I suspect MS does not give a crap about my webcam feed or yours. I'm always amazed how folks can generate conspiracy theory's.
sorry, but this is now post-snowden era and you don't get off that easily.
the new default is to assume malice, and you are usually going to be right, when it comes to anything privacy or security related.
the governments are like drug addicts, they have a monkey on their backs. once they tasted this spy-power of theirs, they are hooked. they don't want to give up that sweet, sweet power they now have.
the new default - when it comes to obvious use-cases, is to assume that there was pressure to have some feature there and this usually will not come via user requests. even parallel construction is now known, so we have to look thru excuses and see the real intent on feature A or B.
we are waking up. its not 'tin foil hat'. please stop with the BS. many of us have a systems/network security background and can see the power-grabs happening daily in the computer field. its very possible that there was pressure to do anything that supplies 'data' to those who have an insatiable need for such 'data'.
I suspect what google does, too. anyone who can be a source of mass data is ripe for power-abuse. many changes in win10 were not there for the user's benefit. we are not children anymore. this is post-snowden. stop with the 'tin foil hat' bullshit. we know this crap happens all the time, now.
This!
I'm amazed when I see people still trotting out that naive line "no one is interested in your PC activities, thinking they are is just tin foil hat conspiracy theory rubbish". When I see it, I think this person must either be incredibly isolated from all non-MSM news sources, or they are sitting at an astroturfing company desk, doing their shift as 50 or so virtual personas, keeping the world safe for the stinking Elites.
Btw, my immediate thought about the web-cam problem, and now the 'frame server' stuff, is that Microsoft has TWO prime design agendas. One is to serve the gov/security agencies with more spying powers, the other is to impose absolute DRM enforcement on all PCs at the OS level. (WHY has no one mentioned DRM in this thread yet?)
Video streams are a high-value asset in the DRM world. What's the bet the Win10 'frame server' doesn't just enable forking streams, but also is intended as a DRM gatekeeper, monitoring for and killing anything that may not be DRM-kosher. Uncompressed simple web-cam streams being one example, since they don't contain any DRM proof-of-ownership keys. Guilty until proven kosher, is exactly the mentality associated with the DRM pushers.
Edit:
...having more than one computer is not a bad thing .
Yeah, agreed. They stick them on the curb, I pick them up. Very rarely is there anything wrong with them, aside from being bloated with malware, startup filled with nonsense, the usual user caused Windows problems. And if they do have a hardware failure of some sort, I just part them out, which usually results in more ram and HD's to stick in the good ones. And the power supplies and such an be reworked for other stuff. Yeah, I like to hoard obsolete PC's.
You and me too.
I can't afford to lay in a huge larder full of long-life food. But I can hoard old PCs.
I have a hunch that at some point it may be necessary to revert to systems from before some particular generation. Modern machines are becoming far too interdependent and 'cloudy'. A situation that seems to be just asking for a dramatic non-recoverable event, whether deliberate or accidental. Infectable monocultures always end up crashing with some form of contagious blight.
Some cautious people these days advise 'stay away from crowds'. I'd add 'keep your old install CDs'.