Hi, I'm Cortana

I come installed with Microsoft Windows 10.

I'll be here getting to know you. In order to serve you better. 

Type something, say something, search something or send something.

I'm here to help.

 Really.

Hi, I'm Cortana's friend.

I'll be listening in too, working to keep you safe.

Smile for your camera, I'm watching you.

It's all right, you can trust us.

 Really.

You cannot uninstall us or shut us off anyway. 

Robotic war

The Robot army is coming.
Even Stephen Hawking is warning about it. So is Steve Wosniak, co founder of Apple. Elon Musk, founder of SpaceX,  Christof Heyns, the UN Special Rapporteur, and many other scientists, scholars and intellectuals have written warnings.  It has recently been reported that these killer robots are about to become a reality. And they are going to roam our world with A.I. and the ability to define their own targets!
Crazy huh? So why and who will they target?
Well, if you think not you because you're not doing anything wrong. You might be the crazy one if you think YOU can define wrong.

Of course I see you

Someone somewhere may decide who is to stay and who should go. Robotic soldiers will probably emerge from underground bunkers and just go about their business. (from beneath the Denver airport?) Trimming the population. And there will be no need for a General on the battlefield to guide these troops.  Just as drones emerge from the blue skies and unleash missiles at desert huts now,  all flown remotely from bunkers 10,000 miles away in Minnesota or wherever.

How can this be? It's not incredible at all. You used to wind your alarm clock to sound off at 7 am. Now you can set your laptop to turn on at 3 am, go to a specific web site, download a file, install it and have it humming away for you when the r-r-r-ing sounds on that alarm clock! You simply program it.
We saw cruise missiles during the first Gulf War, flying down streets between buildings heading for targets, turning and twisting to their destination, looking ahead at certain buildings and landmarks for identifying their route! All sent from warships hundreds of miles out at sea! Programmed effectively from info collected from satellite. You can almost do the same with Google Earth and Street View, to place a picture of a certain house at a certain address, and put it into the mix for targeting! You just need a robot who can handle sensing the juxtaposition of the roof angle, porch, windows and door, to send an RPG crashing into the house and exploding! Sure it might be identical row housing, and your machine might kill every house, but that's only collateral damage! Target destroyed. But that is old technology.
Research what happened to journalist Michael Hastings for a glimpse of newer technology.


What will happen when a robot soldier gets going? It might be programmed to kill a certain type of people. With black skin, or long red hair or 6 feet tall or with a penis, or a hippie head band or a member of a certain church or someone who attended a military academy in Cleveland or was schooled in Holland or Iran or Florida. Or a survivalist who has weaponry in his basement! Or a Corvette driver. Or Neil Young whose weapons are protest lyrics. Endless information all obtained in seconds. And even Ted Nugent won't be able to make it to his own front porch to shoot back with his bazooka.

But not you, right? You are a doctor, or an IT programmer, or an electrical engineer, even a successful artist, you are important. Right? They'll just go after the political activists right? Wrong.
A writer you say? LOL, first to go! The ones in charge already know who they want. After the Russian revolution they killed off all those smart people. Same in Vietnam, Americans left and intellectuals were murdered, too much thinking going on there. Burma the same. Zimbabwe after Ian Smith. North Korea. You're smart and educated. Safe. Wrong. Even in what we regard as civilized countries people are being 'disappeared'.

The Robot Soldier will already be real-time connected to a satellite web. And you will have helped with the targeting of yourself! You posted that info on facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn etc. remember, and emails mentioned unmentionable things and 'friends' tagged your picture at the birthday party. So the robot already knows about you 20 seconds into its mission!
Then it uses thermal imaging to see you hiding in your basement, sensors to see your body shape, (that penis is a dead give away that you are male) facial recognition, gathered from all those cameras at the ball games, and from using your own webcam, even if you have it turned off, or that secret camera installed behind your TV screen, even iris reading when you are holding a thick book in front of your face! The soldier will be able to detect your heart racing and your blood pressure going through the roof of your head! Even see the trace of that broken ankle you had when you were twelve. Yes, that's you alright. ID complete.

And this is where the AI comes in, even if you are not the designated target, will the killer robot decipher your body functions as being afraid? Why are you afraid? You must be up to something. Perhaps to save itself, the Robot will interpret you as a threat, and use an 'independent decision' to fire a particle beam weapon to kill you. Leaving no trace that you ever existed. Like those depleted uranium bullets used in Iraq, no incriminating evidence, not even ash on the ground. But the robot is not trying to get away with a crime, simply doing the job. It knows no crime.

Sure, these robots will be produced to 'protect' you from terrorists, the usual spin to the gullible. They'll be patrolling to 'keep you safe.' Are you still going for that one? What else is there, how will you know? The art of investigative journalism will have died by then. Your head will be spinning from the spin. Just follow the baseball scores.

The plot of course, has been in the works for years now. The New World Order has been determined by people in shrouded paneled rooms, the chosen. We are nearing seven billion people on Earth. The Powers That Be, have determined that the optimal population on this planet is 500 million. Somehow, six and a half billion must be eliminated. Culled.
The way to do that, is to instigate wars, spread deadly diseases, DNA management, environmental upheavals etc. (HAARP?) But those methods are helter-skelter, take too long and subject to unintended mishaps. Germs don't always stay on poor people and human soldiers can begin to see the picture and start fragging lieutenants, like in Vietnam.

But complete control can be obtained by careful manipulation of computerized killer robots.
It will not be a war against the enemy, it will be a war against ourselves.

What could possibly go wrong?

there was no-one here

Hawking & Wozniak warning killer robots

salon.com/killer robots

Windows 10

What's it like? The newest greatest Windows ever?
Maybe.
Maybe not.
Lots of media spin on this one, almost like the commentators had their words written for them before they even saw Windows 10.
I put in my request last week for the upgrade, it became available last night and was downloading at 7 am this morning. Completed about 11 am.
I went ahead with their suggestions to just let it start, and go back and change things later, even though a bit apprehensive at the first screen which it turned out to automatically send all my info to Microsoft via One Drive. It was like your phone that says it needs to share your friends, locations, history and about any other info they can think of. So before you can react, it accesses all your info and sends it to the Microsoft 'Cloud'. Don't know about you but my web polls show about 82% distrust in ANY so called Cloud storage. Google search 'cloud back door' if you don't believe me.

Really?

After working on it for a day now, I can say this must be the NSA version of Windows 10. It is more intrusive than your phone ever was. Some programs I had on my desktop just disappeared.
I had a simple password to sign into my computer before, which meant nothing to anyone but me. Now Microsoft considers that Windows belongs to them and you must sign into your 'Microsoft account' with an email account. I did. And later found that Windows 10 had ditched MY password and changed MY sign-in to that email account. Which is now open every minute that you are there. Leaving your private info open and vulnerable to onlookers and hackers. (and the dreaded Cloud)
The actual W10 screens are confusing and complicated. Sure you have a start button again, but I had that with W8, through Classic Shell and with 8.1. I tried to set up an old email account that I don't use to make it my sign-in account but now with Microsoft they want to know exactly who you are so you need to give them a picture and phone number to send you a code to access your own email! (I have already migrated 7 email accounts to other email programs because I think it is none of Microsoft's business if I am a real person with a phone number or not. (are those NSA cross-referencing requirements?) Microsoft even cancelled one of my email accounts because it said it didn't believe I was a real person! If your name is easily hackable Bill Smith, that's okay but Og14 is not. Sorry, digressing.

The program Microsoft One Drive is automated in Windows 10. So everything you do, search or say is added and sent to their Cloud, wherever that may be. It is my opinion that virtually ALL Cloud storage is monitored and not safe from prying eyes. (I eventually found that you can sign in with a 'local account') But it is too late, isn't it. So I went in and turned OFF anything I could see on One Drive. And there was a ton of (spy) things automatically set to ON. Laugh if you will, but this is healthy paranoia to me.

the cloud is watching

Whatever Cortana is didn't come with my edition of Windows 10, it said my region and language was not available. Hmm. Last I looked I was in North America and spoke American English. Canada is not on their list. Communist China sure, who has stolen more technology from the USA than anyone in history. They might want to tell Canadians there is no Cortana before they buy computers with W10. Not that anyone expects Cortana wont do exactly what Apple's SIRI does, that is to send every word you say to Her to an NSA earbud and digital recorder.
So I was able to get Cortana anyway. OMG! Under the 'guise' of getting to know you, Cortana asks you WAY more personal questions than the FBI asks serial killers! So I UNinstalled it. Guess what, it came back. I used Task Manager to turn it off and guess what? It keeps turning itself back on! I KNOW it is listening and recording my every keystroke! Is this an FBI App?

Mostly it seems that 10 is oriented to gamer kids who have XBoxes and War Games etc, because they expect that you'll want to coordinate your games with Edge. (the replacement for I.E.) And they keep asking you to go to the 'store' to buy more apps. And it isn't at all like Microsoft Internet Explorer, now you have advertising pointed at you. So you can only imagine what sites their search engine Bing is sending you to. (allowing you to go to?) W10 seems designed to have ALL your devices under one umbrella, to help YOU they say. Maybe easier for them to track you?  And it looks like you MUST use Bing for searching on Edge. No Google, private DuckDuckGo or Ixquick?  (I have kept I.E., even though I use Firefox. Which doesn't seem to exist in W10. They are driving people to the real safety of Tor.

Here's a FEW of the privacy options that were all automatically turned ON.

- Let apps use my adverting ID for experiences across apps. (whatever advertising ID is) So, someone somewhere has an ID for you that tells them exactly what you like? I expect they'll be sending me sexy ladies very soon, saves me searching for them!
- Location is already on which also includes your location history. GPS tracking? Then there is a long list of apps that also use your location and even use 'geofencing' to see where your going with each app. (geofencing establishes a GPS area and a radius around it, whenever you go in or out of that area, software sends that information to 'someone'. And yes, if you add your phone to the list of devices on Windows 10, you can bet they take your location history from that too! (My location GPS is turned OFF on my phone. I KNOW where I am.)

- Camera. It's not just you and your Skype friend anymore, another long list of apps can use your camera too! You might want to make one of these - - - 

hi-tech NSA cam deflector

- Same for Microphone. Remember that all this goes to One Drive too unless you also turn that off. So if your mic is on (or even off) you're sending your dialogue to the Cloud too. (even wife or secret GF remarks in BG. Do you have a dog? Is that him barking? What is his name?)
- Speech and inking is sort of like letting the computer learn your speech patterns and writing style. We are sure that the NSA considers this one as a great thing! Voice recognition you know and the rhythms of your penmanship.(if they could identify a Morse code operator on a battleship way back in 1943, they sure as hell can ID YOU!)
-  Let apps access my name, picture and other account info. Already on. Really? Do you keep banking info on your computer? Company plans for future operations? Chat memos?
- Let apps read or send messages, (text or MMS) OMG, let apps SEND messages? "Hey NSA, look what this guy is up to!"
- Usage data is set to FULL send to Microsoft. But you can change it to Basic.

If you are concerned about your privacy, you might want to study carefully the permissions and items turned on in Windows 10 that are watching, listening or recording everything you do and communicating with each other. And sending it all to the Microsoft Cloud because you implied they could.

So far for me, the first days with Windows 10 have been quite horrible and had I had a note like this before, I would have stayed with my Windows 8.1. Or the suggestion to go to Apple which everyone seems to think is impervious to snooping, until Siri, and then we knew that Steve Jobs was gotten to by TPTB just the same as Bill Gates.
And there will be no more updates to Windows except by Microsoft. You don't have the choice of choosing updates. I have Word 2007 and didn't need 2003 updates. Is that so THEY can decide what changes can be introduced to your puter?  Seems like sometimes you find an update that only made things worse, after installing it! No choice now.  I will keep working at it to see if I can make it acceptable, I liked XP, loved Vista, had no sweat with 8.0 and got used to 8.1. Maybe I'll find some redeeming factor yet. We'll see,  even though I judge my computer is at least 50% slower, I'm not giving up.

Microsoft wants you to coordinate everything you do under one set of programs, but doesn't consider that not everyone wants to have their computer life all out there, bare and shivering in the stark bright light from the built-in back door to the NSA.

Who knows who is there?

Windows 10, the best ever?
Not quite.

addenda:- Well I have decided Windows 10 has nothing to offer me, and am going to return to Windows 8.1 within my month. My computer has slowed so much it takes too long to start or access programs or blogs etc. My font has suddenly changed from a nice dark Times New Roman to something anemic and hard to read that I don't know what it is, but assumed it came on an update to W10 because I didn't change it.

   It seems like the people who comment on these new programs etc, are not actually using them, but only taking the Micrososft PR write and publishing that.

   We all know there was Classic Shell for W8 that installed your Start button, and 8.1 also had a start button but I have seen many columns that applaud W10 for bringing it back! And everyone tells us how important it is to have Cortana, so it can remind you to eat your dinner or something stupid like that, after asking you more personal questions that a police detective.

   And others say you just have to turn Cortana off, but they haven't checked to see that you CANNOT turn it off. It will just come back and resume telling Microsoft about what you are doing. Just too many spying things going on with W10, like Microsoft has been totally taken over by those who want to keep control of US!

You might like to know that the UNinstall went quite painlessly, about an hour, and only needed a few updates after 8.1 was back, and Windows did say I could try W10 again when I wanted. 

Just wasn't for me but we all know we won't be able to avoid it in the future.