Microsoft's intention is that users will be always up-to-date, not only with security patches, but also with feature updates.
Windows 10 will resemble a cloud service.
The criticism so far is that this can seriously brake compatibility with other software. But there is another more important aspect to this: If Microsoft is instructed to gather your data to that great big NSA supercomputer then a simple automated update would secure this.
Orwellian paranoia - you say? Big data demand that you gather all of it to make the best analyzes - and so far the US government has gathered most of the data in the world. The NSA "discover and track" strategy has been used on US citizens and naturally on "foreigners".
The policy shift was intended to help the agency “discover and track” connections between intelligence targets overseas and people in the United States, according to an N.S.A. memorandum from January 2011. The agency was authorized to conduct “large-scale graph analysis on very large sets of communications metadata without having to check foreignness” of every e-mail address, phone number or other identifier, the document said. Because of concerns about infringing on the privacy of American citizens, the computer analysis of such data had previously been permitted only for foreigners.
Huge amounts of data are needed for this and to be sure you really need all the data. Having all the data except that one from the terrorist is no option.
So an automated updated from Microsoft the moment the US government has decided to gather everything on all (Windows) computers in the world would ensure this.
Those updates are not open source - so you will never know. You may trust Microsoft too and that does not matter either if they get instructed by the NSA.
..And sadly that is not a far fetched scenario.
A world where Microsoft can remote controll most computers may be good for America, but Europe; Asia and others may have slightly different views.
The beauty of it is that you can even differ between "foreigners" and US computers...
..Or maybe this is just another service that will improve your life and efficiency.
Something to think about before you go for Windows 10 (but much of that is happening in Windows 7 too - Win 10 will just have more of it and you have to accept it up front.)
More here
