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

Re: Windows 10 users are being banned from torrent sites

#341

Post by nickysielicki » Mon, Aug 24, 2015, 8:57 PM UTC

adestefan wrote: post #133

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…

> Hatred for Microsoft? I have none. When you post "M$" in a reply I automatically mark you as rabidly anti-Microsoft and usually stop reading. I'm not a fan of Microsoft, but childish acts such as those have no place in a rational discussion.

It's definitely an overplayed cheap-shot at Microsoft, but that's not to say it's anything but deserved. It's certainly not disingenuous to paint Microsoft as profit-centric above all. Historically speaking they've gone above and beyond to hurt pro-developer and pro-libre efforts in this industry in the name of their margins.

Is it so awful to use an acronym that reminds the reader of these practices? I think it's prudent to not use it, only because it detracts from his point when readers like yourself become distracted by it. But it's not as "rabidly anti-Microsoft" as you are painting it to be, either.

Re: Windows 10 users are being banned from torrent sites

#342

Post by thawkins » Mon, Aug 24, 2015, 8:58 PM UTC

scholia wrote: post #231

outworlder wrote: post #198

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You are missing the point. "Proprietary system" here means Windows. All these applications could run under Linux just fine if the vendors cared.

Any good examples of closed source applications being financially successful on Linux? How do the opportunities on Linux compare with investing in applications for other platforms? It's not so much about "caring" as about the ability to pay programmers to create profitable software.

Steam

Re: Windows 10 users are being banned from torrent sites

#343

Post by nickysielicki » Mon, Aug 24, 2015, 9:03 PM UTC

throwawaykf05 wrote: post #301

x5n1 wrote: post #288

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Okay stop reading. Your response smells of fanboyism, blind faith, and ad-hominem attacks which are rather childish in themselves. I got my point across and it seems the vast readership is behind me.

The vast readership... on a site where open source is the primary religion and the readership includes a significant population of Slashdot escapees. Look up "confirmation bias" and "preaching to the choir".

Really? I think HN has a very even balance of free software advocates and pragmatists who are indifferent to it.

Of course, in a thread about closed source software spying on users there's going to be a bit more people arguing the points of the former.

Re: Windows 10 users are being banned from torrent sites

#344

Post by kuschku » Mon, Aug 24, 2015, 9:03 PM UTC

analog31 wrote: post #218

coldpie wrote: 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 love my touch screen. How's touch screen support on Linux?

Drivers: Linux usually supports almost everything, there was even a build of Fedora for the Nexus 7.

UI: KDE especially has very good touch screen support, including a thing that automatically changes system UI when you connect a mouse, or keyboard, or so on, and switches between phone style, tablet style, desktop with touch, and desktop style on the fly. (Essentially Microsoft’s Continuum) Since 2012.

I used KDE Plasma Active on my Nexus 7 for some time, actually.

Re: Windows 10 users are being banned from torrent sites

#345

Post by Amezarak » Mon, Aug 24, 2015, 11:30 PM UTC

cookiecaper wrote: post #324

Amezarak wrote: post #315

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The issue is that Microsoft states its intent to do so (relevant section underlined): The quoted section is from the privacy header which also applies to Onedrive, which is essentially Microsoft's version of Dropbox. They're not stating their intent to collect files in private folders on your computer aside from bits that have always been collected, like whatever parts of a crash dump Error Reporting sends on.

The doc is at https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/privacystatement . It says: >It applies to Bing, Cortana, MSN, Office, OneDrive, Outlook.com, Skype, ___Windows___, Xbox and other Microsoft services that display this statement. It appears that you're making an assumption that they only intend this to apply to OneDrive, but they explicitly state it applies to Windows too. My Linux installation definitely didn't come with…

They list what data they collect under the Windows section. They don't collect arbitrary files in personal folders.

Re: Windows 10 users are being banned from torrent sites

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Post by chemmail » Tue, Aug 25, 2015, 12:53 AM UTC

fencepost wrote: post #310

smtddr wrote: post #158

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. I'm going to recommend to you, or anyone, wanting to verify Windows 10 network behavior to do it without depending on software running on the OS itself. Try verifying it again using network analyzing software on linux or macosx, running downstream of…

I would be astonished to see "below the stack" communications for anything official from Microsoft, because that takes the public conversation from "look at all these features that affect privacy" to "look at how Microsoft is TRYING TO HIDE privacy invading features." Since MS knows that Windows communications are going to be under a microscope anyway the odds of them expecting to successfully hide the very existence…

That is just plain naiveté. Big corporations don't have the accountability as individuals or smaller companies. They can just scrapgoat someone. Just watch some docus like the enron one http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1016268/. Those dystopian futures many writers romance about are going to come true soon.

Re: Windows 10 users are being banned from torrent sites

#347

Post by chli » Tue, Aug 25, 2015, 6:23 AM UTC

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…

It was announced yesterday in the Swiss newspaper "Le Temps" that the Swiss Federal Data Protection and Information Commissioner has started an investigation on the privacy issues with Windows 10. He will contact Microsoft to better understand what data is uploaded, where it is stored, who has access to this information and for how long it is archived.

He may seize the Federal Supreme Court of Switzerland if required. I don't think Microsoft will care too much but it's good that our government is at least considering what is happening here. Note that all that was triggered after an open letter sent to the Commissioner by the Swiss Pirate Party.

Re: Windows 10 users are being banned from torrent sites

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Post by progman » Tue, Aug 25, 2015, 6:58 AM UTC

afarrell wrote: post #278

progman wrote: post #249

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Regarding your points 1) to 4) this is exactly what I mean with investing some effort to discover how these things work in Linux. For 1) there are LibreOffice and gnumeric, for 2) there are mplayer, vlc, and several other tools, for 3) I don't know because Linux is not a gaming system but a workhorse. A modern Ubuntu distro provides thousands of applications for many purposes. If you don't like Unity or Gnome 3 then…

My point isn't that I personally find Linux too hard, it is that for a large chunk of people, switching to Linux is far too expensive and this makes predictions about the rise of Desktop Linux too optimistic. > Learning Linux is like learning LaTeX This is a particularly fantastic analogy when you look at the type of error messages that LaTeX produces.

> This is a particularly fantastic analogy when you look at the type of error messages that LaTeX produces.

Nevertheless LaTeX is still the favorite DTP system among scientists. LaTeX is actually not too hard to learn. It just requires some mental effort to get it. Scientists are willing to do that. Some people obviously don't.

Re: Windows 10 users are being banned from torrent sites

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Post by danlindley » Tue, Aug 25, 2015, 9:48 AM UTC

smtddr wrote: post #256

danlindley wrote: post #181

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Could you recommend a resource that would provide some good information on this? I keep hearing about ways to modify routers to operate this way, but have yet to come across something that clearly describes how this is done.

I have a blog explaining how to watch the traffic of a Nintendo Wii console using a USB-ethernet adapter. http://smtddr.hatenablog.com/entry/2014/02/16/tvclb_part1 It's probably overly complicated, but because I happened to have an extra router laying about it was the easiest way for me to do it. The setup ultimately looks like this: http://i.imgur.com/klNvoTS.png The spare router is really only needed for the smartp…

This has taught me a lot. Thank you.

Re: Windows 10 users are being banned from torrent sites

#350

Post by JupiterMoon » Tue, Aug 25, 2015, 9:52 AM UTC

chaostheory wrote: post #335

JupiterMoon wrote: post #321

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The Spotify client on linux is a beta application made by some developers for themselves because they wanted it. Spotify released it because they are a fairly decent company and why not? Many of us use it but we should not regard it as a mainstream offering. (In spite of this I find Spotify on Linux to work better than Spotify on Mac.)

> The Spotify client on linux is a beta application made by some developers for themselves because they wanted it. Spotify released it because they are a fairly decent company and why not? That still doesn't detract from the point that I'm making: normal people will have a lot more troubling transitioning to Linux as opposed to OSX (or even Windows - if coming from OSX). Linux GUI apps just aren't very polished compa…

I actually agree with you on the transitioning thing.

The reason that I said don't regard it as mainstream is (1) this is what they themselves say on their website and (2) I know someone who works there who told me not to rely upon it even existing in the very long term as it just isn't a business priority for them to maintain it.

I don't get the tearing I guess we have different set ups (see what I said about not being a mainstream product). On the Mac I find the newer spotify client to be very slow and heavy on resources. On Linux we still have I think the older version that on my laptop uses far less memory and processor to sit in the background and play music.

Finally I didn't actually downvote you...