Windows 10 Can Disable Pirated Games (PC Gamer)

It's not like it's hard. I just block everything but what I want in the firewall. Windows is not allowed to talk to anything else but winupdate for example.

An on the subject of the thread, how would Ms check the license of something that ISN'T a Ms service? Why would they even want to? What's in it for them?

I'll find the sources for you when i get home, i made the exact same claim a few weeks back. To give a good example, there was an update to chrome a few months back, that always kept your microphone on. Apparently it was for The use of Google Now. As for how people found out, the update made it to Chromium.. It was quickly removed after the backlash Google recieved.

Not sure they could without a lot of false positives which will just cause them more problems, surly they can see that and have taken steps to error on the side of good judgment. As for what is in it for them? it could be several things like control or maybe agreements with game developers (most likely), but it'll be a very difficult task if they stray from their own services.

We seriously need modders to fix windows 10 for us it seems.

Or just use something else.

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When stuff moves over to DX12 and such its going to be hard as a gaming enthusiast.
I installed Windows 10 on a laptop I have laying around, like it so far but the whole privacy thing irks me.

Linux support right now sucks, graphics drivers are horridly unoptimized on linux for the most part.

Well if you install and manage your own firewall,
and not use the one which is build into windows, then that might work.
But most people wont install a dedicated firewall.

The problem with modding any version of Windows is kernel access, and the fact the code in it is MS intellectual property, while it's possible to DE-compile and modify, without a road map and a little insider knowledge it would probably take years of trial and error, my understanding is that it isn't tight code (well written) but actually very loose code saturated with links and threads to legacy hardware and software and not really very well optimized, but pirates have done it before to some degree so nothing is impossible. I'm guessing after the first of the year we'll start to see what can be done in a non-legal way.

It would probably be quicker and better to just start from scratch building a whole new OS but I'm not a programmer by any stretch of the imagination so I'm just guessing.

Makes you wonder if Movies are next??? Or TV shows??? Yea, really think the TEK needs to figure out how to stop windows from snooping, post it for us. Just hope they keep it simple and not the do this or do that with your router.

I don't remember a time I had a win comp directly connected to the internet. Probably 15+ years ago. A winnuke, those were the days.

I think it would be suicidal for them to do it, even if they have some kind of agreement. They would probably be sued.

Agreed, DRM is hard to manage on a case by case basis, giving control to the OS probably isn't the best idea they have had but given all the other stuff they are doing DRM fits nicely with the rest, we still have a lot of ground to cover in the discovery of what it's doing under the hood, I'm sure this isn't the last or the worst issue that will come to light in the following months.

Here's a few examples,

Google released an update a few months back to Chrome, what this did really was add functionality towards the browser. HOWEVER it was automatically activated without the users permission. the "Okay Google" function was always on, and required a microphone, and according to some, always listening in. As for how long it was always on, no one knows. but after the backlash from the open-source community (the update somehow made it to Chromium) Google quickly removed it.

Source: http://www.theguardian.com/technology/2015/jun/23/google-eavesdropping-tool-installed-computers-without-permission

Source: http://arstechnica.com/security/2015/06/not-ok-google-chromium-voice-extension-pulled-after-spying-concerns/

**Source: https://www.privateinternetaccess.com/blog/2015/06/google-chrome-listening-in-to-your-room-shows-
the-importance-of-privacy-defense-in-depth/**

A second example, I'm sure you're aware of Googles "Right to be Forgotten" practice. it's a law in Europe, but not a law any where else in the world. Some french users in France are actually using Google.co.uk search engine much more than their very own countries Google equivalent, Google.fr. according to the Google blog about 97% of users refuse to use their own nations search engine of Google. as for the law, and how the practice of the "Right to be forgotten" it's only implemented in Europe as mentioned above.

there's a good example in the blog in the link

source: http://googlepolicyeurope.blogspot.nl/2015/07/implementing-european-not-global-right.html

A third example is Google tracking your Footsteps and the places you may have visited. of course GPS must be enabled, but the sort of dark twist to it is that some of the stuff is synced to your Gmail. which also is under Google's watchful eye. and sadly even though it may not effect you, some people may or may not forget to turn their GPS off. so you can still probably see Google may still track people

Source: http://www.mirror.co.uk/news/technology-science/technology/google-timeline-app-spies-ordinary-6121819

On sidenote you may want to check if you have been tracked. just type in www.google.com/maps/timeline

I didn't even know i was tracked.. mind you these are public places so they don't necessarily effect me, but the fact Google knew where i was is fairly scary. even by the date.. and I'm a New Yorker like yourself.

the list goes on. the sad thing of this all is that, if you have an android device you're already on Googles watchful eye. and I'm not trying to defend Microsoft in any stretch of the imagination.. but i feel people should be just as, or much mad at Google as we are with Microsoft.

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This is a very nice write up @kat, I see where you are coming from. Many people are jumping on the microsoft hate wagon while Google is doing even more nefarious things. I'm personally going to attempt to ditch as many Google services as possible, but having an android tablet makes it difficult, along with the usefulness of Google Drive. Maybe we could create an big thread on alternatives to these services?

Even Fractal Design is joining the convo.

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LOL....when I was testing running Windows in a KVM (virtual machine) at one point it was behind 3 firewalls, Comodo installed on the Windows install, Fedora's Linux firewall running on the host, and the pfSense firewall on the router, I felt really really safe.

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Well Windows 10 just seems to be getting worse and worse...

That is the next logical step and will spell the downfall of Windows (they did say this was the last version) while it might be reasonable to check games against a DRM scheme it is imposable for MS or anyone else to know if you own a legit piece of media that you have shifted from physical to digital media, and to even attempt to go down that road will be a disaster on the scale a tsunami hitting Seattle.

Ok, first of all, thank you guys for noticing this. One question though from a non programmer/power user like most of you here.

There's bound to be a way for a user to configure this and not allow outgoing connections and data transfers, right?

I really don't appreciate a spy in my software.... :(

This is what bugged me big time in OSX and tbh, if I wasn't using adobe I would be 100% on Linux.

Thoughts please?