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Stop Windows from calling home
Shades:
Disabling the services and other stuff with Xpy (or similar software) is a good thing in my book.
How many times should MS be informed about my system and what I do with it? Only once to see if my copy of Windows is legal. All the other communication is rather pointless and only benefits MS not me. Now you can claim that feedback will result in higher quality software, but I think that when you adhere to the software and hardware standards set by the whole industry the problems you will encounter will be never be as high as when you do things your way. A thing MS is known to do.
Did you check each time exactly what info is phoned home to MS? Or do you take their word for it? IIRC the newsletter Windows Secrets has reported several times that this info was not neutral and forced Microsoft to adjust their policies regarding the hoarding of info. Granted, this was all some time ago, but that should not be a reason to become complacent and let them revert back to their old ways.
Furthermore ,Windows messenger should be shot down on sight if you ask me, third party software is better,safer and has more features. Hence it is useless.
Same is true for Windows Media Player, especially version 9, 10 and 11 on XP. Since I don't have any experience with higher versions I will not say anything about those. But if their layout is created by the same person(s) who did 9, 10 or 11, they should be shamed into suicide for doing such a miserable job GUI-wise.
Guess I don't have to mention that a tool as nLite and Xpy have improved my computing life drastically. (Xpy on already installed systems and nLite for new stripped systems). After all, what is not there cannot break. And disabling some services reduces network "noise" considerably. If you have to transfer files like I have to (60GByte Oracle dump files) over a network which does not change on a regular basis, all services that poll for any change on any system in the network are useless for all my intends and purposes. Less noise means faster transferring of data. The earlier mentioned dump file takes 17 minutes to transfer on a 100MBit network.
Granted, the printer tool made by Stoic Joker will likely only work partially at best on my network...but hey, such is life (sorry Stoic Joker :(). With all those PC users out there you can bet that there are a lot of them that want to filter out (some of) the noise generated by running background services. There a lot of legit reasons besides catching the illegal copy.
Eóin:
Now you can claim that feedback will result in higher quality software, but I think that when you adhere to the software and hardware standards set by the whole industry the problems you will encounter will be never be as high as when you do things your way. A thing MS is known to do
-Shades (December 26, 2009, 01:48 PM)
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Care to elaborate?
f0dder:
Furthermore ,Windows messenger should be shot down on sight if you ask me, third party software is better,safer and has more features. Hence it is useless.-Shades (December 26, 2009, 01:48 PM)
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Safer? care to elaborate? And can you point out a MSN replacement that supports webcams?
I'm on pidgin myself, because MS shut down support for older MSN versions, and I can't stand the most recent version... but I wouldn't call pidgin or miranda better or safer, really.
Stoic Joker:
Granted, the printer tool made by Stoic Joker will likely only work partially at best on my network...but hey, such is life (sorry Stoic Joker :().-Shades (December 26, 2009, 01:48 PM)
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Sorry? Really... For What? ...Making assumptions about a program without having tried it? There is no "polling" cycle, the data is collected, displayed, done. The traffic generated during the (typically 14 second) scan is (with packets that are payload-less TCP overhead only) virtually none.
I have no problem with tweaking utilities (which this is), I even use a few from time to time. I just find the tone of its pitch as a privacy repair tool a bit over the top & foolish. Disabling the time service is absurd. You want to pick a different time server, fine. ...But good luck maintain reliable communication in a Windows Domain environment without it (Hint: Kerberos...).
Some of the noise is necessary, some is not, and blanket assumption/assertions are extremely dangerous if the what & why are not fully understood. ...Just look at nLites track record for leaving people with broken and dysfunctional systems because they didn't quite fully understand what they were being asked while Uber stripping there install.
There are no "Magic Bullets" for Privacy/Security and anything that perpetuates the rumor that there is ... is dangerous.
Stoic Joker:
Furthermore ,Windows messenger should be shot down on sight if you ask me, third party software is better,safer and has more features. Hence it is useless.-Shades (December 26, 2009, 01:48 PM)
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Safer? care to elaborate? And can you point out a MSN replacement that supports webcams?
-f0dder (December 26, 2009, 02:36 PM)
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I'm curious on that one myself, but I've found Skype to be acceptable for video calls. *Shrug* ...Just a thought.
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