Windows 10 users are being banned from torrent sites • Hacker News Board

Re: Windows 10 users are being banned from torrent sites

#101

Post by pdkl95 » Mon, Aug 24, 2015, 1:02 PM UTC

UnoriginalGuy wrote: post #76

r3bl wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have a license for like every single Microsoft's product (Windows 8.1, Office 365, Dreamspark account, 1 TB of data on OneDrive, some Skype premium minutes) and yet, I completely agree with him. I love Microsoft's products and I'm using them when I need to use them, but Windows stopped being my primary operating system ever since that whole Snowden scandal. People just automatically assume that I hate Microsoft bec…

> but Windows stopped being my primary operating system ever since that whole Snowden scandal. Snowden released nothing specifically about Windows. No backdoors, no specific cooperation, only the NSA's bespoke malware (but they also have malware for everything under the sun, Linux, uEFI, RAID firmware, cell modems, etc). Sure, the NSA were spying on Microsoft by hooking the fiber lines between Microsoft's data center…

Microsoft was an early adopter of PRISM:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Prism_slide_5.jpg

> same thing to Google

So what? The claim was about not using Microsoft's products.

Re: Windows 10 users are being banned from torrent sites

#102

Post by diego_moita » Mon, Aug 24, 2015, 1:02 PM UTC

This is small stuff, compared to the headaches MS and Windows 10 will have with foreign governments. Snowden showed us that the US regularly spied on the German, Brazilian, Mexican and French governments. I wonder how anxious those governments are for Windows 10 adoption.

Re: Windows 10 users are being banned from torrent sites

#103

Post by antocv » Mon, Aug 24, 2015, 1:03 PM UTC

cletus wrote: post #77

x5n1 wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hatred for Microsoft? I have none. I do hate the fact that we have an absolutely free operating system that works just fine but thanks to Bill Gates 90s shenanigans and aggressive and illegal market and business tactics we're stuck with a proprietary system that is totally unnecessary and as it continues that system becomes more and more invasive. And that system is a black box that you can't trust. Google started en…

Nothing about Linux on the desktop "works fine". It's horrible. UI seems to be one area that benefits--almost demands --a central planning authority. I'm reminded of Supported Features [1]. There is some great open source software out there. But I'm struggling to think of great open source software with a good UI. Not that I'm saying Windows is good mind you. My personal preference would be OSX, which you can view as…

KDE is the best UI there exists and has been since about 10 years already.

Re: Windows 10 users are being banned from torrent sites

#104

Post by dhimes » Mon, Aug 24, 2015, 1:04 PM UTC

cletus wrote: post #77

x5n1 wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hatred for Microsoft? I have none. I do hate the fact that we have an absolutely free operating system that works just fine but thanks to Bill Gates 90s shenanigans and aggressive and illegal market and business tactics we're stuck with a proprietary system that is totally unnecessary and as it continues that system becomes more and more invasive. And that system is a black box that you can't trust. Google started en…

Nothing about Linux on the desktop "works fine". It's horrible. UI seems to be one area that benefits--almost demands --a central planning authority. I'm reminded of Supported Features [1]. There is some great open source software out there. But I'm struggling to think of great open source software with a good UI. Not that I'm saying Windows is good mind you. My personal preference would be OSX, which you can view as…

I have to disagree about the linux desktop. I wish it was better, but for the first time in 10 years I started using microsoft (8.1) again on one of my computers. It has the same problems linux does: drivers, wifi connections. And when I try to close down to go somewhere, I occasionally get some kind of warning that I can't shut down or unplug because it's doing an update. Very aggravating (I'm getting a little wiser about it, but still I would like to be the one who decides when to update).

The problem, and the reason I wanted to give it a try, is software. Things like gotomeeting and such simple work there and are difficult to get working on linux. It cost me a (remote) developer, so I decided that my travel/home rig would be win 8.1 with linux in a VM. So far it's quite convenient, but I don't use much on the windows side.

I think with more adoption we could fix the software issues.

Re: Windows 10 users are being banned from torrent sites

#105

Post by timedoctor » Mon, Aug 24, 2015, 1:04 PM UTC

Gladdyu wrote: post #35

x5n1 wrote: post #13

Basically M$ adoption of this strategy is the death knell for any semblance of privacy on the PC. It's amazing how far we have come to accepting such draconian measures in order to further marketing. There is still time people, come on over to Linux, the privacy here is still fine and will continue to be fine. And if you come over, then all the desktop software makers will port their software to Linux and all the col…

"port their software to Linux". The main issue there is that there is not one single linux, the market is very fragmented. Getting the binary format right (which is the same across distros) is the trivial part, just set the proper compiler backend. The hard part would be getting all dependencies and especially IO sorted out. The wide range of display managers, audio drivers that needs to be supported to simply "port…

We have that problem for our desktop apps. Supporting the Windows and Mac versions is much easier than supporting Linux AND Linux has less users.

Re: Windows 10 users are being banned from torrent sites

#106

Post by nirvdrum » Mon, Aug 24, 2015, 1:08 PM UTC

benburton wrote: post #50

datalist wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sure, but its not about user agents.

How else would you detect the operating system of the client making the request?

I have no idea if the the trackers are doing this or not, but you could use TCP/IP stack fingerprinting. It's a bit costly, so I doubt it's in use. But it could be one way to achieve it. It's certainly not 100% accurate, but my experience with nmap is the detection works surprisingly well:

https://nmap.org/book/man-os-detection.html

Re: Windows 10 users are being banned from torrent sites

#107

Post by progman » Mon, Aug 24, 2015, 1:09 PM UTC

cletus wrote: post #77

x5n1 wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hatred for Microsoft? I have none. I do hate the fact that we have an absolutely free operating system that works just fine but thanks to Bill Gates 90s shenanigans and aggressive and illegal market and business tactics we're stuck with a proprietary system that is totally unnecessary and as it continues that system becomes more and more invasive. And that system is a black box that you can't trust. Google started en…

Nothing about Linux on the desktop "works fine". It's horrible. UI seems to be one area that benefits--almost demands --a central planning authority. I'm reminded of Supported Features [1]. There is some great open source software out there. But I'm struggling to think of great open source software with a good UI. Not that I'm saying Windows is good mind you. My personal preference would be OSX, which you can view as…

> Nothing about Linux on the desktop "works fine". It's horrible.

This claim is usually made by Windows users who don't want to invest any effort and time to learn another desktop -- which they had to do in Win8 anyway.

Linux offers several nice desktops (KDE, Gnome, XFCE, E17, etc.) which we can freely choose from. I am a Linux user since the 90's and I have always used it as my primary desktop. It works perfectly well for me. I consider the new Windows metro "desktop" more horrible than even simple Linux desktops.

Freedom has a price. Education has a price. Both require the sincere willingness to do something for it.

Re: Windows 10 users are being banned from torrent sites

#108

Post by AlexandrB » Mon, Aug 24, 2015, 1:10 PM UTC

Amezarak wrote: post #92

aikah wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> That seems perfectly reasonable No that's not , and what is shocking is that you find it "perfectly reasonable".

That's literally a bog-standard privacy policy clause. You can find the essentially same four points on everything from Ubuntu to Wikimedia. Can you be more specific about which part of it you find particularly unreasonable? Can you explain how the claims that the privacy policy allows MS to share data with the MPAA are founded?

Normally these kinds of terms appear on web services where the scope of disclosure is contained to the information you upload to the service (e.g. repos you upload to Github or posts you make to Reddit). Windows 10 is fundamentally different because the scope becomes everything the OS can suck up including everything on the hard drive and keystrokes from the keyboard.

You no longer have the option not to disclose something because anything that shows up on the PC may be fair game. Privacy is all about controlling who gets to see what information. Windows 10, being an OS, removes your ability to control what is shared in any meaningful way with its privacy policy.

Re: Windows 10 users are being banned from torrent sites

#109

Post by Spoom » Mon, Aug 24, 2015, 1:10 PM UTC

Amezarak wrote: post #97

msravi wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The "password sharing" feature of Windows 10 is sufficient reason for me to never allow anyone with Windows 10 access to my network. Ever. That's the way I'll opt out. Not by changing my SSID.

Sharing your password via Wi-Fi Sense to your friend gives him access to the network, but no knowledge of your password and no ability to share it. Sharing your password via word-of-mouth gives your friend your password and access to your network and the ability to share it further.

But if the friend who got the password via Wi-Fi Sense has access to the network, that means that at some point, the password had to be in clear text on their computer (since otherwise it wouldn't be able to authenticate to the network). This means that at best, they use reversible encryption, and at worst, it's just stored in cleartext somewhere (this being Microsoft, my guess would be in the registry).

I guarantee that someone will create a tool to get wi-fi passwords shared to them if there isn't one already.

Re: Windows 10 users are being banned from torrent sites

#110

Post by marbletiles » Mon, Aug 24, 2015, 1:13 PM UTC

Amezarak wrote: post #92

aikah wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> That seems perfectly reasonable No that's not , and what is shocking is that you find it "perfectly reasonable".

That's literally a bog-standard privacy policy clause. You can find the essentially same four points on everything from Ubuntu to Wikimedia. Can you be more specific about which part of it you find particularly unreasonable? Can you explain how the claims that the privacy policy allows MS to share data with the MPAA are founded?

> Can you explain how the claims that the privacy policy allows MS to share data with the MPAA are founded?

The MPAA could be a Microsoft "customer" that needs protection from piracy. The MPAA could run a service with Microsoft that needs protection from being "defrauded". There are holes in the policy large enough to drive a fleet of buses through.