JorgeA

Installed Foxit Reader on the Win10 test machine today, and noticed something peculiar. Foxit offers the choice of using the ribbon UI or a traditional drop-down menu system. The ribbon was a complete mess whereas with the classic menus I instantly found every feature and command that I wanted, but more directly relevant to this thread is that with @bigmuscle's Aero Glass installed, if I use Foxit's ribbon UI then the title bar is opaque like that of a Win10 Universal app, while if I select the classic menus then the title bar shows as expected with Aero Glass: So by disabling the ribbon UI you get a "two-fer", as Aero Glass then works. --JorgeA

Sure, why not? The idea/usage paradigm is the same or very similar, though I have no idea what actually is run in those, most probably is one or the other version of a Linux (or maybe BSD) OS. The issue might be the actual resources needed, I have no idea what that needs, my "home made" one leverages (besides the excellent zeroshell software/OS) on the features of the hardware, the Futro S200/300 series is (was) a thin client kind of PC, with a few (IMHO) advantages (I had the further advantage that I had one lying around that I bought for a previous experiment for a silent PC to be used as media streamer that was later replaced by another machine): small sizebuilt-in power supply (no external "brick", thus very compact)very low power (the Transmeta may not be the fastest processor around but surely it is not a power hog)no fan (passive cooled) <- this is VERY important as it means completely silent PCel-cheapo (you can get one for anything between 30 and 50 Euros)any similar thin client used machine or passive cooled low-low power board such as good ol' Epia or the like would do nicely, while it would make (IMHO) very little sense to use a "normal" PC with fans (both for the power supply and the processor heatsink) both becayse of higher power consumption and because of the inherent less reliability (and noise). jaclaz Thanks for the info jaclaz, that's a pretty neat setup you have devised. Speaking of el-cheapo candidates for running firewall/router software, the Sophos UTM supposedly can run on any Intel machine. I happen to have sitting around a Daewoo CN530 laptop engraved with a notation that proudly proclaims, "Designed for Microsoft Windows 95." Maybe I could install the Sophos UTM on it and add a second USB network adapter, then use it to protect not only any future Windows 10 machines from Microsoft's telemetry, but also my aging Vista system as security software vendors continue to drop support for it. --JorgeA

Home-made. Actually an el-cheapo Fujitsu-Siemens Futro S220 (bought used on e-bay for a few bucks) sporting a whopping 800 Mhz Transmeta with one common Ethernet/Lan card added to it, running Zeroshell: http://www.zeroshell.org/ jaclaz Could this or this serve the same purpose? Is using an actual router easier/better for that purpose? --JorgeA P.S. @NoelC: This discussion (which takes place in the context of the Sophos UTM) may be useful or informative for your ongoing efforts to minimize Win10 privacy intrusions. Curious what you think of it, in additon to the questions above.

Thanks for the tips, Noel. I had wondered if it would be possible to run more than one of these Win10 privacy tools at the same time. Sounds like the answer is yes. --JorgeA

As bad as we have it with Microsoft, things could be a lot worse: North Korea's Red Star OS leaves the government in control of computers North Korea’s Linux-based Red Star OS is as oppressive as you’d expect One of the more invasive and concerning feature of the operating system is the way in which it watermarks every file found on a computer and the drives connected to it. This makes it possible to trace files back to individual users -- something which the government uses to crack down on legal file sharing. --JorgeA

One more anti-spying Windows 10 tool: W10Privacy is a smarter Windows 10 telemetry blocker However, based on NoelC's research, I'm skeptical of the effectiveness of this tool's use of the Windows firewall and hosts file to do much of its work: --JorgeA

What I like most is the ability to configure dozens and dozens of settings based on zone (e.g., Internet zone, Trusted Sites zone, etc.) means that you can shut off the basic ability of the browser to run dangerous things in the Internet zone (i.e., any web site you happen to visit that's not in your Trusted Sites list), while still maintaining the automatic ability to run ActiveX (should you need to do so) in the Trusted Sites zone. So if your bank, for example, were to require an ActiveX be run in order to be able to complete a transaction, you could simply add their server (or domain using *.thebanksdomain.com) to your Trusted Sites list. You can also limit what scripts can do by zone. In practice, because only IE runs ActiveX, very few sites actually require it, so the Trusted Sites list can be virtually empty. Like I said, there are dozens and dozens of settings. The TL;DR of it is that you can set things up to be just capable enough (e.g., allow active scripting, but limited) so that you can do most everything online in the Internet Zone, but still be quite well protected from basic things, like programs running in iFrames. I also choose to run IE with just which add-ons I choose - which is a very small list. The list is directly manageable, as is the list of search providers, translation services providers, etc. Quite probably Microsoft finds it difficult to support all this configurable functionality, which is why they're trying to foist Edge on hapless users. What I *DON'T* care to use is Microsoft's "SmartScreen Filter", which isn't really necessary if one has taken other measures to blacklist badware sites. That's okay, that's de-configurable. I also don't choose to use UAC, which is much less a problem if ActiveX is simply blocked by settings. I guess what I'm saying is that I've been all through the IE settings, and they fit nicely in my overall strategy. And it must work - I get a very responsive browsing experience and have never gotten a malware infection. -Noel Thanks for the rundown, this jibes with my own view of it (at a much lower level of sophistication ). It does seem to be possible to tune your settings more finely in IE than in (say) FF. One feature that I particularly like is the ability to put websites on a Restricted Sites list. In my research I visit a lot of news sites, and some of them have the extremely annoying habit of refreshing themselves every few minutes, which is a PITA if you're trying to make your way down the text or the headlines and then all of a sudden you're sent back to the top and things are slightly different, so that you have to find your way back and by the time you get there, the page refreshes yet again. Aaaaarrrrggghhhhh!!!!!!!! Chrome and Firefox don't seem to have this capability. I doubt that Edge does. --JorgeA

As the philosopher's observation goes, "Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it." Speaking of Linux desktops, when I find one that looks like Vista or Longhorn, that'll pull me faster to the penguin. One thing that's been holding me back is how grainy and unpolished a lot of these Linux desktops still look, compared to what Microsoft was putting out ten years ago. --JorgeA

IR11 (and 10, IIRC) have incorporated Adobe Flash into the browser, such that they're automatically updated and you're no longer in charge of making sure you're on the latest version. Their updating seems to run on its own mysterious schedule; for example, IE11 on my Win10 test machine is still on Flash version 228, and since then there have been at least two newer versions, 235 and now 267. So much for the vaunted protection of the paternalistic "you stay out of the way, we'll do it for you" model of software updating. As we've noted so many times before, those who give up liberty for security, end up with neither. --JorgeA

Noel, you've said a couple of times that IE has the best or one of the best security models. Could you elaborate on that? I'm not disagreeing, I'd just like your take on it so that I can learn something new today. EDIT: All right, something else new (the discussion between you and jaclaz above about routers and hosts files is pretty informative.) --JorgeA

That's what they seem to think, anyway. --JorgeA

I believe you! Who or what, then, accounts for these unwelcome changes? It's mostly the people inside of Mozilla Corporate that make these decisions. The Mozilla Foundation (the third party open source contributors), the add-on developers, and the userbase usually have no say in this matter. If we did, many of the unwelcome changes that occurred or have been proposed in the last 2 years (Australis [Chrome-lookalike], Pocket & Hello [bundled software], the changes in the add-on ecosystem [removal of XUL; potentially very dangerous], and add-on signing) would be off the table. One big example of this is when they announced last August that they are planning on removing XUL and XPCOM support from add-ons to closer model Chrome. This would require all add-ons to be re-written entirely, no exceptions. Rightfully so, almost all of the add-on developers were infuriated. If they, or the FOSS contributors, had a say in the matter, the add-on ecosystem would have been left alone. Another thing to note is, if XUL and XPCOM were to be removed, Thunderbird, SeaMonkey, and ChatZilla would instantly be killed. The only way to save them would to be to rewrite the entire thing, and that will be a lot of work for the limited set of developers on each of these applications. (I contribute to SeaMonkey, and we have been discussing this on IRC over the past few months) Well, you're going to drive me to read up on XUL. But seriously, it's pretty cool to have someone like you here who's on the inside of a world-famous software project. Where can I read more about how eliminating XUL could be a dangerous thing? It sounds like further unwelcome changes are coming to FF and I'll be going to Pale Moon instead as my replacement for IE. --JorgeA

How to fix Microsoft's latest Windows 10 update blunder: nuked Office templates --JorgeA

It may be a good time to reprise this. We first discussed it three years ago when Windows 8 came out: --JorgeA

It's largely (if not mostly) the young people running tech companies and non-profits who like to limit other people with their arbitrary rules. --JorgeA

That is one GREAT chart -- it should be pasted onto every Windows forum all over cyberspace. Prediction: the Win10 fanbois will shrug and say that they weren't interested in any of those features anyway. Because everybody knows that what they like and what works for them is the only thing that matters in the entire world. But there will be others, more open-minded, who will be receptive to this neatly packaged information. --JorgeA

The lunacy continues: Latest Microsoft updates erase Word customizations, can break Edge, Outlook, File Explorer Some interesting background: --JorgeA

Well, the next step in the evolution of Windows is now coming into focus. Logically, and for our* convenience, not only must all users have the same OS on the same version, but they must all have the same one-size-fits-all software bundle and, ultimately, the same hardware. Just think of all the problems and incompatibilities that'll eliminate! --JorgeA * Notice that I didn't specify who the "we" is that's implied in "our'...

We knew this already, but it's good to know that word is spreading around the Web: Windows 10 Can Auto-Remove Software Against Your Will However, there's a reference and link to an official Windows 10 document that I hadn't come across before: --JorgeA

Something similar happened with Firefox I use at work, except it deleted all my plugins! The only thing I let auto update is Chrome because it has always been seamless, except for that time Flash stopped working a couple years ago. Whoa, it didn't simply disable the plugins?!? --JorgeA

For now, it's possible to adjust the about:config setting as described here, to accept unsigned extensions. But I understand that even this option is slated to go away with FF 44. --JorgeA EDIT: deleted typo

I believe you! Who or what, then, accounts for these unwelcome changes? --JorgeA

Agreed on everything you said there, including the rant! Oh yeah, and they even gave you thick, printed user manuals in the box. BTW I'm almost as "bad" as you: I'm using MS Office 2007. Had I been on a $99/year subscription for it since the purchase, it would already have cost me like 3x what I paid for it way back when. (For any MS apologists reading this: and no, there isn't anything in newer versions of Office that I have the slightest interest in.) --JorgeA

I actually don't know because the very next thing I did after finding out that the function didn't work, was to look for how to re-enable it, if possible. (Fortunately it is, for the time being.) Thing is, even if I could "print to PDF," on a lot of websites if you "print" to PDF, the text will come out overlaid with URLs or menu elements and is well-nigh unusable. More often than not, I use Acrobat's "convert to PDF" extension (FWIW listed as that and not a plugin), which usually renders the page correctly and even preserves the hyperlinks. That said, if Adobe doesn't fix the issue soon for my version of Acrobat (X), before long I will be forced either to ditch Firefox or to get a different full-featured PDF creating+editing application. A few months ago I learned there's a way to install the Acrobat extension on Pale Moon, so that may become my next browser stop (and just when I was warming up to Firefox). --JorgeA

+1 --JorgeA