You realize that Cortana is completely disabled if location is disabled. While I agree that location is required for some queries, it's certainly not required for all, yet Microsoft has made it so. Why is that?

Ad sponsored / pay for ad-free Solitaire packaged with a free copy of Windows 10 - sure. What about for people that actually *buy* Windows 10 - they have to pay twice for ad-free. Seems like a dick move by Microsoft.

Be careful what you give up, you might be able to get it back.

And, personally, I can't stand auto-correct and speech recognition services.

Sure they're giving you Windows 10 for free, but will they still charge people who actually buy a copy of Windows 10 for an ad-free version of Solitaire? My guess is yes - duh.

After reading various articles about the business model for Windows 10, the actual new Privacy statement, and all the information it will collect and Microsoft will share, it seems clear that we are not Microsoft's customer, we're their product. (My niece's Fisher-Price toy notes that "The sheep says 'baaa'".)

... So does actual telephone service - which is *clearly* a telecommunication service.

Or Hello, Social, Apps, WebIDE ... (did I miss anything?)

I dread having to search through about:config for new things to disable with every new Firefox release. Firefox is suppose to be a great *browser*, not kitchen sink (or more appropriately, kitchen junk-drawer). [ That's a job for Emacs :-) ]

That question only suffers from logic and you cannot actually be that dumb.

Windows 7 does what I need. There may be some technical benefits to "upgrading" (specifically written in quotes) to Windows 10 but there also seem to be more privacy concerns and intrusions with Windows 10 and I don't need/want that. The business model MS is employing seems to be changing, like with Solitaire as a subscription service to avoid ads, and I'm not a fan.

Is MS still going to charge people for Solitaire that actually *buy* a copy of Windows 10? I imagine so and that's wrong, or at least undesirable.

This type of thing isn't unique to Windows, I object to the Unity Shopping Lens and Amazon tie-in with the latest versions of Ubuntu, but I know I can uninstall those and other things and be fairly confident that Canonical won't be tracking my every IM, email, browser visit and keystroke. Microsoft has made tracking tie-in a requirement to use just about every new feature in Windows 10 -- according to the Privacy agreement, which I just actually read. For example, Cortana doesn't require your location for everything it can do, but MS makes it so. Auto-sharing WiFi passwords is supremely stupid, especially for such dubious benefits.

The whole point of Windows 10 is to suck you into the new Windows everywhere ecosystem. You are not their customer anymore, advertisers and business partners are. You are the product.

Perhaps overkill for what you want, but MythTV can be be used across multiple systems in a client-server setup for live/recorded TV, photos, videos... You can install the server on your desktop, with a capture card if you want live or recorded cable/OTA TV, and the client side on a less-capable system attached to your TV (really easily if your TV has a VGA port (like mine) or your PC has an HDMI port ...). All you need is to network the two systems. It can also be controlled via a remote or keyboard. Not sure how to configure the remote to work on the client as I have a combined one-system client+server setup.

Um...No. I then said:

If you had bothered to read two more sentences.

The "thenextweb" link has the following excerpt from the Microsoft Privacy Statement and Services Agreements:

The author notes a concern about relying on the “good faith” of corporations. I'm more concerned about the phrase "to protect our customers". Microsoft is giving away Windows 10 for free, so who do you/we think their customers really are? I'm pretty sure it's not us. Even if we are, how would accessing and/or disclosing our data protect us?

Also questionable is that they will access, disclose, preserve personal data when they believe it's necessary to "enforce the terms governing the use of the services". Not sure how personal data is needed to do that, unless it has to do with providing that data to other entities involved in the agreement.

All in all, I'm pretty sure I won't be upgrading my Windows 7 Ultimate system to Windows 10 - ever. If for no other reason than the phrase "freemium solitaire". When the time comes, I'll switch to a Linux or BSD only solution - come what may.

The concept of "dating" is archaic. I look forward to the offloading all the associated penalty costs of "dating" in favour of a service model -- oh wait...

And, if I recall, the VAX and BSD before that - I seem to remember futzing around with those for the linking loader project in my systems programming class that used our VAX-785 running 4.3BSD back in the mid 1980s. (Yes, I'm old.)

Ya, because if *anyone* is going to look at 16-year-old girls laying out by their backyard pools in Kentucky, it's going to be their dads with shotguns. 'Cause, that's not creepy at all.

And here's where punctuation and a missing comma changes everything. I imagine you meant:

I'm not sure stacking computers on make-shift launch pads in the middle of the desert would be helpful. Or did I misread that?

Remember the old Sun slogan: The network is the computer.

[ Yes, I'm that old. ]

That's adorable. You must be new - to everything. :-)