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<div dir="ltr" data-setdir="false">Recently I was setting up a new Windoz10 machine. (There are a few things I need to run that aren't on Linux). I encountered a questions I had not seen previously. First it wanted my cell phone number so it could send a text message. Then it wanted my birthday so I could set parental controls. A while later it asked for my email. It was rejected because it wasn't an Outlook address. Did I want to set up a new account? I skipped that and got a bunch of warnings that I would miss a lot of important things like having all my data backed up on there cloud.</div><div dir="ltr" data-setdir="false"><br></div><div dir="ltr" data-setdir="false">Meanwhile, I had a separate IT problem. My Rosewill WiFi router would not connect to the Internet. All the symptoms pointed to the LAN port into the router. I decided it was time upgrade anyway. Having a spread out house and a workshop in a separate building, I decided to go mesh. I picked a system that got decent reviews, came with 3 units and more could be bought separately, if needed.</div><div dir="ltr" data-setdir="false"><br></div><div dir="ltr" data-setdir="false">Monday Amazon said it would arrive Tue or Wed. I placed the order. Wed I got a message that my shipment was delayed until Thur. It actually arrive before sunset. Some YouTube videos set up the system in less than 15 minutes. The printed instructions started with power down the existing Internet modem. YouTube didn't so I skipped that. It took me a couple hours. I decided to run a LAN cable to the next room for the first unit thinking it would give better coverage. And after turning it on, I had to wait a while for it to update. Then walk around the house to check coverage before deciding where to put unit 2 and again for unit 3. </div><div dir="ltr" data-setdir="false"><br></div><div dir="ltr" data-setdir="false">All the setup was done through the EERO app on my cell. At the end the app started nagging me to sign up so I could pay a monthly fee. Not clear what I get in return for the fee.</div><div dir="ltr" data-setdir="false"><br></div><div dir="ltr" data-setdir="false"><br></div><div><br></div>
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On Friday, June 16, 2023 at 11:21:44 PM PDT, Rick Moen <rick@linuxmafia.com> wrote:
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<div>Quoting Steve Litt (slitt@troubleshooters.com):<br clear="none"><br clear="none">> So then, just as a Hail Mary, I went on a Windows computer and the web<br clear="none">> banking worked perfectly with both Firefox and Chrome.<br clear="none"><br clear="none">User-Agent string match?<br clear="none"><br clear="none">If so, it's classic dumb-company behaviour, but the easiest thing around<br clear="none">to fix. If your favourite browser lacks a function to adjust User-Agent<br clear="none">per user desire, find a browser extension that will do that. (ISTR that<br clear="none">modern browsers _general_ come equipped with an array of predefined <br clear="none">popular User-Agent strings claiming to be on various desktop and mobile<br clear="none">OSes.)<br clear="none"><br clear="none"><br clear="none">That aside, to my knowledge the only other way such fsckery can be<br clear="none">implemented is through one of the rare ways still around to make the<br clear="none">browser (or the user) do an external call for native code execution.<br clear="none"><br clear="none">E.g., many years ago, there was some Citrix-issued Web-conferencing<br clear="none">software that I knew was a pure Java app (I guess it must have been<br clear="none">GoToMeeting), but people were saying that it literally would not execute<br clear="none">on a Java-extension-equipped Linux Web browser.<br clear="none"><br clear="none">Out of curiosity, I got ahold of the client-side Java code, and, holy<br clear="none">jumping Jehosephat! Citrix had indeed built something into it that<br clear="none">literally required running ancillary Win32 code _before_ running<br clear="none">GoToMeeting.<br clear="none"><br clear="none">Ah, found it! It was wrapped delivered (pointlessly) in a Win32<br clear="none">_installer_ program.<br clear="none"><br clear="none"><br clear="none"><br clear="none">Date: Sat, 18 Jul 2009 14:55:23 -0700<br clear="none">From: Rick Moen <<a shape="rect" href="mailto:rick@linuxmafia.com" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">rick@linuxmafia.com</a>><br clear="none">To: <a shape="rect" href="mailto:svlug@lists.svlug.org" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">svlug@lists.svlug.org</a><br clear="none">Subject: Re: [svlug] Fwd: Open Sesame: The Rise and Acceptance of Open<br clear="none"> Source Solutions<br clear="none"><br clear="none">Quoting Don Marti (dmarti@zgp.org):<br clear="none"><br clear="none">[Some webinar broadcast using "GoToMeeting" software.]<br clear="none"><br clear="none">> Practical recommendation 1: Don't do open source if<br clear="none">> you want to participate in "webinars!"<br clear="none"><br clear="none">If you dig determinedly into their documentation, you find this only<br clear="none">_somewhat_ misleading information about system requirements for<br clear="none">"attending a meeting" on <a shape="rect" href="https://www1.gotomeeting.com/en_US/pre/faq.tmpl" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">https://www1.gotomeeting.com/en_US/pre/faq.tmpl</a> :<br clear="none"><br clear="none"> Internet Explorer 6.0 or newer, Mozilla Firefox 2.0 or newer<br clear="none"> (JavaScript and Java enabled)<br clear="none"><br clear="none">or:<br clear="none"><br clear="none"> Safari 3.0 or newer, Firefox 2.0 or newer (JavaScript<br clear="none"> and Java enabled)<br clear="none"><br clear="none">So, it's basically some proprietary Java app that Citrix's "Citrix<br clear="none">Online, LLC" subsidiary developed and is selling to customers on the<br clear="none">streaming-out side. And they certainly _could_ have offered a variant<br clear="none">of the codebase without gratuitous dependency on proprietary OSes, but<br clear="none">unfortunately they've instead bundled it with "launcher" apps such as<br clear="none">"g2m_download.exe" for the Win32 variant.<br clear="none"><br clear="none">It's undoubtedly possible to pull that apart and undo the corporate<br clear="none">brain damage, but frankly it's not in my experience worth the payoff.<br clear="none"><br clear="none">[...]<br clear="none"><br clear="none"><br clear="none"><br clear="none">Anyway, sure, the banking industry has long been notorious for such<br clear="none">fsckery. But only specific pathological players. Most, no.<div class="ydpcb018be2yqt2567849987" id="ydpcb018be2yqtfd10926"><br clear="none"><br clear="none">_______________________________________________<br clear="none">conspire mailing list<br clear="none"><a shape="rect" href="mailto:conspire@linuxmafia.com" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">conspire@linuxmafia.com</a><br clear="none"><a shape="rect" href="http://linuxmafia.com/mailman/listinfo/conspire" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">http://linuxmafia.com/mailman/listinfo/conspire</a><br clear="none"></div></div>
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