I strictly use the local-only setup. I'm sort of OK if they still leave a relatively trivial backdoor to do this, but if they ever flat require an online account, I'm out, hard.
This is partially due to wanting to avoid the hassle and management of yet-another-forking-online-acct-IDGAF-about, but also because I have some machines controlling industrial processes (CNC machines, custom cutting machines, etc.) that I keep entirely off any network for security & safety reasons (yes, moving anything to/from those machines is all sneaker-net; simple, works, and my shop doesn't yet have the scale to justify that kind of networking/security/admin overhead).
I just hope that MS engineering is not stupid or powerless enough to allow MS marketing & MBAs to fully kill off the local account.
This entire attitude of exploiting customers by requiring spurious internet accounts & connections is making me start to think that the Internet is all a huge mistake. If that approach takes over, the world will literally be worse than before the Internet in every important way (and there are some solid arguments that it already is worse).
That's just.... Insane. This is going to be a disaster. I'm so sorry, Windows users.
Sounds like a huge pain to deal with. Why not switch to Linux and be done with it? Genuine question.
Plus, at the outset of another startup, we decided to go Open-Source everything, and tried to setup a real-time version of Linux and the CNC control software. All of it supposedly up and running with only a few dozen steps to setup in the people supposedly running it. Despite decades in networking and a bit of Linux experience, I quickly got swamped in the massive undocumented bugs in setup/config/complile, and brought in a guy who had a full-time Linux shop, and who I knew from working with him previously that he was very good. He thought 'it's a new version, but no problem'. A month later, we still had nothing running and the investor/partner pulled the plug. So the swamp of poorly-documented / undocumented / mis-documented hiccoughs literally killed that startup — death by 1000 cuts.
Sure, it is probably better now, 15 years later. But so is this environment, UNLESS they tie it to another online acct.
So, basically, I'm pretty much now in the business of slinging atoms instead of bits, and the overhead is no fun, and just not worth it (yet). Plus, the overhead of working around the MS carp turned out to be pretty small. Just disable the Wireless at the right time in the W11Pro install (I think it is worse in teh Home version).
I know valve have done great stuff but is it good enough yet to run everything on a AAA game on 4k ultra with hdr, gsync and 144hz?
At that, it still excels and is no mistake. The problem is all the people using it for money.
Someone said a long time ago that "The love of money is the root of all evil".
I'm not a follower of any particular religion, but that guy sure got it right on that point! Also, the only time he was recorded being violent was when he kicked the money-changers out of the temple.
How do we kick out the money-changers from the Internet?
Back to the roots of info transfer... it seems the tagging devices+apps tell us that we have achieved critical mass of node/relay density for an underground mesh network to work, if we can get enough people to run it . . .
They are pushing more and more people into the perception of renting a experience rather then owning a device. Its great money for me to help people figure all this out though.
[1]: https://www.scottrlarson.com/publications/publication-transi...
[1]: https://www.scottrlarson.com/publications/publication-transi...
