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comcast has a 250gb limit

That hasn't been enforced since mid-May, apparently.

What if the iPhone really is that innovative in the smartphone arena that only Apple can provide smartphones? Then they have a monopoly, and the DoJ tends to get upset with monopolies that appear to be unreasonably restraining consumer choice raising prices, or both.

Just ask Microsoft. They, arguably, have never recovered from the antitrust suit. Does Apple want to go down that path?

Apple didn't invent the smartphone, and I doubt they claim to. There were plenty of smartphones before the iphone - Nokia had e.g. N95 (and other N-series) and their Communicator, Blackberry had many phones, Sony Ericsson had their P900 series, HTC had Windows mobile phones. They behaved in different ways, and had many interesting styles. So obviously, there are many other ways than iPhone and iPhone OS to look and behave.

Samsung just put an awful lot of work into looking and behaving the same. Where the legal limit for copying goes I don't know, but Samsung wasn't exactly trying a brand new design they had been working on and polishing for the last five years... it seems as if they even copied marketing materials. And even today, there are many different ways. E.g. the Nokia Lumia 900 - it is a full screen touch mobile, but has its own design and user interface. I certainly wouldn't buy one - Microsoft has already said that they are obsolete - but they have put (different) thoughts into design and behaviour.

I disagree. What you're not seeing is the complete list of devices that Samsung released before and after the announcement of the iPhone. There were devices before the iPhone that looked iPhone-ish, but Apple isn't going to show you those. And there have been a lot of devices after the iPhone that don't look anything like an iPhone, but Apple isn't going to show you those either. The only thing that is certain is that Samsung has released a lot of different devices over the years, and some of them have looked iPhone-ish. Because Apple makes only one style of device, they naturally assume that Samsung must have ripped them off when, in fact, it's just not true.

Or put another way, imagine if I started a car company and decided that I wanted all of my cars to look exactly like a 2005 Nissan Altima because I'd decided that was the height of style and function. Then later, I sued Nissan for ripping off my design. In court, I put forth "evidence", slides showing various models of Nissans--the Sentra, the 200SX, maybe even some old Altimas that used a different design, then slides showing the 2006 Nissan Altima, 2007 Nissan Altima, 2008 Nissan Altima, etc. To a layperson, it would look very much like Nissan ripped off my design, when in fact at best, we came up with the designs independently (and at worst, Nissan could compellingly argue that I ripped off their design).

Unfortunately, Samsung won't be able to show the jury some of the evidence of this happening, as a result of Judge Koh's ruling earlier. I still hope they are able to win this case, because otherwise, whether you like or hate Apple, you can bet that there are going to be a lot more cases coming forward dealing with design patents. Every company out there is going to see "rip-offs" of their products and sue, no matter how incidental it is to the actual workings of the product.

It's also unfortunate, because if Apple wins, it's going to also severely limit companies' ability to innovate in the future. Until very, very recently, it wasn't unusual for companies to regularly take the best ideas from other companies and people, mix them up in new ways, improve on features that were weak, and release new products to advance the industry. Apple has benefited from this themselves: they didn't invent the GUI; they got the idea from another company, improved it, and drove GUI operating system technology forward while also making it popular. They didn't invent MP3 players; they took the best of what was out there, splashed their own design and software ideas on it, and completely revived their company.

But now, god forbid someone else uses some of their ideas--ideas that they got from other places--to try to push the technology forward even further. And if I were an Apple fan, that level of protectionism would greatly concern me. To me, it says clearly that Apple is afraid that Samsung can (and quite possibly is) out-Appling Apple when it comes to design and functionality.

I mean, let's be brutally honest. How many people are going to go in a store wanting an iPhone, get confused, and come out with a Galaxy instead? Nobody. I can almost guarantee you that no one has ever gotten home and thought, "Hey waaaait a minute... This isn't an iPhone!" I will admit that there are some slick features that the iPhone and Galaxy phones share that I really like, but when I got my Galaxy Nexus, it wasn't because it was an iPhone rip-off. If I wanted an iPhone, I would have bought an iPhone, I had one prior to the Galaxy Nexus. I deliberately bought an Android phone because of features such as widgets on my phone's home screens, the ability to use third-party software that isn't in the Google Play store, the bigger screen and an aspect ratio that I like better, etc.

Of course, there are rumors now that the next generation of iPhone will have a taller screen with a 16:9 aspect ratio. Does Apple cons

here is something that I came across on arstechnica about graphics improvements with Mountain Lion
A little below halfway down the page:

"However, the improved drivers appear to be working in concert with overall improvements to OS X's graphics subsystem. According one source who spoke to Ars on the condition of anonymity, Apple has significantly altered the architecture of the graphics subsystem in Mountain Lion, cleaning up the interface between OpenGL and drivers in order to implement upcoming support for OpenGL 4.2. OS X currently supports version 3.2, and the lack of support for the latest version shows when comparing performance with Windows"

For Linux users: http://bcache.evilpiepirate.org/

Lets you use any SSD as a cache in front of another filesystem.

Solaris and Windows have been shipping with production ready L2 FS cache for years already, L2ARC/ReadyBoost. I'll give Apple a pass because their systems are mostly not designed for adding drives, and they were apparently betting on high capacity SSDs coming down in price by now. Desktops have less of a need for caches in the tens of GB anyway. Linux, as a server OS doesn't have much of a good excuse, why wasn't L2 cache worked out years ago when everyone was racing for TRIM support? Using smaller cheaper SSD drives as L2 cache almost makes too much sense. It covers up the short write cycle lifetime and poor sequential read performance. 60 some odd GB of cache starts to look pretty dang good for a lot of server workloads.

I feel I should point this out because these cheesy Linux +1 MeToo posts are _really_ aggravating to people who use it professionally. It's a tool. We're not in love with it.

http://arstechnica.com/civis/viewtopic.php?f=21&t=1114013
The developer apparently didn't even know what the ARC algorithm is... which is just bizarre, like developing a race car without knowing what variable valve timing is. Not saying it is needed, but what level of quality do you expect out of this?

Also from Byuu: an article at Ars Technica about accuracy in SNES emulation.

According to torrent freak:

http://torrentfreak.com/demonoid-busted-as-a-gift-to-the-united-states-government-120806/

>>> Shortly after [the DDoS] a hacker break-in occurred, and a few days later came the investigators,” the source added.

Smells like a plant to me.

What if the hacker was someone paid off by a MAFIAA friendly contact, and the hacker was paid to plant malware ads on the servers, just to give Ukrainian authorities an excuse to shut them down?

It's just as devious as hacking someone, planting CP on their computer, and then calling the feds on them.

Which by the way has already happened:

http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2010/08/disgruntled-brit-plants-child-porn-on-bosss-computer-calls-cops/

So it wouldn't surprise me at ALL if this the malware ad spewing was a black hat contract paid for by someone friendly to US copyright interests.

There is no such brokerage when you're trading directly on the market as high frequency traders do.

Point taken. Its actually an algorithm that matches buy and sell orders placed on 'the book'.

And it's worth remembering that brokers are not obligated to give you the best price possible (unless law on that particular practice has changed since I first heard of it), but the price you asked for, if you asked for a price at all.

Its called a market order.

As I see it, you're lumping a bunch of different exploits under the label of "high frequency trade".

Specifically, what I'm objecting to is the practice of extracting 'book information' from the market by making a bunch of entries to probe for this information (which is not generally available to the trading public) and then canceling the orders. This cancellation could be implemented by simply dropping the network connection or utilizing an error handling process intended for correcting errors in placed orders. When no such error actually occurred. Both of these are fraud. But one would have to prove intent. Perhaps by obtaining a copy of the code and reverse engineering it.

Example: I place a market order to buy 100 shares of XYZ when there is a standing offer to sell at $2.00/share. But a HF trader continually probes the market and steps in to buy 100 shares at $2.00 and sell at $2.01 just before my order. So I get my shares at $2.01. A 'fair' trade would have sold those shares to the HF trader whether I put my order in or not. And if the market turned around and I changed my mind, the HF trader could get stuck with shares that would soon be worth perhaps $1.80. That's how the market works. This form of HFT is called 'front running'. When its done by market makers (traders with a duty to facilitate trades based on book knowledge), it ends up with prison sentences. Because market makers are strictly controlled by SEC regulations due to their advantage in possessing 'book information'. The fact that a third party is (fraudulently) obtaining this data doesn't make it right.

In my opinion, the markets have a fiduciary duty to me to protect my order information. Just because someone has bigger computers with faster network connections should not excuse them from doing so. But I'm afraid that the HFT payment for order flow is just too attractive and so they are motivated to look the other way.

hold your hand and explain it like to a toddler, since this is apparently what you want

this is net neutrality:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Network_neutrality

can you read and understand that? or do you need that concept broken down for you as well?

this is what verizon thinks:

http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2012/07/verizon-net-neutrality-violates-our-free-speech-rights/

do you understand their position? any hand holding required for you to understand that they will do anything in their power to gain marketshare and extract more money from consumers, no matter how flawed the lame premise? or do you actually agree with them on their premise(!? you may, i don't know the depths of your propagandized blindness here)

scenario #1, no regulation: verizon raises prices on you, and squashes competition. do you deny this?

scenario #2: the government yes, get's more power, in YOUR name, as a citizen of a DEMOCRATIC country, in SPECIFIC and WELL-DEFINED ways (see net neutrality, above). do you understand that?

and it uses that specific power, granted to it by YOU, to curtail the power of verizon to abuse you as it sees fit, beholden as it is to the bottom line at all costs

is there anything unclear to you? do you require any more simpleton level explanation as you have requested?

The app stores are fundamentally incompatible with the GPL. You may remember how VLC for iOS was pulled from the app store last year for license reasons.

So besides that what else has changed for Linux since RedHat gave up on the desktop and Loki fell?

Valve is now porting the source engine to Linux (Left4dead 2 first, but other titles are sure to follow).

Many indie games on steam have been offered via humble bundles (which require they provide a Linux version).

And here I compiled a list of Kickstarter games (Thanks to the Phoronix and reddit/r/Linux community) that got funded and are releasing with a Linux version.

And of course, with all the work they're doing porting steam and the source engine to Linux, it would make sense that Linux would be a strong contender for their 'Steam Box' .

You like programs that update without telling you? Not me. Too many times things break after an update.

Actually, that's just Firefox. Compare Chrome's new version uptake with Firefox's.

"Mozilla's market share has been slipping again at a significant pace." http://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2012/08/firefox-continues-to-gain-as-internet-explorer-chrome-slide/

The last two months Firefox's browser share has increased according to netmarketshare.com. Now this article uses StatCounter stats and eyeballing the chart it looks like Firefox's share has been mostly flat since January according to StatCounter. The point being is the slide I believe has stopped or at the worse lessened to next to nothing. The article talks blames the slide on communication and execution. The author likely has a point there, but I think things are no longer as dire as he makes them out to be. Another reason for the slide is Google advertising the Chrome Browser. I think that also has hurt Firefox and there is not much they can do about it. I believe the slide has ended or is ending.

This article states that Firefox's user base is shrinking by "significant" numbers and that there are more Chrome users than Firefox users.

The following article claims Firefox's user base is growing and that there are more Firefox users than Chrome users:
http://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2012/08/firefox-continues-to-gain-as-internet-explorer-chrome-slide/

How can both be right?

Easy. Ask your collegues which browser they use. I'm sure you'll get a perfectly unrepresentative statistic too.

This article states that Firefox's user base is shrinking by "significant" numbers and that there are more Chrome users than Firefox users.

The following article claims Firefox's user base is growing and that there are more Firefox users than Chrome users:
http://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2012/08/firefox-continues-to-gain-as-internet-explorer-chrome-slide/

How can both be right?

I know there is, I'm saying its probably a bad idea, especially as kubuntu is not supported by Canonical.

Hence my point, if you want to use Ubuntu, stick with the 'official' flavour only. If you want a non-Unity flavour, go with a different distro. Ubuntu wants to be a pre-packaged Linux, let it be.

A lot of the house-keeping of multiple destination was left to the user. If you want round-robin or first available, etc.? You'd make this manually. But HEY! Time Machine is automatic, right? There is a plethora of AppleScript and even Cocoa Apps to manage this. These are pretty much obsoleted.

I'll defer to the Ars Technica description:

Time Machine can now back up to multiple volumes. When more than one volume is selected, Time Machine will do a full backup to each selected volume, taking turns each time it runs.

http://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2012/01/microsoft-reports-record-second-quarter-earnings-amid-windows-decline/

Psst: The Xbox has been turning a profit for Microsoft since 2008. http://www.joystiq.com/2008/01/24/the-xbox-turns-a-profit/ http://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2012/04/microsoft-posts-record-3rd-quarter-revenue-windows-resumes-growth-entertainment-back-in-the-red/

And then the astrophysicist looks at them and says, "That cow only has one side. It is part of a hologram that we are all a part of."
And then the philosopher looks at them and says, "That cow doesn't necessarily exist. Neither do you. Cogito ergo sum."

- first thing MS does is it kills supernodes and installs THOUSANDS of Linux servers running grsecurity http://grsecurity.net/news.php#Skype
- that means that ALL Skype traffic now passes through MS servers and can be easily wiretapped since MS holds all the keys and can easily perform a MITM attack

No, it means that SOME Skype traffic (i.e. text messages, but not voice calls) can be easily wiretapped.

tl;dr: Skype's a botnet and NSA paid MS to buy Skype

That's not borne out by your data. In fact, the Ars article referenced in your link states that supernodes play no role whatsoever in making calls.

I don't trust Microsoft at all; in fact, I think they can be relied on to do whatever they think is reasonable to get along with government (and by extension, law enforcement). But this particular issue - the establishment of grSecurity supernodes - doesn't get you an automatic MiTM capability.

Well, that's an important bit of info I didn't see in the article.

And I suppose it's worth reminding everyone that this is NFC. Your phone would have to be in near-contact with the exploiting hardware. Not impossible I suppose, given that skimming happens with traditional payment cards.

I didn't understand the two word description of the problem with Android, so I looked up that Ars article you mentioned...

The Nexus Sâ"when running the Gingerbread (2.3), by far the most dominant Android installationâ"contains multiple memory-corruption bugs. They allow Millerâ"using nothing more than a specially designed tagâ"to take control of the application "daemon" that controls NFC functions. With additional work, he said the tag could be modified to execute malicious code on the device. Some, but possibly not all of those bugs were fixed in the Ice Cream Sandwich (4.0) version of Android, so the attacks may also work against that release and Jelly Bean (4.1) as well.

Ah. So upgrade your phone.

http://arstechnica.com/security/2012/07/android-nokia-smartphone-hack/

AFAIK, there are several issues: Windows 8 won't allow side-loading of apps on ARM computers, so Steam is going to be completely locked out of Microsoft's big ARM push, including the MS Surface tablet which might be popular. W8 also won't allow side loading of Metro apps at all (unless you are a developer or enterprise) and so if developers want to use Metro features, then they won't be able to distribute via Steam. If W8 on ARM is popular, and say 25% of sales are on that platform, then Steam is going to be a lot less useful as a distribution platform because developers are going to want to target ARM devices, and since they're forced to build and distribute via the Windows Store anyway, it becomes more work to target a dual-distribution platform. Microsoft has already stated that alternative web browsers won't be allowed on ARM, so there is little chance that they will allow an alternative distribution channel, and even if they did, they would want some percentage (30%?) of Valve's income so it's not going to happen.

Aside from ARM issues, Steam has 70%+ of the market for distribution of Windows video games. Once Microsoft have an alternative app Store it is going to be competing directly against Steam. The amusing thing is that all this fuss is over a unified distribution channel, which is a new feature for Windows but which the Linux distributions have had for almost two decades now.

Windows 7 doesn't work on ARM either.

So really, it's no different.

That's not the case, according to ArsTechnica review of Mountain Lion. And they prove their point by showing that if you remove the com.apple.quarantine xattr from the downloaded app, Gatekeeper does not kick in anymore regardless of it being not signed etc. And that attribute is added by the browser when you download, and wouldn't be present on a file copied from elsewhere, or the one downloaded by a program that doesn't apply that xattr.

The very Ars review you cite refutes your claim. In fact, it even has a screenshot of a Gatekeeper prompt being shown for an app that has already been downloaded but had not yet been executed.

And if you're really going to point out the fact that the user can circumvent Gatekeeper by right-clicking, choosing to ignore the warnings, and launching anyway, then why not just point out that they can disable Gatekeeper entirely. Of course the user can choose to circumvent Gatekeeper. My point was that by default it prevents drive-by downloads from also executing.

Last I heard, Verizon was trying to get out of the business of anything with physical pipes - including "stabilizong" it's FIOS business. They'd rather go for the exorbitant profits of wireless.
http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2012/07/op-ed-verizon-willfully-driving-dsl-users-into-the-arms-of-cable/

AFAIK, there are several issues: Windows 8 won't allow side-loading of apps on ARM computers, so Steam is going to be completely locked out of Microsoft's big ARM push, including the MS Surface tablet which might be popular. W8 also won't allow side loading of Metro apps at all (unless you are a developer or enterprise) and so if developers want to use Metro features, then they won't be able to distribute via Steam. If W8 on ARM is popular, and say 25% of sales are on that platform, then Steam is going to be a lot less useful as a distribution platform because developers are going to want to target ARM devices, and since they're forced to build and distribute via the Windows Store anyway, it becomes more work to target a dual-distribution platform. Microsoft has already stated that alternative web browsers won't be allowed on ARM, so there is little chance that they will allow an alternative distribution channel, and even if they did, they would want some percentage (30%?) of Valve's income so it's not going to happen.

Aside from ARM issues, Steam has 70%+ of the market for distribution of Windows video games. Once Microsoft have an alternative app Store it is going to be competing directly against Steam. The amusing thing is that all this fuss is over a unified distribution channel, which is a new feature for Windows but which the Linux distributions have had for almost two decades now.

Comcast average connection speeds are faster than their advertised rates.

http://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2012/07/get-this-some-isps-provide-faster-download-speeds-than-they-promise/

From Apple's page.. http://www.apple.com/osx/whats-new/
iCloud, iOS related things, Game Center to play iOS owners, Facebook, Twitter, Flickr, Vimeo, Sharing, Messages, Gatekeeper. Almost all of the things mentioned have to do with interaction between your Mac and iOS, other people on the Net, and well Gatekeeper is useful but basically it's their store. I'm dubious about PowerNap.
Dictation sounds useful. If it really is any good I would buy it from the App Store for my current Mac, if they allowed it.

On the other hand, it seems there are indeed work related improvements. So I will consider it in the future. After making a clone of my hard disk.
http://arstechnica.com/apple/2011/07/mac-os-x-10-7/7/#document-model
Apple has added APIs in Lion that, when used properly, enable the following experience.
- The user does not have to remember to save documents. All work is automatically saved.
- Closing a document or quitting an application does not require the user to make decisions about unsaved changes.
- The user does not have to remember to save document changes before causing the document's file to be read by another application (e.g., attaching an open document with unsaved changes to an e-mail).
- Quitting an application, logging out, or restarting the computer does not mean that all open documents and windows have to be manually re-opened next time.

There's a huge (HUGE) difference between a fanboy and a Unix engineer who uses it because there's work to be done and not worry about the laptop/desktop working.

I've been using Lion on both of my laptops (pro & air) with absolutely no connectivity issues in at least 3 states. There's no fanboyism to this, just stating facts.

And denying a problem exists in the face of evidence to the contrary whilst having a bash at Windows is clear fanboyism, the problem obviously exists.

These bugs are usually fixed quickly, with most disappearing in the 10.x.1 and 10.x.2 releases. Lion differed in both the nature and longevity of its bugs. Bugs in basic functionality like WiFi connectivity and Web browser stability bedeviled many Lion users, and it took Apple several releases over many long months to address the worst of them.
http://arstechnica.com/apple/2012/07/os-x-10-8/

Serious answer (not complete, but should give you a good idea). Summary: a lot.

It's easy - just start here.

Kinda nice being a subscriber. Single-page articles, PDF/MOBI downloads for content, no ads (without adblock's assistance). Plus you can actively support what is [usually] quality journalism.

no, you're not interpreting it wrong.. non-Metro stuff will not see any of these improvements.

Ars did a much better piece about it.

There's a nice technical blog about how bad WPF is for rendering stuff, and how Silverlight is even worse (most Silverlight rendering is done via the CPU). Fun reading.

Well, they have to persuade you to buy into Metro somehow, and how else but saying "man, that old crap we did, how crap! But we did it right this time, look how cool it all is".

ArsTechnica did a much better piece about how its not so much how much better Win8 is, but how much of that goodness is put into Metro apps rather than old desktop apps.

As for WPF, its fine for LoB apps, but TBH those were perfectly catered for with winforms, and winforms were a bit easier to work with - no nasty interfaces, loads of property-laden objects, and really crufty binding expressions in the XAML, Winforms were so simple in comparison and did everything your LoB app wanted, but I guess MS couldn't have sold you the new VS and Blend to work with WPF without saying "man, that old crap we did, how crap! But we did it right this time, look how cool it all is".

The European Commission announced in 2009 that 10 mobile phone producers, including Apple, LG, Motorola, NEC, Nokia, Qualcomm, Research in Motion, Samsung, Sony Ericsson, and Texas Instruments, agreed to adopt a standardized charger in order to minimize the "needless electronic waste" caused by the proliferation and regular updating of mobile phone.

Why not create some goodwill amongst the users here, Fruit-boys? My Infuse4G does HDMI just fine out of this port (yes, it uses a dongle, but just build the tech into the dock!).

Sometimes the "I'll take my ball and go home!" attitude is a bit much.

Ars Technica did as well, but it isn't terribly in-depth.

Do we know there won't be any adapters available?

Apple has in the past sued companies producing products with connectors that mate with its own devices. Even cutting off the end of an authentic Apple power supply and soldering it onto an external battery has triggered a lawsuit.

Your whole work could always be in question, certainly cases like that crop up in sciences, but it's much harder to steal someone else's work when you have to be doing the work in a lab full of people.

It is plagarism for the liberal arts and falsified data for the sciences.

"google allows in app purchases via third party platform, apple does not. apple will take the 30% of everything, forever"

http://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2012/03/new-android-market-rule-prohibits-apps-that-use-third-party-in-app-payment-services/

Ars on the story: WSJ mangles history to argue government didn't launch the Internet

Good perspective here, IMHO:
Ars Technica review of this op-ed

"One of the most common arguments against a scientific finding is confirmation bias: the scientist or scientists only look for data that confirms a desired conclusion." And ignore data that doesn't support. It's how a high school term paper is written.

Regarding fracking... yeah, it makes me uncomfortable. They pump large amounts of water and other "stuff" underground. It may or may not contaminate ground water supplies. It is capable of contaminating ground water if something unexpected happens. And unexpected things do happen. Also, they won't tell us what the "stuff" they're pumping exactly is.

This is getting interesting.

Earlier this month ISPs came to an agreement with the recording/movie industry to enact a "6 strikes" policy to punish copyright infringement. (see ArsTechnica article, as previously discussed on /. -- http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2011/07/major-isps-agree-to-six-strikes-copyright-enforcement-plan/ )

The very next day after the article was published, I noticed something interesting when I was using BitTorrent--aside from request overhead, I was uploading zero data. I'm currently watching a 3.1GB torrent--1.79 GB downloaded and 0.0 uploaded. And no, it isn't my client settings. I have checked them several times, nor did I change them any from when I was uploading normally. Seeding a completed torrent does nothing--it just sits there with no activity.

To put it in simple terms, Comcast (my ISP) is throttling uploads by 100% but not touching download rates (at least mine). Are they, in essence, protecting their customers from the "6 strikes" policy they agreed to enforce? If so, I assume they are doing this to prevent losing customers that continue using P2P software.

I can't imagine the MPAA/RIAA will be very happy about this.

The ones complaining are the ones who have to pay 10 cents a minute or more for you to hang out in a sex chat room or MLM marketing meeting for an hour. A $6.00 a week or more on a unlimited cell plan makes some customers unprofitable. Free phone services that are not advertised as a phone service such as many SIP, Skype, Magic Jack, Google Voice, etc. don't eat the cost. They simply either don't complete the call, or have a termination in the rural exchange so it is a local call not subject to the tariff. To pull the latter off, caller ID is scrubbed and a local number is provided to the termination.

If you use any of the free conference calls, Try calling with Magic Jack, Google Voice, or other low cost alternative phone service. The call either won't go through, or your caller ID will be altered for you.

I use Google Voice and a SIP phone. I have to use a cell phone and use minutes on my plan to call a conference call.

AT&T tried to avoid completing calls, but due to the fact they provide phone service, they were required by law to complete the calls and pay the tariff.

http://arstechnica.com/business/2007/03/attcingular-blocks-cellular-customers-from-free-conference-call-services/

All the product designers and manufacturers of real products are going to have their products stolen and made by freeloaders at home. It will be the total and irreversible end of creativity and innovation. It must be stopped.

You laugh, but DMCA takedowns have already happened to sites hosting 3D shape files.

Many of these community sites aren't actually ready to handle stuff like this, either.

...or else the customer could own the last mile.

http://www.circleid.com/posts/87311_customer_owned_fiber_in_ottawa/ http://arstechnica.com/features/2008/07/customer-owned-fiber/ http://googlepublicpolicy.blogspot.ca/2008/07/what-if-you-could-own-your-internet.html

WiFi sniffing was not to collect personal data. It was a 20% project to get an idea of what sort of traffic was on WiFis these days. No one ever looked at the actual data, and none of the data ever left the lab.

It shouldn't have been collected, and it was recognized as a privacy concern but they went ahead with it anyways. Google then lied about it by saying it was a "mistake" and "unintentional". They then asked the FCC to black out embarrassing findings that contradicted their public statements: http://www.wired.com/threatlevel/2012/05/google-wifi-fcc-investigation/

Like I said, it was not to collect personal data. That data was picked up as extra payload. The data was just part of an experiment to see what the distribution of traffic was like on WiFis these days. The data was never used for any commercial purpose. Everything in that article backs up what I said, except for the wild speculation on the part of the author. Just because it was transferred to the Oregon datacenter for storage doesn't mean it was used commercially. It was just in the engineers files. You say things like "embarrassing findings", when the fact was that they didn't want personal names released to the public.

Not deleting email was just a matter of the way data is replicated in the datacenters.

Deleting it is just a matter of replicating the deletion.

Yeah, I sorry, but it is not that simple. In a huge system like Google's, thing are marked for deletion, and then overwritten later on when the space is needed. There is no point in zeroing out anything, since the data is all encrypted anyway.

The Buzz fiasco was just a mistake.

I'm seeing this excuse a lot. That's quite a "mistake" to make.

So, you are saying that it was not a mistake? That they did it intentionally? That there was some motivation for them to, what was it, reveal status messages to peoples' contacts?

No, it was a stupid oversight. It slipped by.

I don't see how Google was abusing a loophole when the 2009 Google code was written two years before the 2011 loophole was written.

Reference? I did a search for: "google safari 2009 2011 cookies" and didn't find what you are talking about.

You're not looking hard, or you are using the wrong search engine. Try, "google ftc focused on 2009 help page". It's all over the place.

And as for keeping data for too long, I don't know what you are talking about. Generally, Google likes to get rid of that stuff as soon as possible.

Believe me, I'm even more baffled by your comment. Google hoards information, as their whole business is based on knowing as much as possible. I have no idea where you got this idea that Google likes to throw away data: http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2010/03/google-keeps-your-data-to-learn-from-good-guys-fight-off-bad-guys/

Google might extract general trends from your information, to help guess what you might be searching for. But the actual information is disposed of fairly quickly. I think it's six months or so.

As for pervasive tracking, all google cares about is what sort of car you like. They could care less about any actual personal data.

But governments, hackers, and misbehaving employees do.

Yeah, good luck breaking into a Google datacenter. You have no idea.

Welcome to the real world.

Well, duh, that was my entire point. In the real world Google is

WiFi sniffing was not to collect personal data. It was a 20% project to get an idea of what sort of traffic was on WiFis these days. No one ever looked at the actual data, and none of the data ever left the lab.

It shouldn't have been collected, and it was recognized as a privacy concern but they went ahead with it anyways. Google then lied about it by saying it was a "mistake" and "unintentional". They then asked the FCC to black out embarrassing findings that contradicted their public statements: http://www.wired.com/threatlevel/2012/05/google-wifi-fcc-investigation/

Not deleting email was just a matter of the way data is replicated in the datacenters.

Deleting it is just a matter of replicating the deletion.

The Buzz fiasco was just a mistake.

I'm seeing this excuse a lot. That's quite a "mistake" to make.

I don't see how Google was abusing a loophole when the 2009 Google code was written two years before the 2011 loophole was written.

Reference? I did a search for: "google safari 2009 2011 cookies" and didn't find what you are talking about.

And as for keeping data for too long, I don't know what you are talking about. Generally, Google likes to get rid of that stuff as soon as possible.

Believe me, I'm even more baffled by your comment. Google hoards information, as their whole business is based on knowing as much as possible. I have no idea where you got this idea that Google likes to throw away data: http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2010/03/google-keeps-your-data-to-learn-from-good-guys-fight-off-bad-guys/

As for pervasive tracking, all google cares about is what sort of car you like. They could care less about any actual personal data.

But governments, hackers, and misbehaving employees do.

Tax havens are an unfortunate fact of life. All big companies have to do it. Fix the loopholes and level the playing field. Don't expect individual company to drop their competitive edge when the other companies aren't.

I've already addressed this in another comment.

Welcome to the real world.

Well, duh, that was my entire point. In the real world Google is a for-profit company that will ultimately act in their self-interest and not according to the angelic standards some think they follow.

So hopefully my initial complaints about the Win8 secure boot requirements on x86 were not based on the full story.

Remains the ARM bit...