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That time will not come until the law requires that such data must be stored and used only as the owner specifies, with penalties for violation.  In other words, it becomes a matter of contract.  Watch EULAs sharpen up when that happens.  They are useless now because everyone recognizes that they are one-sided and often immune from challenge.  Give the consumer some enforceable rights to his or her data and things will change.

This is a bit like health care.  Until the consumer becomes an active party to the negotiation, we’ll keep going in the same circles.

“Local jurisdictions” have had about as much influence on this issue as they have had on immigration.

Woody, thanks for the heads-up.  I see this is as part of a pattern of operating on the edge of the law, as demonstrated by the credit reporting agencies’ poor record of performing their legal obligations when asked to correct errors in the information they disseminate..

Fundamentally, they deal in what so-and-so-says-about-you.  If they had been held to the same standards as ordinary people under libel law, they would have developed differently.

I continue to say that hacking is the single greatest downside to the various spying/telemetry/data-gathering schemes afoot.

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Noel Carboni, NetDef, woody

The article does not address Windows 7 at all, does it?  Just pulling our chain?

The question would be where and how they make the money to pay themselves.

I don’t have strong feelings about browsers, so long as they are not overtly intrusive.  The whole subject seems a bit overrated, measured in speed and memory usage, when these are seldom an issue now.  Intrusiveness is different.  I won’t go with Google for that reason.  If Firefox had emphasized privacy, or at least the capability to easily customize for privacy (and not have it undermined by other stuff going on), I would have become a Firefox loyalist.  This thread is a signal to start looking around.

And as Noel implied above, I don’t understand how any free browser developer makes money, unless it’s to shove ads in your face (the part you see) and/or sell data (the part you don’t).  So assurances of privacy need to be pretty strong.

 

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Noel Carboni, HiFlyer, Elly

Thanks, after all these months of reading, for giving those of us among the unwashed a definition of “deprecated.”

It’s been a long wait.

 

 

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radosuaf

Reading that Google Sheets is stored on their server: That killed it for me.

Office software sellers have been looking for something new to sell for a long time.  The big thing for at least a decade has been collaboration, and in some environments it offers value.  But I wonder what has happened to the relationship between the spreadsheet software and the individual user, who very often must create alone and needs the software to help, not hinder, that quest.  Have the designers, having failed to come up with new ways to enhance solo creativity, bet everything on connectivity and crowd-sourcing?

The discovery of Windows 3.1 and Lotus 1-2-3 in 1992 did more than provide me a tool; it lit up portions of my brain for the first time.  In grade school I had been tested and shown to be highly verbal but without much aptitude for numbers.  Windows and spreadsheets allowed me to test and demonstrate cause-and-effect relationships that previously I could only hint at.  They helped me launch a consulting career in the complex industry that I knew.

What have the designers come up with lately to equal that?

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Elly, Deep Lurker, MrJimPhelps, Pepsiboy, flackcatcher

As someone whose life was spent in business, I reject the notion that ethics don’t apply.  To contend that is the definition of cynicism.

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EstherD, Elly

Unintelligible to the regular user, which I suppose is an admission of ignorance in your world, but in actuality is a failure to communicate.  Unless of course this is a forum only for those who are full time participants in the industry.

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HiFlyer

Microsoft could make money on a Win7+ version if they put as much effort into it as they have into the gimmicks and deception that they have employed to promote Win10.

It ends up being a question of price and sales volume.  The market share maintained by Win7 suggests that the number of potential customers for Win7+ is quite large.  If the development costs relate to the scope of the changes vs. the existing software, they should be more modest for Win7+ than they would be for a new OS.

The real problem here is Microsoft’s attempt to force its customers onto an advertising and subscription-based model.

 

 

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Cybertooth, Elly, SueW

Windows 7: “Biggest problem MS has it is too good and there is little to no need to replace/upgrade it.”

A well-run company would be able to do this.  Develop ways to extend the franchise and perhaps add set of features now and then, without poaching Windows 10.  Distinguish the two options in terms of whom they are marketed to and how they are priced.  The core concept would be to provide extended support for Win7 for a small price.  If people want to be entranced by gimmicks, let them migrate to Win10.  Fine.  It’s no reason to diss the existing customer base.  Find a way to make money on both.

Some confuse Microsoft’s stock price with “well run.”  But the stock market has a very short horizon (fostered in part by policies that discourage long term investment).  It is not equivalent to the time horizon a long term investor in Nadella’s company would have.

 

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SueW, HiFlyer, Elly

It’s the result of a failure to invent something new that is really useful.  Maybe it was inevitable.  Many have moved on to other devices, as we are constantly told.  I for one still use the desktop computer and so lament that its developers have moved on.

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flackcatcher, Charlie, SueW, Microfix, ch100, HiFlyer

Paint is a humble little example of when Microsoft was producing useful stuff, meeting real needs rather than “needs” created by promotion and hype.  It solved a problem for me when I realized that it could be used to covert a screen shot to just about any image format.

And yes, I remember Outlook Express with a certain fondness, largely for its simplicity.

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SueW, AlexN, Cybertooth, Snowflake Theory

It’s an old concept in the law–the contract that is so dense, incomprehensible, etc. that it is not expected to be read or complied with.  A close cousin to contracts that are so one-sided that no one seriously expects that that disfavored party would voluntarily agree with them.  Contracts inequitable on their face.

It’s a form of compulsion, and judges have the discretion to throw out them out.

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HiFlyer, b

As a businessman and later a writer, I concluded that, most of the time, bad writing is the work of those who don’t think clearly.  This guy can’t write worth a d**n.

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AlexEiffel