Bad microsoft!

Post Reply New Topic

I guess microsoft hides some files that cannot even be found as hidden files. These store your browsing history even when you clear history.

As well, they do some other less than polite things on your computer. Have a look.

http://sillydog.org/mshidden.php

In OS X, Apple's pathetic file manager doesn't even have the capability of displaying hidden files without a command-line hack, which is then a pain to revert. I end up just navigating my filesystem in the terminal. Also, there does not seem to be any readily apparent way of navigating Finder with elevated permissions, which means I have, on occasion, been denied (graphical) access to some of the files on my system.

I'm not sure what easter eggs Apple has hidden, but there has to be some reason why the base install of Leopard is as large as about 4 or 5 self-respecting Linux installs.

Orgüel:

1.- show & hide
http://www.versiontracker.com/dyn/moreinfo/macosx/27793
2.- easyfind
http://www.devon-technologies.com/download/index.html

Thanks for those. It is still frustrating that they don't build that into their file manager by default- Finder really is a piece of crap. I miss PCMan FileManager already...

And I still can't get elevated permissions for graphical file browsing, but oh well. Most of the time I need root access I'd be in a terminal anyways.

Interesting article but it looks a bit old. It would be interesting to know what secret information Vista stores away amongst its myriad of files. It also begs the question that if the operating system keeps a permanent record of all sites visited (even if the user clears their history) then does it also record this if Firefox is used instead of IE? Similarly for the logging of all email - what about third party software such as Thunderbird?

My guess is probably not. It would be significantly more complicated a procedure to log the activity of 3rd party browsers then their own. With their own software, all they have to do is add a few lines that have it write to a log file. It'd be kinda hard to do that from the outside of a program. However, if you have windows firewall on, then they could log your sites based on the firewall activity. Although, I don't know if they could log your emails through thunderbird. They'd have to right awfully specific code just for the case of Thunderbird(and likewise for all other 3rd party email clients)

It wouldnt be hard as its open source. It might not be worth the pay off in labour though.

I suppose that the hidden histories might have been a clandestine project with law enforcement.

firefox and thunderbird would be easy, just force install an extension.

Now doing it secretly is another question. Its a pity Microsoft dosn't let you symbolic link something to /dev/null

Well, I'm not familiar with 9x, but XP+ would show those files after enabling some options (unlike what the article claims). The index.dat's are indexes to cache files on disk, every browser that use disk cache has one. Microsoft should have put it in the cache directory, and the file should be cleared when the cache is emptied (the article claims that only the cache is cleared, the index is kept intact thus still contains list of recent websites you have visited, I haven't check this but if so it's really strange). Still I don't think it's some kind of conspiracy. And Outlook is a database. Basically every database implementation would just mark an entry as deleted instead of actually removing it. It's the same with files on your harddisk, your deleted files are still on the disk until the space is used by something else. I'm not defending Microsoft but that article is borderline misleading.

If you just want to prevent IE from creating those index files, delete the file and create a directory with the same name.

Microsoft would never do anything like that... oh wait.

If you're referring to the firefox addon, its not forced upon you. Nobody is being forced to download .NET which is where that addon comes from. Although, I will admit that either way its still pretty low.

You guys do know that the U.S Justice Department inspects every line of code in Microsoft Software!! Do any of you remember U.S Vs. Microsoft. By the way what is the very likelihood of Microsoft hiding that from th Justice Department!!

I thought MS kept some of their code from government scrutiny under the excuse of "trade secrets?" Anyways, if the US DoJ inspects every line of MS code, how did they fail to notice that Windows XP was produced using pirated software? It contains .wav files that were encoded by cracked warez.

But wave files aren't program code.

Its called profiting from the commision of a crime, and it is most assuredly illegal in the US.

*suppresses laughter* do you know how easy it is to hide stuff in code? I hide stuff from myself in my code all the time by accident. Its called bugs and it often takes more time to find them than writing the code in the first place.