If they let France push them around then every nation will come up with some new way to try to push them around. And someday someone might even sue to have an offense against them remembered. How do you deal with things when one country says that recorded history must be erased world-wide and another says it must be preserved world-wide?
Alternately, this would be a great test for how much the people of France want their government interfering with their use of the Internet. There just might be some feedback when French academics some day go to Google and are told "Your country no longer has access to Google. Contact your political representatives."
Yup. My thought was that the government has info on me, if they toss it out then the criminals get it. Personally I would rather that the private criminals have it than the government criminals. Not that I'm a hoser, but it isn't all that unlikely that they also have info on me. After all, we have very detailed records on all Canadians. Some of it we even got from going through the trash.
If you don't think that adding a computer (and the Internet) that the computer owner can control, see all of the cards in everyone's hand and all of the cards coming up, and even change the order of the cards coming up, or trade out his unexposed cards for ones coming up, then you really don't understand the game and the odds. And it is people who don't understand the game and the odds who should not be playing.
You're about to be modded down by on-line poker players who desperately want to believe that they are not being cheated and feel compelled to silence anyone who says otherwise.
Or the people they have overcharged and cheated. They could, of course, stop cheating and gouging people, but the $250k reward is small potatoes compared to what they overcharge people each year with their monopoly powers.
Microsoft "security" is a perfect way for any government organization to waste public tax money. Of course, we could use the money to import more Syrian terrorists, but I'm sure that we can find the money somewhere to do that too.
I'm not certain that you saw the exact same thing as I did, although the two may be related. In my case it was years ago and while that (and some later Knoppix releases) were unable to access the Internet after booting, eventually Linux seemed to learn what Microsoft was up to and corrected the problem. After they did I could run later copies of Linux without problems.
To give you a little more info on the issue, as I said NICs have EEPROM to store the MAC address of the device. That makes it easy for the manufacturer to create thousands of NICs all with unique MAC addresses. That MAC address does not take up all of the EEPROM, there is space left, and my NIC (and I suspect most or all others) used remaining space to store configuration parameters. That way you could configure how you wanted the NIC to operate, things like speed and duplex mode. What I found was that, while the MAC address had not changed, these configuration parameters were now meaningless garbage and the NIC was coming up in a state that couldn't talk to anything else. Windows was ignoring the configuration parameters in the NIC and setting it's own, so the NIC worked OK (although you lost the ability to configure how you wanted the NIC to behave in hardware and had to do it in Windows if you wanted anything other than the default). I also found that I could force a reset of the NIC and then configure the NIC parameters under Linux on the failing Knoppix CD, and was thus eventually able to use that disc, but with a lot more hassle that it used to take. Before the "security update" I had booted and run Knoppix on the network many times without any issues.
One time, years ago, I got a new laptop and deferred accepting the "security update" for over a month while I learned the details of my new laptop and new Win XP OS. When I did accept the security update I could no longer access the Internet from Linux. This was particularly strange since I was running Linux from a Knoppix Live CD, and I even confirmed that the CD had not changed (both by checking the md5 and by making another CD). What I eventually tracked down was that the "security update" had changed the EEPROM on my built-in NIC so that it wouldn't work properly under Linux any more (all modern NICs use EEPROM to store information including the MAC address). Windows bypassed what was done and it could still access the Internet.
As Windows is that only malware that successfully has been able to do damage to any of my computers that I couldn't undo, I no longer allow Windows to do the automatic updates. Some say that I'm foolish. This article indicates otherwise.
What the hell do they mean "wireless dongle"? At first I thought they were talking about something that you attach to your devices that you don't want stolen. But that makes no sense at all, as the thieves would quickly learn to remove it. Then, after rereading the disclaimer " (any of them with wireless capabilities and a MAC address, at least)" I think that I realize that the "dongle" is some device that the cops would use to intercept wifi signals. Wouldn't make any sense to add a dongle to a wireless device anyway, since the new "dongle" would have to have it's own MAC address (although it would allow for finding stolen items that were not themselves wireless devices). But then it isn't really a "dongle", it is clearly a wifi port and antenna attached to some sort of computer (most cop cars already have laptops and I suspect that most or all have wifi anyway) and special MAC collecting software, similar to what got Google in trouble (although they were even more invasive about it).
Obviously the police want to collect more invasive information on people too, and they have a damn poor record of ever attempting to return stolen property. (A local news story here told of one person who kept getting bills month after month as his stolen car was driven past toll road license plate scanners almost daily, but they never caught the thief or recovered the car). And what percent of the population is going to be able to help the police when asked "Your Tablet was stolen? Great! What was the MAC address?"? I would be a lot less skeptical if the police ever expressed interest and were willing to track down stolen cell phones, which clearly have a much greater range and could easily lead police to thieves with just a little effort. But they show no interest in that. Why believe that they want to find stolen items based on a much weaker less reliable wifi signal?
Thanks. Not awful, but it is 10/100 only, not Gigabit ports. It is currently about 6 bucks less at Newegg. Not ready to jump at this and rule out Gigabit capable solutions, even though I don't need that yet.
I certainly wouldn't put this past Microsoft. But they better make it very public when they try it and they sure better not download "updates" to existing versions of the software like Win 7 and Win 8 that enforce it on people who bought their computers before this nonsense even started. And your cave is my mountain top, or airport, or airplane. Or even when I'm visiting family or friends who don't have internet access. (There are still farmlands in this country don't have Internet access or only can reach the Internet by a very limited cell phone link.)
Don't stop there. It turns out that even a greater percentage of vehicle / pedestrian casualties occur when the pedestrian is not wearing a helmet. So let us use our Politically Correct Nanny State logic and mandate that all pedestrians have sight and sound restricting helmets. And once we have that in place we can start understanding that all injuries and deaths occur more frequently when the poor victim isn't wearing a helmet, so we can be a good nanny state and require that people wear helmets all of the time.
This is certainly an option that I'm considering. My reason for not rushing to do it, beyond the somewhat still user-unfriendly nature of Linux (for those us us who are not Linux high-priests and know well the sacred prayers), is that an inexpensive desktop PC eats a lot more power than a router type solution. Many of the very small desktop solutions that I've seen use ARM processors and might not support the software needed, and these tend to have one NIC and extremely limited expansion capability. Other that have x86 type processors often lack a second NIC and the capability to add one. And most or all still include the Microsoft tax, or worse cost more with no OS than a computer that includes the Microsoft tax. And now the question of "will the box even be able to boot anything non-Windows" enters the discussion. Even if I get an expansion port, if it is an arm processor or some other non-86 type processor I might no be able to install a driver for a second NIC. So while I'm certainly not ruling out this solution (in many ways it seems very desirable and should allow me to do a lot more secure things that I just don't expect to do with a stand along router; I would love to have a display of all of my outbound traffic for example), I'm hoping that someone will give very specific answers about what they have done, not just a vague "get yourself a cheap PC response" that really doesn't pass along any experience.
And prices starting at $500 fot the lowest end router that lists "Gigabit Throughput". The $300 router claims to have Gigabit ports but avoids listing:Gigabit Throughput " like the other models do!
Please give the model number of this Buffalo router (and version if applicable). A link to it at Frys would also be nice. The problem is simply that manufacturers make many routers and may even make multiple routers that run open source software, so I would like a link to something know to actually work.
It damn well better not refuse to run all together. Not unless Microsoft discloses that Windows now requires a full time Internet connection. I think that I still have the right to take my computer to a location where I don't have Internet access and still expect a crappy Microsoft experience.
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If they let France push them around then every nation will come up with some new way to try to push them around. And someday someone might even sue to have an offense against them remembered. How do you deal with things when one country says that recorded history must be erased world-wide and another says it must be preserved world-wide?
Alternately, this would be a great test for how much the people of France want their government interfering with their use of the Internet. There just might be some feedback when French academics some day go to Google and are told "Your country no longer has access to Google. Contact your political representatives."
Yup. My thought was that the government has info on me, if they toss it out then the criminals get it. Personally I would rather that the private criminals have it than the government criminals. Not that I'm a hoser, but it isn't all that unlikely that they also have info on me. After all, we have very detailed records on all Canadians. Some of it we even got from going through the trash.
Yea, 16 characters were not enough for me either. I also had to hit the ENTER key.
If you don't think that adding a computer (and the Internet) that the computer owner can control, see all of the cards in everyone's hand and all of the cards coming up, and even change the order of the cards coming up, or trade out his unexposed cards for ones coming up, then you really don't understand the game and the odds. And it is people who don't understand the game and the odds who should not be playing.
You're about to be modded down by on-line poker players who desperately want to believe that they are not being cheated and feel compelled to silence anyone who says otherwise.
This is great news. I hated only being cheated by the site operators.
mmmmm, Bacon!
Or the people they have overcharged and cheated. They could, of course, stop cheating and gouging people, but the $250k reward is small potatoes compared to what they overcharge people each year with their monopoly powers.
Microsoft "security" is a perfect way for any government organization to waste public tax money. Of course, we could use the money to import more Syrian terrorists, but I'm sure that we can find the money somewhere to do that too.
No public money for hetropathy but plenty for homeopathy. I suspect the BBC is behind this.
I'm not certain that you saw the exact same thing as I did, although the two may be related. In my case it was years ago and while that (and some later Knoppix releases) were unable to access the Internet after booting, eventually Linux seemed to learn what Microsoft was up to and corrected the problem. After they did I could run later copies of Linux without problems.
To give you a little more info on the issue, as I said NICs have EEPROM to store the MAC address of the device. That makes it easy for the manufacturer to create thousands of NICs all with unique MAC addresses. That MAC address does not take up all of the EEPROM, there is space left, and my NIC (and I suspect most or all others) used remaining space to store configuration parameters. That way you could configure how you wanted the NIC to operate, things like speed and duplex mode. What I found was that, while the MAC address had not changed, these configuration parameters were now meaningless garbage and the NIC was coming up in a state that couldn't talk to anything else. Windows was ignoring the configuration parameters in the NIC and setting it's own, so the NIC worked OK (although you lost the ability to configure how you wanted the NIC to behave in hardware and had to do it in Windows if you wanted anything other than the default). I also found that I could force a reset of the NIC and then configure the NIC parameters under Linux on the failing Knoppix CD, and was thus eventually able to use that disc, but with a lot more hassle that it used to take. Before the "security update" I had booted and run Knoppix on the network many times without any issues.
Programmer's day is just more hype from Hallmark and American Greetings and another attempt to sell a lot of greeting cards.
I wounder if these are the same "scientists" that saw a strange rock and said: "That rock looks strange, it must have come from Mars".
One time, years ago, I got a new laptop and deferred accepting the "security update" for over a month while I learned the details of my new laptop and new Win XP OS. When I did accept the security update I could no longer access the Internet from Linux. This was particularly strange since I was running Linux from a Knoppix Live CD, and I even confirmed that the CD had not changed (both by checking the md5 and by making another CD). What I eventually tracked down was that the "security update" had changed the EEPROM on my built-in NIC so that it wouldn't work properly under Linux any more (all modern NICs use EEPROM to store information including the MAC address). Windows bypassed what was done and it could still access the Internet.
As Windows is that only malware that successfully has been able to do damage to any of my computers that I couldn't undo, I no longer allow Windows to do the automatic updates. Some say that I'm foolish. This article indicates otherwise.
Maybe. But since I have to pay $100 just to read the manual for this "free" software, I really don't feel that I can evaluate it properly.
I prefer to think of it as a touch screen display that costs not much more than a low end full tablet with touch screen display.
What the hell do they mean "wireless dongle"? At first I thought they were talking about something that you attach to your devices that you don't want stolen. But that makes no sense at all, as the thieves would quickly learn to remove it. Then, after rereading the disclaimer " (any of them with wireless capabilities and a MAC address, at least) " I think that I realize that the "dongle" is some device that the cops would use to intercept wifi signals. Wouldn't make any sense to add a dongle to a wireless device anyway, since the new "dongle" would have to have it's own MAC address (although it would allow for finding stolen items that were not themselves wireless devices). But then it isn't really a "dongle", it is clearly a wifi port and antenna attached to some sort of computer (most cop cars already have laptops and I suspect that most or all have wifi anyway) and special MAC collecting software, similar to what got Google in trouble (although they were even more invasive about it).
Obviously the police want to collect more invasive information on people too, and they have a damn poor record of ever attempting to return stolen property. (A local news story here told of one person who kept getting bills month after month as his stolen car was driven past toll road license plate scanners almost daily, but they never caught the thief or recovered the car). And what percent of the population is going to be able to help the police when asked "Your Tablet was stolen? Great! What was the MAC address?" ? I would be a lot less skeptical if the police ever expressed interest and were willing to track down stolen cell phones, which clearly have a much greater range and could easily lead police to thieves with just a little effort. But they show no interest in that. Why believe that they want to find stolen items based on a much weaker less reliable wifi signal?
Thanks. Not awful, but it is 10/100 only, not Gigabit ports. It is currently about 6 bucks less at Newegg. Not ready to jump at this and rule out Gigabit capable solutions, even though I don't need that yet.
I certainly wouldn't put this past Microsoft. But they better make it very public when they try it and they sure better not download "updates" to existing versions of the software like Win 7 and Win 8 that enforce it on people who bought their computers before this nonsense even started. And your cave is my mountain top, or airport, or airplane. Or even when I'm visiting family or friends who don't have internet access. (There are still farmlands in this country don't have Internet access or only can reach the Internet by a very limited cell phone link.)
Don't stop there. It turns out that even a greater percentage of vehicle / pedestrian casualties occur when the pedestrian is not wearing a helmet. So let us use our Politically Correct Nanny State logic and mandate that all pedestrians have sight and sound restricting helmets. And once we have that in place we can start understanding that all injuries and deaths occur more frequently when the poor victim isn't wearing a helmet, so we can be a good nanny state and require that people wear helmets all of the time.
This is certainly an option that I'm considering. My reason for not rushing to do it, beyond the somewhat still user-unfriendly nature of Linux (for those us us who are not Linux high-priests and know well the sacred prayers), is that an inexpensive desktop PC eats a lot more power than a router type solution. Many of the very small desktop solutions that I've seen use ARM processors and might not support the software needed, and these tend to have one NIC and extremely limited expansion capability. Other that have x86 type processors often lack a second NIC and the capability to add one. And most or all still include the Microsoft tax, or worse cost more with no OS than a computer that includes the Microsoft tax. And now the question of "will the box even be able to boot anything non-Windows" enters the discussion. Even if I get an expansion port, if it is an arm processor or some other non-86 type processor I might no be able to install a driver for a second NIC. So while I'm certainly not ruling out this solution (in many ways it seems very desirable and should allow me to do a lot more secure things that I just don't expect to do with a stand along router; I would love to have a display of all of my outbound traffic for example), I'm hoping that someone will give very specific answers about what they have done, not just a vague "get yourself a cheap PC response" that really doesn't pass along any experience.
And prices starting at $500 fot the lowest end router that lists "Gigabit Throughput". The $300 router claims to have Gigabit ports but avoids listing :Gigabit Throughput " like the other models do!
Really? Prices starting at $300 for a minimal router with no wifi and one local port (no built-in switch)? I think I'm still looking.
Please give the model number of this Buffalo router (and version if applicable). A link to it at Frys would also be nice. The problem is simply that manufacturers make many routers and may even make multiple routers that run open source software, so I would like a link to something know to actually work.
Or perhaps refuse to run altogether?
It damn well better not refuse to run all together. Not unless Microsoft discloses that Windows now requires a full time Internet connection. I think that I still have the right to take my computer to a location where I don't have Internet access and still expect a crappy Microsoft experience.