On the limited account I went into Windows and
System32. I changed some things in the All Users
Start Menu. (I should note that I also remove
PCHealth in order to eliminate System File Protection
(known as Windows File Protection starting with Vista).
So I have no limitations on anything.)
Of course. It's hellish enough without them holding your hand
and slapping you around ALL the time.
If you want to run restricted in order to reduce the
actions that malware can take then I think you'd want
to convert to NTFS. (But you may not be able to
change back.)
There are utils out there, but I'm not going to NTFS anyway.
I still can't understand why NTFS would protect a computer
better than any other file system (well, specifically FATs.)
OTOH, some Linuxheads claim they are 100% immune, but that's
less and less true. Haiku may be immune since no one has even
heard of it. When this stupid XPHome/FAT32 gets infected with
some crap, I may go to Haiku. I have been playing around with
it and it's quite nice but (AFAICT) there are only like 50
people in the world working on the OS development and apps,
so...
Getting into the topic of the best online options brings
out lots of opinions. I don't enable script/cookies/3rd
party images/java/flash/iframes.
I never even HEARD of iframes until you mentioned them.
Anything that starts with i is not for me. I love music, and
the iPod killed music. People thought radio did, about a 100
years ago, but no, that was just a small hurdle. The iPod,
however, DID, IMO.
(Many mega-ads from companies
like Doubleclick/Google are put into iframes so that they
can bypass 3rd-party cookie blocking.
I don't care about cookies, and I don't block them, since I
have Opera set to accept everything and delete everything
when I shut it down. And OB1 has one cookie file which I
delete with one line of a general housecleaning batch file I
wrote years ago and which I have been successfully using as a
cleaner/backup to a "safe" partition, since I'm too shiftless
to do real backups.
[That is, I used to under 98SEL, I have to modify it, and I'm
probably going to have to run it from DOS (I put DOS 6.21 on
my C drive yesterday, XP is on E) just before XP boots, or
possibly under former 98SEL ("can't find win.com" etc, DOS
prompt) and then reboot into XP. SIGH.]
I think the Facebook
Like buttons may do the same thing.) Bill in CO says I'm
accessing a Stone Age Internet by doing that.
The Stone Age was a lot better than the WWW Age.
I think
a lot of people feel that way. I go online for research and
news, mostly. I *like* static webpages, without cartoons
jumping around while I'm trying to read.
These are truly holy words. Opera has a Flash block button,
an aniGIF block button, and a JS on/off button wich you can
put on the toolbar. I haven't found the Flash blocker in the
main config page of the latest version yet.
I do - for idiotic shit which is bound to generate spam, ID
theft attempts, or the dreaded "This is REALLY FUNNY!"
forwards from cretinous acquaintances.
and I don't take part in any sort of corporate-sponsored
social life. I also don't give credit card info. online. I
find what I want online, then call the store. If they don't
have a phone# I don't use them. (Not only for security. If
there's no phone# I can't call a human if there's a
problem. So, no Amazon or NewEgg.)
www.gethuman.com
and
http://whatis.techtarget.com/definition/0,,sid9_gci1163748,00.
html
Well, here we disagree. I know SO many people who will NOT
use a credit card online, even though I tell them - and I
believe it to be true, or I wouldn't - that it is ten
thousand times safer than giving it to the waiter in the
restaurant. In my case. 15 years of no problems prove it. I
should admit I don't buy more than 2-5 things per year
online. Still, OTOH, I did enjoy having my debit card cloned
and charged for about $150 of various stuff like fancy
chocolates and movies (the "other user" was actually quite
restrained) after getting some cash from an ATM in a
supermarket. I got the money back, of course - I guess banks
would rather absorb (ie charge us in other fees) than abandon
plastic. Can you IMAGINE life without plastic?
A lot of people would find that approach completely
unworkable. I find numerous sites with articles. Search
works fine. Serious websites mostly work fine. The things
that don't work are mostly the sites that depend high
interactivity or data mining and, therefore design their
pages not to work without script/cookies.
Being a miserable-and-grumpy-yet-romantic (and REALLY stupid)
old fart, I have in the past made the mistake of trying many
dating sites (a whole other subject).
Make a fake account and get on OKCupid, free. Look at the
javascript activity, and save a few files for analysis. I
don't understand coding, but I have NEVER seen javascripts
THAT huge, ANYWHERE. Of course, they tell you the site won't
work without JS on. (/Some/ things don't, but that's what the
"JS on/off" button in Opera is for.)
I half suspect they are backed by the NSA. I guess guys crazy
enough to look for love on the web just MIGHT be crazy enough
to try to bomb the congress, especially after a few dates
with assorted clones of Ms. "I liek too watch footbowl, runs
of that real old show "Trucker's Guide to the Ford Galaxy",
campin, hunts, and bod workouts, ALOT!". [sic]
This topic is never really confronted honestly by any
party.
Honesty........? I VAGUELY recall that word from MANY years
ago...
There was an interesting article last week about a woman
in Iceland who's shocked that the US gov. was able to force
Twitter to release her personal data as part of their
investigation into Wikileaks. She's been posting for free
on a commercial website but has imagined that she has
"rights". I see the same thing with Facebookers. They let a
corporation host their social life and spy on them. When
Facebook gets caught being sleazy the Facebookers are up in
arms, threatening to quit the free service.
But in no
time they've forgotten all about it.
Well, AFAIAC, anyone on facebook is a moron.
My all-time fave, and yet to be beaten AFAIK, is Yahoo
sending two Chinese guys to prison for life - or just to
their death, we'll never know. Incredible.
I currently run Pale Moon and Firefox. I use Pale Moon
for
most things. I use Firefox with script enabled if I need to
deal with a script-enabled site. I don't have any plugins
except DownloadHelper in Firefox.
www.offbyone.com
No JS, no css, no flash, no nothing. Until proven otherwise,
100% safe. AND clean - very limited "artistic web design".
| Speaking of Flash - are the latest AV programs (like my
| ESET NOD32) capable of finding malware in them, or do
| they just skip them, like they skip avi and jpg (and
| other) files... ?
I don't know the details of flash exploits, whether
it involves corrupt files or programmatic exploits. The
problem with AV is that a lot of exploits are using
approaches that are not yet known. It used to be
virus definitions required a monthly 1 MB update. Now
it's 40 MB every time one boots the computer. Yet
there are always new exploits. I don't think AV is good
for much other than watching for suspicious disk activity.
It's a big business, and web paranoia is more popular than
ever. Everyone is so scared they spend millions on AV
programs who hire PR companies to write their scare blurbs,
while in reality, if you know a few basics and can control
yourself, you don't even need an AV program. And in ANY case,
at least in my experience, if you DO get infected, half the
time you have to reformat ANYWAY, and in more than one case,
even that did NOT do the job for me. I don't even like to
think about it. That's why I'm on XP with a lot of stuff
disabled and a lot of stuff blocked with the Agnitum FW - it
just happened ONCE too many times on 98SELite, and not a
single one of the 4 best anti-malware/AV progs found
anything, of course. Perhaps an MS timebomb. I already talked
about it - this thread kind of started as a by-product of
that, IIRC.
| > With FAT32 you can't have a limited account.
|
| Well, I do have it. I can post a grab of the logon screen
| for you.
Yes, but, as noted above, it's really only doing what the
same thing did in Win9x -- saving Desktop layout, etc. for
each person.
Yes, and having to set up EVERY damn program FROM SCRATCH
when I THOUGHT I CLONED the admin account is a REAL PITA!
It DOES show about a third of running processes (using the MS
crap, TaskInfo shows everything, of course), and I can't
access the FW settings, so it DOES seem to be limited in
certain ways.
XP was designed to be a corporate workstation.
In that usage it's always on NTFS, and it's designed to
cater to the needs of corporate sys. admins. So whether
you're on FAT32 or NTFS, the Admin GUI is the same.
(Which is actually quite odd. FAT32 was the default for
OEM PCs when XP first came out.)
I remember a surprisingly honest MS rep saying to my boss
"You don't need NT, 95 is just fine for you guys". I am sure
he has not been heard from since.
The Documents and Settings folder is a ridiculous mess.
And that's all before you create users! If you delete
any extra accounts and disable Guest you can skip
the logon screen altogether. You may as well, unless
you have kids using your PC and don't want them
changing your wallpaper.
I am fairly certain it would cause many problems. The amount
of stuff in there which should be in ini files (and IS in a
few really good programs), or at least the registry (which is
a nice warm puppy compared to Docs&Sets), is unbelievable. I
have yet to get around to writing an additional batch file to
get rid of all the new crap which grows like mushrooms after
every online session and after every week of just USING the
machine. It's a nightmare.
| XP Home SP3, BTW. I don't know if this makes any
| difference. I tried XP Pro but it was too insane for me.
| Messing with the group policy sort of did me in... It's
| not avail. in TweakUI running under XPHome, and a good
| thing, too.
That's not exactly true. Group Policy is another thing
designed for corporate sys. admins. The applet is only
installed on Pro, but the settings apply on all XP
machines.
I know, but I really fubared the machine playing with it when
I was cautiously experimenting with XP a year or two ago...
So it's just as well I don't have easy access to those
settings...
A little knowledge... you know....
Remember the IE-MD utility I posted about before? One
of the functions in that sets 8 different Registry settings
for each single security setting in each IE zone! There's
normal HKLM and HKCU, Lockdown HKLM and HKCU, then
there's the same 4 under the Software\Policy key.
Where's my Advil? I have IE and a few other MS "gifts"
blocked in the FW. End of /my/ IE story.
Since
the whole thing is designed for corporate use, someone
using IE will only see their own settings under HKCU,
regardless of which settings are actually being applied!
So you can't escape the Group Policy mess...and malware
could exploit it.
/THEY/ can't escape it. No one has ever touched this machine
since thanatoids don't have families or friends, so I don't
have to worry about group policies, and which is why the fact
XP is designed for a "bunch" of people drives me insane - not
to mention it is ESSENTIALLY inconsistent with Gates's wish
of "a computer on every desk in the world", or whatever it
was.
Or would you answer, 'Never have I heard anything
more divine'?
I guess that depends on what I did last time. It's
an interesting thought experiement to highlight the true
nature of freedom. (We are free to relate to what is.)
But I don't understand why Nietzsche (sp?) said it.
I prefer Schopenhauer, but I thought it was a nice quote. I
have NO idea where I ran across it.
--
What if a demon were to creep after you one night, in your
loneliest loneliness, and say, 'This life which you live must
be lived by you once again and innumerable times more; and
every pain and joy and thought and sigh must come again to
you, all in the same sequence. The eternal hourglass will
again and again be turned and you with it, dust of the dust!'
Would you throw yourself down and gnash your teeth and curse
that demon? Or would you answer, 'Never have I heard anything
more divine'? Friedrich Nietzsche
