Microsoft Removes Wi-Fi Sense Feature From Windows 10 Which Shared Your Wi-Fi Password 190
Microsoft says it has removed the controversial Wi-Fi Sense feature that shared a user's password with their friends and people in the contact list. "We have removed the Wi-Fi Sense feature that allows you to share Wi-Fi networks with your contacts and to be automatically connected to networks shared by your contacts," says Microsoft's Gabe Aul. "The cost of updating the code to keep this feature working combined with low usage and low demand made this not worth further investment." Ben Woods, writing for The Next Web: The feature allows you to share Wi-Fi login information with friends automatically via your contacts, however it got a controversial reception due to privacy implications. Do you really want to share your Wi-Fi codes with everyone in your contacts? No, of course not. It seems that was the general response from users too, so that option will be removed in the upcoming Windows 10 Insider Preview update, Microsoft says. Public Wi-Fi login info will remain in the app though.
Can we get them to remove other annoyances? (Score:3, Insightful)
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It was the telemetry that told them this future was not used much hence the reason for it being removed.
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Oh shit, Microsoft has the ability to remove the future? We're all doomed, DOOMED!
Re: Can we get them to remove other annoyances? (Score:2)
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Brought to you by the makers of the email and document virus.
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Surveys in the Insider builds make perfect sense and are to be expected given that those builds are designed to gather feedback from users to be incorporated in future updates and are not supposed to be used on primary or production systems.
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How about removing all the so-called 'telemetry' and other privacy-invading malware bullshit and return control of peoples' computers to the people who own and operate them? Or will not being assholes cut into your profit margin too much?
Telemetry would be fine if we could trust that it was completely non-identifying . Telemetry is how they knew almost no one was using this "feature" after all.
I don't trust them to not make use of identifying stuff and / or using and selling the info to advertisers though. Anything more than "this feature is being used, and that one isn't" with no machine / personal identification is too much. I can understand wanting to know about how many OS installs there are and how many times each feature is e
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This message brought to you by Microsoft...
Re:Can we get them to remove other annoyances? (Score:4, Insightful)
"but the fact of that matter is that this level of data reporting has been included in the three prior versions of Windows"
You had the option to turn it off, dipshit. That's the whole fucking point.
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We know that Microsoft has paid shills. The game is to figure out who they are. The hard part is that so many naive people are rabid Microsoft fans, refusing to believe that their heroes can do anything wrong, or younger engineers who have been in the Windows monoculture since birth and so lack relevant breadth of experience.
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I think we can be fairly confident that someone who compares the telemetry data of Vista and Windows 7 to the fundamental nature of the telemetry system in Windows 10, while not mentioning previous versions it could be completely disabled, is very likely a shill.
Does a sockpuppet by any other name... (Score:2)
We know that Microsoft has paid shills. The game is to figure out who they are. The hard part is that so many naive people are rabid Microsoft fans, refusing to believe that their heroes can do anything wrong, or younger engineers who have been in the Windows monoculture since birth and so lack relevant breadth of experience.
Does a sockpuppet by any other name sound as shrill?
Two Words: Persona Management [dailykos.com]
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But it's pretty obvious you are a paid shill.
If you're not, then you're just a moron.
I vote for both.
Re:Can we get them to remove other annoyances? (Score:4, Informative)
... the fact of that matter is that this level of data reporting has been included in the three prior versions of Windows.
[citation_needed]
The telemetry nonsense was included in Windows 10 and then backported to Windows 7, 8, and 8.1 [slashdot.org] not all that long ago. That was also a scuzzy move, and implying that the tracking's been there all along and nobody cared is flat out wrong.
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> a scuzzy move
Are you sure it wasn't an IDE move?
I'll see myself out.
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That's enough SAS for one day...
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Re:Can we get them to remove other annoyances? (Score:5, Insightful)
> Did you complain about the so-called telemetry in Vista, 7, or 8?
Windows 7 and 8 didn't have it 10-style until 10 launched. It is possible to run 7 without telemetry, and out of the box, 7 doesn't have it. So if people aren't complaining about it, it is ultimately because it doesn't exist. Certainly not the way it does in 10.
> Do you complain about it Android?
I'm pretty sure you can turn it off in Android. I know you can in ios. More importantly, phones are generally poor at privacy, because they must, by nature, broadcast your location constantly. To make this worse, there's no truly open phone.
But just because phones suck doesn't mean desktops should. This does not excuse Microsoft's behavior in Windows 10. Windows 10 runs on a real machine, it is far more capable than a phone, and you could easily have most or all of your electronic life in there, and many do. It is disgusting to switch that to some kind of system that rings the mothership everytime you launch notepad, such that some profile about you exists for how you edit your damned files.
Comment removed (Score:5, Interesting)
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Did you complain about the so-called telemetry in Vista, 7, or 8?
I'm still running XP at home, because I didn't give enough of a damn to go to all the hassle of upgrading.. and truth be told I didn't know about any 'telemetry' in Win7 anyway, but had I known I would've been pissed about that, too.
Current plans are some flavor of Linux. When I get around to it. There's only one piece of software I have that has only a Windows-only version, and I can get around that easily enough. No way in hell I'll accept any Microsoft OS on any machine I own anymore, if this is the way
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I'm still running XP at home, because I didn't give enough of a damn to go to all the hassle of upgrading.. and truth be told I didn't know about any 'telemetry' in Win7 anyway, but had I known I would've been pissed about that, too.
Maybe Ubuntu LTS or Debian? Beware that Ubuntu only offers security updates for their small main repository. Or something like CentOS; that will reduce your need to upgrade a lot.
Current plans are some flavor of Linux. When I get around to it. There's only one piece of software I have that has only a Windows-only version, and I can get around that easily enough.
Wine is also really great these days, it even runs a .NET app I threw at it, using it's Mono support.
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Did you complain about the so-called telemetry in Vista, 7, or 8?
HELLLLL YES.
Do you complain about it Android?
There is nothing to complain about. Android is open source and does not have built in spyware. (Google play services != Android)
Or are you just focusing on it because Microsoft was the ONLY corporation that reworded their legal liability notices so they were written in plain English?
I don't think anyone gives a shit honestly.
I'm not defending them, I'm not saying it's an acceptable thing, but the fact of that matter is that this level of data reporting has been included in the three prior versions of Windows, AND is done in many other products in on the market (some to far greater extents).
Then what are you saying? That two wrongs make a right? That because someone else does it then it must be ok? What is your point?
The only reason people have this incorrect belief that Windows 10 is particularly bad (hint: it's not) is because Microsoft was up front about it.
I think the belief stems from reading Microsoft's own documentation about what the software does and reading their own privacy policies about what they grant themselves the right to do and simply
Re:Can we get them to remove other annoyances? (Score:5, Insightful)
> How about you just don't fucking buy it and stop whining.
Well, Windows 10 has been pretty clever about sneaking into machines and installing itself, in the process downgrading your "pro" 7 install to a "home" one. So some victims of Windows 10 didn't consent, they were tricked.
If you used Windows 7 (a pretty good OS!), you might expect that, at some point, Microsoft would make another good OS. It's reasonable to be disappointed or even angry that they have not.
And you said it yourself- Microsoft is obsessed with capturing what you do and sending it to their servers. This means that someone must obviously care what people are doing on computers, because there is such a huge pressure to make that happen.
I can't disagree with your overall point though: the solution is to stop using Windows. If Windows users continue to put up with anything, then "anything" is exactly what they will get.
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Well, Windows 10 has been pretty clever about sneaking into machines and installing itself,
It asked to upgrade and people said yes; and then worst case the upgrade happened weeks or months later instead of immediately so that they forgot. I concede its a bit malware-ish since people click without reading. But in the end its the same as adobe reader "sneaking" the adobe reader DC upgrade onto machines with Adobe Reader X.
in the process downgrading your "pro" 7 install to a "home" one.
I've never heard of that ever happening, and a quick google didn't bring up a storm of outrage either. So... cite?
So some victims of Windows 10 didn't consent, they were tricked.
http://winsupersite.com/window... [winsupersite.com]
Even Adobe Reader doesn't have
Re:Can we get them to remove other annoyances? (Score:5, Informative)
The messages use a variety of misleading text. For example, my wife was tricked into upgrading to Windows10 because after clicking "no thanks" a certain number of times, it eventually asked her "do you want to upgrade to Windows 10 now, or later?" and she clicked "later", meaning "never", but it installed it later that day, assuming it had permission.
if you want to argue that TECHNICALLY she agreed to install it, fine, but in my opinion when a major avenue of adoption is tricking its users into installing it, that is pretty much the definition of evil.
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The messages use a variety of misleading text. For example, my wife was tricked into upgrading to Windows10 because after clicking "no thanks" a certain number of times, it eventually asked her "do you want to upgrade to Windows 10 now, or later?"
Nope. Your wife or someone else WAY back comitted to doing the upgrade. They clicked, "yes I want to install the upgrade when its available; reserve it now and let me know when its ready" or something along those lines.
THAT was the opt-in or opt-out.
Everything AFTER that, all those "Do you want to complete your upgrade to windows 10 now?" boxes your wife declined for the last few months ... it wasn't asking permission to install wiindows 10. It was asking to COMPLETE the installation of windows 10 that had
Re:Can we get them to remove other annoyances? (Score:5, Insightful)
haha, why are you bothering to defend this horrible practice?
she did not want the upgrade. somehow it wound up on there. there are THOUSANDS of people with the same story. you want to write a book on why she TECHNICALLY must have agreed to install it at some point, fine, but the bottom line is she was tricked into installing it, and her story is an extremely common one. It's a shitty tactic and it's creating millions of brand new microsoft haters who previously didn't really have an opinion on the company.
Re:Can we get them to remove other annoyances? (Score:4, Informative)
Nope. Your wife or someone else WAY back comitted to doing the upgrade. They clicked, "yes I want to install the upgrade when its available; reserve it now and let me know when its ready" or something along those lines.
It's still a bait-and-switch. I had initially opted into that, before it was known that they were going to have all the telemetry and other assorted bullshit in the final version. So naturally, I wanted to later opt out of it.
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The messages use a variety of misleading text. For example, my wife was tricked into upgrading to Windows10 because after clicking "no thanks" a certain number of times, it eventually asked her "do you want to upgrade to Windows 10 now, or later?"
Nope. Your wife or someone else WAY back comitted to doing the upgrade. They clicked, "yes I want to install the upgrade when its available; reserve it now and let me know when its ready" or something along those lines.
THAT was the opt-in or opt-out.
Negative. I have several machines I went through the update process. I also have Win7 on an IMac in a i5 Mid 2011 edition that simply cannot run Windows 10 Will not work with that version of Bootcamp. Yet Microsoft pushed everything to upgrade onto the computer without permission, and it has been trying like hell to get me to upgrade. It is hard for me to believe that I - as you suggest - deliberately told Microsoft to Download an OS that computer will not run. Weird-ass little windows pop up as well, wit
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> So... cite?
I'm wrong on this.
My mistake was that "Home Premium" and "Home Basic" both map to "Home", which loses the "Premium" options, such as Windows Media Player. I internalized that as "Pro" becoming "Home", which does not happen. "Pro" becomes "Pro".
Other things:
The ability to revert doesn't excuse the forced upgrade in the first place. Having to mess with wusa and kb numbers to keep Windows 10 off your box is flat out disgusting. Changing the upgrade category to make it get picked up by users
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Having to mess with wusa and kb numbers to keep Windows 10 off your box is flat out disgusting.
Yeah, you don't have to that. Not reserving your copy or whatever its called is sufficient to keep it sitting there idly forevor. It doesn't force windows 10 itself on you.
I do agree the GWX program itself was too difficult to silence.
I bet they were afraid of a lawsuit or something, frankly
You'd have thought that would have come up when the feature was proposed in beta and the negative press started ramping up.
The correct use of "telemetry" for me and many others is "never". The fact that Microsoft makes this difficult is ludicrous.
I completely agree. Although telemetry blockers have stepped in to fill the gap. But I completely agree you shouldn't have to use a 3rd party tool for th
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That windows 10 home was replacing 7 pro...
It might as well be, in some respects. Windows 10 Pro is not like Windows 7 Pro.
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> How about you just don't fucking buy it and stop whining.
Well, Windows 10 has been pretty clever about sneaking into machines and installing itself, in the process downgrading your "pro" 7 install to a "home" one. So some victims of Windows 10 didn't consent, they were tricked.
If you used Windows 7 (a pretty good OS!), you might expect that, at some point, Microsoft would make another good OS. It's reasonable to be disappointed or even angry that they have not.
Notice how Win10 features (OS) are making their way into Win7? GWX which I consider "spyware"' shows up at random times. X:\windows\GWX did last night and I just delete the directory as normal. I Can't call it the cause as more was going on, but I can't boot into Win7 now, an error message does read cause it can't find a component in the GWX dir...
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No, I'm wrong on that, as I stated here:
https://slashdot.org/comments.... [slashdot.org]
"My mistake was that "Home Premium" and "Home Basic" both map to "Home", which loses the "Premium" options, such as Windows Media Player. I internalized that as "Pro" becoming "Home", which does not happen. "Pro" becomes "Pro"."
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We're talking about Windows 10. Why derail the conversation by mentioning cool shit?
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Not only do I care about privacy and security personally, but from a business point of view, some of us literally can't install Windows 10 at work. Since we're dealing with other people's sensitive information, having a system that phones home in unknown ways and can update itself however it wants without knowledge or consent is just a complete deal-breaker.
They left out a clause (Score:3, Insightful)
Now that Microsoft knows 90% of its users' wireless passwords, We have removed the Wi-Fi Sense feature
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75% of those passwords are variations of 'password' anyways, so not really a big haul on their part.
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P@ssw0rd12345
They already had it years ago. (Score:2)
Wifi password? You gave them root, the system stores wifi passwords in plain text right out in the open.
Translation (Score:4, Interesting)
Okay, fine. We'll remove this feature. But not because everyone flipped their shit and hated it. The only reason we're removing it is because it was cost effective to do so. If we could have found a way to profit off of it, you can bet your pimply ass that it would still be in there and on by default.
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It's probably just a face-saving excuse.
Option removed (Score:2, Insightful)
... so that option will be removed in the upcoming Windows 10
Of course, we'll keep *collecting* that information ... 'cause it's Windows 10, which is all about data collection. /cynical
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Re: Option removed (Score:2)
Your home isn't the only wireless... (Score:2)
Honestly, I thought this was a very useful feature for small businesses that had wifi with a simple password.
I noticed quite a few friends had the same idea as me, because I would go into a new coffee shop and my laptop could connect right away because one of my friends already checked the wifi sense box.
Now, I know no one that did this on their home network. However, for networks like a coffee shop or hotel, it is great.
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These wifi should not have a password in the first place if the intent is to have anybody connecting.
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The intent is that you need to go ask someone at the store what the wifi password is, or find it on a menu.
I agree, it is stupid, but it still exists, and the wifi sense feature made it less of a hassle.
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Bad idea. How do you know this coffee shop is safe? Only because your friend was naive enough to trust it? The one place you should never trust anything is in a coffee shop, how do you know it's not someone sitting at another table pretending to be the coffee shop? Extremely bad idea.
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What are you going on about? Safe Internet? What's that?
I don't trust password-protected wireless any more than I trust open wireless, or my Comcast connection.
Anything I do over the Internet that needs any sort of security is going over AES-256 encryption. The encryption of wireless is only somewhat useful to make sure people don't use wireless they shouldn't have access to.
Wifi-CommonSense (Score:2, Insightful)
Windows 10 can just hack out features? (Score:5, Interesting)
I understand Windows 10 is more of a rolling release than previous versions were, but this is insane. Are they going to "update" out things that I bought from the Windows Store because they weren't terribly popular as well? Imagine if you took your car in for maintenance and they took out your parking camera because nobody used it....
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This has liability and security issues and Facebook friends / email contacts is way to broad.
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They learned it from Sony. Please see "Other OS" on the PS3.
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Microsoft issued patch MS16-928167 which patched vulnerability CVE-2016-989374 which would allow a remote attacker to obtain administrator...
I *used* that vulneratibility! Can Microsoft just "update" it out? I was pulling in 5 bitcoins a week with that one! Can microsoft just remove that because it was seen as a so-called "security" problem? Clearly it was very popular judging from then number of people who paid for me to decrypt their files.
(jk)
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Welcome to Software as a Service (SAS). You didn't buy Windows 10, you paid to grant Microsoft a licence to fuck with your computer whenever they feel like it in exchange for whatever services they see fit to hand down.
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You must be referring to Edge, probably the worst browser developed in the last 20 years. I'd get a better experience using the nightly build of Firefox. What an unbelievable hunk of junk.
Get's them out of liability issues with that (Score:2)
Get's them out of liability issues with that.
That makes no Sense (Score:2)
Wow, they listen to their users? (Score:4, Insightful)
Who would have thought that there is low demand for a "feature" that broadcasts your passwords to others?
Hey, MS, allow me to let you in on a secret: There's also really low demand for the thousand "apps" that nobody needs, can't be uninstalled and take up unnecessary space on the drive and the start menu (where you ALSO cannot get rid of them), and there is really low demand for updates we can't turn off.
Maybe you could discover this great revelation next?
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There's also really low demand for the thousand "apps" that nobody needs
You don't know that, you don't have the hard data.
Microsoft does...
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You can actually name someone who really thinks it's a great idea that you cannot uninstall apps you don't need? Aside of the apps' maker, of course?
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The real problem explained (Score:4, Insightful)
The problem wasn't so much that you could share access to your network with your friends - it was that if you gave your WiFi password to someone (which what the majority of people do when they visit someone elses house) then you had to make sure that they didn't share access to your network with their friends.
The problem is that Microsoft cannot differentiate between someone who has the WiFi password because they own the connection and someone who has the WiFi password because they were told it. Microsoft made the assumption that if you have the password, then you have the right to offer that connection to others - but this is not what happens in the "real world".
Because of this incorrect assumption, the onus was suddenly placed on the owner of the WiFi (who does decide to provide their password) to police the entry of it into Windows 10 devices to ensure that a bunch of random people that they have never met aren't suddenly allowed to use their network.
That was why it was an issue.
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Of course you could just go an change your SSID to end _optout which is what I did, but that was super annoying as every WiFi connected device needed updating.
The problem with this is that most people didn't have a clue what was going on. I know my family members where not impressed at all with Microsoft when I explained why I was changing the SSID on all the hotspots. It was a universal WTF.
The "tech" solution of course is to have a separate SSID for guests that can't access anything on your internal netwo
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The worst part is you can't opt out of allowing people to share the password. They tried to offer a way to do it, but adding "_optout" to the end of your SSID, but this conflicts with other opt outs like the Mozilla Location Services one which requires "_nomap".
What about collected passwords (Score:2)
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A lot of folks I know have their password in a QR code.
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Re:I actually liked this feature (Score:4, Funny)
A lot of folks I know have their password in a QR code.
Oh! That's an awesome idea. I need to put one of those up by my front door.
Just leave your house key at the door so they can just go read the password off the post-it -- we all -- have taped to the bottom of the router.
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Also, I don't really understand why everyone even secures their wifi. I leave guest mode open. You can use my bandwidth and my devices are fairly secured against attack already.
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Well, if you don't secure the WiFi, you're broadcasting all your packets in plain text.
Don't look at WPA2 as access control only, it's also providing channel encryption.
Guest networks (isolated from the main one) are a nice idea but they should be secured anyway for the sake of the guests.
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Security is the opposite of convenience. This is why many companies have lousy security because they don't want to inconvenience customers, and even corporate alliance standards can water down security because they want their products to be popular.
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Obviously I meant inside and I've never written down a password in my life since not all of us are idiots? Also, I don't really understand why everyone even secures their wifi. I leave guest mode open. You can use my bandwidth and my devices are fairly secured against attack already.
Two questions.
1) May have your address please? I have spam campaign I'd like to launch an since you're so generous with your Internet access...
2) Who would like to pick the over/under date for when this trusting soul has his "fairly secured" shit pwned?
Dude. We are well past the point in time where your behavior moved from "generous" to irresponsible. Lock down your fucking WLAN.
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Heh... There's a guest channel, specifically for company, at my home. You can use it all you want. I'm probably going to notice you, so you might as well come in for a drink.
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C'mon over. You're gonna need to sit in the driveway or come inside. My home is 24 miles from the village and at the end of a 1/2 mile drive. Your cantenna isn't going to cut it. So, when they come looking I'll be able to see the logs and say, "Ah ha! I know who it was. In fact, here's my firewall logs. No, you can have those without a warrant, fuck that guy."
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Holy crap, how do you know that? Were you in my house?
ha-ha, I used a Brother label! it's staying on! (Score:2)
that's login persistence, thank you very much.
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There were many many reasons this was a bad idea. "Crowdsourcing" the trust in random access points is stupid, unless you have verified that all your friends have adequate security. Ie, I have a friend who does stupid stuff all the time, things like joining wifi at restaurants or coffee shops, trusting that Yelp tells the truth, installing every app ever invented, etc. I would not trust his recommendations that a wifi access point is safe, ever. Enter the password once and that's the end of it.
And yet s
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Re:How about adding back ip over firewire? (Score:4, Insightful)
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This is why I love Slashdot. People (like you) are obsessed with comically niche features like IP over Firewire, which is utterly irrelevant, and yet you're too blind to reality to realize it.
This is why I love Slashdot. People (like you) are obsessed with cherry picking comments of random posters to establish (insert trend/meme here) is a real sentiment shared by some undisclosed subset of "you people".
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It was rather useful for device-to-device networking - direct connection at 400 or 800Mbps. I think the bigger complaint was that it was simply dropped when other consumer operating systems still support it. However, if he's still complaining about something that was dropped ten years ago, it's time to move on to a different OS if he's that bound to it.
SSH, on the other hand - that's my single biggest feature request for Windows....
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Actually if the router is visible then an e-ink display showing a qr code would be updatable and work great.
Actually that is a good initial security set up too. The code can be randomized at initial boot of the access point. Once a master password is created the display can be used for one time passwords that last for X hours as determined in the settings. The master password works all the time.
So your devices can get online all the time but new temporary 12-24 hour passwords are created daily for guests.
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And nothing of value was lost. Seriously. Stop with the spam. It's annoying and off topic.
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It was a dupe of this story [slashdot.org] from last Friday, maybe they removed it.