal search engine, but I honestly haven't looked all that hard.
Yes, I am running a traffic analyzer (Wireshark) on the Windows 10 machine. As I said in conversation earlier with Saracen in another thread, I may not be AS security conscious, but I will scream to anyone that listens if I see anything even remotely nefarious. And other than some 'pings' to the update server on a fairly regular basis, I've seen nothing outbound (nor inbound) that I've not intentionally triggered. All in all, Win10 has been very well behaved - not sure if I'm surprised or not, given the privacy statement. Then again, they were pretty upfront with that privacy statement, which most companies make you go looking for, in the darkest bowels of the lowest levels of some mop room.
DanceswithUnix (06-06-2015)
And it's good to know that people, such as yourself, have the ability, equipment/software, and inclination to keep an eye on what goes on.
Also, while that privacy statement is wide-ranging, to say the least, it is a technical preview and MS claim, not unreasonably, that data is used to improve the OS. Personally, I don't have a problem with that, in as far as it goes.
But even that privacy statement, or rather, utter lack of privacy statement, makes clear that they are entitled to use data collected, including :-
- name,
- email address
- phohe number
- voice samples
- sensor data (which includes, if you use it, fingerprints, retinal scans, whatever)
- phone logs
- SMS data
and so on.
They also reserve the right to transfer it out of country, so kiss goodbye to UK or EU data protection laws, or the US equivalent.
And the reserve the right to pass data on to others, for a variety of reasons.
And to communicate with you, by any means about which they have data, therefore including email and phone, for a variety of purposes, including "offers" and adverts.
In other words, by using Win10 tech preview, you have effectively ppred in the a vast array of marketing communications, including phone calis.
Well, no. Hell no. Absolutely not. Not now. Not ever.
What the released software's privacy policy is remains to be seen, but if it's anything like that, Win10 is dead to me. And my bet is, it won't much change. At which point, I will start to connect dots between any such privacy policy and MS comments about how they are changing how they "monetise" Windows.
If MS want to gather such intrusive amounts of data, they ought to get people to opt IN. Not effectively bypass data protection laws by opting people in by default, simply by using an OS and failing to carefully read privacy policies. But of course, they know full well that if asked to out in, few would.
It would not surprise me, at some time over the next few years, if legislation appeared banning such opt-ins, just as Scan's disgraceful policy of opting people in to their Scansure insurance became illegal.
I'm in the US - I don't have the consumer protections that the UK and EU do, and honestly, I don't often consider them. So anything getting transferred in my case would be from Western N. Carolina to Redmond, WA.
As far as identifying info goes, and this is solely in my case, they've already had my address and phone number. I've been a Windows 'Insider' since before it was an actual term, and I was an authorized retailer in the late 90's through 2009, at which time I mostly retired (ok, I got run over by Best Buy, CompUSA, which is now Tiger Direct, and Walmart), so they know as much about me as pretty much any utility or credit agency does. In my case, simply the price of doing business.
As far as everyone else goes, (and I could be wrong) - but I'm pretty sure Windows 8/8.1 needed an email to set up a user account. Regardless, as with Win 8/8.1, Win10 does allow the use of a local account that doesn't require an e-mail account - just a name and password, a la Win7 and prior. You can also opt out from advertising under the privacy section (a similar top level menu to the one I posted about the snap screen thing). I don't know if just a local account can be set up beforehand. I didn't try, and at this point, I'm not sure if I'm an intrepid enough reporter to set up another machine or another partition to find out. E-mail accounts are about as throwaway a commodity now as is a paper napkin, and *IF* they require an account for updates, it's probably a good idea to have one to use.
I cannot speak to things like the phone number, SMS, and voice sample thing, as I do not have a Win phone, nor any smart phone for that matter. While they may be neat for other people, to me, a phone is used for dialing 7 (or 10) numbers, and talking to people - and I've yet to find a consumer grade print scanner that worked more than 5-6 times before needing to be cleaned/recalibrated/disabled. That does not, and is not meant to, discount the fact that you are correct - they do claim the right to collect that info, at least during the preview. Obviously, we can't comment on the RTM until it's released, other than to hope that things are a little (or a lot) tighter in the privacy department, or, as you put it, Hell no. I've not seen any evidence, either personally or anecdotally on the web, about MS abusing this (lack of) privacy statement, and there are plenty of sites out there, both real and tinfoil hat versions, that are quick to squawk. And they've been silent, other than to complain about the actual terms.
It's not my full time OS (yet) as there are apps I don't want to install, now or gold (including both Chrome and FF - I have no trust in Google at all, and FF has become bloatware on a level close to rivaling both Norton and AVG), but it IS my primary OS. Spartan is turning out to be an exceptional browser - it just doesn't have the Chrome-like extensions enabled yet (nor does it save username/passwords unless the site uses cookies - like Hexus with the remember me radio box). IE11 works normally, and the ABP program works with it (although it has the same problems on 10 as it does on 7 - a complete memory hog). My only real complaint, and it's fallen on deaf ears, is no more Media Center - so I will be leaving one machine as an exclusively Win7 machine, strictly for use as a media center. Kodi doesn't meet my needs, and Mythbuntu still isn't stable enough.
I'm beginning to think that MS may have gotten it right this time, and it's just a matter of finalizing things by dotting the i's and crossing the t's. July 29th and we'll know for sure.
By and large I agree with you, Guido, but on where the data gets transferred to, for example, they say
"Personal information collected by Microsoft may be stored and processed in the United States or any other country where Microsoft or its affiliates, subsidiaries or service providers maintain facilities".
So what you've agreed to is not just transfer to Redmond, but to Yemen, or Russia, North Korea, Iran or ANYWHERE that even an "affiliate" chooses to maintain facilities.
On fingerprint data, that's true of older, cheap retail scanners, but they're accurate enough fir authorities to be using handheld scanners to identify suspects, like our Immigration people here, and over there, all sorts of federal authorities, and local police, to the points then tens of millions of lookups are done, ever year, through mobile AFIS to the NCIC backend. They're good enough for widescale deployment, and are only going to get better, and cheaper, over time. Of course, the obvious option is simply go not use two-part authentication that requires fingerprints, etc.
But that's not so easy with voice data. I already use, quite extensively, Dragon. Fortunately, I use it on a system with no internet connection. But you can see why I'd be a bit concerned at the scope of that privacy statements, and that in a number of areas, MS might have SOME valid reason for retaining certain data, like in that case improving voice recognition, but they don't restrict themselves to that.
I don't use smartphones either. I have what I regard as an idiot phone, in that it's party piece is actually storing 10 numbers in memory. But even data types more appropriate to phones, or tablets, like call data and location, aren't restricted.
I guess what I'm saying is that the breadth and depth of what that policy gives MS permission to do is very worrying, regardless of what they are doing (which your traffic monitorig might pick up, might intend to do in future (which it won't), or even things they don't currently intend to do but subsequently decide to.
Of course, the RTM privacy policy might be much more modest in it's degree of intrusion. I agree entirely on that. We will indeed have to wait and see. Like, it appears, we will for the EULA and it's effect.
I get ya. Just set something up for a test out of interest
Yeh, at least they made it pretty clear. I'm not sure what the install process is like though. I would hope that it clearly warns you about this stuff before you install, rather than just giving you the whole privacy statement and t&c in one hit without highlighting anything. Because as you say, that's what we're used to seeing, and most of us just skip it because it's way too much to read those things on a regular basis!
I think Saracen mentioned something about making these kind of things illegal as being opted in by default. I would really love to see that happen. I probably do check much better than most people when it comes to these things, but things are not often very clear and easy to understand. I hate automatic opt-ins for pretty much anything really..
Well, yeah, it probably is.
But will it make any difference?
I mean, the point is that if you have a massive accumulation of data, data mining can throw up all sorts of connections. So suppose you have dataset A, linked to your "real" email, and dataset B linked ONLY to a dummy, throwaway account.
Given the extensive nature of the data capture MS take your permission to do, how long before that data mining operation figures out that 'identity of real data email address' = 'identity of dummy email address'?
At that point, both datasets become effectively merged.
What could give that away?, Well, IP addresses for the machines associated with both addresses, perhaps. Or, geolocation data from a tablet/phone GPS system. Or, if the phone book, calendar and or email address book contacts are a 100% match, what's the odds both addresses are for the same individual? Who's to say, even, that given voice data samples, now or in the future, those cannot he compared and matched? And there could be countless other profile matches that data mining would pick up on.
So, if you've given MS a load of data relying on preserving anonymity using a throwaway email address, if ANYTHING connects the data on that address to you, just once, then that data is linked to you.
Nor is any of this in any sense implausible. Indeed, it's bread and butter operations to data mining. And it's not like MS, or any other corporate, care that that data is about you or me, as people. It's not like someone is sitting in Redmond Towers saying "Today, let's try to match that data set. It's just that data mining computers spend 24 hours a day churning through data analysing, collating, sorting, etc,
MS, to some extent, give the game away when they blithely mention, almost in passing that they, or "associates" MIGHT wish to communicate with us, and send us advertising, which MIGHT be targetted.
"Might", my <bleeep>.
The Holy Grail of advertising is detailed, extensive and in-depth information, on everybody they can, precisely for the express purpose of targeting us with adverts.
Personally, there is exactly ONE piece of information I want companies to know about me, assuming they already know I exist, which is that I don't EVER want to be targeted, for advertising, by anybody, on anything, for ANY product or reason.
Microsoft do not need ANY information about my identity in order for me to run an OS on my PC. They don't need my GPS data, they don't need my phone number, they CERTAINLY don't need records of my call log data or what applications I run, etc. And acvordingly, I don't want them grabbing, storing, analyzing or using it unless they get my direct, explicit, informed ageeement first.
But they're clearly not planning on asking.
So if I upgrade my mobo and I already have Windows 10 I can reinstall it on a new MOBO?
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