Nothing prevents you from buying a non-Windows, non-Mac laptop. It's not the year 2000 anymore when there were hardly any other options.
Tell me where these mythical laptops are, other than the Dell XPS 13?
German government warns Windows 8 is a security risk
61–70 of 125 posts
Re: German government warns Windows 8 is a security risk
#622013, it's the post-snowden era. We don't have a cold war any more, but the level of spying is unbelievable. I am currently moving out my emails from GMail and installed PGP. At the moment I am using OSX since I do for years. But in the end the only "safe" way to protect your business and privacy is to use Linux/Unix. The FSF said it for years; the german CCC told us for years. I admit, I didn't believe it's so bad.…
> We don't have a cold war any more
We absolutely have a cold war, except, rather than a continuously increasing stockpile of nuclear weapons, we have a continuously increasing stockpile of zero-day exploits.
Another hallmark of the cold war is escalation and regional hegemony, and consider that draconian spying legislation is disseminating from the USA to her vassal states -- Canada, UK, Australia, NZ. Similar technology and legislation is being deployed in other major world players under the guise of fighting "terrorism," but it stands to reason that it's in response to Chinese espionage/reconnaissance.
The USA has a very serious rivalry with China, and vice versa. We can expect to see the USA trying to further compete with China by trying to level the playing field across a variety of fields. The TPP and the F35 Joint Task Force are shining examples of attempts to curry favour with fellow nation states.
Re: German government warns Windows 8 is a security risk
#63Translation (it's a very long-winded article with many repetitions, I left some passages out): How trustworthy is Microsoft? This is the question that concerns the Federal Administration and other German government agencies, as well as companies and private users who might want to use the Windows operation system now and in the future. Sooner or later they will be forced to use Windows 8 or its successor. According t…
It's funny how Windows 8 is singled out as if other Windows versions are any better. Windows 7 can be securely used till 2020? That's the cut off date for updates from MS. The same MS that the article says " For the user there is simply no way to tell what exactly Microsoft does to their system through remote updates."
The above is true of Apple and Google, but it is glossed over.
First, I fail to see any relevance or technical info about what the TPM or trusted boot has to do with the issue at hand.
If anything they should be warning people about using Chromebooks where everything is uploaded to the cloud by default, same with Google Apps and Skydrive. Or Outlook.com and Gmail.
Oh, also be careful about Ubuntu, Shuttleworth said he has root on your machines.
In short, this is a rambling article full of technical sounding gibberish designed to get semi technical folks riled up with scary sounding buzzwords instead of actually educating people.
Edit: Fixed typo reported in reply.
Re: German government warns Windows 8 is a security risk
#64This is about the TPM in windows 8. It's the same argument about treacherous computing that goes around, except the article seems to be suggesting people think it's a extent problem now because the TPM is always on, not a hypothetical in the future/ Microsoft's long term plan. Further, there is a nebulous assertion linking this to the NSA. 1) The TPM still can't control your computer(yet). It can only measure it's st…
I have a Windows 8 notebook and for the first time in my life I have no control over my own general purpose computer: - I can't enter BIOS before entering OS. - Once I enter the BIOS from the OS I can't activate the hard disk password. - I can't install the Windows 8 OS clean. The MSFT has the deal with the computer producers that doesn't allow them to deliver the pure OS medium, you can only backup the already prese…
My roommate bought a Windows 8 equipped Asus a few months back and installed Mint on it. Seriously, Google 'How to install Linux on a Windows 8 laptop' sometime.
Re: German government warns Windows 8 is a security risk
#65So because Windows 8 has support for trusted boot and friends that might (it's pure speculation) contain a backdoor, it's less secure than previous versions that did not support trusted boot at all? I agree that the NSA spying is a real threat, but so is traditional malware. The article is basically saying that, because the malware protection is not good enough (i.e. not securing against NSA malware), it's worse than…
> The article is basically saying that, because the malware protection is not good enough (i.e. not securing against NSA malware), it's worse than no protection at all. No. If the OS is locked down so only MS-signed applications can run, it is impossible to run software that can detect malware that has been approved by MS. It is also impossible to run software that can remove such malware. If the OS makes it impossib…
First, Windows 8 allows you to run whatever desktop apps you want, including third party antivirus software of your choice that have full access to the system.
Second, I haven't seen your argument made for iOS and Chromebooks which are much more locked down than Windows 8. Though one could argue that Chromebook doesn't need to have malware since everything is helpfully uploaded to the cloud.
Re: German government warns Windows 8 is a security risk
#66Translation (it's a very long-winded article with many repetitions, I left some passages out): How trustworthy is Microsoft? This is the question that concerns the Federal Administration and other German government agencies, as well as companies and private users who might want to use the Windows operation system now and in the future. Sooner or later they will be forced to use Windows 8 or its successor. According t…
It's funny how Windows 8 is singled out as if other Windows versions are any better. Windows 7 can be securely used till 2020? That's the cut off date for updates from MS. The same MS that the article says " For the user there is simply no way to tell what exactly Microsoft does to their system through remote updates." The above is true of Apple and Google, but it is glossed over. First, I fail to see any relevance o…
"First, I fail to see any relevance or technical info about how TPM or trusted boot to the issue at hand."
Is that a sentence? It sort of looks like a sentence, but something seems missing.
Re: German government warns Windows 8 is a security risk
#67Earlier quoted context omitted.
What brand notebook is that? Just so I can make a mental note to avoid purchasing that brand in the future :)
It's Acer, but I as far as I know almost nothing it Acer specific -- it's a Windows 8, all OEMs must accept what MSFT wants, plus the concept of third party additions, plus the Intel technologies. I'm surprised how little coverage there is on this all aspects. The discussions of kernel-level "giving up control" existed in Palladium and "technologies formerly known as Palladium ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Next-Gene…
It was Apple that implemented Palladium in on iPads and iPhones and many technical folks even cheered it on.
Re: German government warns Windows 8 is a security risk
#682013, it's the post-snowden era. We don't have a cold war any more, but the level of spying is unbelievable. I am currently moving out my emails from GMail and installed PGP. At the moment I am using OSX since I do for years. But in the end the only "safe" way to protect your business and privacy is to use Linux/Unix. The FSF said it for years; the german CCC told us for years. I admit, I didn't believe it's so bad.…
> We don't have a cold war any more We absolutely have a cold war, except, rather than a continuously increasing stockpile of nuclear weapons, we have a continuously increasing stockpile of zero-day exploits. Another hallmark of the cold war is escalation and regional hegemony, and consider that draconian spying legislation is disseminating from the USA to her vassal states -- Canada, UK, Australia, NZ. Similar techn…
> The USA has a very serious rivalry with China, and vice versa.
Can you say more about this? Are we afraid of them doing something to us? What? Are they afraid of us doing something to them? What?
Re: German government warns Windows 8 is a security risk
#69Nothing prevents you from buying a non-Windows, non-Mac laptop. It's not the year 2000 anymore when there were hardly any other options.
Tell me where these mythical laptops are, other than the Dell XPS 13?
http://www.system76.com/ among others.
Re: German government warns Windows 8 is a security risk
#702013, it's the post-snowden era. We don't have a cold war any more, but the level of spying is unbelievable. I am currently moving out my emails from GMail and installed PGP. At the moment I am using OSX since I do for years. But in the end the only "safe" way to protect your business and privacy is to use Linux/Unix. The FSF said it for years; the german CCC told us for years. I admit, I didn't believe it's so bad.…
It is even worse. The attempt to escape into OSS/Linux is a step in the right direction. But as long as we are dependent on mass consumer hardware then there is always a risk of being spied through hardware backdoors. In this case it doesn't matter which software we use. Even encryption is useless. It is NOT enough to avoid Windows 8 because the real problem is modern hardware that uses Trusted Computing chips. Trust…
> TC could also be used to delete evidence from computers of journalists who would have no power to keep it.
Since Amazon deleted all those copies of 1984 from everyone's Kindles, I don't keep mine connected to the internet. If you have data, you can keep it. Keep it on your own devices.