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Windows 10 users are being banned from torrent sites

irishexaminer.com

141–150 of 358 posts

Re: Windows 10 users are being banned from torrent sites

#141

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've deactivated all reporting and services that call back home (at least which I was aware of). In addition I've installed glasswire to check the network activities. So far I can assure you: Compared to my Android phone Windows 10 is absolutely mute. There're no noticeable differences compared to Windows 7. You seem to be more driven by your hatred towards Microsoft than by real privacy concerns.

Are you using 10 on a daily basis? My primary work machine is begging me to update, but I keep seeing reports of slowdowns and lockups.

Not addressing any potential privacy/security concerns but as far as daily operations, I've had it on my primary desktop workstation, my higher-end laptop, my girlfriend's budget laptop, and my work Surface Pro 1. Haven't noticed any slowdowns or lockups. If anything it's on par or a little faster than 8.1. I had a minor issue on my laptop at launch because it kept trying to install the wrong touchpad driver but I used the little "hide updates" app they provide and that sorted it until the underlying issue with Windows Update was addressed and it stopped trying to pull the wrong driver after a few days.

Re: Windows 10 users are being banned from torrent sites

#142
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.

Perhaps, but as I understand it if I do or have in the past given my friend the wifi password, it will then be automatically shared with his/her friends?

And what if I don't want my password to be stored on Microsoft servers where it can be accidentally leaked, stolen, handed to security agencies, and so on?

Re: Windows 10 users are being banned from torrent sites

#143
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…

I've deactivated all reporting and services that call back home (at least which I was aware of). In addition I've installed glasswire to check the network activities. So far I can assure you: Compared to my Android phone Windows 10 is absolutely mute. There're no noticeable differences compared to Windows 7. You seem to be more driven by your hatred towards Microsoft than by real privacy concerns.

[deleted]

Re: Windows 10 users are being banned from torrent sites

#144
post #134
post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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've been working 4 years on Ubuntu Linux now and I'm very happy about it. My life is much easier and I don't loose time fighting with my system. I have a Win7 partition that I boot now and then when I must use software that can't be virtualized well enough. In 4 years I've never lost work and I had only two crashes after messing with my GPU settings. If only the biggest proprietary software we available on linux (Lo…

How is Steam on Linux (+Wine) these days?

Re: Windows 10 users are being banned from torrent sites

#145

So... Microsoft wants to stop piracy by trying to read users contents (or so they say) .. So in response, torrent sources help them by stoping them from downloading... So torrent sites are giving MS what they want?

Indeed, I can see this turning into a "if you don't use Windows 10 you must be a pirate/have something to hide" sort of argument. Ten years ago, when filesharing was the awesome new thing, that would've been almost a compliment; but given how the population's view of piracy seems to have changed now, I don't think that will be the case anymore.

What is the population's view of piracy now?

Re: Windows 10 users are being banned from torrent sites

#146
post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Or just switch to a less hostile operating system. As more things move to the web, this is becoming a very reasonable proposition.

I am using Linux since about mid-2012 exclusively, I switched after wasting a month trying to get git in command line working properly on Windows.

That's actually one thing I miss from Windows when I'm on Linux: Git for Windows is wonderful in my opinion. I don't know how to use Git on the command line (or rather, I'm not terribly comfortable with it). I don't use Git every day or even every week, so Git for Windows is a godsend to get me to actually commit things. Git on Linux is much, much more difficult for me.

Re: Windows 10 users are being banned from torrent sites

#147
post #123
post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Can’t we remove them from dnsapi.dll? Decompile dnsapi.dll, remove all hardcoded hosts, replace and protect to a nonexistent group so that windows can’t even override it during an upgrade.

Then watch all that hard work get undone the next time Microsoft forces an update and bundles a "fixed" dnsapi.dll with some other important security fix. Are you going to verify that there isn't a new backdoor in every single update that works around your changes? Or are you going to bypass that impossible task by not installing any future security updates? Workarounds that try to make a hostile OS "safe" is doomed…

The real question is how often does dnsapi.dll change, and when it does, can you reapply your patches? The crackers were quite successful in bypassing the activation scheme for previous versions and made autopatchers that would find and patch the right places, in a generic way that worked across many versions, so I'm reasonably certain that this could be done to preserve privacy too. And with more people on their side now than just pirates, there's all the more reason to do it. It's essentially taking the files that would be changed in an update and passing them through a filter that automatically maintains the pieces you want.

Re: Windows 10 users are being banned from torrent sites

#148
post #113

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have no love for the direction in which Linux desktop seems to be heading today, but engineering concerns aside, it's been working fine for a long time.

No, it's not. Besides driver problems, missing support for newer OpenGL standards, fragmentation of desktop environments and a dozen of other problems, it doesn't even have GUI isolation (meaning that any X11 application can sniff your keyboard input): http://www.hackinglinuxexposed.com/articles/20040705.html http://theinvisiblethings.blogspot.de/2011/04/linux-security...

> Besides driver problems

As long as you stay away from perpetually-beta distributions that I shall not name, driver problems are really a non-issue. I haven't had a malfunctioning peripheral under Linux in a very long time now (years?). Driver problems are on-par with what you see on Windows :-).

> missing support for newer OpenGL standards

This has been a common complaint about OS X for a long time, and no one thought desktop on it didn't work.

> fragmentation of desktop environments

As long as the desktop respects ICCCM (hint: they all tend to do) and you don't write your application using some obscure, non-ICCCM compliant toolkit, this tends to be a non-issue.

> it doesn't even have GUI isolation (meaning that any X11 application can sniff your keyboard input):

This is true. However, the expectation is that you'll usually run open source software from trusted sources (and you can run untrusted applications in an Xnest session). Methods aside, it's just as easy for a malicious user to keylog you on Windows or OS X, the Linux keylogger is just more trivial to write.

Re: Windows 10 users are being banned from torrent sites

#149
post #109

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

> 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). The status quo is that your password is already stored on their computer with nothing better than reversible encryption.

The status quo is that random business acquaintances and whoever gets automatically added to contact lists via some vulnerability (just wait, it'll happen) do not have my wifi password. Not on their machine, not to share, not access at all. I like it that way. We have something-guest as a SSID for a reason, after all.

Re: Windows 10 users are being banned from torrent sites

#150
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…

The thing is what now? Using Linux everyday is atleast problematic, sometimes impossible (I've had like 20 distros and played with it a lot, used it in my job, etc.) cause of apps/drivers/etc. And what about phones? When iOS/Android/WP is a mobile botnet node what should I use? A 3310 Nokia? Is there any viable alernative? Is iOS/Apple the same vultures as Google/MS when it comes to privacy?
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