Another Opinion Among Many
…but I’m right!
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R.C.A.F- Break in service August 2, 2008Just a quite note to all nine of my listeners: I’ve got some location audio work coming up, so that, coupled with moving into a house Krista and I just bought, will be keeping me busy. In fact, I don’t believe I’ll even have access to a computer between Aug 20th to Sep 27th. After that, [...]
- RACF - Episode 2 July 25, 2008Robot Cousin’s Audio Feed - Episode 2 Links of Interest: Information on the NES sound chip YMCK’s ‘Magical 8-bit’ plugin reFX’s “QuadraSID” plugin (Commodore 64) Jack Dark’s “Syntendo” (seems to be taken down) Korg’s Padkontrol Product website. Any questions, comments, observations, or slander, please email myself at jordan@robotcousin.com Special Thanks go to Krista Goguen and Tyler Gallant.
- Status update July 21, 2008Just a quick note to let everyone know that I’m still working on my second episode. Taking a bit longer than I had expected, and other things, like life, have gotten a bit in the way, but hey, the podcast is free, so you can’t complain too much. Expect the episode to be posted by the [...]
- Break in service August 2, 2008
Well, it’s an update to Windows Update itself, from what that person says. I’m not going to get paranoid.
I think a lot of things people say about Microsoft turn out to be exaggerated. Not that I trust them fully though…
The thing that worries people (including me) about this behavior is that Microsoft installed these updates without permission - even on machines where updates were turned off! I can understand that they would need to provide these patches, but they should be available to those who choose to update on their own schedule (after auditing the updates). They did this with Service Pack 1. They said something like, “You will need service pack 1 or you’ll never be able to update again.”
The bigger implication is that they can install anything they want whenever they want and that they just might do it sometime for they own benefit and not that of the customer.
Yes, but still… I don’t know how true this news is. You usually get a lot of this kind of thing on the Internet but I’ve never seen it happen myself (autoupdating without user permission).
Besides why do people keep connected to the internet all the time. That’s so stupid. It’s better to turn off the modem when you don’t want to use the internet and safer too…
I have to agree with hari. Besides things have become more secure these days. I’m not saying it’s completely safe, but it’s a lot safer than it was a while back.
From what I read on that link, it seems to me it’s somebody that had one bad experience or unusual one. Who knows he may have been drunk and did the update himself, or is making the entire thing up because he’s actually a Mac user.
I admit that MS is the PC OS Bully of the world, but I have been using Windows for many many years, even when it was on the Tandy and was just a green screen. Well it was MS-Dos really but you know… but I have not had any problems. Except with on version of their that didn’t stay on market very long until they got XP.
Besides, auto update is there for a reason. If you don’t update, then you have no reason to bitch about a security hack or whatever.
IMO whatever OS happens to be the dominant one will always be under attack, no matter what. If Mac Computer suddenly became the most popular OS, I’m sure it would end up being the target, same goes for Linux, and other OS’s.
I’ll stick with my XP and have my updates when they arrive thank you very much.
I guess that the Valium vendors have reached you both. I was too late. There is no reason to have updates happen automatically, without the end user/sysadmin having a chance to audit the “patch” and see if its actually a valid upgrade in their own situation. The issue here is that Microsoft may, indeed, be able to change your computer operating system without asking you. This means that they could potentially install anything that they wanted, including a keystroke logger, restrictive HOSTS file, etc. This could be the basis of another anititrust lawsuit if they choose to exercise it. The problem is that if this is true, they will likely become too powerful and entrenched to be stoppable. Perhaps I am being too paranoid, but this is still a great argument for using an operating system that has the code being audited by the entire world, rather than a few paid employees.
To clarify, I’m not supporting sneaky updates by the OS vendor.
All I’m saying is that it doesn’t happen to me.
besides if you install a third-party firewall, you can always monitor your network traffic and block unwanted connections. ZoneAlarm is a good option.
It’s the silly Windows Media Player and Apple iTunes which try to sneakily connect to the network, but you can block it, you know.
hari, you beat me to it. I was going to mention teh Media Player and iTunes too. LOL :p
Heh. This is jolly fun! The WMP and iTunes issue can be solved (along with all the rest) with a 10 minutes session with the SimplyMepis Live CD. Yep, it installs an entire operating system and many popular apps in about 10 minutes. Of course, if you want to go back to Microsoft’s spyware, you can with about 2 hours of installing and tweaking (if your network interface is supported without an external driver). No biggie.
MrCorey, you miss my point entirely. You know better than I do that I am a Linux fan myself. The point I wanted to make was that if you secure your network, nothing can be “automated”. And there are firewall solutions other than Microsoft if you don’t trust them.
That’s all I wanted to say.
Oh no, hari, I didn’t miss your point. I still think that it would be less work to replace Windows than it would be to secure your system against attack from your OS producer. Of course, I’d be a happier camper if I could just replace my ATI video card with an NVidia.
Haha… knew it MrCorey. just teasing you.
I use Linux 90% of the time, but there are still occasions which demand Windows 10% of the time. So I dual boot the OEM Vista and Debian on my laptop.
All in good fun.I decided to go the route of Debian with less work - Ubuntu 6.06 LTS. I’ve enabled the backports repository, so I’ll see if I can get a good balance from “stable” video and fresh software - without an update to x.org for a while. It seems to work alright with 7.0
Blog Drive-Bys for 2007-09-20 - Untwisted Vortex says:
[...] Thompson gave yet another reason why he prefers Linux over Windows. I receive the same newsletter and was appalled by Microsoft's behavior. [...]