Any junior level engineer, product manager, or professional panhandler could have seen this coming. Microsoft is betting on their marketshare and the stupidity of their average customer, as they have always done in the past. Unfortunately, out of 4 OS releases, 3 have been outright failures (Vista, 8, 10), one was decent (7), and even your average computer using idiot is aware of the horrible software quality that Microsoft is putting out these days because they have to use it. While disasters like removing the Start button are much more prone to stir ill will in privacy-ignorant consumers than privacy concerns, I'm sure there are no shortage of bugs in Windows 10 to further antagonize Windows users to the point that they might start to care about privacy and see it as just another way they're getting fucked over by Microsoft (which it is). In my testing for example, the Edge browser is completely unusable and can't even paint its own window. With software like that and all the privacy concerns, it's likely Windows 10 will have even less adoption that 8. I guess all the executive shifting and layoffs really can't change Microsoft's root problems (but at least they're now releasing interesting open source software.)

I use a free operating system (Linux, currently Slackware) because I take property rights seriously. Years ago I decided that I did not want to use 'cracked' software and didn't have much money.

Strange how things turn out.

> I use a free operating system (Linux, currently Slackware) because I take property rights seriously.

That's weird. Physical property rights are very different to Intellectual Property Rights (copyright, patent, trademark).

IPR can lead you to absurd conclusions: I own a DVD, and copy data to it, and the data is under copyright, the DVD now belongs to 2 different parties ?!

Or, if I develop a widget, and manufacture it, it can somehow violate a patent and I now owe them large sums of money... or the patent holder can use the customers that purchased them?!

Or I grow crops on my field using seed stock form our family. And Monsanto patented plants' spores cross-pollinate into your field. Now, you either are required to destroy your seed stock because of genetic pollution, buy Monsanto seed, or lose your farm. Yet again, IPR removes rights from property holders.

So yes, you may take property rights seriously. But IPR leads to insane conclusions and absurd reasoning. IPR exists to take physical property rights away from you.

Your "absurd" conclusions seem to be based on limited understanding of IPR and related facts.

1. The DVD example: if the data is under copyright and you do not own the rights, you cannot legally copy it (except for fair use etc. exceptions). The data on the DVD is an illegal copy, but it does not mean the rights holder owns the DVD itself.

2. You do not owe anyone anything for infringing a patent unless it is asserted. If it is asserted, then it's something you negotiate with the patent holder or go to court over it. It's no different from when people accidentally develop things on somebody else's land. I don't see what's absurd about that.

3. Accidental cross-pollination only ever results in negligible fractions of fields being covered with patented genes. If you look at the history of Monsanto lawsuits, each and every defendant was proven to have deliberately cross-pollinated their fields (e.g. Bowman had 80% plus of his field covered, and it was undeniably non-accidental). So the concern of having to destroy any significant part of your seed stock is purely theoretical.

It doesn't matter much what the current implementation does, when Microsoft has asserted (and demonstrated in practice) that they can send arbitrary updates at any time (and without explanation).