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Windows 10 users are being banned from torrent sites

irishexaminer.com

271–280 of 358 posts

Re: Windows 10 users are being banned from torrent sites

#271

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I mean a response now that there has been a sizable backlash (especially from the tech community) on the privacy settings on Windows 10. The consistent "phoning home" no matter what privacy settings are used.

The backlash is a bit of an overreaction, although justified due to the lack of total transparency of what's being sent. This is no different than any other cloud oriented services offered by Google/Apple, etc. Edit: blog.laptopmag.com/windows-10-privacy-issues-exaggerated The phoning home isn't new, is it? Licensing validation was done every few months on Windows 7. The only thing Microsoft is guilty of SO FAR that…

This isn't communication every few months. More like every hour, and it's only that sparse when locking down the privacy settings.

http://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2015/08/even-w...

Re: Windows 10 users are being banned from torrent sites

#272
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.

And it's so 90s, dude. Move on. There's a lot more evil in the world now, even if they say they don't do any.

Re: Windows 10 users are being banned from torrent sites

#273
post #265

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> But I still can't approve only the app permissions I want and not approve the ones I don't (which coincidentally are not essential to app functioning). Hmm? I can do exactly this in the Privacy Guard settings. You can choose which permissions you want an app to have and which you don't. You can also set to Ask every time as well as just blanket blocking/.allowing permanently.

Oh wow. You're right. The option does exist. It's just hidden behind a stupid, non-sensical UI. Apparently if I long tap the app name, I get a lot of options. This is great. I don't understand why they hide it behind such a stupid, non-obvious UI. Do I need to long tap every single other UI element to get some functionality that should be obvious? Until they make a proper UI for it, it might as well not exist.

Yeah it's not the most intuitive.

As far as I'm aware you just long-press the app name in order to get to the more granular permissions controls.

There's nothing else I'm aware of that needs these long presses to get more options, save the stuff that Android has anyway.

Re: Windows 10 users are being banned from torrent sites

#274

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.

And what leads to the vendors caring? Demand. There is no demand for this software on linux. Professionals have better things to do than choose their software based on ideology.

But professionals now have a very good, non-ideological reason to choose a Linux OS over Windows. How many professionals are comfortable with an operating system that collects and sends everything they load, type or save to Microsoft and their corporate and government partners?

Re: Windows 10 users are being banned from torrent sites

#275

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.

[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Policies\Microsoft\Windows\Gwx] "DisableGwx"=dword:00000001

It won't beg anymore ;)

Re: Windows 10 users are being banned from torrent sites

#276
post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes if you actually write software for desktop Linux you know that it's not that much of a problem to actually do it if you want to. There is enough free software available, you know often written by individuals without multi-million dollar budgets, that I have not had need for using a Windows machine other than to compile software for Windows machines. If multi-million dollar companies actually wanted to support Lin…

For what it's worth, I had the same experience with my parents. I installed Ubuntu on my dad's laptop and my mum's desktop. They loved it for quite a while - it was much faster, no security problems and no weird errors. I was so happy that I left a few comments online similar to yours. A year or so later, they both use Mac. In both cases, the inevitable question came "so I bought this , how can I get it to work?".

I did the same with my parents and they still use Ubuntu.

When they want some hw or sw, they ask what would I recommend. They realize that they know nothing about it and do not want to buy some crap.

Re: Windows 10 users are being banned from torrent sites

#277
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…

> we're stuck with a proprietary system that is totally unnecessary I think you are being a bit biased on this one. There are a lot of applications that the "free" alternative is just not good enough in comparison with the propetary one. Just to name a few: Gimp and Photoshop Inkscape and Illustrator Maya/3DStudio and Blender I would even add Office and LibreOffice but the later is actually good enough for a good chu…

"good enough for a good chunk of people" completely describes Gimp, Inkscape, and Blender, all of which are absolutely powerful and capable of (and actually used for) the highest level professional results.

That there are features and quality from the well-funded proprietary tools that are lacking in the free/open ones is undeniable. But the examples you chose are ones where if we had to use the free/open ones, we would be just fine. These are cases where free/open options are actually pretty darn nice.

Re: Windows 10 users are being banned from torrent sites

#278

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Usually made by windows users I used to make this claim as someone who had been using desktop gnu/linux for several years. I've been using OSX now for a year and so stopped making the claim. But it is really frustrating to hear people say "it works for me" to rebut claims that it doesn't work for most people. Such counters and arguments over them are basically single data points. If the point under discussion is "d…

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.

Re: Windows 10 users are being banned from torrent sites

#279
post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You know that, unlike Windows, you can turn it off.

Except for telemetry (and that you can turn off in the Enterprise edition as well) you can turn off all these features.

So why it connects to a-0001.a-msedge.net when I type into start menu, with web search and cortana turned off?

Re: Windows 10 users are being banned from torrent sites

#280

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Except for telemetry (and that you can turn off in the Enterprise edition as well) you can turn off all these features.

So why it connects to a-0001.a-msedge.net when I type into start menu, with web search and cortana turned off?

You have to block outbound communication for "Search" in the Windows firewall. Regardless of whatever privacy settings you may have set.
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