"What did people ever do before they had a Cortana to whisper in their ear? How did they ever survive?"

What did people ever do before they had mobile phones, stuck permanently to their ears? How did they survive.

Seriously though in reply to the topic, Germany had the Gestapo, Russia had the KGB, now the US and the rest of the world has Google & Microsoft.

Privacy, it's all in the imagination, and this is only the beginning!!

Re-quoting myself...

You'll notice what left out when quoting me (and which is bolded above) suggests why I believe digital assistants need to be made better.  I would argue that anyone still desperately hanging on to 'keeping track of my own stuff' has been/is fighting a losing battle.

"What did people ever do before they had Cortana to whisper in their ear?"  The same thing they will do long after technology has created the next puzzle piece on the way to engineering us humans completely out of the equation.  Technology is actually supposed to do this.  It is supposed to offload responsibility/jobs from us and in doing so maybe create other responsibility/jobs elsewhere.  It is up to us to keep up or get out of the way that is all.

You still have privacy 'to give up' Doc?  Well I'll just agree to disagree there.....

My data/files can be browsed by 'them' (whoever 'them' actually is) at will I'm sure.  Permission to do so just seems so 2000-late these days....

Sure Cortana and I have an uneasy 'friendship' at times (she can really creep you out sometimes with suggestions etc.) but at least Cortana has no feelings I could potentially hurt so the odds of my life being fucked by a vindictive digital assistant are much less than those by a real live one I'd say! 

For now... although that's just a guess.

Enjoy W10, Monk. My next OS will be Mac. Although I'm probably older, I keep my brain young by keeping track of my stuff by myself.

Anyone who thinks it's OK to surrender his/her privacy to MS for the sheer pleasure and beauty of their OS can have it with my "blessing".

Anyone who thinks it's OK to surrender his/her privacy to MS for the sheer pleasure and beauty of their OS can have it with my "blessing".
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I'm with you Doc !!!

Regarding the privacy issues, it's not good enough that you can 'turn this, that or the other feature off'.  Since an internet connection is required to install Win10 and the feature(s) are activated by default, by the time you can find the option to turn the respective feature off, your data has already been uploaded to their servers. 

i.e the ability to opt out is just for show.   Encrypted or not, MS, Advertisers, government entities have access to your wireless network.

I will thanks.  You might just find that W10 is 'the better OSX'.  Also my brain is plenty active (sometimes I think too much so) and I'm sure I have at least as many grey hairs as you; I'm just one of those 'older folks' who believes in advancement at any/all cost.

....and not to repeat myself ad nauseam but I sincerely believe privacy (the actual) doesn't exist (hasn't for a long time in my opinion).  Or does privacy refer to the marketable product/ideal which is just another way of saying entities 1 2 and 3 may not know what I know/do but entity 4 is allowed? What happens when entity 4 becomes business partners with 1 2 or 3 or is purchased (or otherwise connected with/to) by 1 2 or 3?  These days everyone is 'connected' to everyone else and everything else (at least in some way).  Unless you intend to stop computing entirely and live the rest of your life off the grid (as possible or not as it still may be) I really believe no one actually has any 'privacy' left.

   Well the moment Cortana gives me some lip she'll be dealing with my wife as my wife has reminded me time and again during our marriage that she is the only woman who may ever do so! 

is that so? 

i had all those syncing options turned off in Windows 8.1 (mostly because i do not use MS's environment, i would not want to do without browser syncing or the cloud but i use Yandex), and Windows 10 kept all my settings during the upgrade. as it should.

also i don't see how a clean install would require an internet connection. would be impossible to install on certain hardware then.

and Cortana is opt-in, not opt-out.

of course that doesn't mean just because you don't use a service they wouldn't spy on you. it's MS after all, the company that forgot to rename their NSAKEY variable and that was pre-XP.

Same here... I like to keep all my stuff in memory to use/deal with as necessary. While I have Cortana on my phone, I've never found a need to use it and haven't.  And while it may be a feature in Win 10 that has the yuppie set abuzz, I will continue to do things the old way... with appointment cards, sticky notes and using my young brain to remember.

As for anything I might forget, most often it comes to bite me in the arse and I'm reminded.... of birthdays and anniversaries, etc.

And while various ones have stated that MS and others are spying on us and probably always have, I see no reason to increase their opportunities by willingly installing even more 'phone home' software.   If and when I install Win 10, I will disable all those 'helpful' features by opting for the custom installation.

"Helpful", indeed. "Let us help ourselves to your data, your files, your browsing data, etc., etc." 

If a 14 year old Russian hacker from Novosibersk or Chendou said that to people, they'd take a pickaxe to him, and rightly.

But, because MS hides and disguises it in an endless, legalese EULA, it's just fine. Lol. Right. You gave "consent"...without a Law School professor translating that bullshit into intelligible human speech. Tell Satya, "Thanks but no thanks." Parasites.

What the hell has computing come to when websites publish articles on how to prevent your own effing computer from spying on you, because a huge effing corporation designs its software to be obsolescent and insecure so they can sell you something "new", ugly and intrusive...just to make more money from you?

And that doesn't piss you off? They're evil!

butbutbutbut....Windows 10 is Skynet...

*did Jafo just motorboat me?! 

Its evil.  But its big, and powerful, and ubiquitous. Oh, and richer than Donald.  Whats a small fry to do?

"And while we're at it we'll use your webcam in reverse to see if you compute/surf the net in the nude"

And if you do, I can imagine you'll be targeted with ads for plastic surgery, diet pills, wrinkle creams and all sorts of other stuff... like penis enlargers for men, breast augmentation/reduction for women. 

Yeah, well as far as I'm concerned, if I can't see my penis [belly] then neither is Microsoft.  Yup, I'm putting tape over my webcam when I compute/surf the net in the nude.

I know, I shouldn't be making light of such a serious matter, but if I don't my extreme displeasure will have me effing and blinding and using expletives that could get me a rap over the knuckles... and I don't fechen want that to happen, do I.

Oh look at that, Doc's effing and blinding.   And rightly so!

Apart from a few other choice words, contemptuous comes to mind when judging MS' treatment of its customers.  It doesn't matter if the EULA makes mention of MS intentions, most people won't have a clue as to what's being done to them.  I mean, who's going to read 30-something pages of a convoluted EULA?  And even if they do, who is going to fully understand the implications... the consequences?  For mine, MS deliberately wrapped it up in 30-something pages of gobbledygook to put people off reading it, not to be open or transparent.