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Security Analyst Concludes Windows 10 Enterprise 'Tracks Too Much' (xato.net)
A viral Twitter rant about Windows 10 Enterprise supposedly ignoring users' privacy settings has since been clarified. "I made mistakes on my original testing and therefore saw more connections than I should have," writes IT security analyst Mark Burnett, "including some to Google ads." But his qualified results -- quoted below -- are still critical of Microsoft:
- You can cut back even more using the Windows Restricted Traffic Limited Functionality Baseline but break many things.
- Settings can be set wrong if you aren't paying attention. Also, settings are not consistent and can be confusing to beginners.
- You are opted-in to just about everything by default and have to set hundreds of settings to opt out, even on an Enterprise Windows system. Sometimes multiple settings for the same feature. Most Microsoft documentation discourages opting out and warns of a less optimal experience... But you can't completely opt-out. Windows still tracks too much.
- Home and Professional users are much worse off due to limitations of some settings and lack of an IT staff... I'm not saying ditch Windows. I'm saying let's fix this. If we can't fix it, then we ditch Windows.
My business runs entirely on Linux. So does NASA. Those cute little Rovers that we have on Mars right now, Linux. Oil companies use special security Hardened versions of Linux to run the oil wells. If all these organizations are running Lenox just fine, the problem must be with you. :-)
Yep, linux linux linux... all us geeks can rant about the virtues and advantages, but at the end of the day, the rank and file want to run office and a web browser. MS Office is the lock-in that sells Windows... and while Wine promised to solve that it's way too complex for most people. Enter PlayOnLinux, which makes common Windows software installation just as simple as on Windows. Point, click, install. Holy $#%@ it just works, and ALL that Windows telemetry is gone, because Windows is gone. And I don't miss it.
To keep it short: I set up Linux Mint and ran updates (about 10 min total install time, from bare metal), installed PlayOnLinux (about three clicks into the Software Manager app), then used that to install MS Office (including Visio), registered and all. The Cisco VPN works (of course), the browsers are faster (of course) and work well with corp apps, and MS Office just works. Tons of other stuff Just Works(tm). Corp IT never hears from me, all the tools just work, everything's much faster, and I didn't have to do ANYTHING at the CLI -- in fact, it was easier and much faster than typical interminable Windows setup processes. It's beyond me why people still put up with the stress of Windows, or insist that it's easier (it's not) or more secure (*snort*).
I think not...(*poof*)
The free market is anti profit. Profit, in a free market, is evidence that there is an inefficiency in the market and that demand is there but unfilled. EVERY MARKET would have zero profit in a properly free and functional market, because someone could come in and set their price below the price of another who is making profit and steal their customers away, and if that were still profitable, then the cycle repeats until the marginal cost is reached where there is no way to take customers by charging less without losing money on the transaction.
Free markets are anti profit. Are you anti-free-markets?
It's 100% absolutely accurate logic.
"There will be improved old and new technology"
Doesn't change a thing I said and doesn't support your claim it's illogical.
"people's wants will change"
And therefore someone will see a place to make money. Profit is what's left after your expenses, which includes your pay. Enter the market and get paid or don't enter the market and don't get paid, which means you starve on the streets.
"and differences in geography count as well"
Which is meaningless. Differences in daylight exist. Differences in accents. But they don't count. How do differences in geography count????
"The problem is we don't live in a free market. "
That is why there's profit. If we lived in a free market,there would be no profit, since profit is what's left after the marginal cost, and a free market means products reach the marginal cost, meaning no profit.
And what "problem" are you talking about? So you're anti profit as well as anti-free market????
Unfortunately it is well documented that Windows 10 ignores the hosts file for "telemetry"
Source?
It is well documented that Windows 10 ignores the host file for a list of "vital" MS services like Update. I have been unable to find any evidence the the telemetry urls get ignored too.
In fact they seem to be perfectly blockable by the hosts file.
Spybot abti-beacon fixes mst of it, even if it can't kill cortana.
https://www.safer-networking.o...
This "you are the product" meme is stupid. When you watch TV, you are not the product even though they sell advertising on it. The relationship is clearly more complex than that.
In Google's case, there is relatively little lock-in to their products. Farm animals can't leave, they belong to the farmer. It's trivial to switch to another search engine, to another mapping site, to another email provider. Google doesn't even mind if you install uBlock and Privacy Badger from their official Chrome extension repo. If Google annoys users too much, or doesn't offer them something compelling to stay, their advertising business becomes worthless.
Yes, they are selling advertising targeted ads. But they don't allow individual users to be targeted or for advertisers to access user data directly, only in aggregate via the tools that Google provides. That's not a simple "you are the product" relationship.
const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC
The *REAL* problem is you can use the Antibeacon tool to turn off the spyware aspects of Windows, but every time you get another "update" or new version from MS, they default those spyware aspects back on, so you're playing an endless game of "whack-a-mole" trying to keep MS's nose of your bidness.. I used/supported Windows for 20 years as a sysadmin, and never really trusted MS, but since Windows 10 came out, ANY trust I may have had for MS has evaporated. When I retired in 2010, I moved all of my computers over to Linux and thats where they'll stay..
THANK YOU, Edward Snowden!! Americans owe you a debt of gratitude (whether they know it or not..)
If the ReactOS project got even 10% of the commits and money that Linux receives, it might soon become the Open Source alternative to even Windows 10, allowing everyone to ditch Windows without having to change the software they use.
Said no person with experience reverse engineering ever, at no point has trying to chase your proprietary competitor's blobs ever worked. WINE does an okay job running some Windows software, LibreOffice does an okay job opening some MS Office documents but you'll never repeat every quirk, bug and obscure functionality. You'll never get a fully working replacement for DirectX that isn't DirectX, not without 10x the resources Microsoft used to write it to reverse engineer it. That's not 10% of the Linux resources, probably more like 1000%. The only workable solution long term is to get people over to new, open standards like web apps written for W3C compliant browsers instead of IE6, games using Vulkan instead of DirectX, cross platform tools like qBitTorrent instead of uTorrent and so on.
Look at git, the version control software to develop Windows is now created by Linus Torvalds, what better endorsement can you get than the competition eating your dogfood? Look at all the cloud solutions booming because you can just spin up another Linux instance on demand without licensing worries. You don't win by mimicking the old, you win by delivering something new and better. And even if someone builds proprietary stuff on top of it (OS X, Android, Tivo etc.) you keep gaining ground. Even if the pace is somewhat glacial I never had the feeling open source went backwards, even if you look at stuff like Firefox then Chrome is mostly open source through Chromium. It would be a helluva lot less work to fork that than to start over. Tools like ASP.NET Core is being open sourced, Apple has open sourced Swift, for more and more of low-level infrastructure closed source just isn't kosher anymore.
Live today, because you never know what tomorrow brings
I caught Microsoft fucking my entire system over when I got new hardware and HAD to go with Windows 10 - after installing Windows 10 (Legit license) I had to install an audio driver.
Naturally, the driver prompts me to reboot.
First fucking thing it does - go straight into the "Updating computer, please wait."
It wasn't updating. What it was doing was scanning my hard drive and wiping out anything that wasn't Microsoft-related - EVERYTHING in my Windows.old directory was wiped out - my music player (which was then replaced by Groove Player,) anything that was in my old Windows 7 user profile (in-progress design work, photography work I had JUST paid for and received, future business plans, almost-finished bylaws drafts,) the ONLY things it did not touch in the Windows.old directory were Microsoft's own things, anything and everything else was deleted from my system during that 'update.' PRogram Files (x86) and regular x64 directories were wiped of anything that wasn't Microsoft, as well.
And there was no reason for that to happen, I had over 300GB free space on my drive and I know full and goddamned well Windows 10 updates didn't need to free up any space.
So, here's see what Microsoft's Windows 10 actually does:
1. Violate antitrust law by removing competing programs and replacing them with their own.
2. Violate CFAA by purposefully scanning and deleting files without explicit permission.
3. Violate IP law by destroying IP which doesn't belong to them.
4. Possibly committing corporate espionage by sabotaging plans for the formation of corporations by destroying their charter and bylaw data which is in construction.
5. Trespass to Chattels by violating the state of my system.
6. Wire Fraud by committing such crimes over wire.
I'm heading to the DA's office Tuesday to file charges. I'm done with these motherfuckers and I'm personally going directly after Satya Nadella's fucking wallet.
Still waiting on Serviscope_minor to wake up to fucking reality and realize that Jessica Price isn't going to fuck him.