jaclaz

On other news ... ... meanwhile in California.... https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2015/09/california-protect-your-drivers-license-privacy jaclaz

The adapter in your last post is seemingly a USB to TTL converter. Without the specifications it is impossible to know if it works at the 3.3 V (good) TTL level or at the 5 V (bad) TTL level (this has nothing to do with the 3.3 V and 5 V pins that you have on that adapter that are used - if needed - to provide power to the device, the fact that it has a 3.3V power pin may mean that it is the "right" kind). You need NOT a battery in this setup, the adapter is powered by the USB port and the disk drive is powered "normally" by a PC PSU though its power connector. "Still not work" means nothing, last time you had issues with the loopback test, what happens with this other adapter when attempting a loopback? To recap: loopback test: if it works the adapter works, if it doesn't the adapter is dead (and you need NOT any grounding for the loopback test) communicating with the drive: if it works good, if it doesn't try exchanging Tx and Rx connections, if the devices are not grounded together you may see "random" or "garbage" characters and you will need effectie grounding together of all devices involved jaclaz

See if Licecap runs on 9x/ME: http://www.msfn.org/board/topic/171205-licecap-useful-screenshot-to-animated-gif-recorder/ http://www.cockos.com/licecap/ jaclaz

I don't know, I don't see any legal advantages in choosing to have not served "dedicated" ads (as opposed to "generic" ads. This is a simple "preference", as I mentioned elsewhere what I normally do is each monday to search a few times for "something" (as an example "drone" or "drones") in Google and then I am served all week long with nice ads for drones (something that I really have no real interest in/that I have no real plan to buy in a foreseeable future), To this you add that I never (if not by mistake) ever clicked on an ad in my life and you have a clear view on how (at least for me personally) the approach is completely flawed. BUT my personal behaviour is nothing but a (little) demostration how the model is essentially chaff, see: https://blogs.law.harvard.edu/doc/2015/08/12/separating-advertisings-wheat-and-chaff/ jaclaz

Wasn't it? Why? Who? What? Where? I thought that in the "continuous upgrade model" a notion like "patch tuesday" would have lost any meaning jaclaz

Yes, but this has no practical effects, the issues are with the gathering of data not really to the ads that are served as a result of the computing of those data. The only effect being if you turn everything off will be that the ads served by MS and partners will be "more random" or "less targeted" to you. jaclaz

Certificate revocation list. Also: http://social.technet.microsoft.com/wiki/contents/articles/2303.understanding-access-to-microsoft-certificate-revocation-list.aspx Rule of the thumb being obviously has the *whatever* under examination has a connection - direct or indirect - with .Net? If yes find an alternative, it will usually be faster. jaclaz

I wouldn't define "1 month old" as "fresh". jaclaz

Consider also how it seems how you would in that case also change your video card to get one that does support the newish DX 12. http://www.pcworld.com/article/2954260/windows/these-graphics-cards-and-processors-support-windows-10s-directx-12-graphics-tech.html jaclaz

Well, but the same not-demented kids will anyway clear internet history, what the nice MS guys do now is to send to the parent's account an e-mail "regularly" summing up latest activities of the kid. (the difference between been active/proactive and passive is relevant) There was (in my times) the long standing question whether parents should be allowed (in the sense whether it was opportune or not) to read their children's diaries or not, and/or to browse in their (locked) chest/drawer (or whatever) or if the kids had some right to some limited forms of privacy/secrecy, but noone ever offered to the nosy parents incapable of opening a tiny padlock without leaving traces a service in which once every two weeks a certified burglar would come to your house, open the padlock, read the diary and provide a neatly laid sum up of events of note . jaclaz

The reason why any (non-demented) kid 12-18 will attempt to install Linux on the family PC[1]: http://www.independent.co.uk/life-style/gadgets-and-tech/news/windows-10-automatically-sends-parents-detailed-dossier-of-their-childrens-internet-history-and-computer-use-10472226.html http://windows.microsoft.com/en-gb/windows-10/monitor-child-device-activity jaclaz [1] if he/she does not own a personal PC/tablet of course and whether he/she will succeed at it or botch the install is an altogether different thing

And even the NYT noticed how there is something of "perverted nature" in the IOT: http://www.nytimes.com/2015/09/06/opinion/sunday/allison-arieff-the-internet-of-way-too-many-things.html?_r=0 jaclaz

As a side note, indirectly, and given that all the experiments/tests/reports by NoelC (and others) were made pro bono , we can use these data to estimate the real cost of free update to Windows 10, it costs no less than US$ 39.95. On the other hand, more or less this amounts of money represents also the commercial value that the good MS guys attribute to ALL the data they will gather from your installation for the whole lifetime of it. If you are not currently a Windows 7 or 8.1 user (still using good ol' XP or Vista), the "current" US$ 119/199 for the "full" license of Windows 10 Home/Pro could be compared to the price a full license of the Windows 7 US$199/299 Home/Pro (at the time and without taking into account inflation), with a net decrease of 80/100 US$, but if we compare them to the price of the Windows 8/8.1 license which was also 119/199 there is no difference, i.e. US$ 0. It's up to you to decide if the value of ALL your data from now to any foreseeable feature has a value between US$ 0 and 39.95 or if it has a value between US$ 39.95 and 100. On the other hand if you are currently a Windows 7/8/8.1 user, we could say that by giving away the upgrade for free the good MS guys are forfaiting an income corresponding to the simple upgrade fee, which was (from Vista to 7) 119/199 and dropped down to around US$ 70 for the upgrade to 8. But in any case it cannot logically exceed the 100 US$ that you could even raise (considering inflation from 2009 to 2015): http://www.usinflationcalculator.com/ to US$ 111.20. Now let's put it another way, someone knocks at your door and proposes to sell him your soul, how much would it be an adequate price (provided that you actually like the idea of selling it)? jaclaz

It is seemingly a Kovter and/or Miuref/Boaxxe variant: http://cybertracker.malwarehunterteam.com/malicious/860 https://www.dshield.org/forums/diary/Malicious+spam+continues+to+serve+zip+archives+of+javascript+files/19973/ I just made a phone call to the good people at the "la terrazza fiorita" B&B and as expected they knew nothing of the issue, but they said they will alert their webmaster to look into the matter. jaclaz

Those sites are seemingly "normal" ones, the laterrazzafiorita.it is a small Bed and Breakfast in Sardinia, please read as "home made, possibly easily hackable", I wouldn't be surprised if some malicious contents have been uploaded to it without the owner knowing about it, someone already notified them: http://www.laterrazzafiorita.it/index.php/commenti but given the kind of site it is unlikely that anyone will actually notice the note and do something. https://forums.spybot.info/showthread.php?23632-SPAM-frauds-fakes-and-other-MALWARE-deliveries&s=febb317caa19ccf6b3f7c6e96109cdb8&p=466056&viewfull=1#post466056 https://www.virustotal.com/en/ip-address/208.43.65.115/information/ Same goes for the fibrasinteticafm.com, they are producers of some synthetic fibers in Brazil (via Wayback Machine): https://web.archive.org/web/20141219174623/http://www.fibrasinteticafm.com/ it has been clearly hacked to contain *any* Viagra/Drug selling crap or scam or possibly worse, example (via Google Web Cache - source): http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:dENIi0BGsSoJ:www.fibrasinteticafm.com/vjfh/list-of-radiometric-dating-methods/&hl=it&gl=us&strip=0&vwsrc=1 jaclaz

Well, now you are being too suspicious, simply the list of all the settings, services, outbound communications, data gathering servers and what not do not fit in 140 (actually 140,000) characters. Yep, the issue is not only about privacy (in the sense of exposing to them "sensible" data) it is also about data gathering even those data that is not reasonable (or legally allowed) to hide and the use that will be made of these data. I will give you a completely different example, you are of course not allowed to drive a car without a license plate, the numbers/letters on it is not obviously covered by privacy, it is a state/nation issued ID for your vehicle that is meant to be visible publicly at all times. Now, your local police department uses one of those scanners that while the patrol car travels identifies, scans and records the license plates of parked or passing cars: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Automatic_number_plate_recognition This is very good to check for stolen vehicles and similar, but it is misused. In theory (in a perfect world) it is an assistance to the work the police officer normally does, the thingy should read a number plate, compare it against a database of stolen vehicles, missing or wanted people cars, etc. and then the sheer moment the license plate comes out as "clean" the "system" should completely "forget" about it. What happens is instead that the data goes anyway in a database that is kept accessible for a given period of time. You (your car) has been pinpointed at a given time in a given place. This piece of data "exists" and "someone" can access it. Now, if you live in Oakland, CA. you may be lucky : http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2015/08/cops-decide-to-collect-less-license-plate-data-after-80gb-drive-got-full/ but if the same kind of data goes into the hands of a private company that has the resources and technology to store the data indefinitely, to correlate it countrywide and analyze it, deriving from the "big data" any kind of relevant (technically or commercially valuable) info. Good things may come out of the data, as an example in a future where electric (battery powered) cars will be more widely used one could find the best spots where to place public recharge stations, maximizing their use and creating with the minimum investment an optimized network (that will prompt more people to buy electric cars as they will become more convenient). Would (say) Tesla be interested in having those data? But the same data could be used to identify all citizens that drive daily on average less than 100 Km, then another electric car manufacturer may decide to go for a new "short range vehicle", let's say with max 150 Km operating range and (still say) provide a "bigger car rent" service at a discounted price for when you want to go outside town. If you belong to the "100 Km daily" club, you will be bombarded by advertisements from BOTH the "new" product and for the "old" long range car. Now since all in all it is not a bad idea, you decide to subscribe to the new ECAAS (Electric Car As A Service) that will have a small written clause that allows them to collect data about your driving habits. Since you stop every morning in a given place to get a coffee but for the vast majority of other users of the new car that place is inconvenient, a new (national chain) coffee shop will be opened where the flux is maximized (casually in a place that is very inconvenient to you) and the coffee shop you used to stop by every morning in the last few years will have to close down. So, you will soon be driving a terrible car and be drinking awfully tasting coffee, without any actual breaking of your privacy. The good news being that all other people around you will be driving the same car and drink the same coffee. jaclaz

Well, it still means that a user preference has been overridden and proves that they CAN do it . The case of the update to Windows 10 is very different there is only some (repeated) insistence on attempting to trick the user into updating (and the usual lack of clarity in communication) but all in all the user actually needs to click on "yes" to get the Windows 10 Free update (even if by mistake or not knowing the disgrace that will land on his/her PC) the 2007 episode is a clear sign that explicit user settings may (and will probably be) overridden and is more related to the risk of what future updates may be delivered and related concerns about "privacy" or however about the data sent to MS (or other partners) servers. jaclaz

Yes and no. There is a precedent (which may be seen both as of little relevance of the uttermost one ) where windows did not respect the user settings to have NO automatic updates and Windows Update was triggered nonetheless: http://windowssecrets.com/top-story/microsoft-updates-windows-without-users-consent/ http://www.informationweek.com/microsoft-updates-windows-without-user-permission-apologizes/d/d-id/1059183? http://www.techrepublic.com/blog/it-news-digest/microsoft-admits-to-stealth-updates/ Sure , but two different things: 1. Comparing apples and oranges is legit : http://www.improbable.com/airchives/paperair/volume1/v1i3/air-1-3-apples.html 2. No matter the above and the patently obvious difference between free (as in gratis - actually forcibly pushed) vs. pay-for , NoelC has made a nice comparison: this is what MS will state, maybe changing "unprecedented success" with "biggest achievement" or similar. jaclaz

Sure, and those info have been copied to Wikipedia: http://www.firstratemold.com/about-us/c19-news/what-is-catia/ https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CATIA Only , original Dassault Systems documentation for CATIA V5 has this to say: http://www.catia.com.pl/tutorial/z2/infrastructure.pdf The difference being seemingly that while you can install it on a NT Workstation with it's self-standing license for 9x OS's you need a LUM : AFAICT at the time noone (in his/her right mind) would have even thought of using a Win9x System as a "working" graphical workstation, so most probably the provision was for a limited set of the program capabilities anyway. jaclaz

Though the "data points" are obviously scarce (as a matter of fact only one), this: http://gs.statcounter.com/press opens a big doubt. For the releases of Windows 7 and 8 - again rather obviously - there are no sensible differences between the US and the UK adoption rate (the fact that also the worldwide adoptions is not that much different is most probably a mere coincidence, as so many factors - including country average income and political situation affects the result). Now, Windows 10 has been adopted in the first month by more people than Windows 7 was (but one has to remember that at the time a large number of people was still shocked by Vista ) and much, much more than Windows 8. One cannot but evidence how this is an unprecedented success for Windows 10. However comparing the US vs. the UK adoption rate (and since more or less they speak the same language there re no issues with translations/regional editions) there is something disturbing. The UK adoption rate is much higher than the US (and though with a smaller increase most other English speaking countries present the same phenomenon): US 5.64% UK 8.45% And: http://gs.statcounter.com/#os-AU-monthly-201508-201508-bar AU 6.33% CA 6.49% But also some non-English speaking countries part of the industrial countries have much higher rates than the US: D 7.94% F 6.80% WHERE is patriotism? Two tentative hypothesis to explain this queer behaviour : 1. The US computing infrastructure (and consequently its market) is less ready for innovation 2. The good people of the US are either much smarter or dumber than the people in the other mentioned countries. jaclaz

But then you might start having issue with your tractor : http://www.wired.com/2015/04/dmca-ownership-john-deere/ http://www.wired.com/2015/02/new-high-tech-farm-equipment-nightmare-farmers/ jaclaz

Of course not. Interesting. Though most probably innocuous , yet another example of why a "real" external firewall is a good idea, and indirect proof that we have been forcibly put in the condition of never trusting anyone . jaclaz

Yep, I just imagine the situation at corporate parties where the theme will be strangely revolving around "mine is bigger". jaclaz

I am The Finder, there is a reason for that . Thanks , though being born modest (not all over but in spots ): http://www.quotes.net/quote/39361 I would be very happy with just the "living" (for a looong time). jaclaz

Some news from Samsung: http://www.theguardian.com/technology/2015/sep/03/samsung-launches-smartthings-internet-of-things-hub Just a few days after DEFCON 23 and: http://www.pentestpartners.com/blog/hacking-defcon-23s-iot-village-samsung-fridge/ https://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2015/08/using_samsungs_.html And some more (IMHO preoccupying) news: http://arstechnica.co.uk/security/2015/09/9-baby-monitors-wide-open-to-hacks-that-expose-users-most-private-moments/ https://www.rapid7.com/docs/Hacking-IoT-A-Case-Study-on-Baby-Monitor-Exposures-and-Vulnerabilities.pdf jaclaz