Microsoft's Software is Malware
31–40 of 185 posts
Re: Microsoft's Software is Malware
#32You'll have a hard time finding any believer in any religion who would admit to the biases in their beliefs.
Re: Microsoft's Software is Malware
#33> "Microsoft cut off security fixes for Windows XP, except to some big users that pay exorbitantly." XP has had longer support than any Linux distro out there (aside the rolling release ones, but that's a little different). I know this submission is intended to be biased, and I do honestly favour Linux over Windows anyway. But surely FUD like the above is so painfully transparent that it only undermines the credibili…
I agree with you but I think there argument would be that you could maintain the software "yourself" or hire someone to do so; presumably not at exorbitantly high rates.
Re: Microsoft's Software is Malware
#34> "Microsoft cut off security fixes for Windows XP, except to some big users that pay exorbitantly." XP has had longer support than any Linux distro out there (aside the rolling release ones, but that's a little different). I know this submission is intended to be biased, and I do honestly favour Linux over Windows anyway. But surely FUD like the above is so painfully transparent that it only undermines the credibili…
They do clarify that it is only "wrong" because the proprietary nature of the OS means that third parties can't carry on supporting users after official support ends. Still pretty shaky reasoning, in my opinion.
Re: Microsoft's Software is Malware
#35Shots Fired!
They've been firing shots at Microsoft for decades now (remember "MS-DOG" in old GNU writings?)
Or their absolutely ridiculous Bad Vista campaign?
Re: Microsoft's Software is Malware
#36"Malware means software designed to function in ways that mistreat or harm the user." Some days I'm pretty sure bash is malware, too.
+1
Re: Microsoft's Software is Malware
#37"Microsoft cut off security fixes for Windows XP, except to some big users that pay exorbitantly. (...) A person or company has the right to cease to work on a particular program; the wrong here is Microsoft does this after having made the users dependent on Microsoft, because they are not free to ask anyone else to work on the program for them." Microsoft did not make anybody dependent on them, and should have zero…
The argument is that by having users at all you're creating dependence. After all, if you've written a business critical application to the Windows API, you're not easily going to move to any of those options.
That's true, but those same businesses could have more easily moved to a newer version of Windows. It seems like an irresponsible business strategy to have your critical applications rely on a 14 year old operating system.
Microsoft releases new versions of Windows just about every 3 years. Businesses shouldn't be surprised that Microsoft has moved on.
Re: Microsoft's Software is Malware
#38The BitLocker recovery key for the user’s device is automatically backed up online in the Microsoft OneDrive account. Even if we trust MS, do we trust MS to keep these keys safe from outside hackers?
No this is why it's not the default setting it asks you if you want to do it.
That said OneDrive content is encrypted, while the encryption is not perfect it's not going to be "hacked" as easily as one thinks, it's not stored in some global key repository just in your normal onedrive account which is by far more likely to be compromised due to your activity than Microsoft's.
BitLocker can fail, simple things like a UEFI/BIOS updates will cause it to fail, playing around with your boot loader or even boot order will cause it to fail, anything that will trigger the TPM will cause it to fail, sudden powerloss/crash can cause it to fail.
BitLocker is quite more reliable now but when I was using it with Widnows 7 about 4-5 years ago I had to use the recovery every 2-3 months usually so I had the key printout stored in my wallet this is probably quite less safe than storing the key in OneDrive.
Most people use encryption not to fight state level surveillance but to ensure that if they lose their devices or they get stolen they don't need to worry about all their accounts being compromised and their life being penetrated to a point where they need to worry about identity theft, fraud, and extortion. However FDE also puts you at risk for not being able to access the device when you need to, at like usual it will fail at the worst possible moment, the chance of losing all access to your device and data is a big hurdle which prevents people from using FDE and OneDrive-BitLocker integration kinda solves this quite well while still providing tamper resistance/detection.
Re: Microsoft's Software is Malware
#39Earlier quoted context omitted.
I think the problem is that they won't allow anyone else to continue working on it
That's only a problem if Microsoft promised or implied XP would be updated indefinitely. Is that the case?
No.. but one could think so seeing how they postponed the end of life so many times :)
Re: Microsoft's Software is Malware
#40Earlier quoted context omitted.
I think the problem is that they won't allow anyone else to continue working on it
That's only a problem if Microsoft promised or implied XP would be updated indefinitely. Is that the case?
Not that I agree, but the FSF's issue with non-free software does not seem to be purely based on those who sell proprietary software lying (or being unclear) about the limitations, but at least partially on the fact that they even offer such "raw deals" to begin with.