While your post makes some good points, I do have to take exception to this one line. The first amendment is cited incorrectly in at least 3-4 stories posted on /. today alone. The freedom of the press is used erroneously to snoop into the private lives of civilians all the time, and to break into private events. The right is freedom of the press from government not carte blanche to investigate everything a celebrity does.

Where you are at maybe. My mother-in-law lived in the city where they had FiOS, great speeds from when I visited her, even made me a bit jealous despite the fact that I have a pretty decent 50/5 plan. She moved in with her new husband on a farm in Kittaning, and now she has to pay out the nose for cellular "broadband" to the point where she and my wife have to limit the time they skype so it doesn't rack up a big bill.

I could easily install Linux and remove those problems, at the cost of lesser enjoyment of the programs I want - if Nvidia and AMD would make decent drivers for Linux, and game developers would support Linux (across the board!), then it would make me switch. Conversely, if MS decides to pull something like Apple's app store (I know, I know it's already there!) so that you cannot even install software not received through the store, THAT would be a final straw. The way I see it, I have a choice - an informed choice. I can use Windows and know that my personal data is being mined to target me for ads or who knows what else, the same way Google, Facebook etc. etc. do, and as a result, not have to worry about whether or not the new game I want to play will work, or I can be free of MS's data collection, take steps to prevent Google, Facebook, LinkedIn, etc. etc. from getting any data about me, and pray that the available graphics card drivers will be good enough and Wine or whatever you have to work with now will work. I choose the former, and as a result I can spend that much more time enjoying my PC, instead of searching for workarounds and fixes. MS is evil for data mining? Sure, but by the exact same token, so are Google, Facebook and all the other companies who target advertising. I know Safeway is able to track what I buy when I use my club card, but the discount is worth it to me. I recently was browsing for certification training and now I get ads on just about every site pointing me to the trainer for the cert I was looking to pick up. Same deal with Windows, the "discount" of having less administrative work involved in performing the tasks I want to do is worth the nagging updates and data mining. The real point I was interested in, however is that I have done none of the above-mentioned registry edits to remove the nagging. I have, in fact, seen no nagging on my home PC to update to Windows 10 at all - so as you can see that makes it pretty hard for me to voice an opinion that they are hijacking my computer for their nefarious purposes. I have been debating whether or not to update it based on the fact that there are one or two games which I have been told do not work on Windows 10 and the headache of checking that all the settings of applications I use aren't going to be wiped out.

Honestly? I don't know. I'd be pretty pissed about the 6GB forced download if I knew about it and could see it happening, but I don't think it is on my PC. I have changed no registry settings, and my computer does run automatic updates. It does piss me off when it reboots without my permission occasionally to install updates, but not enough to get me to try to live with a Linux desktop. I am fluent in Linux. I can do just about anything on Linux that I can on Windows. But my home computer is a gaming rig, and for gaming, Linux just isn't there yet. I'm not too worried about any data Microsoft can harvest from my PC, as all it will let them know is that I buy humble bundles and haven't even played something like 75% of the titles I have purchased. I'll see if I can spot the download on my or my wife's PC when I get home, but like I said, I haven't been nagged or even suggested on my home PC to update to 10, and I think that is pretty interesting in and of itself.

Good tip, while we were Christmas shopping my wife asked me why in the fark a sample of uranium ore was in my Amazon suggested items. It took me several seconds to realize that it was likely there from reading "The worst stuff for sale" blog which I generally find highly amusing. In fact, I am pretty glad it found the radioactive gag gift instead of several of the other postings that could have come up :-p I'd provide a link, but I can't be arsed.

After using Windows 10 on my work computer for a few months I was pretty happy with it - it seemed like the worst parts of 8 had been fixed and many UI improvements were made - multiple desktops, a taskbar that is duplicated on additional monitors etc. I was planning on updating my home computer with 10, but held off, so it's still running 8.1 which I finally have mostly gotten used to. Strangely, I haven't been bothered at all to upgrade to 10 on my home computer, though both of my wife's computers are telling her to upgrade from 7. If MS is forcing a 6GB download in the background, that might explain the odd slow speeds I have seen occasionally, and it's definitely a bad move by MS, but I'd say that the alternative is Linux, or live with the nags. Still better than apple!

When you rent a car. some unethical companies will bill you after returning the car for "dings" and "dents" that you are responsible for unless you have paid for their "insurance" up front.

Thats crazy - my BS in CS required 3 calculus classes, linear algebra, number theory, logic, discrete structures, and statistics. A good third of the classes I needed to take were math courses - roughly as many classes I needed to be CS courses.

w00t!! that was l33t! u t0tally pWn3d th3m!