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[Japo]

The GUI is just to make it more agile and easy, but the interface doesn't change the architecture. Just add a shortcut to cmd.exe in your startup programs and voilà, you just got yourself a command line Windows. You could even kill the GUI (\WINDOWS\explorer.exe) at boot, if you can't prevent it from starting at all --there must be some way for that too though. However I bet you'll sooner or later be back with the GUI. Before MS made Windows, the main argument against DOS from Mac fans was that their GUI was better than DOS's command line. (Then they started to claim that MS had copied Apple, when actually Apple had ripped the GUI off Xerox.)

[_r.u.s.s.]

Originally Posted by Japofran

I have XP and I've seen it call home (saw it in my firewall's log then I checked the remote IP and it belonged to Microsoft). So it would seem this is not only about Vista, XP also does it. I wouldn't be too tinfoil-hat paranoid about all the urban legends romaing the Web as to the evil purposes of these calls. I wouldn't be concerned about them and besides, if you're really concerned get an outbound firewall and block them.

i think you might want to disable automatic bs in services. i have my own modifited xp and it doesn't call anything except for the peers my programs set

[DeathDude]

Disable and or just block it via your firewall, thats what I did with most of the things that called home via XP.

[Japo]

By the way I heard that the next Windows version (internal MS version number 7.x) may "leak" like tons of data. :P At least I read in an interview with Bill Gates that he envisioned the next generation of OSes as user-centric, meaning --from what I understood-- that they would include a service so that user's settings are stored in on-line servers instead of the user's machine; so that one would have his "system" just the same no matter what physical machine he was working from. Not the user's private documents though, I guess those are well kept in the user's own machine.

[Doink]

By the way I heard that the next Windows version (internal MS version number 7.x) may "leak" like tons of data. :P At least I read in an interview with Bill Gates that he envisioned the next generation of OSes as user-centric, meaning --from what I understood-- that they would include a service so that user's settings are stored in on-line servers instead of the user's machine; so that one would have his "system" just the same no matter what physical machine he was working from. Not the user's private documents though, I guess those are well kept in the user's own machine.

That sounds like and interesting and good idea as long as your internet is cheap or free Microsoft dont think that in some areas internet is not cheap and some of us are still on dial up:mad: and already XP's weekely updates cost alot to download so a remote system would be completly unusable.

[dosraider]

You will not be forced to use those features.
You can live happilly without those, you know.

[DeathDude]

Yeah but the trend that seems to be occuring more and more nowadays, from companies is to either secretly install these programs or bury them within a running process, which is hard to eliminate, without doing some extra work in the process.

Its fine for people who are tech savvy, but for others who have not much knowledge in these areas, thats not really fair to them either, to have to get exposed to these features which aren't exactly "clear".

[dosraider]

Originally Posted by DeathDude

Its fine for people who are tech savvy, but for others who have not much knowledge in these areas, thats not really fair to them either, to have to get exposed to these features which aren't exactly "clear".

So, what your saying is that they don't understand how or even why their compy works. The only thing they know -(*sometimes*)- is that the must click somewhere.
Fair enough.

How they gonna decide then what's needed from updates to keep their system a bit safe??
How they gonna decide what's really needed to run programs then?
They have no other choice then to give it out hands, to the prog devs.

And sometimes, yes indeed, they gonna be screwed.

[DeathDude]

My main point is that companies besides Microsoft, just need to be more upfront with what is being put on our systems, esepcially when it comes to phoning home. Yes it is necessary for certain things such as updating, but for other windows aspects, it'd be nice to simplify disabling such a program, but alas that always isn't possible.

If you want to disable a certain component of a program, I'm pretty sure most people don't want to either go a. fiddling through their registry to disable it there or b. go through their processes find the program and shut it down that way and or c. via programs such as hijackthis.

[dosraider]

Originally Posted by DeathDude

My main point is that companies besides Microsoft, just need to be more upfront with what is being put on our systems, esepcially when it comes to phoning home....

Reminds me of STEAM, tried that once, never again. What a piece of crap to have on your PC. In the end I've put back a sysbackup to get rid of that junk.