Windows 8 - Deeper Impressions

[JorgeA]

And to what ROTS was saying:

NSA tracking cellphone locations worldwide, Snowden documents show

NSA gathering 5bn cell phone records daily, Snowden documents show

--JorgeA

[bphlpt]

And to what ROTS was saying:

NSA tracking cellphone locations worldwide, Snowden documents show

NSA gathering 5bn cell phone records daily, Snowden documents show

--JorgeA

This actually made the front page of the local paper yesterday, even in the little town I live in. Whatever you might think of Snowden and what he did, he certainly succeeded in raising the awareness of the common man to this kind of thing.

Cheers and Regards

[TELVM]

Loved this no-nonsense, zero-political-correction, straight-to-the-jugular old rant :

I hate Unity. I hate GNOME. I hate Windows 8. The ultimate desktop search continues.

"... Windows 8 is a whole new animal that's really a vegetable. I hate it. I hate the look with all those ridiculously large icon things that you have to swipe through. It looks like it was designed for preschoolers not adults and certainly not for technically savvy folks like you and me ...

...

... What's with the three new desktop systems I've described here? Is the new thing to make you search endlessly for your applications and things you work with? I don't want to do that. I want to know where my programs are. I want to know where my documents are. I want to be able to work efficiently. And, searching through a bunch of flippy, gloppy icons is not my idea of efficient.

Who's designing this stuff? Monkeys? Aliens? Vampires?

...

... I hope that by the time my current computer draws its last Watt that someone will have come up with something usable, efficient and not crappy. I don't like the dumbed-down garbage that they're tossing my way. If you're trying to appeal to a wider audience, don't. If people are too dumb to use a computer, then so be it. Don't waste everyone's time on something that looks like it should be teaching babies to speak and spell ..."

[JorgeA]

!!!

Microsoft: US government is an 'advanced persistent threat'

While Microsoft's recent move to encrypt user data made the most headlines, the reasoning underlying its new data protection strategies classify the US government in the same category as a cyber-criminal group.

Microsoft's EVP of Legal and Corporate Affairs labeled the American government as an "advanced persistent threat" in a December 4 post on The Official Microsoft Blog.

Now if Microsoft puts their money where their mouth is, and comes up with a practicable way of using e-mail and surfing the Web with end-to-end encryption -- that's one of the few things that could trump the insults and annoyances of the Metro environment.

--JorgeA

Edited December 6, 2013 by JorgeA

[JorgeA]

Loved this no-nonsense, zero-political-correction, straight-to-the-jugular old rant :

I hate Unity. I hate GNOME. I hate Windows 8. The ultimate desktop search continues.

That was pretty good!

Our new Android phones are like that somewhat -- there's a nice-looking "desktop" (the home screen) that reminds me of Vista and Windows 7, but no file manager. It's weird, not knowing (for example) where the cookies are so that I can go in and delete them. We'll have to see if there's a way to install a proper file manager without signing up for Google Play.

Wonder if CCleaner has an Android version...

--JorgeA

P.S. Thanks in another way for that article link. While on that page, I saw the headline for my previous post.

[bpalone]

!!!

Microsoft: US government is an 'advanced persistent threat'

While Microsoft's recent move to encrypt user data made the most headlines, the reasoning underlying its new data protection strategies classify the US government in the same category as a cyber-criminal group.

Microsoft's EVP of Legal and Corporate Affairs labeled the American government as an "advanced persistent threat" in a December 4 post on The Official Microsoft Blog.

Now if Microsoft puts their money where their mouth is, and comes up with a practicable way of using e-mail and surfing the Web with end-to-end encryption -- that's one of the few things that could trump the insults and annoyances of the Metro environment.

--JorgeA

Let's not forget just who was in bed with and just how deeply they were involved here. Seems like I remember a mention here of a comment by the NSA of just how much more data they were getting after Microsoft purchased Skype.

I don't know abut you or anybody else here, but Microsoft has blown their credibility with me.

bpalone

[bpalone]

I don't know if this was ever mentioned here on MSFN, but if it was I apologize up front.

With all the current revelations of just how much all of us are being tracked by our friendly governments and the big corporations, I thought maybe it was time to mention this. I have not installed or used it, but have thought of installing it on a server.

The item is YaCy, a peer to peer web search system. Go to their website to get a better understanding of how it works and what it is. Its time could of arrived.

Here is link to their website: http://yacy.net/en/

bpalone

[CharlotteTheHarlot]

Silicon Valley Wants Tony Bates in Microsoft's CEO Seat ( Tom's Hardware 2013-12-04 )

Ford throws cold water on reports that its CEO is leaving for Microsoft ( NeoWin 2013-12-05 )

Microsoft Shares Drop With Talk of Mulally Staying with Ford ( Tom's Hardware 2013-12-06 )

Microsoft's shares reportedly fell 3 percent on Thursday after Ford CEO Alan Mulally said in a Bloomberg television interview that he plans to stay with the company through next year rather than abandon ship and take Steve Ballmer's position as CEO of Microsoft. Mulally is reportedly the top candidate for the job followed by Microsoft's own Satya Nadella.

Seriously, I think they're trying to wear us down enough to throw up our hands and beg they keep Ballmer instead.

BitLocker Bug Is Locking Out Some Surface 2 Owners ( Tom's Hardware 2013-12-04 )

"At the weekend our two Surface 2 devices got a firmware update installed," reads one post from forum member Andrew. "My Surface 2 updated and rebooted fine with no issues. But my wife's Surface 2 (64GB model) asked for the Bitlocker recovery key at boot after the update, and now every time it reboots. Although I have the key this is very poor end user experience. Especially as I am trying to sell her the Surface 2 over an iPad."

"Whenever it reboots - let's say for updates or things like that - I have to enter the BitLocker key. This is really starting to annoy me," said another user, Nsmet.

In a number of cases, many users had no idea BitLocker was enabled, and was forced to find a nearby PC and log into their Microsoft account to recover their BitLocker key. Others have simply decided to write down the lengthy key and stash it into their wallets in case the tablet needs the key again while away from a trusted computer.

"This is the second time this stupid BitLocker has ask me to enter the key. I don't really mind if it is like 10 numbers, but it is like 25," another owner complains. "This is annoying, I may have to return this surface for an IPad if this happens all the time one more time then I am done."

Another problem, apparently confined just to the Windows ReTard Edition devices ( "Surface 2" being the nom de guerre, or maybe that should be nom du jour instead? ).

Bitlocker is full disk encryption, which itself is a risky proposition because you are trusting the programmer to be absolutely perfect in their authentication routine where one slip up means that the system will now believe you are not the owner but instead a trespasser and locks you out accordingly. The fact that it is encryption brought to you by Microsoft, the government spooks' primary PRISM parter ( and whatever else we don't know about ) and is also the company that added a known government spook compromised RNG ( and whatever else we don't know about ) to Windows Vista ( and whatever else we don't know about ), well, that's a little more than I would be willing to gamble on these days. It is the single most likely part of Windows that the compromised RNG would impact IMHO. Using Bitlocker or anything today that doesn't explicitly disavow use of compromised Microsoft technology is absurd.

However, when you add in the fact that this is so far only occurring on "Windows on ARM", it now smells like a bad port from x86 to RISC, possibly from a rush job to market, or possibly signaling their utter lack of expertise in this family at least at the consumer level ( they actually do have lots of experience in ARM and other architectures over their entire history and I've pointed this out here before, but that doesn't mean that this historical knowledge has anything to do now with the recent consumer grade disaster called Windows 8 and its extension to consumer ARM ). Time will tell what's really going on here.

[CharlotteTheHarlot]

China wants Microsoft to extend Windows XP support past April 8th ( NeoWin 2013-12-04 )

Yep, another day another FUDfest from the MetroTard fanboys. Here's a comment from one of NeoWin's short bus riders ...

Microsoft should go in for the kill and make XP installations shutdown every hour with a message saying to upgrade to a newer version of Windows!

Yes MetroTard, please urge them to do this! Make a martyr out of Windows XP and watch what would happen! Not to mention the fact that it would instantly be the world's largest case of computer crime ( hacking/tampering/sabotage ), disabling more systems than all other bad guys combined. Please, make it so! ( In fairness, most of the other NeoKids disagree with him ).

Microsoft's getting aggressive and it's about time ( NeoWin 2013-12-06 )

Microsoft is getting aggressive with its advertisements, and its about time. Over the past decade, Microsoft has typically taken the high-road and avoided being overly antagonistic towards its rivals, mostly because it was sitting on top of the world in terms of market share in many of the key consumer markets. But with Apple stealing Microsofts tablet thunder, Google sweeping away nearly all of the smartphone market, and Chromebooks now pushing hard into the low-end computing segment, Microsoft has finally wised up and opened up a can of a**-kicking advertisements.

For years, Microsoft has been sitting on the sidelines, biding its time as it built out its ecosystem - but now its time to protect that investment. Well, it was time to protect that investment years ago, but slow moving management, among various other factors, caused Microsoft to misstep several times. But hey, the past is the past.

[...]

No longer is Microsoft willing to be pushed around and, at long last, it is confident enough to call out its competitors for their failures and shortcomings. Microsoft is not new to the tech game and it has to constantly evolve and transform itself to stay relevant. This new aggressive side of the company is an encouraging start to the next chapter in its history.

Phewww! Waiter, I'll have what he's having.

Microsoft, the nearly trust busted convicted monopolist, is like an Angel you see, put upon by those twin devils Google and Apple. Oh whatever floats your boat. Everybody's entitled to an opinion regardless of how fictional it might be. Even Brad Sams.

But since this is from Brad Sams ( who is a contender for MicroZealot-in-chief at NeoWin and it wouldn't surprise anyone if "Dot Matrix" is a sock puppet for him ), and his "editorial" does not come with a disclaimer attached it requires some sort of public service announcement so that folks understand him and what he is likely doing. Brad became famous here back around September 2012 in Post #961 where we noted that he set the new standard for fanboyism and the upcoming Windows 8 launch by stating: "The next person who says that Windows 8 is the next Vista deserves to be shot, twice." Then he stealth edited that comment away leaving obvious holes in the thread commentary leading right back to his edit, a kind of Streisand Effect. Other threads came along ( see here at #963 ) and enough people had saw what he originally wrote before he edited it away down the memory hold so he came clean by briefly mentioning it in a forum discussion in this completely different thread about the controversy and coyly admitted it but still never updated the article to mention the stealth edit. His explanation was that 'he did in fact mention the edit on Twitter though' ( wtf? ) because 'that's where the outrage was centered' which compounded the problem because he didn't post his original "The next person who says that Windows 8 is the next Vista deserves to be shot, twice" comment on Twitter at all, he posted it right at the top of the original editorial thread at NeoWin, and that is where the mea culpa and explanation belonged ( 'Hey I apologized over there where no-one saw it!' ) . Even to this day that original thread is left hanging with holes and he avoided coming clean about it. The moderators circled the wagons and owner Steven 'NeoBond' Parker played dumb and away the story went, or at least they wish it did. While not quite as effective as Stalin's airbrush method of erasure, it appears to have worked on the typical NeoKid as seen in some of the comments. Anyway, this is Brad Sams here from a YouTube video talking about his company 'Tracour' and other things including his age, which I believe is about the same as Windows 2.0, which certainly qualifies him as an expert on Microsoft's Angelic history.

With that out of the way I believe this editorial is just an exercise in fire suppression since Brad seems to have a knack for setting the tone over there among the rabid FanDogs even if Steven cannot see this. The 2012 editorial described above ( "should be shot" ) tried to dampen the growing feeling during the fall of 2012 that Windows 8 would be stillborn in the coming launch after already undergoing two full years of criticism and the RTM didn't make anybody change that opinion. So today, the latest editorial is necessary because even among NeoKids there is a lot of criticism of Microsoft for the Scroogle nonsense. Yes, it's true. There isn't the knee-jerk sycophantic cheering in the Scroogle stories. It is very safe to say that way more MetroTards dislike the campaign than dislike Windows 8 hence he simply may feel the need to rally the troops again.

Once again, no question he is entitled to his opinion, and I'm certainly not saying anything about censoring him, now or then. Heck no, these little incidents help to put a face on NeoWin, and I'd say his face matches exactly what one imagines for the average NeoKid! I'm not sure what Brad's little company does, but I wonder if it has anything to do with reputation management.

[CharlotteTheHarlot]

Surprise! Apple devices are the most sought after this holiday season ( TechSpot 2013-12-06 )

You mean that Microsoft Tiles hasn't convinced AppleTards to throw out their iStuff and join the Playskool walled-garden? How is this possible? For all of 2013 we have been told that the failed 2012 launch of MetroToys was because of lackluster products from those villainous OEM's not producing great products worthy of the mighty Windows 8 operating system. A full year later and countless releases of new products and the near extinction of Windows 7 and earlier options and they still are at square one? Say it ain't so. Could it be that they blew it from the start? Could it be that Microsoft lost this war years ago and that sacrificing their core Windows product was a mistake? Yes it was. Everyone saw this coming since Microsoft Tiles was first revealed. Everyone warned them. Only the fanboys kept cheering them on. Just wait til they see Q1 reporting for the 2013 holiday season.

Here's How You Can Snag a Dell Venue 8 Pro for $99 ( Maximum PC 2013-12-06 )

Microsoft Stores to sell Dell Venue 8 Pro for $99 on Monday ( NeoWin 2013-12-06 )

Okay, it's not quite a firesale yet, but it sure looks a lot like something from a couple of years ago ...

( Image Sources: 1,2 )

The main difference being that many people actually loved that WebOS operating system while many people loath the other one. Yes there are other hardware differences, mostly attributable to RAM and storage prices and CPU advancement during the intervening time. There are two lessons here that I see ... {1} HP is truly incompetent for letting WebOS go because that thing equipped with updated hardware specs would be an excellent product today ... {2} Microsoft is quite possibly the most incompetent bunch of all by making the operating system so ugly and overbearing that it dominates every single device it is installed on and becomes all that you can see ...

( Originals: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8 )

Once the inevitable tide turns away from the trendy anti-skeuomorphic craziness with a clueless interface with flat depth-less crap icons running on amazing hardware that is capable of so much more, Microsoft is going to look awfully silly with this phone interface on everything. It is already becoming the kiss of death for everything it touches, once that embeds itself into mainstream thought and people who see Microsoft Tiles automatically associate it with failure, then it is game over and just as fast as WebOS disappeared so will this monstrosity. Well, that is depending on who sits in the CEO chair and who still reports to him.

EDIT: fixed misplaced tags from this ridiculously buggy IPB editor

Edited December 7, 2013 by CharlotteTheHarlot

[CharlotteTheHarlot]

Hundreds of complaints swarm Xbox One feedback site and Reddit ( NeoWin 2013-12-04 )

And this mightily displeases the NeoKids.

'Call of Duty' and PlayStation 4 Are Gaming's Most Wanted ( Tom's Hardware 2013-12-06 )

Some more early reports of possible Sony success ( contrary to that earlier NeoWin article ), this time from Nielsen.

Valve becomes latest investor in The Linux Foundation ( TechSpot 2013-12-04 )

Valve Software Joins the Linux Foundation ( Tom's Hardware 2013-12-04 )

Valve joins Linux Foundation as part of its SteamOS push ( NeoWin 2013-12-04 )

Valve joins Linux Foundation ( PC Gamer 2013-12-05 )

Valve is nudging Linux towards bigger and better things by becoming one of the latest companies to support The Linux Foundation, a non-profit consortium that is dedicated to growing the Linux brand. The operating system is used in 98% of the world's super computers, the majority of worldwide financial trades, and is prevalent in most of the servers powering the internet. It's also a main component of Valve's upcoming "Steam Machines," which will make use of a Linux-based operating system featuring Steam compatibility.

According the language on the Foundation's official website, membership status allows Valve to participate in member-only events of the Linux Foundation Collaboration Summit, the right to vote and run for Linux Foundation board seats, access to the foundation's media network, and other, frankly boring benefits.

[...]

Valve's membership in the Linux Foundation and a potential seat on its board in the future is perfectly in-line with the above statements. It will, hopefully, increase confidence in Linux is a gaming-friendly operating system, and it might even allow Valve to encourage other developers and vendors to step up the biggest technical challenge Linux faces: better driver support.

The news also emphasizes Valve's increasing commitment to the free operating system. The living-room centric Steam Controller that made headlines in September will be used with the SteamOS, the Linux-based operating system for Valve's Steam Machines.

Who would have thought even a year or two ago that the guy who would give Linux a shot in the arm would be the gaming CEO of Valve. No matter where this whole thing winds up, Gabe Newell has at least put consumer Linux back on the radar.

I just love how the NeoKids keep saying Gabe is scared of the Microsoft Store though. In their minds Windows is competing with a spontaneous product called Steam. In truth though, Steam is a result of Windows strategy, a solution to planned obsolescence of PC gaming by Microsoft and all her devious tricks. Without Microsoft trying to hurt PC gaming there would be no Steam which is nothing but a seamless solution for moderate gamers to painlessly play games on their computer without the headaches of micromanaging every possible setting. It exists because of Microsoft. If they didn't buy off game makers into a walled garden and actively block PC releases and use Direct-X as an OS upgrade tool, Steam simply would not exist. The NeoKids seem to think that Microsoft still cares about PC gaming, sorry no . They might care a little about MetroTard gaming if that will draw sheeple into their walled garden, but even this is a non-starter. Steam is here to fill a void, and they seem to do it well enough for most moderate gamers. What Microsoft had in mind was something else entirely, and those NeoKids, as few as they are in number are prima facie evidence of their goal. But thanks anyway for playing.

EDIT: typos

Edited December 7, 2013 by CharlotteTheHarlot

[CharlotteTheHarlot]

Hotfile to shutdown, pay $80 million to settle MPAA lawsuit ( NeoWin 2013-12-04 )

And the Hollywood Mafia strikes again. It doesn't matter if there were any users storing perfectly legitimate data, what matters is that they think there were some pirated movies, so they kill it with fire. This begs the question, if someone stores pirated material on Microsoft SpyDrive will they kill that? No they won't. Microsoft can afford the extortion payment, others cannot. So exactly how are copyright pirates like the RIAA and MPAA any different than the Sopranos? It's all about fiefdoms operated by well-heeled special interests lobbying their way to monopoly status, and protecting them at all costs. I wonder if any of these sites ever considered just posting a no-trespassing EULA that users click on stating that "use of our computers by MPAA or RIAA or government agents is expressly forbidden and violators hereby agree to pay a penalty of 100 million dollars for each infraction". Make it look exactly like the FBI warning on DVDs and vocalize it using Dr. Evil's voice

UK politicians call on shoppers to boycott 'tax-avoiding' Amazon ( NeoWin 2013-12-06 )

Leaving politics completely out of this, we have many of the same types of comments from our own bureaucrats. As they run out of arguments they invariably pull out the last ditch strategy of calling them disloyal traitors. However, there is one large point which makes them patriots IMHO. If governments manage to get all the taxes they are demanding then they will have succeeded in making "online" merchants into agents of the state, as unpaid employee tax collectors. That is what is really at stake here. This is quite a marked upgrade from the state tax collectors of yore. Not only do they tax the peasants now but to really rub it in they force them to do the dirty work to themselves!

This also fails because in reality there are no "online" merchants, no "online" buyers or sellers for that matter. Buyers and sellers live in the real world, not in a state of electricity! Prior to the web they did this by telephone. Or by snail mail. No new laws are needed to say that someone living in a certain place needs to pay a tax or tariff or duty on something. They are already covered. What they are doing is using the Internet as a foil by describing it as a "thing" rather than a "means". Of course we know the real reason that politicians talk like this is because the peasants lack the expected voluntary compliance to file their taxes and willingly admit they bought something from some other place that legally requires a tax. Hence the move here to make merchants into agents of the state.

All these ideas should be resisted at every opportunity because after they get the infrastructure into place then they will continually adjust tax rates to achieve outcomes which opens another can of worms because they will set about taxing certain groups into oblivion while helping along others whom they favor, or worse, others who purchased their favors by lobbying them. It always leads back to fiefdoms, favoritism and feudalism.

New USB connector inbound, set to be smaller and reversible ( TechSpot 2013-12-04 )

Finally! New USB Standard Will Feature Reversible Connector ( Tom's Hardware 2013-12-04 )

USB to Become Quicker, Smaller and Flippable ( Tom's Hardware 2013-12-04 )

New USB connector standard won't matter which way you plug it ( NeoWin 2013-12-04 )

Finally, USB 3.1 Will Feature Reversible Connectors ( Maximum PC 2013-12-04 )

To start with, the connector will come with an entirely new design that's reversible - similar to Apple's Lightning connector - which will finally stop the issues with not being able to insert the plug correctly the first time. Type-C will also be smaller than the current Type-A plug, similar in size to the microUSB 2.0 connector.

The Type-C connector is currently in development and is expected to be finalized by mid-2014. Brad Saunders, chairman of the USB 3.0 Promoter Group, says the updated connector will "meet evolving design trends" while Intel's Alex Peleg says it will facilitate "an entirely new super-thin class of devices from phones to tablets, to 2-in-1s, to laptops to desktops".

No-one can argue with that idea, because everyone has this problem at one time or another. However, to experience this problem you must first be able to see the friggin USB receptacle in the first place. Besides being either upside down or flipped horizontally, the biggest problem is that almost every one is invisible on the device because the the little keying insert is almost always the same color as the device. Furthermore, the USB geniuses came up with a cute little icon for themselves rather than using 3 simple letters U-S-B. Try to describe that ridiculous little icon to a n00b user over the telephone, I dare you! Of course it's not just them, it's everyone really, including the device manufacturers who have never met a hardware or software GUI that they couldn't manage to screw up. Black on black? Check. Tiny icons? no problem. Connectors all jammed together? Of course.

I've been working some graphics with examples of hardware fails, here's part of one ...

( Image Sources: 1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8 )

So is this a welcome idea? Certainly. But how much you wanna bet that they will continue to use invisible receptacles, labels, icons and everything else?

[CharlotteTheHarlot]

NSA tracks cellphone locations worldwide to map relationships between owners ( TechSpot 2013-12-05 )

Based on the vast pool of data at their disposal, agents can find a cell phone anywhere in the world and retrace its movements. This can help the agency identify hidden relationships among those using the devices, were told, and accurately map out exactly where the user has been. Mobile phones are known to broadcast their location even when they arent being used to place a call.

Naturally, officials in the US said the programs used to collect and analyze data are within the bounds of the law and are done so strictly to gather intelligence about foreign targets. Legal or not, however, many privacy advocacy groups believe location data is uniquely sensitive. Thats even truer when the majority of data collected isnt relevant to national security.

( mentioned by Jorge ) TechSpot article with a pretty good overview of the goals of metadata siphoning. The spooks are truly vacuuming up every possible thing they can and tossing it into storage that gets scanned for patterns and relationships. This is the absolute best case post-9/11 scenario that was sold to the politicians and the people, it's the one where everyone has privacy between themselves and only the government protectors have the ability to intrude by carefully analyzing the metadata. Unfortunately that best case scenario came and went once we learned from the leaks that they have access to everything, not just metadata. If you believe that best case scenario is all that they care about then I've got a bridge for sale.

This article only touches on cellphones and the thoroughly compromised system they operate under. It doesn't take a rocket scientist to figure out that the same plan is underway for everything else, every plane ticket, every thing you buy, nearly every thing you do. If it has a traceable handle it is fed into the mother of all computer systems and tucked away for later recall by algorithms we are to trust. In theory something like this would be necessary to prevent a loose tactical nuke from detonating in a city because they would be able to trace the chatter back to the source. Perhaps that extreme best case scenario with its massive tradeoff of letting them do anything and everything in the name of security makes sense? Maybe, but they wouldn't tell us if they did stop a nuke, let alone prove it beyond any doubt, they would just say 'we prevented a bunch of attacks but cannot get more specific'. So we are left with doubts, bigtime doubts.

Unfortunately that tradeoff also means that they have the same ability to stop rogue nukes as the ability to thwart a legitimate government overthrow, righteous insurrection against a rogue government. That means something to a lot of us over here. Speaking for myself, I'll live with the nuke threat if it means the government is kept safely in a box without the ability to shut down dissent in the interest of its self-preservation. The linchpin holding the current big brother scenario together lies in our sheeple that are still sleeping unfortunately. One wonders what it will take to wake them up. ( And, while they snooze, are they actually counting sheep? ).

D-Link Finally Shuts Firmware Backdoor in Routers ( Tom's Hardware 2013-12-04 )

Thought people would like to know. See this page for the list of router models and links to new firmware for each to kill this bug.

Microsoft Research's new tool guesses your password ( TechSpot 2013-12-06 )

( Yes, by all means, enter your actual passwords into this safe website! Image Source: Screencap )

Microsoft has a webpage that uses an algorithm to rate character selection relationships within your passwords. Mathematically interesting I guess, but like all sites that rate passwords there is that irony of trusting them with your password examples as that actual screencap I made shows: "What information does Telepathwords collect and why?". My working assumption is that all online password testers are funneling every tested sample into a real world crowd-sourced dictionary of passwords because that would be a very salable commodity. When sold to the highest bidder, and we can easily guess who that might be, such a collection would be worth its weight in bitcoins. Apparently no commenters have considered this at all, in fact they all seemed to have tried their own: "Looks like my password system performs as expected". Really? You entered those passwords on a Microsoft site, the government's first and primary PRISM partner? This is a job for OFFLINE computers, one that has no network access and no Ethernet cable attached, no modem, no WI-FI, no Internet. This is why some of us are always looking for specialty applications, DOS or Windows to do these tasks, despite the grand push to the cloud returning us to client-server dumb terminals connected to walled-gardens.

[Monroe]

Well this is nice to know ... the FBI must have one nice collection of "sex tapes" and other stuff to pass around the office !!! ... something to do on the slow days! From now on a person will have to put a "band-aid" over the camera since the light will not be on but is the camera on ... who knows ?

FBI Can Secretly Activate an Individual’s Webcam Without the Indicator Light Turning On

http://www.theblaze.com/stories/2013/12/07/the-fbi-can-secretly-activate-an-individuals-webcam-without-the-indicator-light-turning-on/?utm_source=twitter&utm_medium=story&utm_campaign=ShareButtons

Ex-Official Says FBI Can Secretly Activate an Individual’s Webcam Without the Indicator Light Turning On

Dec. 7, 2013 - Oliver Darcy

The FBI can secretly activate a computer’s webcam to spy on an individual without turning on the indicator light, a former official revealed to the Washington Post in an article published Friday.

According to the Washington Post’s account of what Marcus Thomas — former assistant director of the FBI’s Operational Technology Division in Quantico — said, “The FBI has been able to covertly activate a computer’s camera — without triggering the light that lets users know it is recording — for several years, and has used that technique mainly in terrorism cases or the most serious criminal investigations.”

“Because of encryption and because targets are increasingly using mobile devices, law enforcement is realizing that more and more they’re going to have to be on the device — or in the cloud,” Thomas added, in reference to remote storage services. “There’s the realization out there that they’re going to have to use these types of tools more and more.”

TheBlaze has previously reported on hackers using remote access tools to activate an individual’s webcam and spy on them.

...

Edited December 7, 2013 by duffy98

[CharlotteTheHarlot]

BREAKING NEWS ...

Microsoft's Android royalties in danger as German court invalidates FAT patent ( NeoWin 2013-12-07 )

Bundespatentgericht (Federal Patent Court of Germany, BPatG) held an invalidation trial on Thursday at the end of which it was declared by Judge Vivian Sredl that the patent is completely invalid and does not satisfy the technicity requirement of European patent law.

FOSS Patents posted that:

"..common name space for long and short filenames" is invalid in its entirety (including Microsoft's proposed amendments) because the court found that all of the elements distinguishing the patented invention from the prior art (which includes a Linus Torvalds post to a mailing list) did not satisfy the technicity requirement under European patent law.

Well this could be friggin' huge!

And it is righteous. Not because they don't technically have "rights" to FAT, they in fact created it but that was over 35 years ago. By continually changing it they have managed to extend the patent essentially forever, and this is a clear abuse of the concept of patents in the first place, at least if you are an objective person. I've said it before, the file systems are a critical function for computer interoperability and are a perfect candidate for public domain "good" and I have used the example of Benjamin Franklin as a benevolent forward thinker with his lightning rod. But Bill Gates and Steve Ballmer are no Benjamin Franklins ( Bill Gates has clearly spent his free time reading up on Carnegie and reputation management on how to buy a legacy, rather than Franklin ) not by a long shot. Instead, had they invented the lightning rod ( which saved untold lives and entire cities from fire ) they would have not only patented it for personal gain ( unlike Franklin ) but they would have modified it every few years to keep it out of the hands of non-paying customers. What they do now is clearly extortion by "convincing" these Android producers to pay their Sopranos extortion, and then the agreement is somehow kept confidential. How the he!! has it gone on this long! Yay for this court ruling. May it precede many more.

I still think this war should be fought on multiple fronts. Let a new consortium of companies commit to a cleanroom bit and API compatible clone of FAT and NTFS that maintains perfect backward compatibility and interoperability, done the old way using smart programmers and then release it as public domain. Microsoft should respect the concept of cleanroom cloning, after all, it was what helped propel them to the heights they reached once all those other companies besides IBM built computers with a compatible BIOS allowing use of the exact same operating system. Things would have been completely different for Microsoft had those other companies never been born, or if they had been born but instead went elsewhere for their OS. That would be Karma and my name is Earl ( not really ).

Microsoft No Longer Selling Windows 7 to Retailers ( Tom's Hardware 2013-12-07 )

Consumers looking to install Windows 7 on their current computers are now out of luck, as Microsoft has quietly discontinued the sale of the operating system as of October 30, 2013. The end of sales for PCs with Windows preinstalled will be on October 30, 2014, meaning you have less than a year to snatch up a desktop or laptop with Windows 7 preinstalled.

If there was ever a perfect use of the phrase 'in with a bang, out with a whimper' well, this is it. It surely must be one of the greatest acts of suicide we have yet witnessed for a company, and one of the oddest acts of premeditated murder of a product that literally took the world by storm but was sentenced to execution immediately after. The article continues ...

"End of sales refers to the date when a particular version of Windows is no longer shipped to retailers or Original Equipment Manufacturers (OEMs)," states Microsoft's lifecycle chart. "Examples of OEMs are Dell and ToshibaPC manufacturers who often preinstall Windows software. When a version of Windows reaches its end of sales date, it's a good time to think about upgrading."

Oh yeah? I don't think so. They are telling us to drop trow and bend over, and 'accept our planned obsolescence'. Wouldn't they just love for that to happen, using their monopoly for personal gain because the victims have nowhere else to go. Break these scoundrels up, split off the x86 operating system away from the monopolists in Redmond, or force it into the public domain. They are worse than drug dealers who get kids addicted and then jack up the prices. You cannot let your technology come to run over 90% of the world's technological infrastructure and then later decide to play games with that unique position of responsibility, altering, obsoleting and breaking the thing.

Even with governments failing proper oversight of monopolistic actions they still may have miscalculated badly here. The sum total of all these machinations with Windows 8, Windows 7 and Windows XP are getting well understood by more people than ever before thanks to the blogosphere and web, and it just might completely backfire with an exodus. Microsoft had better pray that Google or Apple or someone else doesn't have something up their sleeve. If Google was secretly working on a useful desktop version of Android, or a cleanroom replacement x86 operating system, or is Apple decides to let an OS X variant go out in retail ( that's an x86 operating system today ), they could lose everything practically overnight. Microsoft is really sticking its neck out waiting for someone to chop it clean off.

EDIT: typos

Edited December 8, 2013 by CharlotteTheHarlot