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MessiahAndrw wrote:On personal risk level, trusting a restaurant is more risky, for me, than trusting software I install on my computer. Food has the potential to be poisioness, infect me, make me sick, shorten my lifespan, lead to long term side effects.

Bad software has the potential to kill my computer, steal my money (which I often look at my bank statement and would report this to my bank), spam people on my Facebook, etc. Bad, but at least I'm healthy, alive, and have the support of my friends and family to recover.

Of course, that's true. But if a restaurant would poison its visitors, I guess it would be much more difficult to hide this than if they would steal some data and give it to a third party. Therefore I consider the probability of a restaurant poisoning people much smaller that any kind of digital fraud.

I agree but that's slightly beyond the control of the software I install on my PC. Once you interact over a network, how can we trust the server? Even a site claims to use open source software, how do you know the software running on the server hasn't been modified to add security exploits? We have to trust other people to some point.

Of course you only have to trust only those companies whose services you wish to use. You can also choose not to use their services at all.

I use Facebook, and I understand it's beyond my control once Facebook gets my pictures and posts, so I only post stuff on Facebook that I wouldn't care if my employer/government/worst enemy/stranger saw it. I occasionally order stuff online, so I've trusted websites with my credit card and address, but I know my bank takes fraud seriously (and they call me if I make a big order online to confirm it's me).

That's exactly my point. You choose whom to trust and what data to give to them.

You have to trust closed source stuff to some point, or you're missing out on much of what modern culture has to offer - online shopping, social media, video games, mobile phones, GPS navigation. Just use common sense. If security is your biggest reason to not use priority software, why not build a second computer that's kept offline that you out your sensitive data on.

The question is: How much of your privacy do you want to sacrifice for this modern culture? Personally, I consider my privacy more important than online shopping, social media or mobile phones, so I don't use them. But of course, everyone has to make this decision for himself.

iansjack wrote:If you're stupid enough to use Facebook, or other social media, then you have only yourself to blame, and you should have far greater concerns than what use Government is making of that data.

See, that's what I meant. You have reason to mistrust them, and so you don't use their services.

I've deactivated (boycott) my Ask.fm account today. I'm glad that I've realized that early on, I've already wasted a lot of time on using it. They don't know how to talk, how to respect others. They hurt people due to their looks. There is no place there for intellectuals, thinkers, or intelligent people. Ask.fm people are just talking animals with no manners.

Without wishing to drag this off-topic, your signature displays an unhealthy degree of paranoia. No-one here (that I am aware of) cares about your religion or nationality, just what you post.

I take it as an insult to the members of this forum that you make such a statement. And, for that, I will choose to ignore you.

XenOS wrote:

MessiahAndrw wrote:On personal risk level, trusting a restaurant is more risky, for me, than trusting software I install on my computer. Food has the potential to be poisioness, infect me, make me sick, shorten my lifespan, lead to long term side effects.

Bad software has the potential to kill my computer, steal my money (which I often look at my bank statement and would report this to my bank), spam people on my Facebook, etc. Bad, but at least I'm healthy, alive, and have the support of my friends and family to recover.

Of course, that's true. But if a restaurant would poison its visitors, I guess it would be much more difficult to hide this than if they would steal some data and give it to a third party. Therefore I consider the probability of a restaurant poisoning people much smaller that any kind of digital fraud.

Unless the restaurant publishes the recipe (and you trust the chefs to follow the recipe), the kitchen and the food is a black box. If you eat there everyday for lunch - do you know the long term effects of the food? Is it nutritious? Will it make you fat? What if you get a bacterial infection because their hygiene standards are not so good? Or they buy their ingredients from a farmer that uses a pesticide that over the years can accumulate in your body and slowly kill you if you continue to eat it?

iansjack wrote:Without wishing to drag this off-topic, your signature displays an unhealthy degree of paranoia. No-one here (that I am aware of) cares about your religion or nationality, just what you post.

I take it as an insult to the members of this forum that you make such a statement. And, for that, I will choose to ignore you.

Removed that signature.
I admit that I had just gone crazy.

Websites: None really. There are sites that I avoid because I don't like their content, or I have no need for them. But I don't specifically boycott a site because of morals/ethics or whatever.

Software: Anything Microsoft, except when I have to fix my mother's Windows computer or call someone on Skype or do anything else that I can't do (or am too lazy to set up) under Linux, which is not much if I can help it. Also anything Apple after OS X ("classic" Apple rocks!). Any freeware that is not open-source- if you're not earning from it, let us improve it ourselves. Any "commercial" or "proprietary" utility software e.g. backup software, encryption software, antivirus software (where needed) etc. - don't charge people for basic necessities, or lock people into using your product because you can't e.g. open your backup with another program. Strictly no "software as a service" - don't cripple my software just because I ran out of money; let me keep what I've paid for.

I'm not strict when it comes to these things, and I'll deal with them when absolutely necessary. So I'll run free but not open-source graphics drivers. I'll install the not open-source programming utility for my microcontroller on my Linux system. I'll use "software as a service" if everyone in the office needs it on their laptops. But otherwise I'll avoid these things at all costs.

MessiahAndrw wrote:Unless the restaurant publishes the recipe (and you trust the chefs to follow the recipe), the kitchen and the food is a black box. If you eat there everyday for lunch - do you know the long term effects of the food? Is it nutritious? Will it make you fat? What if you get a bacterial infection because their hygiene standards are not so good? Or they buy their ingredients from a farmer that uses a pesticide that over the years can accumulate in your body and slowly kill you if you continue to eat it?

Under that aspect I wouldn't be able to eat anything at all, no matter whether in that particular restaurant or anywhere else. I couldn't buy any food, and even if I grew my own food it would still be under the unavoidable global influence of the atmosphere. The only way to exclude any unknown influence on my food is to eat nothing at all, and that would certainly kill me.

So the question here is not how to avoid any possible unknown external influence, but to reduce it as much as reasonably possible without causing even more trouble.

On Windows, anything that is only and unnecessarily supplied in a form of an installer.
Sure, if it's, i.e., Virtualbox that needs to install drivers and services - go ahead.
But if it's some small program like a hex editor or a SSTV reader, then there really is no excuse to supply it as an installer at all, less so only.

There is a good correlation between whether a program is portable and it's usability/quality, with few exceptions.

Artlav wrote:On Windows, anything that is only and unnecessarily supplied in a form of an installer.
Sure, if it's, i.e., Virtualbox that needs to install drivers and services - go ahead.
But if it's some small program like a hex editor or a SSTV reader, then there really is no excuse to supply it as an installer at all, less so only.

There is a good correlation between whether a program is portable and it's usability/quality, with few exceptions.

Yeah, it really annoys me when something is an installer when it doesn't need to be. Apart from the issue of "what else is it installing?" there's the issue of that extra installers just means more registery clutter and similar clutter in other parts of the operating system (I'm talking about Windows here, where excessive installers are most prominent and problematic) which just slows everything down.

Also, you use SSTV?

EDIT: Actually I don't so much mind an installer for a small utility, but there are worse things that have installers e.g. help files. Seriously, I don't need something to "install" help files for me!

EDIT 2: lol sorry about the SSTV question; thought you were talking about CCTV magnification, like what partially-sighted people use to read printed documents.

onlyonemac wrote:e.g. help files. Seriously, I don't need something to "install" help files for me!

Help files as in *.hlp?
Weren't they broken since forever?

onlyonemac wrote:thought you were talking about CCTV magnification, like what partially-sighted people use to read printed documents.

No, SSTV as in the method you use to transmit pictures over amateur radio, or just encode them as sound.

Artlav wrote:

onlyonemac wrote:e.g. help files. Seriously, I don't need something to "install" help files for me!

Help files as in *.hlp?
Weren't they broken since forever?

No, as in .pdf or .html files. Basically a .msi file to ask me where I want to save the .pdf or .html files, and then put them there - or more often to just assume that I want them either a) scattered all over my desktop b) in the ROOT of my Start Menu or c) in a folder called "help_fiels" in my Documents library (I've seen all three of those). [sarcasm]Oh, and there's the added bonus that if I'm too lazy (or incompetent) to gather them up myself, then I can always just go to the "Add/Remove Programs" function and uninstall them from there.[/sarcasm]

Artlav wrote:No, SSTV as in the method you use to transmit pictures over amateur radio, or just encode them as sound.

I know what SSTV is.

google search engine because it collects data. I transitioned to duckduckgo. Chrome is lightning fast and nice but lot of compatibility issues, so no choice but switch back to slower firefox. Not boycotting chrome though.

sony and surface laptop/tablets, they are miserable quality.

Local news site: sfgate.com, mercurynews.com - as they are infested with adware so much, it brings not only browser but entire computer to a crawl.

wsj article that attempts to have user pay for their articles. I think they are living in age of dinosaurs.

Free anti-viruses (McAfee, Avast, etc) - pure garbage IMHO.
Any websites that use Adobe Flash.
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BTW, about Google collecting your data: I'm cool with that. I don't think that FBI or CIA are going to read my mail or look at my search results. Even if they do - I don't really care. I really doubt that my search results are somewhat amazingly different from other people. Main thing why they are doing that - AdWords. I do support ads on youtube or google. All of its content is free, and by watching some little advertisement, I can "repay" content creators. I think it's fair enough.