Windows 8 - Deeper Impressions

[Formfiller]

Security and Privacy ...

Skype under investigation in Luxembourg over link to NSA ( UK Guardian 2013-10-11 )

Skype under investigation over NSA links ( NeoWin 2013-10-11 )

Eric King, the head of research at human rights group Privacy International, says Skype users should no longer trust the voIP service.

"The only people who lose are users. Skype promoted itself as a fantastic tool for secure communications around the world, but quickly caved to government pressure and can no longer be trusted to protect user privacy."

The EU is on the job now and Microsoft is no doubt tucking away a few pennies to cover their next fine. To Microsoft it's a business expense. To Brussels, it's operating income. To me, it reminds of local counties and towns over here that have ticket quotas that the cops set out to collect, and the elected bureaucrats ring the cash register accordingly. Nothing of substance will likely come out of this, but one can hope.

Nothing of substance will likely come out of this, but one can hope.

Pretty pessimistic, no?

I am certain that the EU will be able to strike a deal with MS just like they are able to do with the NSA:

https://www.bof.nl/2013/06/11/bits-of-freedom-dutch-spooks-must-stop-use-of-prism/

Today reveals that also the Dutch intelligence services make use of PRISM, the controversial US intelligence program that was exposed by the newspaper.

“We are shocked to learn that the Dutch intelligence services have access to the same digital dragnet that the US government has secretly deployed against millions of innocent civilians,” says Simone Halink, surveillance expert at Bits of Freedom. “We need to know exactly what is happening here and we want the Minister to put an end to this eavesdropping scandal as soon as possible.”

In the Dutch newspaper De Telegraaf, an anonymous source from within the Dutch intelligence services spoke up about the unlimited access that they have to the data of civilians and entrerprises. Although this access should be limited by internal procedures, it now appears that these services can pull information from the US program PRISM with merely one push of the button. Such unlimited and international access gives the Dutch intelligence services a whole range of extra interception possibilities in circumvention of the applicable law.

I am pretty sure the EU will get the same user-data from MS-Skype as the US does (the threath of a billion bollar fine keeps the data flowing). And everyone will be happy.

[JorgeA]

Facebook starts making profiles visible in search, removes option to opt-out ( NeoWin 2013-10-12 )

In a lengthy post, Facebook has outlined that many of its users faced issues while finding people whom they knew personally but had disabled search listing which led to a broken search experience. Users are advised to control what they post and set up post visibility in order to maintain privacy once these changes are completely rolled out globally.

Ah, they're going ahead whole-hog regardless of the criticism. IMHO here's why ... I guarantee that Facebook is as up to its neck in spook collaboration as Microsoft. Just look for which companies seem the most stubborn in their paths, making the most daring and egregious moves to expand their kingdoms. Acting like nobody can touch them, like they've got nothing to lose. That's Microsoft and Facebook in a nutshell ( and perhaps Google next ). The reason IMHO is that they have tacit assurances from the government that they won't be impeded as long as they cooperate. Facebook seems to have a minimum base of about a billion sheeple despite all the privacy concerns and recent articles. They're okay with that as their bottom line, and will proceed without any fear of blowback against their business. To the Feds, a billion sheeple is essentially 1 out of every 7th person on Earth, the spooks can do the math and consequently will give a wink and nod to anything Facebook does going forward. Stay the hell out of Facebook is all I can say.

[emphasis addded]

Might not be a bad idea to add Facebook to the Hosts file, so that it can't track you all through the Internet.

Now if only we could do the same thing with the NSA's servers...

--JorgeA

[JorgeA]

Microsoft reveals planned updates to its Fresh Paint apps ( NeoWin 2013-10-10 )

( original photo from theappchamp )

Somebody help me out here, isn't that GUI the literal definition of skeuomorphism? Strangely enough that word doesn't appear in the comments anywhere. I wonder why. Juvenile hypocritical children.

That's exactly what I was thinking ("hey, isn't that skeuomorphism?") before I scrolled down to see what you wrote!!

--JorgeA

[JorgeA]

Thought this belonged here

Back door found in D-Link routers

D-secret is D-logon string allowing access to everything

LOL

Reverse Engineering a D-Link Backdoor

A flaw, or a feature? At this point I wouldn't be surprised to learn that the NSA or some similar agency had a hand in this, too.

[JorgeA]

IE11 and Bing team up to pre-render web pages in search results ( NeoWin 2013-10-14 )

In a blog post, Microsoft discussed the inclusion of a new pre-render tag in IE11 that will enable the web page at the top of a Bing search result list to be automatically downloaded and rendered in the background. Microsoft says this pre-rendering technology has been designed so as not to waste bandwidth or a device's battery life.

Microsoft says, "Because half of people click on the first result on the search results page, pre-rendering that page is an important addition in our quest to improve the overall task completion time."

: nah nah nah. You should have been honest and said: "Because half of people click on the first result on the search results page, pre-rendering that page will be useful one haf of the time. The other half? Oh well. Wasted processing. Wasted power. Wasted time."

The only reason I even mention this is because of the rationalization for destroying Windows, particularly the aesthetics like Aero Glass, for alleged power savings ( even if you don't have a battery in your wall-plugged PC! ). This is the second time now we have seen Bing spending all that saved power and CPU cycles thanks to Windows 8. Wasting power is just fine whenever they say it is. MicroHypocrisy at its finest.

And what about bandwidth. And local storage. Did they really just admit to 'background download to local storage'. That adds wasted bandwidth and wasted disk space to the hypocrisy. And one more thing ... Let's hope that first search result isn't something dangerous! What if you search for "FBI Ransom Virus". Sounds to me like the authors of poison webpages only need to jack up their Google/Bing rank to make result #1 and get a free ride to the local hard drive, no clicking necessary.

As long as there's a way to turn off that feature (and unless they keep burying the command in increasingly arcane places, as with JavaScript in Firefox), then I'm OK with this.

Good to find out in the comments section that Chrome already does this pre-rendering. Talk about a waste of bandwidth and power.

--JorgeA

[CharlotteTheHarlot]

Buying an Xbox One Console Requires Waiving Right to Class Action Suits ( Maximum PC 2013-10-15 )

Among the list of requirements to use the Xbox One, gamers must waive their right to participate in a class action lawsuit against Microsoft.

[...]

In this case, Microsoft may have been influenced by the so-called Red Ring of Death (RRoD) that affected several early Xbox 360 models. Should something similar happen with the Xbox One, gamers would have to sue Microsoft individually rather than in a class action suit.

According to Paul A. Herman, an attorney and consumer advocacy expert, the matter is "completely objectionable," IBTimes reports. Herman said clauses like the one Microsoft is using gives them a "totally stacked deck" that makes it easy to screw customers.

"Arguments can be made that would not even be considered evidence in a real court of law," Herman told IBTimes. "If they pick the arbitration company, it's easy to skew the judgment in their favor."

The Xbox saga continues. This one is certainly no surprise to anyone here ( it's been part of every EULA update this cycle starting with Windows itself ) but I'll bet it will get the attention of some lazy console kids. It's really doubtful that the RROD issue is behind this. They are just trying to set precedents en route to becoming a "services" company. At the end of the day when everything is subscription and all products resemble Apple toys they will not want to be bothered with petty things like consumer criticism and legal action. They will want to just receive your money as quickly and painless as possible with no backtalk, thank you very much. This is Microsoft devolving down to the lowest common denominator.


Editorial: Please, give Apple a break ( NeoWin 2013-10-15 )

Well you can just imagine how this article is going over with the NeoKids. It's quite a 'TardFest. There's way too much comedic material to cover, but a couple of comments just for fun ...

Windows Phone is considered a failure after having more market share in 3 year than MacOS/OS X in 30+.

Hard to believe they still parrot this meaningless factoid, but believing this apparently is the only way they can sleep at night. The truth? Apple does not even sell their Mac OS to anybody, nor do they license it to OEMs, and they do not have a corporate edition sold to huge companies. So right there, all of the markets that Windows fully utilizes are not even touched by Apple. They were never competitors in the same market until Surface came along. Ironically that gives them an easy way to actually do a true apples-to-apples comparison! And that means comparing Microsoft tablets vs Apple tablets since the OS in each case is distributed identically. What was that number again? Oh yeah, 2013 Q2 saw 300,000 Surfaces versus 14.6 million iPads. So Apple's iOS is actually wiping the floor with Windows when compared properly. No wonder the fanboys keep making that bogus comparison, even though it's like counting Samsung's refrigerator or washing machine firmware marketshare ( which of course matches the number of units sold ). The last thing these fanboys would want to see is Mac OS released into the same channels as Windows, especially now.

Windows Phone is considered a failure after having more market share in 3 year than MacOS/OS X in 30+.

What can I say? They make schtuff for tech wanna-be hipsters. If you love being told what to do, then by all means, buy an Apple device. If you'd like more freedom from the hand-holding, and the reality distortion fields, Apple is not the company to buy from. There's no innovation there, Mac OSX and iOS development is relatively static. The UX has remained essentially the same since their incarnation. But yet, somehow, we're supposed to believe this is amazing?

Also, there is something to be said about the egos of Apple users, but that's left for another day.

Yes, that was Dot MetroTard himself, the single most brainwashed fanboy on planet Earth, ironically talking about "hand-holding" and "reality distortion fields". No truer case of a MacTard-in-training can be found. The child is begging Microsoft to bend him over with every breath but still musters enough hypocrisy to project his cognitive dissonance against Apple. It's quite a feat of mental gymnastics.

Windows and Windows Phone are the perfect operating system. They're a middle ground between the Walled Garden (Apple), and trash-infested, third party all the things, run down city center (Android).

Completely beyond help. Rationalizations galore. For some reason I keep thinking of Sam in Supernatural who had a wall constructed in his brain to keep his damaged soul in check, and "Death" warned him not to scratch at it or else it might crack leading to a mental break. The only difference is Microsoft constructed his wall and it's holding back reality, logic and rational thought. I am watching for signs of the inevitable, though it seems to be holding up, even for now. But the next set of Surface versus iPad numbers might just do it.

EDIT: typo

Edited October 17, 2013 by CharlotteTheHarlot

[CharlotteTheHarlot]

How to Recover Your Lavabit Emails ( Tom's Hardware 2013-10-15 )

Users will first have to go to a new Lavabit page, https://liberty.lavabit.com, to change their Lavabit passwords.

The new page reminds users that, as revealed in recently declassified court documents, the FBI forced Lavabit owner Ladar Levison to turn over the keys to the site's Secure Sockets Layer (SSL) encryption, which is what protected all Web traffic going to and from the site.

Using the SSL keys, the FBI could see the unencrypted metadata of Lavabit email messages, which essentially meant that Lavabit could no longer be a secure email provider.

That deserves to be repeated. So one guy who the Feds want to nail uses a service and that somehow merits demanding the keys for everyone. Nothing makes it clearer that our "system" is broken beyond repair. This kind of precedent is most dangerous and is simple to scale up to include anything and everything. Meanwhile over at fanboys sites, they defend Microsoft to the death for collaborating with the spooks with Skype and Windows citing a variation of the Nuremberg defense, they were doing only what they were ordered to do by a national security letter. Now what will they say if Snowden used SpyDrive to store files? How would the MicroZealots feel if they demanded all the keys for everybody?


Some D-Link Routers Have Backdoor Vulnerability ( Tom's Hardware 2013-10-15 )

Heffner discovered that if a browser's user agent string is set to "xmlset_roodkcableoj28840ybtide," hackers can gain access to these routers if connected to the network via Ethernet or wireless, or if the router's configuration page is publicly accessible. When reversed and the numbers removed, this string actually reads "edit by joel backdoor" as if the "backdoor" in the routers' firmware was intentionally placed.

"My guess is that the developers realized that some programs/services needed to be able to change the device's settings automatically," Heffner writes. "Realizing that the web server already had all the code to change these settings, they decided to just send requests to the web server whenever they needed to change something."

( Mentioned above by Rick and Jaclaz ) I found that bold part to be wildly off the mark. All routers I see have uPnP ability, as does Windows since at least XP, and this is the actual way it is done in the real world. So that excuse does not hold water IMHO. Universal PnP effectively undermines LAN security as a matter standard operating procedure. This user agent string backdoor undermines it further, moving these routers from "somewhat secureable" to "completely insecureable". It has to be one of the dumbest ideas ever released into general circulation.

EDIT: spacing

Edited October 16, 2013 by CharlotteTheHarlot

[Tripredacus]

I pretty much wrote off that D-Link news when I read it on twitter over the weekend. For a couple of reasons:

1. D-Link routers are bargain basement products. You get what you pay for.

2. D-Link routers work like crap with base firmware. Anyone who has a brain and buys one of these would put DD-WRT on it.

3. The default setting for the admin page being public is DISABLED.

So there ya go.

[JorgeA]

In a discussion of the sales and prospects for Surface and Windows RT with Leo Laporte and Paul Thurrott, Mary Jo Foley (who knows more than most about Microsoft's plans) issues a grim forecast for the future of the Windows Desktop.

Discussion begins around 3:50. Quote starts at about 9:15:

MJF: The Deskop's not going away in the near term. But Microsoft's goal is to get everyone to write Metro-style apps, and ultimately at some point they want the Desktop to go away. And so their bet for that is Windows RT -- that's kind of like the platform where they're testing that ground, how is that going to work -- it's where they really can control all the inputs. I think this is going to stick around, for sure.

[emphasis added]

This is not a surprise to us of course -- our deductive powers are considerable -- but it's significant to have our suspicioins pretty much confirmed by someone so familiar with the inner workings of the company.

If she's right, then we need to either start getting used to Tiles, or start thinking about an alternative OS that's better suited to our needs and preferences. :angrym:

--JorgeA

[JorgeA]

More security/privacy news:

Top sites (and maybe the NSA) track users with “device fingerprinting”

The research, by a team of scientists in Europe, is among the first to expose the real-world practice of "device fingerprinting," a process that collects the screen size, list of available fonts, software versions, and other properties of the visitor's computer or smartphone to create a profile that is often unique to that machine. The researchers scanned select pages of the top 10,000 websites as ranked by Alexa and found that 145 of them deployed code based on Adobe's Flash Player that fingerprinted users surreptitiously. When they expanded their survey to the top one million sites, they found 404 that used JavaScript-based fingerprinting. The researchers said the figures should be taken as the lower bounds since their crawlers weren't able to access pages behind CAPTHCAs and other types of Web forms. Mainstream awareness of fingerprinting first surfaced three years ago following the release of research from the Electronic Frontier Foundation.

[...]

More troubling, device fingerprinting may have given the National Security Agency and its counterparts around the world an avenue to identify people using the Tor privacy service. As disclosed in an installment of previously secret NSA documents published last week by The Guardian, the spy agency is capable of injecting script redirections into the traffic of Tor users. Slide 16 of an NSA presentation titled Tor Stinks included the excerpt: "Goal: ... Ignore user-agents from Torbutton or Improve browser fingerprinting? Using javascript instead of Flash?"

Down in the comments, the following website is offered as a way to check yourself for uniqueness: https://panopticlick.eff.org/. Although I have to wonder how only 1 out of every 3.5 million PCs could possibly have the same system fonts as my PC, given that I haven't installed any new fonts on it and it has whatever standard list of fonts came with it. (I did read the FAQ explanation, and I still don't get it.)

One data bit that serves as both irony and a warning is the following:

Anonymizer.com, in sharp contrast, ran largely the same fingerprinting scripts on its homepage without making any mention that it was compiling a list of fonts and plug-ins that could be used to identify an end user's computer.

If I understand this technique correctly, then one way to combat it would be to try hiding in the crowd by using the most common settings and features possible. Buy a vanilla PC and use IE as your browser.

Another take on this story about fingerprinting:

Websites use device fingerprinting for secret tracking

Of course device fingerprinting does have legitimate security-related uses including fraud detection and protection against account hijacking. But this study suggests it's also being used for analytics and marketing purposes via fingerprinting scripts which are hidden in seemingly innocuous advertising banners and web widgets.

In order to detect websites which are using device fingerprinting technologies, the researchers have developed a tool called FPDetective. This crawls and analyses sites looking for suspicious scripts. This tool and its source code will be made freely available for other researchers to use and build on, so we can expect to see fingerprinting detection appearing in security products in the future.

* * * * *

Two of our favorite companies are getting in on the fun (we'd already reported this for Google):

Microsoft, Google working on super cookies to track your activity on every device

Once the unique ID of your smartphone, laptop, TV, and game console has been linked to a central point, it becomes very easy to track your usage behavior. Microsoft (or Google or Apple or Facebook) will know what time of day you wake up (when you first check your phone), the route you take to work (via GPS), where you work (GPS), your job description (via your searches), and when you get home, the games you play and TV you watch.

A good argument for never getting a Microsoft or Google account. Or a smartphone, let alone one with GPS on it.

--JorgeA

Edited October 16, 2013 by JorgeA

[TELVM]

MJF: ... they want the Desktop to go away ...

If she's right, then we need to either start getting used to Tiles, or start thinking about an alternative OS that's better suited to our needs and preferences. :angrym:

--JorgeA

Well I refuse to use operating systems for ignoramuses, on general principle.

Being realistic, all available evidence indicates that Se7en is the last real Windows, and the last useable OS from Microsoft. Thus considering alternatives is a necessity for me.

I'd like very much if the think-tank of vast-knowledged people in this thread could enlighten the audience about alternatives, for the benefit of plain common long-time Windows users like here your servant. I'm beginning to feel like an orphan in need of a new home.

Edited October 17, 2013 by TELVM

[Tripredacus]

Well I refuse to use operating systems for simpletons, on general principle.

Emphasis mine. Of course as time goes on, Windows is changed to protect people from themselves because Microsoft has no care to properly educate people. We had a discussion about this before, about why the UAC exists. No, I'd say that Windows 2000 would be the last "real" Windows. One could argue that XP would be so instead, but the building blocks were already in place when it would complain about not having anti-virus installed.

[JorgeA]

I'd like very much if the think-tank of vast-knowledged people in this thread could enlighten the audience about alternatives, for the benefit of plain common long-time Windows users like here your servant. I'm beginning to feel like an orphan in need of a new home.

The alternatives I'm looking at are some flavors of Linux, mainly Netrunner and Zorin OS. Zorin was my early favorite as the UI is specifically designed to ease the transition from Windows to Linux, but the most recent version has taken on the Win8 look so it's fallen behind, in my book. Netrunner (so far, anyway) is visually stunning IMHO.

--JorgeA

[JorgeA]

Well I refuse to use operating systems for simpletons, on general principle.

Emphasis mine. Of course as time goes on, Windows is changed to protect people from themselves because Microsoft has no care to properly educate people. We had a discussion about this before, about why the UAC exists. No, I'd say that Windows 2000 would be the last "real" Windows. One could argue that XP would be so instead, but the building blocks were already in place when it would complain about not having anti-virus installed.

I took what TELVM said to mean in terms of the interface (flat and tiles vs. 3D and windows), but your point is something that had never occurred to me. Thought-provoking.

--JorgeA

[CharlotteTheHarlot]

MJF: ... they want the Desktop to go away ...

If she's right, then we need to either start getting used to Tiles, or start thinking about an alternative OS that's better suited to our needs and preferences. :angrym:

--JorgeA

Well I refuse to use operating systems for retards, on general principle.

Being realistic, all available evidence indicates that Se7en is the last real Windows, and the last non-retarded OS from Microsoft. Thus considering alternatives is a necessity for me.

I'd like very much if the think-tank of vast-knowledged people in this thread could enlighten the audience about alternatives, for the benefit of plain common long-time Windows users like here your servant. I'm beginning to feel like an orphan in need of a new home.

Well we don't know what is going to be happening to hardware in the future, like if motherboards somehow go away or get locked-down or severely limited in availability. Or if CPU growth stays dead at 3.9 GHz. Maybe they get even more SoC ( kinda has been with Intel each cycle recently ). Hardware is easily the wildest variable and one can imagine any number of crazy things.

Any existing operating system would be reasonably functional on new hardware if at least the chipset driver INFs were updated. I have said that "flipping" either Intel or AMD to say 'screw Microsoft' and provide chipset drivers for XP for new releases would result in the other company quickly following suit. That is probably the most fruitful line of attack. Besides, it's crazy for them to write drivers and INFs for Vista or 8 when XP has a larger base than them combined times three.

Of course hanging on to old computers is a very productive plan too. I have working systems back to 1996 here and now, and would even have older ones if I had more room. Definitely collect and save anything from Core2 forward, about six or seven years old. They are very useful and people should be grabbing them en route to the dump. Bag 'em and tag em'. They should work fine out past 2020 and even beyond. Naturally it pays to collect CPUs ( lots of great deals ) and hard drives too. And video cards. And Windows discs. Whipping together PC's is easy, and fun. And possibly also very wise because by changing out all the parts just might keep the possibility of unique ident through hardware fingerprint minimized. ( BTW, I can't wait to see what happens next spring to XP activation servers, this should be extremely interesting if you change stuff and trigger WPA and the server doesn't respond. This was argued years ago and Microsoft avoided answering directly IIRC. If they pull a sleazy move letting XP systems die from WPA they will have a riot and possibly a legal fiasco on their hands).

There are lots of unknowns though and lots of other ways to proceed. Maybe the whole VM thing will be much different. VMware might be superseded by something even better and easier and faster. Or if Intel ever gets their enthusiast act together and we see chips 5x or 10x as fast, running XP ( because of pre-9/11 ) or 7 in a thoroughly secure VM that leaks no information on a 20 GHz computer would even be more pleasant to use than today.

I expect by that point, 10 years tops, that Windows itself will have collapsed like Blackberry seems to have now, and Android or some later variation of Linux will be ubiquitous on all form factors. Android is already coming to the desktop, and Microsoft will soon have to make a choice. Will they use their x86 expertise and make a workstation OS to keep that market or will they keep playing in the children's sandbox where they will lose every single time? Will Android or other operating systems target x86 chips? Will Intel and AMD even keep making x86? It's all unknown and all unimaginable really. And we have Microsoft to blame. They decided to launch a frontal assault at Russia in Winter ( mobile market ) and are leaving their flank undefended ( x86 ). They will lose on both fronts with their current strategy.

So I'd say at least stockpile computers and parts. And software. That stuff is yours to do with as you wish. Yes they plan to change that and will try to shame everyone into going subscription services on anemic toys where you own nothing. Ignore the naysayers and enablers just begging for big brother and 1984. Screw the lot of 'em. In fact take advantage of their ignorance and relieve them of their big bulky desktops when they toss them due to peer pressure.

We've seen this in so many fields, the consumerization-commercialization that ruins something. It has happened steadily in music with a rapid decent, a race to the bottom in the 80's, the 90's, 2000's. We watched it happen but also noticed that the classic stuff not only survives, but thrives. The Stones and many others are still touring while so much crap from the 90's and beyond is already collecting dust. Even in the studio and onstage we saw equipment evolve and devolve to electronic crap but hardcore Marshalls and many other tube amps, effects and guitars from 30-50 years ago are priceless.

While everybody can make a mis-step, no-one is more expert at it than Microsoft. If they made cars they would cancel the Mustangs, Corvettes, Ferraris, Lambos and Carreras and make only economical flat Chevy Chevettes. If they made guitar amps they would have chucked out the massive selling 100-watt tube lines and went to electronic mini-techno-gadgets. If they were a record label, they would have fired The Beatles and Stones and Iron Maiden and Dream Theater ( and everyone else ) just keeping Madonna and Miley Cyrus. They are the Justin Bieber of operating systems now. The solution is to ridicule them and make them suffer and expedite their fail. Or just wait it out because what goes around comes around.

EDIT: typo

Edited October 17, 2013 by CharlotteTheHarlot