Re: [Trisquel-users] vPro technology and thinkpads
This is excellent information! I think the WLAN card slot wouldn't be a viable solution because of the BIOS whitelisting? Still, the USB option is there. I've ordered an Atheros USB WLAN card from thinkpenguin. This more or less solves, or at least helps, against vPro. But what about TXT? It's really a shame for this line of laptops(the x-series). They're really lightweight, durable, and have a very good IPS screen. On Mon, 30 Sep 2013 07:00:04 +0200 oralfl...@lavabit.com wrote: Luckily for free software users, vPro can be avoided by removing the built-in WLAN card, which requires proprietary firmware anyways. Unless there is a backdoor built in to a backdoor, then this is likely the easiest way to fix a problem like this. Check out: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intel_vPro#vPro_hardware_requirements According to this, vPro can only function with certain WLAN cards. As long as the WLAN card is COMPLETELY OUT of your computer, then they should not be able to access it remotely. For info on removing it, see: http://support.lenovo.com/en_US/product-and- parts/detail.page?LegacyDocID=MIGR-72544 You can buy alternative WLAN cards, which have free chipsets, from Amazon or ThinkPenguin. They can go in both the USB port and/or the WLAN card slot.
Re: [Trisquel-users] vPro technology and thinkpads
Oh, and btw. This kind of information is very valuable. We should update it in h-node or a valid equivalent :-) On Mon, 30 Sep 2013 07:00:04 +0200 oralfl...@lavabit.com wrote: Luckily for free software users, vPro can be avoided by removing the built-in WLAN card, which requires proprietary firmware anyways. Unless there is a backdoor built in to a backdoor, then this is likely the easiest way to fix a problem like this. Check out: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intel_vPro#vPro_hardware_requirements According to this, vPro can only function with certain WLAN cards. As long as the WLAN card is COMPLETELY OUT of your computer, then they should not be able to access it remotely. For info on removing it, see: http://support.lenovo.com/en_US/product-and- parts/detail.page?LegacyDocID=MIGR-72544 You can buy alternative WLAN cards, which have free chipsets, from Amazon or ThinkPenguin. They can go in both the USB port and/or the WLAN card slot.
Re: [Trisquel-users] vPro technology and thinkpads
Hi Chris, Thanks for your very detailed answer. It really helped clear things up for me. I'm really glad that there is a company out there, yours, which is not only offering good hardware compatible with libre software, but also taking an active position in these discussions. Things like this really give me hope. I wanted to ask you, and others who read this, a general question about non-x86 design: What options are there for the future? Should people start thinking about MIPS, for example? I've toyed with the idea of getting a yeeloong notebook to tinker with, but AFAIK there are also some inevitable non-free components. On a side note, I'm an engineering student specializing in embedded systems and, even though I'm still in my second year and there are lots to learn, I'd love to contribute somehow in any future efforts regarding non-x86 designs. Perhaps you or someone knows of any forums and/or groups where there is an active discussion regarding this? Thanks once again for your detailed answer and for all your hard work. -Miguel
Re: [Trisquel-users] Million dollar question concerning the hardware we use
Thanks for the links! Do you know where I could find more videos/audios on lectures/speeches by RMS? On 09/29/2013 02:54 AM, fernando.ne...@mail.ru wrote: Ah. Nice... :) RMS ended up (inadvertently) answering my question, in his lecture given at the GNU's 30th anniversary celebrations. (So, there's no need to e-mail him, any more, about this...) He talks about the need to encourage a Free/Libre Hardware Movement, due to the same concerns that I talk about, in a segment that starts at around 7m40s into the following video: http://files.jxself.org/rms-gnu30-1.ogv (So, the million dollar question has been correctly answered. ;) And, now, what we need to do, to collect the prize/fortune/benefits, is to follow his advice and encourage such a movement, which is beginning to take form.) :) Let's start buying, using and pressuring for this type of non-proprietary hardware, instead, and make our whole systems free! (http://trisquel.info/en/forum/some-current-free-software-friendly-hardware)
Re: [Trisquel-users] Million dollar question concerning the hardware we use
On 09/29/2013 10:15 AM, mikko.viinam...@students.turkuamk.fi wrote: Thanks for the links! Do you know where I could find more videos/audios on lectures/speeches by RMS? Here's some older material http://audio-video.gnu.org/ And if you don't mind the privacy implications I'm sure you can find something also on youtube (ewww) Thanks! Regarding youtube, I normally just get the links of the videos I want to watch and fetch them with youtube-dl.
[Trisquel-users] vPro technology and thinkpads
Hi all, I'd like to ask you guys if you knew a bit about this vPro technology as a possible method of remote control. I've always thought that thinkpads were great for GNU/Linux, asides from the intel wireless card, and just now it dawned upon me that most of them have vPro technologies, which is a method of remote control implanted on your CPU. Thing is, I don't know much about how it works, and whatever information I've found is either too vague or purely marketing-oriented. Do you guys/gals know anything about this?
Re: [Trisquel-users] vPro technology and thinkpads
On 09/29/2013 01:00 PM, da...@qq.com wrote: vpro in action: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Xq-mHC9JYwY Incredible... This is really saddening. Does this only work on windows ? What about account priviledges in GNU/Linux? How does it know exactly which computer to connect to? Does the client have a certain address to access it ? On another note, I know anything with txt and vpro is just a nightmare regarding privacy. So one would need to get a processor which doesn't have these features, for example the i5-3210M (http://ark.intel.com/products/67355/Intel-Core-i5-3210M-Processor-%283M-Cache-up-to-3_10-GHz-rPGA). I would LOVE to order a laptop from thinkpenguin, but I'm in Europe, which means +300-400 euros in shipping handling, taxes, etc. The only other laptop I've seen that includes a similar chip without these features is the L430. Any experiences installing trisquel (linux-libre kernel without proprietary software, binary blobs, etc.) on that one?
Re: [Trisquel-users] vPro technology and thinkpads
What really impresses me is that people complain a lot about apple, me being the first. But still, look at the processor the macbook airs are using: i5-4250u - no vPro, no TXT On 09/29/2013 01:17 PM, Miguel Guasch wrote: On 09/29/2013 01:00 PM, da...@qq.com wrote: vpro in action: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Xq-mHC9JYwY Incredible... This is really saddening. Does this only work on windows ? What about account priviledges in GNU/Linux? How does it know exactly which computer to connect to? Does the client have a certain address to access it ? On another note, I know anything with txt and vpro is just a nightmare regarding privacy. So one would need to get a processor which doesn't have these features, for example the i5-3210M (http://ark.intel.com/products/67355/Intel-Core-i5-3210M-Processor-%283M-Cache-up-to-3_10-GHz-rPGA). I would LOVE to order a laptop from thinkpenguin, but I'm in Europe, which means +300-400 euros in shipping handling, taxes, etc. The only other laptop I've seen that includes a similar chip without these features is the L430. Any experiences installing trisquel (linux-libre kernel without proprietary software, binary blobs, etc.) on that one?
Re: [Trisquel-users] Secret 3G Intel Chip Gives Snoops Backdoor PC Access
Every time I read things like these, I am so tempted to buy a yeeloong notebook.. How is the status on the MIPS architecture? -Miguel On 09/28/2013 06:25 AM, n...@blueyonder.co.uk wrote: Answering my own question... http://www.eteknix.com/expert-says-nsa-have-backdoors-built-into-intel-and-amd-processors/ All the articles seem to reference the same Australian Financial Review story from July of this year. http://www.afr.com/p/technology/intel_chips_could_be_nsa_key_to_ymrhS1HS1633gCWKt5tFtI And a denial from AMD here. http://fudzilla.com/home/item/32120-amd-denies-existence-of-nsa-backdoor One is tempted to think well, they would say that, wouldn't they? No one's going to admit to this and see Government and/or military supply contracts lost. I've spent the last 10+ years loving IT, spending every spare moment in front of my pc. Most of them using Linux. I was happy, believing that if we could just get enough people interested in Open Source that the world could be made a better and safer place, free from the tyranny of Corporate nonsense and spying. Over the last few days, as a result of the various links on this and other threads here, everything has changed. Now it all seems nasty and suspicious. I used to think I cannot help someone to be happy with Windows or Apple, without at least warning them of the loss of privacy and control they bring with them but now I'm wondering if the message should be if you have a computer, regardless of what you run on it, you're unable to rely on being secure or safe. What if NSA employees are masquerading as OpenSource contributors? What if they are maintainers for various bits of code? If code comes from a trusted person is it really reviewed by others for compromise or is it accepted as trusted and included without being checked? We had a story break here in the UK a few months ago, whereby it transpired that undercover Police had infiltrated various political movements, to the extent of having sexual relationships and even children with women in the movements. If that is the level of abuse of trust that is being carried out in order to monitor dissidents, then it's highly likely that some trusted contributors are indeed working for the security agencies, with hidden agendas. Once stories like that become known it naturally and presumably intentionally, introduces mistrust into every such movement, as people begin to look at people they thought were trusted and wonder are you a Policeman too? Such mistrust tears movements apart, again, presumably quite deliberately. Divide and rule. So it comes down to this, for me - I'm not involved in anything that could be described as genuine terrorism. I don't call for the deaths of politicians or bankers. I speak out as and when it seems necessary, always and only in defence of the weak and the poor. If the day should come when they're arresting people for doing that then that's no world I wish to live in and I'll take the consequences without shame. Or put another way f*ck 'em, I'm doing no wrong and I'm not going to let a bit of fear (perhaps unfounded and introduced by those who wish to destroy the OSS movement) stop me from thus speaking out.
Re: [Trisquel-users] Video Stream For GNU 30th Birthday
On 09/28/2013 09:49 PM, zatr...@riseup.net wrote: Happy GNU-Day! Nobel Peace Prize nomination, anyone?! (= I second the motion :-)
Re: [Trisquel-users] Secret 3G Intel Chip Gives Snoops Backdoor PC Access
On 09/26/2013 06:13 PM, fernando.ne...@mail.ru wrote: (It never ends...) http://www.prisonplanet.com/secret-3g-intel-chip-gives-snoops-backdoor-pc-access.html (And, this is what I'm talking about, when I call everyone's attention to also the *hardware* that we use... - https://trisquel.info/en/forum/million-dollar-question-concerning-hardware-we-use) I first found out about this while perusing the thinkpenguin website. They explicitly state that they do not offer CPUs which have either vpro or txt technologies.
[Trisquel-users] New to Trisquel
Hello all, Today I finally did it. I downloaded the Trisquel iso file and am looking forward to installing it on my personal laptop once I get home. I am trying to learn as much as I can about software libre, and Trisquel was just great when I tried it out. Hopefully my experience with it will be better than with gNewSense, with which I had too many difficulties to set up a usable system. The reason why I am trying to learn and cooperate in any way I can is because, although I've been reading almost every word that's printed on GNU, the Linux kernel, and the like, I have had to take it easy and walk towards freedom one step at a time. I toyed with linux back in the 90's, but personal turmoils did not help me find the time to really learn it much more than as a confident user. Ever since then, I jumped back on the wagon with the Ubuntu releases, which have gone, in my opinion, in the wrong direction regardless of all the great work they've done in making linux attractive for regular users. Afterwards I used Debian and Fedora. Although both of them are great distributions which more than fulfill my needs, I just needed to take one more step towards freedom, and after trying gNewSense and failing at it, I've decided to take on Trisquel. Trisquel is appealing to me for two reasons: first of all, it's a free, polished and well maintained distribution as far as I can judge it so far. Second, I just feel incredibly proud of the people who started the project. I am from Latin America, and my wife is spanish, and to see the amount of people from both latin america and spain involved in the software libre world is just amazing. I really want to be a part of this and do my best to stay afloat in a world that is going more and more in a direction with which I'm not comfortable. I am going to familiarize myself with the distribution, and hopefully I'll be able to help in the future. As far as skills go, I am well versed in English, Spanish, and German. I also have a bit of experience in operating systems, C/C++ programming, some java, html, python, and bash scripting. At the moment, I'm studying an engineering career on embedded systems, and working full time for a software company. In my free time, I still enjoy multi user dungeons (MUDs), specifically the original LP MUD, Genesis MUD, via tinyfugue. I look forward to exchanging ideas, asking for help, and contributing in any way possible to the project. Thanks again, Miguel.
