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Baron · Guest

Tim Williams wrote:

[quote]"Baron" <baron.nospam@linuxmaniac.nospam.net> wrote in message
news:g6i7hp$s7m$1@registered.motzarella.org...
Everything on a windows machine is viral.
Do you like to be spied on all the time ? Most people don>t !

Wrong. Spying is hardly a virus. Windows in installed voluntarily
(assuming you>re doing the installation), it does not spread via
internet or
what have you. You>re obviously ignorant of what a virus does.
[/quote]
Whatever.

[quote]Are you happy to have your computing behaviour monitored ?
The number of pages you sent to your printer !
How many Emails you replied to... etc etc !

Where are these counters stored, how are they transmitted, and to
where?

Tim
[/quote]
Try the registry or how about ADS ! Or try your printer driver ! Maybe
word docs ! Outlook Express 6. How about that nice little webcam you
just bought ?

The point is just about everything that you install phones home !
Virtually every program you use makes itself known in some way. Data
about you and your machine is recorded all over the place ! The
internet has opened a big gateway into your life via Windows.

--
Best Regards:
Baron.

Tim Williams · Guest

"Guy Macon" <http://www.GuyMacon.com/> wrote in message
news:U8Wdndf-kL8V2hDV4p2dnAA@giganews.com...
[quote]Where are these counters stored, how are they transmitted, and to where?

The are stored (encrypted) in the data structures associated with
the Visa[sic] Kernel DRM subsystem.
[/quote]
Ah yes, the DRM fiasco.

I didn>t mention in this thread, but I>ve mentioned elsewhere that I use XP,
not Vista. So where are they stored, transmitted etc.?

Tim

--
Deep Friar: a very philosophical monk.
Website: http://webpages.charter.net/dawill/tmoranwms

Tim Williams · Guest

"Baron" <baron.nospam@linuxmaniac.nospam.net> wrote in message
news:g6il3c$6vr$1@registered.motzarella.org...
[quote]Try the registry
[/quote]
There>s a few million entries (well, almost). Care to be a bit more
specific?

[quote]or how about ADS ! Or try your printer driver ! Maybe
word docs ! Outlook Express 6. How about that nice little webcam you
just bought ?
[/quote]
I don>t have a webcam.

[quote]The point is just about everything that you install phones home !
[/quote]
Even L-View Pro 1.D2/32? :^)

Tim

--
Deep Friar: a very philosophical monk.
Website: http://webpages.charter.net/dawill/tmoranwms

Guy Macon · Guest

Tim Williams wrote:
[quote]
Baron wrote...

Are you happy to have your computing behaviour monitored ?
The number of pages you sent to your printer !
How many Emails you replied to... etc etc !

Where are these counters stored, how are they transmitted, and to where?
[/quote]
The are stored (encrypted) in the data structures associated with
the Visa Kernel DRM subsystem. They are transmitted over the
internet, when and if a third party with a trusted signature
(a record company, recording studio, software vendor or government
agency, usually) pulls the trigger and tells Vista to gather that
data.

DRM is a kernel service in Vista that prevents users from accessing
media or using high-end monitors without authorization from the
"approriate" parties. Vista grants third-parties the right to
irrevocably alter policies and disable functionality on systems in
accordances with their own EULAs without warning. Basically, it
provides a kernel service that lets signed apps install rootkits
and spyware, prohibit you from using competitors products, or
monitor your use and charge you for EULA infractions.

--
Guy Macon
<http://www.GuyMacon.com/>

Guy Macon · Guest

Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8Bit

V.I.S.T.A. = Virus Infection and Spyware Transmission Architecture

Dirk Bruere at NeoPax wrote:
[quote]
Vladimir Vassilevsky wrote:

John Larkin wrote:

High expectations of Microsoft products? Somebody has those?

I remember people standing in the lines in the front of the stores at
the release day of Windows 95. MS XBOX and optical mouse caused some
hullabaloo, too.

XP is good enough that they should leave it alone. Vista is trying to
mimic the Apple OS, but without the programming skills.

Vista is an attempt to do the things finally in the right way, when
everything had gone too far for making changes.

Was an attempt.
The attempt was aborted because it was taking too long and a defective
product was released with most of the major innovations omitted.
[/quote]
They did, however, have *plenty* of time to implement DRM. The recording
and movie industries, it seems, are more important customers that we are.

DRM is a kernel service in Vista that prevents users from accessing
media or using high-end monitors without authorization from the
"approriate" parties. Vista grants third-parties the right to
irrevocably alter policies and disbale functionality on systems in
accordances with their own EULAs without warning. Basically, it
provides a kernel service that lets signed apps install rootkits
and spyware, prohibit you from using competitors products, or
monitor your use and charge you for EULA infractions

A few interesting quotes:

"The contentious stealth update that Microsoft delivered
to customers this summer blocks 80 patches and fixes from
installing after Windows XP is restored using its "repair"
feature... The background updates were delivered and
installed without prior notification, even when the PC>s
owner had told the operating system not to download or
install updates without notification and permission."
http://www.computerworld.com/action/article.do?command=viewArticleBasic&articleId=9039258&pageNumber=1

"many of Vista>s DRM technologies exist not because Microsoft
wanted them there; rather, they were developed at the behest
of movie studios, record labels and other high-powered
intellectual property owners."
http://www.computerworld.com/action/article.do?command=printArticleBasic&articleId=9005047

"NBC-Vista copy-protection snafu reminds us why DRM stinks
Handfuls of Windows Vista Media Center users found themselves
blocked from making recordings of their favorite TV shows
this week when a broadcast flag triggered the software>s
built-in copy protection measures. The flag affected users
trying to record prime-time NBC shows on Monday evening,
using both over-the-air broadcasts and cable. Although
the problem is being "looked into" by both NBC and Microsoft,
the incident serves as another reminder that DRM gives
content providers full control, even if by accident."
http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post/20080514-nbc-vista-copy-protection-snafu-reminds-us-why-drm-stinks.html

Schneier: Do not upgrade to Vista: Security guru Bruce Schneier
has given a big thumbs-down to Windows Vista, arguing that the
DRM (digital rights management) features built into the new
operating system "will make your computer less reliable and
less secure."

The celebrated cryptographer, who is credited with designing
or co-designing several widely used encryption algorithms,
is calling on consumers to send a message to Microsoft by
avoiding Vista entirely.

"[The] only advice I can offer you is to not upgrade to Vista.
It will be hard. Microsoft’s bundling deals with computer
manufacturers mean that it will be increasingly hard not to
get the new operating system with new computers. And Microsoft
has some pretty deep pockets and can wait us all out if it
wants to. Yes, some people will shift to Macintosh and some
fewer number to Linux, but most of us are stuck on Windows.
Still, if enough customers say no to Vista, the company might
actually listen," Schneier wrote in an essay posted at his
personal blog.

His argument is that Microsoft has succumbed to the
entertainment industry and built copy-protection (DRM)
schemes into the OS that will make computers less stable
and force customers to spend to upgrade peripheral hardware
and existing software.
http://blogs.zdnet.com/security/?p=28
http://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2008/02/lockin.html

MSN Music to shut down, leaving DRM customers in the
lurch: Microsoft is ceasing support for its MSN Music
service. After August 31, 2008, people who have bought
music from the service will no longer be able to move
that music to different computers, or even change
the operating system on their current computers.
With restricted music, every time you move it to a
new system, you have to get new approval. Microsoft
is shutting down the servers that currently grant
that approval, which leaves everyone who bought
music from them holding locks with no keys, and
no recourse.
http://www.defectivebydesign.org/blog/1131

Also see:
http://cbbrowne.com/info/mslinks.html

V.I.S.T.A. = Virus Infection and Spyware Transmission Architecture

--
Guy Macon
<http://www.GuyMacon.com/>

Guy Macon · Guest

Tim Williams wrote:
[quote]
Guy Macon <http://www.GuyMacon.com/> wrote...

Where are these counters stored, how are they transmitted, and to where?

The are stored (encrypted) in the data structures associated with
the Visa[sic] Kernel DRM subsystem.

Ah yes, the DRM fiasco.

I didn>t mention in this thread, but I>ve mentioned elsewhere
that I use XP, not Vista. So where are they stored, transmitted etc.?
[/quote]
Assuming that you yourself don>t download and run spyware
(I don>t think you would, but someone reading this might
not know of the danger, so it is worth mentioning)...

Unlike Vista, which by design allows "trusted" (trusted by
Microsoft, not you) third-parties the right to access a
kernel service that lets signed apps install rootkits and
spyware, prohibit you from using competitors products, or
monitor your use and charge you for licencing infractions,
XP has a potential future vulnerability, not a gaping
security hole pre-installed in every copy by design like
Vista. Here is the sequence that would result in XP having
the same problem:

First Microsoft has to decide to spy on you (unlikely; the
enemies of Microsoft would put that on the front page of
your local paper as soon as someone detected the packets)
or decide to add Vista-style DRM to the XP Kernel (which I
consider far more likely).

We know that at least once, Microsoft installed a stealth
update to all copies of XP -- even those in which the PC>s
owner had told the operating system not to download or
install updates without notification and permission.

Or Microsoft cound bundle DRM with SP3 and then do the
usual Microsoft trick of making futire security updates
require SP3.

If either of the above comes to pass, you will be in the
same situation that Vista users are in now; the gun is
pointed at you and loaded and you are trusting every
third party that Microsoft trusts with the DRM keys to
not pull the trigger.

In the meantime, XP is far, far safer than Vista.

Unless you are running XP Media Center Edition.
That version has already had several "critical updates"
that installed various DRM "features" like no longer
being able to watch HBO, Netflix online or the Cartoon
Network.

--
Guy Macon
<http://www.GuyMacon.com/>

Guy Macon · Guest

Guy Macon <http://www.GuyMacon.com/> wrote:

[quote]We know that at least once, Microsoft installed a stealth
update to all copies of XP -- even those in which the PC>s
owner had told the operating system not to download or
install updates without notification and permission.
[/quote]

"I know that this is a bitter pill for Microsoft to have to
swallow, but no matter what spin is being put on the PR,
updating files on systems where users have specifically
stated they want to have the final say on what>s installed
is a serious betrayal of trust, and this isn>t the first
time (we>ve already seen Microsoft push WGA through the
Windows Update mechanism as a high priority update). The
Windows Update mechanism cannot become a backdoor, access
all areas pass to systems where users believe that they have
indicated that they don>t want updates, period. No excuses,
no waffle, no PR spin. With this incident Microsoft has
crossed the line and needs to make a clear public apology
and then lay out exactly what stealth updates have been made
prior to this one and what>s being done to make sure that
this doesn>t happen again. Also, I believe we need much more
transparency over the Windows Update mechanism and what
access it gives to systems. If there are exceptions to
'Download updates but let me choose whether to install them'
and 'Check for updates but let me choose whether to download
and install them' then how do we know that there aren>t
overrides to the 'Never check for updates' option?"

Source:
http://blogs.zdnet.com/hardware/?p=787&page=1
http://blogs.zdnet.com/hardware/?p=787&page=2
http://blogs.zdnet.com/hardware/?p=787&page=3

Also see:
Microsoft Stealth Updates Confirmed by Many
http://blogs.pcworld.com/staffblog/archives/005417.html

--
Guy Macon
<http://www.GuyMacon.com/>

Dirk Bruere at NeoPax · Guest

Guy Macon wrote:
[quote]Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8Bit

V.I.S.T.A. = Virus Infection and Spyware Transmission Architecture

Dirk Bruere at NeoPax wrote:
Vladimir Vassilevsky wrote:
John Larkin wrote:

High expectations of Microsoft products? Somebody has those?
I remember people standing in the lines in the front of the stores at
the release day of Windows 95. MS XBOX and optical mouse caused some
hullabaloo, too.

XP is good enough that they should leave it alone. Vista is trying to
mimic the Apple OS, but without the programming skills.
Vista is an attempt to do the things finally in the right way, when
everything had gone too far for making changes.
Was an attempt.
The attempt was aborted because it was taking too long and a defective
product was released with most of the major innovations omitted.

They did, however, have *plenty* of time to implement DRM. The recording
and movie industries, it seems, are more important customers that we are.
[/quote]
The irony is that as Hollywood moved to protect its HiDef fare with all
kinds of crap, one of the biggest trends has been downscaling DVDs to
play on PDAs, phones etc.

--
Dirk

http://www.transcendence.me.uk/ - Transcendence UK
http://www.theconsensus.org/ - A UK political party
http://www.onetribe.me.uk/wordpress/?cat=5 - Our podcasts on weird stuff

Joel Koltner · Guest

<invalid@example.com> wrote in message
news:ss2dnQMbMYsgnBHV4p2dnAA@giganews.com...
[quote]Screenshots of the 25 worst moments when windows fails:
http://www.wackyarchives.com/featured/25-worst-moments-when-windows-fail.html
[/quote]
Many of those are demonstrating failures of non-Microsoft-provided code,
actually (e.g., applications, device drivers, etc.).

Obviously one can see "Windows" failing far more often than any other OS when
they have something like 90% of the desktop market.

For embedded applications, Linux is far more popular... and you don>t have to
Google much at all to find incidences of poorly implemented Linuxes dying in,
e.g., network routers ("router reboots" has ~290k hits!).

It>s probably a fairly safe statement that OSes failing -- regardless of which
one you choose -- is in the single digit percentages; the rest of machine
failures being due to bad drivers, applications, configuration, etc.

Although it is absurd that, in some distributions of Linux, having a bad
Xorg.conf file will dump you back into text (console) mode rather than giving
you a (Windows-like) generic VGA desktop.

---Joel

Joel Koltner · Guest

"Tim Williams" <tmoranwms@charter.net> wrote in message
news:FI3jk.4539$LF2.2791@newsfe09.iad...
[quote]LaTeX does the same thing, more often than not.
[/quote]
Well, perhaps by default... by how you change the behavior is well-documented
and -- more importantly -- I think even beginning LaTeX users all get the
lecture about, "Your job is to write, LaTeX>s job is to typeset. At times
this will be incredibly frustrating and you>ll be fighting with LaTeX, but
when that happens, take a moment and think about whether or not this is a
fight you *should* be having -- in many cases, it won>t be." In other others,
people tend to appreciate from the start the whole idea of separating the
"writing" vs. "typesetting" processes, whereas for all the good that WYSIWYG
products such as Word have done, they intentionally blur that line to the
beginner... because that>s what beginners usually want.

I suppose that>s not particularly bad or anything, just different. Word,
OpenOffice, etc. all have the tools to separate out typesetting from content
editing, although I doubt they>re commonly used.

[quote]The one thing about LaTeX is, it>s structured. Word isn>t, at least in any
way you can see (I forget, maybe you can view markup on a Word file?).
[/quote]
No, you>re perhaps thinking of WordPerfect, which still lets you do that.

[quote]So whereas merely mystifying to the ordinary user, Word is literally
impossible to understand, on a fundamental level, by the power user.
[/quote]
Agreed. Happily, few people actually use advanced Word features, so it>s
usually not a problem. :-)

---Joel

Joel Koltner · Guest

Phil,

Same suggestion to you that I mentioned on ABSE... you might try out
Scientific Workplace some time, if you like LaTeX. I was actually first
pointed to it by a chemistry professor at the University of Canturbury -- he>s
done journal papers with it without any hassle from the publishers, AFAIK.

---Joel

Phil Hobbs · Guest

Joel Koltner wrote:
[quote]Phil,

Same suggestion to you that I mentioned on ABSE... you might try out
Scientific Workplace some time, if you like LaTeX. I was actually first
pointed to it by a chemistry professor at the University of Canturbury -- he>s
done journal papers with it without any hassle from the publishers, AFAIK.
[/quote]
My first real word processing experience was with MS Word 1.5 for
Macintosh, circa 1987--I taught myself to touch-type writing my thesis.
When I came to IBM, I used SCRIPT/VS and Bookmaster, which is a
LaTeX-like typesetting language for mainframes. Publishing was all done
via hardcopy then, so it wasn>t an issue. Then I used WordPerfect 5.1+
for DOS for about 15 years. I>d still be using it if publishers still
accepted it, but most of them don>t. It was real geek city--I used
machine-compiled macros and a big makefile to package up my book MS, so
that I could have a completely portable method and back up the tools as
well as the text and pictures.

I had a look at SWP once...the problem I saw with it is that if you used
it in GUI mode, it made messy LaTeX that required its own macro set, and
it couldn>t display LaTeX that wasn>t written with SWP>s macros.

My whole 800-page book takes only a minute or two to typeset, mostly in
the DVI->PDF stage. A journal article takes a few seconds, so I usually
just use a text editor (X2) to write LaTeX source and gsview (part of
Ghostscript) for debugging. Works great. I>d love to have something as
quick as WP5.1+ (which *flies* on modern hardware), but oh, well. WP
had some issues with placing figures as well--sometimes they>d overlap
each other, which was a real mess. The big benefits of WP were (a) I
knew all the keyboard shortcuts cold; (b) it didn>t need a mouse; and
(c) it has a 'reveal codes' mode that lets you debug corrupted files.
Good luck if your Word file gets hosed.

LaTeX is pretty good medicine, though not as good at hiding the works as
WP--all those \begin{} things and (especially) tables are pretty
cryptic. When I get desperate, I do them in WP and run WP2LaTeX on the
results--that>s how I was able to switch from WP to LaTeX in the first
place. Re-keying all those equations would have been really nasty.

Cheers,

Phil Hobbs

Frithiof Jensen · Guest

"Guy Macon" <http://www.GuyMacon.com/> skrev i meddelelsen
news:U8WdndT-kL_i2BDV4p2dnAA@giganews.com...

[quote]They did, however, have *plenty* of time to implement DRM. The recording
and movie industries, it seems, are more important customers that we are.
[/quote]
But, predictably, they screwed that up too: CloneDVD f.ex. installs and runs
just fine on Vista and one can rip as much as one likes.

I am still considering if I should try Ubuntu+WINE instead because file
copying and moving really, really sucks and Vista simply does not deliver
anything new at all. Disks still fragment, Network drives are
single-user-logon only, power-manglement does not work unless a luser has
logged in which occasionally causes the lapdog to self-discharge.

Vista is merely XP Me!!

Joel Koltner · Guest

Hi Phil,

Good information, thanks.

"Phil Hobbs" <pcdhSpamMeSenseless@pergamos.net> wrote in message
news:16WdnUxYOICrkBPVnZ2dnUVZ_vWdnZ2d@supernews.com...
[quote]I had a look at SWP once...the problem I saw with it is that if you used it
in GUI mode, it made messy LaTeX that required its own macro set, and it
couldn>t display LaTeX that wasn>t written with SWP>s macros.
[/quote]
It does require its own macro set, although it>s freely redistributable. The
LaTeX it makes isn>t particulalry messy at all -- at least in recent editions.
And it can import regular LaTeX, although it imports some blocks of LaTeX
commands (e.g., for graphics, tables, etc.) with "Code Block" icons since they
don>t contain the "secret sauce" needed to tell SWP how to display them
properly.

I think SWP>s biggest drawbacks are that (1) ongoing development seems to have
ceased and (2) if you *do* end up getting an error while running LaTeX, it can
be that much harder to debug due to having to figure out what SWP>s own macros
are doing.

WinEdt (not to be confused with WinEdit) is a good "middle ground" in that --
at its core -- it>s just a regular old text editor... but contains lots of
handy mini-wizards/tools/etc. to help generate LaTeX code for you.

Of course, the most important thing is that you have a flow that works for
you, and it sounds as though you do.

---Joel

Joel Koltner · Guest

"Martin Brown" <|||newspam|||@nezumi.demon.co.uk> wrote in message
news:e58eb$488c730c$998@news.teranews.com...
[quote]The sad thing is that there are good engineers in MS who know how to do
things right, but somehow their corporate culture prevents good quality
software engineering.
[/quote]
I think it has a lot to do with their size as well... they>ve got over 30,000
folks up there in Redmond, and around 35,000 others spread around the globe.
I fully realize that Microsoft is a lot more than Windows, but still -- if I
had 65,000 employees, I>d be expecting something closer to a cure for cancer
than a few dancing animations and flashly 3D effects.

Tektronix had huge layoffs and never returned to their original level of
brilliance after management got too big for their britches. I wouldn>t be
surprised if the same thing happened to Microsoft in the next few years --
they>re betting a significant fraction of the farm on Windows 7, at this
point.

[quote]But Excel 2007 is particularly lamentable...
[/quote]
I>d suggest that OpenOffice Calc is your friend, but I personally I was
surprised they didn>t even include engineering notation in the standard cell
formatting options.

---Joel


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