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Why We Can No Longer Trust Microsoft

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141–150 of 310 posts

Re: Why We Can No Longer Trust Microsoft

#141
post #119

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You certainly have a court decision or at least an official accusation to support your claim? Just asking.

You might find some of what you're looking for on the wikipedia page I linked to. But courts are only very rarely the place where accusations against heads of states are examined, especially when it comes to superpowers.

I read it carefully. Name "Putin" is not mentioned anywhere in the Investigation section.

Please stick to the facts.

Re: Why We Can No Longer Trust Microsoft

#143

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Let's boycott the hell out of Microsoft. They gleefully sold out their users to the NSA.

As long as you also "boycott the hell" out of: Yahoo Google Facebook PalTalk YouTube Skype AOL Apple Who have also been mentioned as complicit in this whole scandal. Just to be fair :-) By the way, I actually agree with you and have been slowly switching all my home stuff to linux and trying to get away from Google Dependence (although I type this in Chrome on a Win 8 laptop... damn work computer)

What about ubuntu tracking/sending our info to Amazon? Which Linux distro would you recommend, that is easy to use, and not sell out it's users?

Re: Why We Can No Longer Trust Microsoft

#144
post #136
post #117

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Windows natively has several data collecting operations on any machine with Windows installed. Each time you visting a page, IE sends the URL over to be "checked" by Microsoft. Each update, a summery of all installed packages are collected and sent to Microsoft in order to "improve the experience". WAT collects your hardware specification, including the serial number of your hard drive. Each time you connect your ope…

>Each time you visting a page, IE sends the URL over to be "checked" by Microsoft. Huh? Are you talking about hashes being sent for malware check similar to the ones in Chrome or Firefox? If not its a serious privacy issue. The ones you mentioned about Updates is also true for Chrome updates. [1] >Microsoft can forceable push new executable code as updates, regardless if settings has turn of updates. Any source on th…

To be fair to SkyDrive, it does quite clearly ask you about that during installation. (At least, it did when I installed it recently.)

Re: Why We Can No Longer Trust Microsoft

#145
post #5
post #3

This is a financial disaster waiting to happen. Microsoft is oblivious if it is not doing something to divorce itself from the NSA. Apple, on the other hand, could have come out smelling like a rose, but following the death of Steve Jobs, who apparently refused to play ball with the NSA, it stupidly jumped on board to join the PRISM club. According to the Prism slides, it really looks so: "Dates when Prism collection…

That reminds me of Putin a little bit. Even if you think some leader is an asshole, sometimes you need an asshole to stand up to an even bigger bully. I just imagine someone like former president Medvedev (and with no Putin in sight) would've offered Snowden to US government on a silver platter, just like France, Spain, Portugal and Italy tried to do (fortunately unsuccessfully). I remember I was very much against Pu…

Anyone who serves in a role as top leader of a country or large corporation is an asshole -- it's a job requirement.

What you're seeing in Putin is the ability to be independent. He gets to enjoy watching the Americans squirm at low cost. What's the US going to do to Russia? Our diplomats will be rude to each other, maybe we won't attend the Russian summer ball and snub the Russian ambassador, each country will declare some spies persona non grata.

At the end of the day, the areas in which the Russians and Americans cooperate are areas that they have a mutual interest to do so.

Others, like the Germans or Spain are different. They piss off the US, we cut off the faucet of intelligence, money, privileges, etc.

Re: Why We Can No Longer Trust Microsoft

#146
post #120
post #3

This is a financial disaster waiting to happen. Microsoft is oblivious if it is not doing something to divorce itself from the NSA. Apple, on the other hand, could have come out smelling like a rose, but following the death of Steve Jobs, who apparently refused to play ball with the NSA, it stupidly jumped on board to join the PRISM club. According to the Prism slides, it really looks so: "Dates when Prism collection…

What amazes me is that among those corporations with revenues in the tens of billions of dollars, not one of them challenged the constitutionality of the decision in court. Not one, not once. Not that it would be necessary in an obvious case like this, but each one of Microsoft/Skype, Google/Youtube, Apple and Facebook could easily have hired the nation's best and brightest one thousand lawyers at $1,000 an hour, ful…

Correction: Yahoo did fight, and lost. The details aren't all released, but here's a precis of what's public:

http://www.wired.com/threatlevel/2013/06/yahoo-failed-fisa-f...

It's possible that there's as-yet undisclosed legal action with some of the others; the secrecy around just about any proceeding in the FISC makes it very hard to tell.

Re: Why We Can No Longer Trust Microsoft

#147
post #120
post #3

This is a financial disaster waiting to happen. Microsoft is oblivious if it is not doing something to divorce itself from the NSA. Apple, on the other hand, could have come out smelling like a rose, but following the death of Steve Jobs, who apparently refused to play ball with the NSA, it stupidly jumped on board to join the PRISM club. According to the Prism slides, it really looks so: "Dates when Prism collection…

What amazes me is that among those corporations with revenues in the tens of billions of dollars, not one of them challenged the constitutionality of the decision in court. Not one, not once. Not that it would be necessary in an obvious case like this, but each one of Microsoft/Skype, Google/Youtube, Apple and Facebook could easily have hired the nation's best and brightest one thousand lawyers at $1,000 an hour, ful…

It's been my observation that revenue in the tens of billions of dollars doesn't enable a company to make bold, risky moves -- it hinders it. People become very risk-averse when there's a lot to lose. Many of these well established, high revenue companies can't even take the risks that are necessary to continue having revenue in the tens of billions of dollars, much less stand up to nation-states.

Re: Why We Can No Longer Trust Microsoft

#148
post #51

Windows should be banned in all countries except America. Open source OS is the only way to go. I'm not saying Linux since it's not exactly the most non technical friendly OS for people requiring more than basic usage but windows definitely isn't the OS for the future and it needs to die.

>Windows should be banned in all countries except America. Open source OS is the only way to go.

That is a very close minded way to look at things. Closed Source does not always = Evil and Opensource does not always = Secure. Competition and choices should always be sought for. Without competition, stagnation is as prevalent in open-source community as in closed source. I rather have the right to choose between a Mac, Windows or a Linux variant than someone making the choice for me.

Re: Why We Can No Longer Trust Microsoft

#149

A couple of years ago at a Linux conference in Germany I had a discussion with a Microsoft employee at their booth. At that time I was a 'hardcore' linux user with no trust in Microsoft at all. The discussion with the employee went like this: Me: "Hello. Could you tell me what Microsoft is doing at this Linux conference? I honestly want to know that." Him: "We are here to show how our products can work well together…

To me seems you were just kinda rude to some guy that was getting paid to do his job.

His job was to represent Microsoft, which involves answering questions (to the best of his ability given the access to information that he has). As long as the questions were not worded or spoken in an unnecessarily pointed/aggressive manner I really can't see any reason to call the question asker rude. "It confuses me to find you here, could you please explain so I can fill in the blanks in my knowledge about your company" seems a perfectly valid question to ask of a company representative, and raising a security concern for said rep to respond to is valid too.

You can't expect a show rep to know about anything like prism though - that information would have been "classified" and available only to those well above his pay grade.

Re: Why We Can No Longer Trust Microsoft

#150
post #136

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Each time you visting a page, IE sends the URL over to be "checked" by Microsoft. Huh? Are you talking about hashes being sent for malware check similar to the ones in Chrome or Firefox? If not its a serious privacy issue. The ones you mentioned about Updates is also true for Chrome updates. [1] >Microsoft can forceable push new executable code as updates, regardless if settings has turn of updates. Any source on th…

To be fair to SkyDrive, it does quite clearly ask you about that during installation. (At least, it did when I installed it recently.)

I might have clicked through it. I guess I am still paranoid since you can re-enable it on the web, its not a client controlled setting. Surely someone could take advantage, not just the NSA but even a hacker breaking into your Outlook.
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