Mmmno. The research doesn't indicate anything like that at all. They were looking for civilizations that harness energy and resources at galactic scales, ie. Kardashev III - level civilizations. Mankind haven't even reached Kardashev I yet. The submitter didn't understand what they were reading and jumped to conclusions.
No. Just.. no. They should *NEVER* be able to retrieve forgotten passwords, ever. If they forget a password you should provide a mechanism to generate a new one and then providing them with that, but you should never offer a mechanism to retrieve the old password. If you can retrieve their old password then anyone who gains access to your servers can also do that.
Almost all the actual apps that I use are more-or-less open-source already. Or, well, Netflix I would also like as a native app; as far as I know the web-browser client still doesn't support 1080p resolutions or surround-sound.
I was talking about XMPP. Whatsapp at least handles all those more modern conversational features well and coherently, XMPP doesn't, and I am not aware of any other good open-source alternatives either. It's useless to rant about proprietary protocols when the available open-source protocols are so bad that no one would want to use them.
XMPP is not a proprietary protocol. Also, attaching images, sound-clips and short video-clips is a pretty common way of adding flavour to a conversation. E-mail is not an on-going live conversation, it's not comparable.
There are no good alternatives, though. XMPP, for example, is a huge effing mess and doesn't even properly support modern features. As an example, I have been trying to set up an XMPP-server of my own and for some reason Pidgin-users can transfer files to other Pidgin-users and Conversations (an Android-based XMPP-client) users can send files to other Conversations-users, but Pidgin-to-Conversations or Conversations-to-Pidgin doesn't work. All the things related to file-transfers and such are afterthoughts so it's no wonder, even; it was originally just meant for text-based chatting and that shines through everywhere.
Check the All Apps list. That's where I right clicked and deleted Get Skype and Get Office (or whatever it was called - it's gone).
The person I replied to wrote rather clearly "Windows 10 has reminded me repeatedly" -- that's not quite the same as you, yourself, having to deliberately go and find such items in the first place. Besides, I don't see what it matters if those items are there if I'm not going to be using either of them anyways.
Not me. I'm going to stick with Android. But I do think it's a very positive thing on Apple's side of things that they are protective of peoples' privacy and try to do all the crunching locally. It's something I would like to see from Android - devs and manufacturers, but, well, the pessimist in me says "no effing chance, just prepare your anus."
So far, Windows 10 has reminded me repeatedly that I should: (1) Consider getting Office 365! (2) Consider installing Skype! (3) Should collect and use Bing Rewards! (4) That I should look into getting an Xbox! (5) That I should buy things from the Microsoft Store!
So, where do you actually see these things? I've been using Windows 10 Insider Preview for a good while before it went RTM and I have W10 installed on two laptops and one desktop at the moment and, well, I have not seen any of the things you mentioned, not even once.
But how useful are "screen quality and processing power" if the device's manufacturer refuses to issue updates to correct security vulnerabilities in a device's operating system and refuses to cooperate with hobbyists making replacement operating system images?
Just as useful as they always were. Having an outdated OS does not magically reduce the screen's quality or anything over time.
When vendors are still banging out tablets loaded with Jellybean and Kitkat
The OS has nothing to do with the hardware. A few years in tablet - hardware is a long time considering how big leaps there have been in screen quality and processing power and you still have those things even if you use an outdated OS. There's also the issue that some hardware ages a lot more rapidly than others, like e.g. on my Iconia Tab A500 there doesn't seem to be any support for TRIM and thus the storage has become excruciatingly slow over time, it's just unbearably slow.
When they F*sk my system with an update that fails and it loses my data or prevents me from working, just once, it can be a huge disaster for me.
But isn't that exactly what these Snappy - packages are meant to address? All the current data for the application is backed up, the update is applied, if something goes wrong the system rolls back to the state the package and its data was before the update was attempted. At least that's what it says on Ubuntu's website, I don't know anything else about this thing.
So (since I'm obviously not an expert) my question is: is it likely that my router has been hacked? Will it allow the hacker to use it as a "bot"? Is my (unencrypted) traffic vulnerable to interception/change/man-in-the-middle attacks? Or is it more likely that Google isn't blocking my little network (that is attached to the internet by a single dynamic IP address) specifically but is blocking a large portion or even the entire ISP (in my case Viettel?).
I hope whoever can answer my questions is rewarded Karmically! Thanks!:)
1) Google your router model for vulnerabilities. If there are unpatched vulnerabilities or your router's firmware is outdated then answer is "yes." 2) Yes. 3) Yes, and your encrypted traffic is also subject to man-in the-middle and all that. Router has access to all your network-traffic so it can redirect DNS-queries and all that, and man-in-the-middle becomes real easy to do. 5) Either or both. We have no way of knowing, but you need to check your own network and equipment anyways.
I'm not sure why you're replying to me, did you mean your comment to someone else? I haven't even once defended these morons, I was only arguing about the legitimacy of the tools themselves -- something that you, yourself, seem to agree with me on.
Who said anything about doing it over the Internet? You can test and research such even in an internal network. Besides, DDoSing your own equipment using equipment you own is not illegal, even if it did happen over the Internet. It's only when you're DDoSing someone else's equipment or using someone else's equipment that it becomes illegal.
Strawman - argument. Nuclear weapons are physical objects that require specialized tools and materials to build. DDoS-tools dont; anyone with a text-editor and a translator or compiler can create those out of thin air and thus it is literally impossible to control them. Also, criminals don't care about your silly regulations and as is rather evident DDoS-attacks *are* carried out in practice on a daily basis (nuclear attacks, surprisingly, aren't) -- there definitely is a need for the tools for people to test and develop counters to those attacks.
DDoS-tools are a perfectly legitimate tool in network testing and research and both individuals and various companies do use them for those things. Just because you fail to see any use for them other than illegal attacks on others doesn't make it so.
That's a horribly stupid argument. To be able to regulate such things you'd have to somehow magically be able to control who can be allowed to program anything in the first place, then you'd have to control all the possible tools for that -- including Notepad or your web-browser -- and then there's the fact that there's no way for the government to start regulating all the settings and software in networked-connected devices so that no bugs or misconfigurations can be exploited -- you're quite literally asking for the Moon from the night sky.
By the way, I'm not sure if you've heard, but... the act of DDoSing someone, without their explicit permission, is already illegal. There is no need to start regulating software in the first place when the act of using it as a weapon is already a criminal act.
that it should be illegal to use it against someone against their will... sure.
But to even own it? No.
You can't do system testing without tools that are effectively hack tools. And even if you've no good reason to have it, it isn't the government's place to say what programs we have or don't have.
I think you missed something: considering the tool is built on hacked routers, hubs and other kinds of devices yes, it is illegal. Regular systems testing tools aren't built on hacked devices owned by others.
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Mmmno. The research doesn't indicate anything like that at all. They were looking for civilizations that harness energy and resources at galactic scales, ie. Kardashev III - level civilizations. Mankind haven't even reached Kardashev I yet. The submitter didn't understand what they were reading and jumped to conclusions.
No. Just.. no. They should *NEVER* be able to retrieve forgotten passwords, ever. If they forget a password you should provide a mechanism to generate a new one and then providing them with that, but you should never offer a mechanism to retrieve the old password. If you can retrieve their old password then anyone who gains access to your servers can also do that.
Maybe areusche is a gamer? Linux is still a bad choice for gamers, there's no getting over that.
Almost all the actual apps that I use are more-or-less open-source already. Or, well, Netflix I would also like as a native app; as far as I know the web-browser client still doesn't support 1080p resolutions or surround-sound.
I don't blame you, to be honest. I don't really trust the idea, either, at least not without trying it myself and seeing how hard it is to break it.
I don't see
Yes, that much is obvious at this point.
I was talking about XMPP. Whatsapp at least handles all those more modern conversational features well and coherently, XMPP doesn't, and I am not aware of any other good open-source alternatives either. It's useless to rant about proprietary protocols when the available open-source protocols are so bad that no one would want to use them.
Then you're clearly not the target audience here and your ranting is irrelevant.
XMPP is not a proprietary protocol. Also, attaching images, sound-clips and short video-clips is a pretty common way of adding flavour to a conversation. E-mail is not an on-going live conversation, it's not comparable.
There are no good alternatives, though. XMPP, for example, is a huge effing mess and doesn't even properly support modern features. As an example, I have been trying to set up an XMPP-server of my own and for some reason Pidgin-users can transfer files to other Pidgin-users and Conversations (an Android-based XMPP-client) users can send files to other Conversations-users, but Pidgin-to-Conversations or Conversations-to-Pidgin doesn't work. All the things related to file-transfers and such are afterthoughts so it's no wonder, even; it was originally just meant for text-based chatting and that shines through everywhere.
Check the All Apps list. That's where I right clicked and deleted Get Skype and Get Office (or whatever it was called - it's gone).
The person I replied to wrote rather clearly "Windows 10 has reminded me repeatedly" -- that's not quite the same as you, yourself, having to deliberately go and find such items in the first place. Besides, I don't see what it matters if those items are there if I'm not going to be using either of them anyways.
Not me. I'm going to stick with Android. But I do think it's a very positive thing on Apple's side of things that they are protective of peoples' privacy and try to do all the crunching locally. It's something I would like to see from Android - devs and manufacturers, but, well, the pessimist in me says "no effing chance, just prepare your anus."
Why is this written as if it was a negative thing?
So far, Windows 10 has reminded me repeatedly that I should: (1) Consider getting Office 365! (2) Consider installing Skype! (3) Should collect and use Bing Rewards! (4) That I should look into getting an Xbox! (5) That I should buy things from the Microsoft Store!
So, where do you actually see these things? I've been using Windows 10 Insider Preview for a good while before it went RTM and I have W10 installed on two laptops and one desktop at the moment and, well, I have not seen any of the things you mentioned, not even once.
But how useful are "screen quality and processing power" if the device's manufacturer refuses to issue updates to correct security vulnerabilities in a device's operating system and refuses to cooperate with hobbyists making replacement operating system images?
Just as useful as they always were. Having an outdated OS does not magically reduce the screen's quality or anything over time.
When vendors are still banging out tablets loaded with Jellybean and Kitkat
The OS has nothing to do with the hardware. A few years in tablet - hardware is a long time considering how big leaps there have been in screen quality and processing power and you still have those things even if you use an outdated OS. There's also the issue that some hardware ages a lot more rapidly than others, like e.g. on my Iconia Tab A500 there doesn't seem to be any support for TRIM and thus the storage has become excruciatingly slow over time, it's just unbearably slow.
When they F*sk my system with an update that fails and it loses my data or prevents me from working, just once, it can be a huge disaster for me.
But isn't that exactly what these Snappy - packages are meant to address? All the current data for the application is backed up, the update is applied, if something goes wrong the system rolls back to the state the package and its data was before the update was attempted. At least that's what it says on Ubuntu's website, I don't know anything else about this thing.
So (since I'm obviously not an expert) my question is: is it likely that my router has been hacked? Will it allow the hacker to use it as a "bot"? Is my (unencrypted) traffic vulnerable to interception/change/man-in-the-middle attacks? Or is it more likely that Google isn't blocking my little network (that is attached to the internet by a single dynamic IP address) specifically but is blocking a large portion or even the entire ISP (in my case Viettel?).
I hope whoever can answer my questions is rewarded Karmically! Thanks! :)
1) Google your router model for vulnerabilities. If there are unpatched vulnerabilities or your router's firmware is outdated then answer is "yes." 2) Yes. 3) Yes, and your encrypted traffic is also subject to man-in the-middle and all that. Router has access to all your network-traffic so it can redirect DNS-queries and all that, and man-in-the-middle becomes real easy to do. 5) Either or both. We have no way of knowing, but you need to check your own network and equipment anyways.
I'm not sure why you're replying to me, did you mean your comment to someone else? I haven't even once defended these morons, I was only arguing about the legitimacy of the tools themselves -- something that you, yourself, seem to agree with me on.
Who said anything about doing it over the Internet? You can test and research such even in an internal network. Besides, DDoSing your own equipment using equipment you own is not illegal, even if it did happen over the Internet. It's only when you're DDoSing someone else's equipment or using someone else's equipment that it becomes illegal.
Strawman - argument. Nuclear weapons are physical objects that require specialized tools and materials to build. DDoS-tools dont; anyone with a text-editor and a translator or compiler can create those out of thin air and thus it is literally impossible to control them. Also, criminals don't care about your silly regulations and as is rather evident DDoS-attacks *are* carried out in practice on a daily basis (nuclear attacks, surprisingly, aren't) -- there definitely is a need for the tools for people to test and develop counters to those attacks.
DDoS-tools are a perfectly legitimate tool in network testing and research and both individuals and various companies do use them for those things. Just because you fail to see any use for them other than illegal attacks on others doesn't make it so.
No, if you wish to investigate such things then build your own on hardware you own.
That's a horribly stupid argument. To be able to regulate such things you'd have to somehow magically be able to control who can be allowed to program anything in the first place, then you'd have to control all the possible tools for that -- including Notepad or your web-browser -- and then there's the fact that there's no way for the government to start regulating all the settings and software in networked-connected devices so that no bugs or misconfigurations can be exploited -- you're quite literally asking for the Moon from the night sky.
By the way, I'm not sure if you've heard, but... the act of DDoSing someone, without their explicit permission, is already illegal. There is no need to start regulating software in the first place when the act of using it as a weapon is already a criminal act.
that it should be illegal to use it against someone against their will... sure.
But to even own it? No.
You can't do system testing without tools that are effectively hack tools. And even if you've no good reason to have it, it isn't the government's place to say what programs we have or don't have.
I think you missed something: considering the tool is built on hacked routers, hubs and other kinds of devices yes, it is illegal. Regular systems testing tools aren't built on hacked devices owned by others.