Microsoft hides option to use Windows 10 with a local account - GDPR violation?

[mr moose]

11 hours ago, Crowbar said:

If you don't want to believe what I have to say that's fine. Live in ignorance and refuse to be educated on how Linux actually works. There are tons of resources available online that state the same thing if you so feel inclined.

 

Not a single thing you said in this post addresses anything I said. I asked you for numbers to back up your claims.   You can't just make claims then tell me to go look for the resources.  I have first hand experience using Linux, I still use it today.  I specifically asked you to back up your claims with numbers.  Please do not post insinuating I am ignorant if you can't provide anything to support your claims.

 

 

[thorhammerz]

2 minutes ago, mr moose said:

Not a single thing you said in this post addresses anything I said. I asked you for numbers to back up your claims.   You can't just make claims then tell me to go look for the resources.

Asking for quantifiable data points?! Providing sources/references?! 

 

What blasphemy!

 

[TheVillageIdiot]

I am gonna have to read further to figure out when this turned into somekind of linux fight.

[mr moose]

12 minutes ago, thorhammerz said:

Asking for quantifiable data points?! Providing sources/references?! 

 

What blasphemy!

 

I know right, asking someone to backup their claims with evidence makes me ignorant and unable to be educated.

7 minutes ago, TheVillageIdiot said:

I am gonna have to read further to figure out when this turned into somekind of linux fight.

When justpoet pointed out that windows error messages were vague and sometimes restarting had opposite effects between windows and Linux, That is a very valid claim and I agree with it, however I pointed out that the inherent difference between Linux and windows (install base, hardware support, software support etc) made it unfair to compare error counts.  After that I got lambasted for having the audacity to point out that you can't compare apples to oranges.

[TheVillageIdiot]

ya... windows event viewer. I usually have to get of cluster of errors before even hoping to get close to the source. I am just a dude with google.

[JustWantTech]

Just curious. What part of the GDPR law did Microsoft violate for this?

[Crowbar]

On 10/7/2019 at 2:21 PM, mr moose said:

 

Not a single thing you said in this post addresses anything I said. I asked you for numbers to back up your claims.   You can't just make claims then tell me to go look for the resources.  I have first hand experience using Linux, I still use it today.  I specifically asked you to back up your claims with numbers.  Please do not post insinuating I am ignorant if you can't provide anything to support your claims.

 

 

Thanks for the concern but I'll post insuniating you are anything I please because you repeatedly prove to fit said mold. For example, applying double standards to others that you are not willing to apply to yourself. If you want numbers that you and I both know damn well are unattainable then you better start providing more evidence to your own fallacy narratives other then "I saw it on a forum" like you have in other threads.

[RejZoR]

On 10/7/2019 at 11:48 AM, Crowbar said:

Backporting drivers on Linux isn't really a thing because the drivers are part of the kernel and are only removed when those that maintain it decide to do so. Where Linux lacks the most is in the bleeding edge because of the disadvantage that takes place in having to wait for the hardware to be released and the community to do the work before it can be audited and submitted for addition. Linux isn't perfect but granted that a lot of it is community driven pro bono, I think it's impressive what has been accomplished to be this successful/competitive. Especially in the sever space when up against mega corporations like microshaft.

Main problem with Linux is lack of any kind of standardization and unification. Having trillion distros isn't helping either. The fact driver installers are total clusterfuck and you need to mostly rely on repositories and lack of distinctions like Windows has with that where it's basically just whether you need 32bit or 64bit drivers. In the end only most mainstream ones like Ubuntu have some sort of direct support, the rest is "as is" and you're on your own.

[Crowbar]

15 minutes ago, RejZoR said:

Main problem with Linux is lack of any kind of standardization and unification. Having trillion distros isn't helping either. The fact driver installers are total clusterfuck and you need to mostly rely on repositories and lack of distinctions like Windows has with that where it's basically just whether you need 32bit or 64bit drivers. In the end only most mainstream ones like Ubuntu have some sort of direct support, the rest is "as is" and you're on your own.

How is a repository any different then the app/play store? Do you find those difficult to navigate as well?

[LAwLz]

56 minutes ago, RejZoR said:

Main problem with Linux is lack of any kind of standardization and unification. Having trillion distros isn't helping either. The fact driver installers are total clusterfuck and you need to mostly rely on repositories and lack of distinctions like Windows has with that where it's basically just whether you need 32bit or 64bit drivers. In the end only most mainstream ones like Ubuntu have some sort of direct support, the rest is "as is" and you're on your own.

To be fair, drivers is a clusterfuck on Windows as well.

Saying that on Windows you "just need to know if it's 32bit or 64bit" is dramatically underselling it. Also, most people would be as clueless on Windows if a driver didn't work as they are on GNU/Linux.

[RejZoR]

24 minutes ago, LAwLz said:

To be fair, drivers is a clusterfuck on Windows as well.

Saying that on Windows you "just need to know if it's 32bit or 64bit" is dramatically underselling it. Also, most people would be as clueless on Windows if a driver didn't work as they are on GNU/Linux.

Is it really? Google manufacturer page, look for downloads, done. Most even have unified drivers or it's basically sorted by model of your product. Good luck with Linux on that.

[Crowbar]

4 minutes ago, RejZoR said:

Is it really? Google manufacturer page, look for downloads, done. Most even have unified drivers or it's basically sorted by model of your product. Good luck with Linux on that.

The Linux kernel is essentially the same across all distros. The main difference is just how bleeding edge and tested it is from one to another which isn't that far removed from different versions of windows 10. There are of course many niche distros with few users but they are all still based on a select few main ones with different default optional packages installed. If one driver doesn't work based on your system then you can easily uninstall it and try an earlier one from the repository. Again, very similar to windows and installing a previous driver because the newest one is buggy.

 

It's not as if you need to spend days seeking a solution for common tasks like this as your hyperbole would imply. It's a matter of you wanting to do it the windows way and downloading from a website rather then utilize a vetted source such as a repository.

[LAwLz]

5 minutes ago, RejZoR said:

Is it really? Google manufacturer page, look for downloads, done. Most even have unified drivers or it's basically sorted by model of your product. Good luck with Linux on that.

Those instructions are too difficult for ~80% of computer users today.

And it's not always that simple. It might be that simple for very basic and common stuff like graphics cards but for stuff like printer drivers it might be very complicated even on Windows. For example Ricoh has 4 different universal drivers for printers. PCL4 V4, PCL6, PS V4 and PS. All of them are for the same printers, the same OS and same OS architecture (32 vs 64 bit). The difference are things like driver architecture for the driver. Which one is the right for you? It depends. You can't just look at the version number either since they are developed in separate tracks.

 

WiFi NIC drivers is another pain in the butt. For example if you got an Asus NIC then you might not necessarily find the latest drivers on the Asus website because that requires Asus to repackage the chipset driver developed by a company like Qualcomm or Broadcom. The original drivers might not be packaged as an easy to use .exe either.

 

Both GNU/Linux and Windows has gotten really good over the years with automatic driver updates though. Outside of a small minority of people who always want the cutting edge drivers (for things like GPUs) I bet both Windows and Ubuntu will work just fine for the majority of people out of the box.

[leadeater]

46 minutes ago, LAwLz said:

For example Ricoh has 4 different universal drivers for printers. PCL4 V4, PCL6, PS V4 and PS. All of them are for the same printers, the same OS and same OS architecture (32 vs 64 bit). The difference are things like driver architecture for the driver. Which one is the right for you? It depends. You can't just look at the version number either since they are developed in separate tracks.

Printer drivers ARE THE WORST. Ricoh is by far not the worst either. Too easy to forget to add the 64bit or 32bit driver to your print server after you update the other, and it used to be buried so hard to spot if it's been forgotten without looking specifically at it.

 

Only thing worse than printers is label printers and ID card printers, still printers but soo much worse they belong in their own category of awful. You know it's bad when the vendor themselves recommend you use a driver that is totally not listed as supported for the model, or is somebody else's driver entirely (wtf?).

 

1 hour ago, LAwLz said:

To be fair, drivers is a clusterfuck on Windows as well.

Saying that on Windows you "just need to know if it's 32bit or 64bit" is dramatically underselling it. Also, most people would be as clueless on Windows if a driver didn't work as they are on GNU/Linux.

Outside of update GPU drivers I doubt most people deal with drivers on Windows now, lots of them come through Windows Updates or are pre-installed and never get touched. That means if it doesn't work just by plugging it in the chance of getting to working is very low.

[MageTank]

I skipped most of the pages here, so my apologies in advance if this was already posted, but there is another interesting interaction when attempting to install Windows 10 and creating a local account offline on the latest build of 1903. When you successfully create your local account, the moment you connect back to the internet, the blue OOBE screen reappears and says "Let's finish completing setup", prompting you to create the Microsoft account again.

 

Luckily there is a "skip for now" button, and I've yet to be prompted again after pressing that button, but I do have concerns that it will come back in the future. I am not sure why Microsoft is putting so much effort into getting consumers to use a Microsoft account, but it's borderline solicitation at this point.

 

EDIT:

 

I went ahead and re-imaged a system to obtain a visual confirmation of the prompts.

[Trixanity]

I bought a laptop with Windows 10 Home 1809 pre-installed. There was no option to skip the Microsoft account at all. I tried many things and going back and forth to find a skip option. I gave up and tried to login and failed (iirc). Then it gave me the option of a local user. It took some fiddling to get there at least. This is a bad change.

[Tristerin]

Just found this thread - I did a fresh install a few weeks back and was like - I have to sign in?  I did so and after seeing how it tied me into logging in without disconnecting internet I just unhooked cable and re-installed again and did this suggestion above to skip the whole ordeal.  

 

Makes me feel even better about skipping the Microsoft Tax.

[LAwLz]

3 hours ago, MageTank said:

I am not sure why Microsoft is putting so much effort into getting consumers to use a Microsoft account, but it's borderline solicitation at this point.

They probably want you to sign in for a few reasons but I think these are the two main ones:

1) Less friction for using their other services. Oh you're already signed in? Then you can start using OneDrive which we have generously preinstalled and shoved into file explorer! Wanna add some music to that video you're editing in movie maker? Great, because we already have your credit card info and can serve you some offers that you can buy with a single push of a button!

 

2) Makes data harvesting easier. If you sign in it's confirmation that it's you, and it can be tied to a Microsoft rather than a "ghost profile" (or whatever it's called).

[mr moose]

9 hours ago, Crowbar said:

If you want numbers that you and I both know damn well are unattainable then you better start providing more evidence to your own fallacy narratives other then "I saw it on a forum" like you have in other threads.

 

So you agree, there is no evidence to support your claims but you insist you are right and everyone else's experience is wrong. 

 

What fallacies do you claim I have made?   Unlike you I have qualified ever thing I have said.  So please quote the fallacy.

 

 

[justpoet]

On 10/7/2019 at 4:44 PM, mr moose said:

After that I got lambasted for having the audacity to point out that you can't compare apples to oranges.

I like pears.  Orange you glad you campaigned for apples?

[Crowbar]

5 hours ago, mr moose said:

 

So you agree, there is no evidence to support your claims but you insist you are right and everyone else's experience is wrong. 

 

What fallacies do you claim I have made?   Unlike you I have qualified ever thing I have said.  So please quote the fallacy.

 

 

I’ve admitted nothing but by all means continue to fantasize.

 

You’re asking me to quantify every single piece of hardware in existence and compare it against the Linux kernel and windows closed source code which would be impossible.

 

Please explain to me just how you “qualified everything you have said” with statements like “I saw it on a forum”? 

[Kisai]

9 hours ago, LAwLz said:

They probably want you to sign in for a few reasons but I think these are the two main ones:

1) Less friction for using their other services. Oh you're already signed in? Then you can start using OneDrive which we have generously preinstalled and shoved into file explorer! Wanna add some music to that video you're editing in movie maker? Great, because we already have your credit card info and can serve you some offers that you can buy with a single push of a button!

 

2) Makes data harvesting easier. If you sign in it's confirmation that it's you, and it can be tied to a Microsoft rather than a "ghost profile" (or whatever it's called).

 

I would recommend people not "sign into your microsoft account" unless you actually have more than one PC, or use Microsoft's apps on the iPhone/Android mobile.

 

This all started back with Skype and Xbox Live. Microsoft in it's grand wisdom decided to do a unified SSO. Great... except that they did that by using their old MSN instant messaging as the template, merged xbox live, skype, hotmail, outlook.com , and a pile of other "sign in with microsoft account" things in the same way google was doing with their Google Plus. Except? Microsoft saw the fallacy in rolling out their own Twitter/Facebook competitor and didn't.

 

Today the most common Oauth SSO is actually twitter. Google and Facebook exist as options, but because it's a huge pain in the neck to implement each "slightly-non-standard, my-way-or-the-highway" that make Google's Oauth and Facebook's Oauth and Twitter's OAuth, and Tumblr's Oauth, and so forth all mutually incompatible because they abuse their market dominance and middleware is often broken if jQuery or some other framework releases a new version.

 

By logging into your microsoft account, you can have your data synchronized (eg OneDrive, MS Edge favorites, background wallpaper, etc) between your computers, but you can also log into a lot of other peoples pc's arbitrarily. So in an enterprise environment you login with your @example.com company email address and you can use ANY PC in the company, even ones in other countries that you've never been to. 

 

The GDPR stuff is really kinda nonsense. You can not, realisticly, mandate that the user opt in to every form of data collection, because what that results in is everyone ignoring the prompts. When you re-image a Windows 10 machine, you get like, three pages of on/off sliders about what data microsoft is allowed to collect from you. If you do not login with your MS account, it's a lot harder for Microsoft to tie any of that information to you.

 

But only a tinfoil mad hatter would think that collecting the data in the first place is some kind of trick. It's not. It's true, that GOOGLE and Facebook have not been so forthcoming with what they do with your data. Microsoft and Apple have on the other hand often tightened privacy controls once they're notified that software is abusing a loophole. Unlike Google.

[Crowbar]

29 minutes ago, Kisai said:

 

I would recommend people not "sign into your microsoft account" unless you actually have more than one PC, or use Microsoft's apps on the iPhone/Android mobile.

 

This all started back with Skype and Xbox Live. Microsoft in it's grand wisdom decided to do a unified SSO. Great... except that they did that by using their old MSN instant messaging as the template, merged xbox live, skype, hotmail, outlook.com , and a pile of other "sign in with microsoft account" things in the same way google was doing with their Google Plus. Except? Microsoft saw the fallacy in rolling out their own Twitter/Facebook competitor and didn't.

 

Today the most common Oauth SSO is actually twitter. Google and Facebook exist as options, but because it's a huge pain in the neck to implement each "slightly-non-standard, my-way-or-the-highway" that make Google's Oauth and Facebook's Oauth and Twitter's OAuth, and Tumblr's Oauth, and so forth all mutually incompatible because they abuse their market dominance and middleware is often broken if jQuery or some other framework releases a new version.

 

By logging into your microsoft account, you can have your data synchronized (eg OneDrive, MS Edge favorites, background wallpaper, etc) between your computers, but you can also log into a lot of other peoples pc's arbitrarily. So in an enterprise environment you login with your @example.com company email address and you can use ANY PC in the company, even ones in other countries that you've never been to. 

 

The GDPR stuff is really kinda nonsense. You can not, realisticly, mandate that the user opt in to every form of data collection, because what that results in is everyone ignoring the prompts. When you re-image a Windows 10 machine, you get like, three pages of on/off sliders about what data microsoft is allowed to collect from you. If you do not login with your MS account, it's a lot harder for Microsoft to tie any of that information to you.

 

But only a tinfoil mad hatter would think that collecting the data in the first place is some kind of trick. It's not. It's true, that GOOGLE and Facebook have not been so forthcoming with what they do with your data. Microsoft and Apple have on the other hand often tightened privacy controls once they're notified that software is abusing a loophole. Unlike Google.

Those that truly care about privacy don't use windows though. This indicates that the issue has more to do with the act itself rather then transparency. Even with all of the sliders set to "off" microshaft still collects data which has been analyzed and determined to be user identifiable regardless of what microshaft has stated indicating otherwise. Also, once you update it's not uncommon for all the sliders within the OS to go back to the default "on" position anyway and you forgot to mention that all these sliders are relatively new to the windows 10 "experience" only being implemented more extensively due to legal obligations. Prior to that it was the wild west and microshaft took everything without explicitly indicating what.

 

What the GDPR is doing is very much valid. Tech giants don't like it because it conflicts with their business models but quite frankly if they didn't base their business around such a model no prompts would be necessary at all.

 

Forcing an account now just streamlines the process of data harvesting and bypasses user implimented work arounds.

 

[Kisai]

3 minutes ago, Crowbar said:

What the GDPR is doing is very much valid. Tech giants don't like it because it conflicts with their business models but quite frankly if they didn't base their business around such a model no prompts would be necessary at all.

 

Forcing an account now just streamlines the process of data harvesting and bypasses user implimented work arounds.

 

They aren't forcing an account.

 

One of the first few days the GDPR nonsense was turned on, nearly every website in existence stated doing the "we store cookies" nag, and you know what they did? They made it so you couldn't access the site without clicking "I agree". GDPR defeated. Poof *confetti*

[SpaceGhostC2C]

4 minutes ago, Kisai said:

One of the first few days the GDPR nonsense was turned on, nearly every website in existence stated doing the "we store cookies" nag,

Which is a great thing.

4 minutes ago, Kisai said:

and you know what they did? They made it so you couldn't access the site without clicking "I agree". GDPR defeated. Poof *confetti*

You are wrong. Of course they highlighted the "agree all opt in" options much more, but a) you can access all sites without clicking anything, it's just that the message would remain there, something that doesn't really harm the usability of most sites, and b) there's always (is mandatory) the alternative button taking you to the opt in/out menu, where you can set cookies to the basic ones only, switching off all data-collection and advertisement cookies.

 

Of course, if one is dead set on clicking yes to everything to save 1ms then there is no amount of information and user control that can help, short of outright banning data collection with or without consent. But in a (utopian?) world where people can indeed be free and choose for themselves without becoming lemmings, willing and able to make informed choices, some form of democracy is feasible, etc, GDPR is a great, much needed framework for data handling.