On Wed, August 20, 2014 9:06 pm, Always Learning wrote:
>
> On Wed, 2014-08-20 at 10:26 -0400, James B. Byrne wrote:
>
>> My recent inquiries have raised the unsettling possibility
>> that recent Skype clients may be designed to permit remote exploitation
>> of
>> host systems by unauthorised entities.
>
> Generally entities, authorised by governments, have been doing back door
> entries over the Internet since at least 1995. Its staggering what has
> been happening, staggering how its done, staggering that every, so it
> seems, network hardware device has a 'backdoor' - sometimes it is
> mentioned in the documentation or discovered by chatting with service
> personnel.
>
> Better never to touch proprietary closed-source software. Don't forget
> M$ Windoze with 3-knocks-and-anyone-is-in software. It caused a friend
> to get a nasty virus about 10 years ago just by being connected to the
> Internet and NOT downloading anything at all. He didn't even use his
> browser.
>
> Skype piggy-backs on to a lot of different, and unknown to the caller,
> computer systems. Try the grown-up version called SIP. It has open
> source products and it caters for voice and video.
>
> Big companies always fully co-operate with demands from Big Brother but
> never ever boast about their acquiescence. The encryption algorithm for
> GSM mobile phones was deliberately downgraded ..... We live in the
> Information Age and Big Brother wants information.
>
Thank you Mr. Always Learning for nice reminder about reality we live in.
I'm sorry Mr. Jim Perrin, I'll disregard your request and I will stay on
this side topic just for one more message.
Those [conspiracy] theories are reality not just theories, at least some
(Mr Snowden, e.g.) put their life on line to tell us about it. If we do
not care to listen, then we deserve to have what we have.
I was quite displeased since quite some time ago that almost all web
browsers, whenever I feed URL into location bar, do not go to that URL,
but instead do the search with the search line that is that URL first. Not
only when URL doesn't exist (for which case I too prefer not darn search
but just an error message "URL doesn't exist"). Why would be that? What
purpose does the search serve. You do your math. I still use often
browsers with this "nasty" feature. I will mention one browser that
doesn't to that unnecessary [unnecessary for me, of course] thing: midori.
If someone has any other suggestions, please, let me know (you can e-mail
me off the list if you prefer to respect Mr Jim Perrin's request). I also
will mention one search engine that seems to be "clean" of nastiness to
the best of my knowledge" DuckDuckGo:
https://duckduckgo.com/
(I would welcome information about others "clean" of nastiness)
Thanks.
Valeri
++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
Valeri Galtsev
Sr System Administrator
Department of Astronomy and Astrophysics
Kavli Institute for Cosmological Physics
University of Chicago
Phone: 773-702-4247
++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
_______________________________________________
CentOS mailing list
CentOS@xxxxxxxxxx
http://lists.centos.org/mailman/listinfo/centos
