Getting back on the topic: If I was an editor and I was given the piece of work above, I would toss it in the metaphorical trash can, and tell Ed Bott "an award-winning technology writer with more than two decades' experience writing" no less, that if that is the best he can produce he can work elsewhere. In this sort of article I thought the point was to state your opinion and then present reasons to persuade the reader why they should believe you.
Argument: Microsoft is not spying on you
Evidence why you should believe him: if you don't you are likely a member of a growing and very vocal population of people who believe that Windows 10 is basically a 1984 telescreen come to life, with a built in spying apparatus scraping up every detail of your life and feeding it back to Redmond for who knows what nefarious purposes.
I don't find insultingly ridiculous rhetoric persuasive in the least
Evidence why you should believe him: if you don't you are a tinfoil hat wearer ("saying someone is "wearing a tin foil hat" means that they have paranoia or a belief in conspiracy theories, especially involving government surveillance"-from an urban dictionary).
Still not finding any persuasive evidence here, just lots of insults
Evidence why you should believe him: if you don't you are wildly misinformed, deliberately agitating, or just crazy
Maybe there is something in the misinformed bit, but he provides zero evidence on how we are misinformed, rather he just presents the most extreme examples one could possibly find and makes it seem like if you disagree with him, these examples describe you.
I'm not persuaded that they do
I could go on, but I'm tired of typing and it's really just more of the same.
Amazingly after this performance the author tries to justify MS by stating "In fact, the specific terms that the good doctor (you gotta read the article for the context) was complaining about are completely unremarkable. Any company that offers modern computing services has nearly identical language in its privacy agreement. Compare these snippets from the Google, Apple, and Microsoft privacy statements:"
So it seems he is backtracking here, like if everyone else does it, it's o.k, and the terms 'the good doctor' was complaining about are actually there, but we should not worry, it's justified because everyone else is doing it.
Still not persuaded, seems after character assassination there he grudgingly points out that 'stuff' is happening, but it's o.k. The author even makes the same point again, "It is certainly true that Windows 10 relies on online services to a much greater degree than previous Windows releases. That's the way of the world"
same rebuttal from me as the first time he said it.
"I'm also not hearing a single peep of complaints from people who actually set up and run business networks, because they understand how utterly normal those privacy terms are in 2015.
Again, no proof, just that whatever is happening with Win 10, it's o.k. folks, relax, everybody does it, after all it's 2015 and today that's the way it's done..........and that is precisely the problem
