for the romantic dreamers...

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nikos
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for the romantic dreamers...

Post by nikos »

for those that don't trust IE "because it isn't secure", keep on dreaming :)
http://arstechnica.com/security/2016/04 ... ew-attack/
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Re: for the romantic dreamers...

Post by Tuxman »

That's why I always prefer small and simple ("KISS") add-ons. Even when testing the blergh-Chromium based Vivaldi, I exclusively use µMatrix. And, well, it's close to perfection.
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Re: for the romantic dreamers...

Post by Kilmatead »

Tuxman wrote:I exclusively use µMatrix. And, well, it's close to perfection.
Not exactly for civilians, though, now is it? Imagine kindly old Father Geppetto innocently browsing his woodcutter sites... if he saw a mere hundredth of the amount of stuff going on behind the scenes, he'd be completely overwhelmed by what's a real boy and what's a Pinocchio.

Essentially the reality would be even more paralysingly fearful than all the messages telling Father Geppetto how dangerous it is in the first place.

While µMatrix can certainly protect the vulnerable and disclose all the information necessary to at least approximate some safe harbour, this kind of firewall-within-a-firewall Matryoshka-doll storm is way over the head of probably 99.9% of the surfing public.

Plus it makes browsing the properly-enjoyable illicit sites of the internet damn-near too frustrating to bother with, when it flags the humongous amount of heat they throw at the user. I mean, like anyone, I'm happy enough to click on a suspiciously-ungrammatical link labelled Boobs Of These Actress Cant Hold By Their Dress, but actually getting there with µMatrix takes pretty much all the fun out of it. :wink:

Sometimes total safety is completely overrated - just because a site, or, really, all sites, are crawling with spiders-of-evil it's important to remember that while all spiders can bite, most of them aren't so poisonous as to kill outright. Children need a little dirt in their lives to build up their immune systems - it's how humans are designed. :shrug:
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Re: for the romantic dreamers...

Post by Tuxman »

In fact, it's better for mere civilians to be unable to extend their whitelists. The less web bugs they can load, the more safe the web is.
But then again, the surfing public prefers colors to safety. :shrug:

Maybe we should all use Gopher again.
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Re: for the romantic dreamers...

Post by Kilmatead »

In the same way as every parable ends with with the words "No one ever said life was fair" - why, exactly, should be the web "be safe" in the first place?

Most of what we like about the web has nothing to do with the academic aspects of its utilitarian structure, it's more the form itself - simplified into the trite phrase of calling it the Wild West. The real wild west was an extremely dangerous, violent, and unhappy place - and while the silly Americans and/or international corporations as a whole will eventually legislate/tax all the freedom and good out of the 'net given enough time, for the moment it's still an essentially free tableau. And free means dangerous.

Thus, where does this notion that the web "should be safe" even come from? Is there a basic human need to destroy all sense of freedom (in the sense of 'expression' rather than 'liberty') no matter how it manifests itself? And the one thing that freedom has in common with life is that neither of them are (or should ever be) fair.
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Re: for the romantic dreamers...

Post by Tuxman »

Wild, Wild Web. :D

After all, this topic addresses the "romantic dreamers", and maybe I am one of those dreamers, unwilling (while capable) to accept that even stupid people should have the right to join a free, borderless internet. I only wish the hurdles to keep them safe from spreading virii were smaller.
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Re: for the romantic dreamers...

Post by nikos »

on a side note, I just installed adblock plus on my IE and it makes things slooooow
it feels like the nineties all of a sudden with a cable modem!
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Re: for the romantic dreamers...

Post by Kilmatead »

I've been using Adblock Plus as well as its Pop-up addon (for Firefox) ever since it was created, and as far as I can tell there's no appreciable slowdown - it's just a filtering mechanism, after all. Actually, it's faster given that a lot of extra pictorial/video content doesn't need to load. Exactly why an addon requires an addon always amuses me, but whatever floats their boat.

Ironically, many more sites these days are beginning to block it though, so they won't work when they detect it active, which is a slight pain. :shrug:
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Re: for the romantic dreamers...

Post by Tuxman »

I've switched to Adguard. I don't trust the makers of ABP anymore since they added paid whitelists for ad providers.
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Re: for the romantic dreamers...

Post by Kilmatead »

Tuxman wrote:...since they added paid whitelists for ad providers.
Yeah, but that can be easily disabled - and the irony/hypocrisy/chutzpah of the whole thing is just adorable. :D
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Re: for the romantic dreamers...

Post by Tuxman »

Why would I want to trust a provider of so-called security software who provides insecurity by default for no other than economic reasons?
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Re: for the romantic dreamers...

Post by nikos »

Kilmatead wrote:I've been using Adblock Plus as well and as far as I can tell there's no appreciable slowdown
it's hard for you to tell about slowdowns if your system is screwed up for maximum performance... only laggards can appreciate what a slowdown means ;)

or it could be the general loopiness of my IE since I started running it as a differnt user
Tuxman wrote:Why would I want to trust a provider of so-called security software who provides insecurity by default for no other than economic reasons?
trust noone... sandbox them to the maximum allowable extent that will allow them to run with the minimum possible privileges
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Re: for the romantic dreamers...

Post by Tuxman »

Sandboxing a software which needs to intercept the TCP process is not the smartest of your ideas.
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Re: for the romantic dreamers...

Post by Kilmatead »

nikos wrote:it's hard for you to tell about slowdowns if your system is screwed up for maximum performance...
Hey, Wookie-breath, screwed-up nothin': this is the ship that made the Kessel Run in less than twelve parsecs. :wink:
Tuxman wrote:Why would I want to trust a provider [...] for no other than economic reasons?
That's um, how the free-market works? What, you want it to actually make sense, too?
nikos wrote:sandbox them to the maximum allowable extent that will allow them to run with the minimum possible privileges
And you wonder why it's slow... :roll: Just out of interest, how much memory does your poor overworked 32-bit laptop actually have... for all that virtualisation you keep throwing at it...
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Re: for the romantic dreamers...

Post by Tuxman »

A free market does not make its products useful.
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