If the UEFI firmware is implemented correctly, it offers an option for someone with physical access to the machine to see a list of the keys, add and (probably) remove keys at will.
Actually, if I'm not mistaken Microsoft demands this for machines to get the Windows 8-Logo.
Now suppose they perform competitive bidding to provide service to a separably maintained database of customers (or multiple such databases if you dislike centralization) which handled billing.
So... instead of having to hack the database of all service providers an attacker would only have to hack one (or a small number of) database(s) to get the data of all consumers? No that's progress.
I wonder how this law is to be enforced. If nothing is ever told that the breach happened (and logs "expired" pertaining to the breach), then only the party that did the intrusion would really have proof it ever happened.
That a company does it's best to hide that their systems where breached doesn't mean that it will never come out. If lists of passwords appear online, or if somebody abuses customer data that was only ever disclosed to that company, they will be in deep sh*t if it comes out that they knew about the breach and did not follow the law.
In German we actually have two different words for this: Garantie for the (voluntary) warranty of a seller or manufacturer and GewÃhrleistung for the mandatory warranty.
No they were not covered. After the first six months you are responsible for proving that it was Apple's fault; with an extended warranty it's Apple that has to prove that it's not.
Not quite. With a usual warranty, like Apples extended warranty, it's basically up to the company to decide what they cover and what not. You hear quite often about people who where denied a repair under warranty because the maker found some clause in their legalese that excludes that special case.
The mandatory warranty, on the other hand, is defined by law and companies can not as easily weasel out of it.
You are right, though, that only for the first 6 months it is assumed that a defect was there from the start. Afterwards, the customer has to prove that that is the case. But the consumer is still covered for the remainder of the period (usually 2 years, less if the goods ar perishable or sold used).
Since european courts tend to be rather consumer-friendly, sellers don't demand proof even after more than 6 months as long as it is not obvious that the consumer is trying to scam them.
No word yet on when the rest of the EU will see those changes, but it would now seem to be just a matter of time before other countries get the new terms as well.
Nope. the customers in other EU countries already have the same (or very similar) terms. Because these terms are based on laws that are based on EU guidelines. And law trumps whatever Apple says they are willing to do. The only thing missing is Apple admitting to the customers what rights they have under the law.
First, we need to make sure that the current laws don't cover this action.
It doesn't. Otherwise it would have been pointed out by now. The law should also not be designed to address the direct issue, which came up recently, but it should address net-neutrality in general.
As I wrote: the consumer protection agencies (Verbraucherzentralen) and the cartel office (Bundeskartellamt) are analyzing the situation. So I'd say your wrong: It is not yet clear if the actions of the Deutsche Telekom can be addressed with current laws.
(BTW: I'm German, so I follow this situation in the German media.)
What should the government do? Write a Lex Telekom, especially targeting this company?
The consumer protection agencies and the Federal Cartel Office are on the case and inspect if the Deutsche Telekom is breaking laws. That's how it should be.
I'm opposed to the government changing legislation 'on the fly' just because one company does something bad. First, we need to make sure that the current laws don't cover this action. Then the parliament can look into the matter and if necessary make a new law after proper deliberations.
Amazon regularly scans the prices for eBooks at competitive websites and will automatically drop the price of any title that it finds lower at another site, without giving notice to the publisher (or, for a self-published eBook, the author.)
Ok... can you explain how Amazon cutting their own profit is price fixing?
And why Amazon should give the publisher notice? I assume that with the big publishers, Amazon has a deal where the company pays a fixed price for any sold book.
This is different with books self-published through Amazon. Those authors probably get a percentage of the profits. In this case (and only in this case) Amazon hurts the profits of the authors.
What island country are you talking about? If you mean Vietnam, let me be the first to tell you that Vietnam is not an island. Vietnam lies on mainland asia, just south of China.
Google "epub download" and add some authors name and book title and you'll see why DRM doesn't work.
DRM doesn't change the availability of non-licensed download options.
There is really just one group of people that has to deal with DRM -- the people who actually are willing to buy your stuff. Anybody who doesn't want to pay will find the content DRM-free somewhere.
That's the lesson that the music industry learnt the hard way -- the people that aren't willing to pay are a lost cause either way, but DRM may alienate the paying customers. DRM hurts the honest customer. You know, the guy that you want to come back and buy more from you.
So not using DRM anymore didn't make the non-licensed downloads go away. But it increased the number of payed, licensed downloads. So it's good for the bottom line.
Now, if the citizens of NZ decided to sue their government for wasting so many resources on a personal vendetta against a single individual... THAT I can see making it to court.
Kim seems to be (or have been) quite cozy with a few of NZ' officials.
So it's not so much a case of personal vendetta but one of those 'le'ts roll over for the US government' cases.
They are stuck with a bunch of odd resolutions and encouraged developers to target them all directly, resulting in debacles like the black bars when they went widescreen.
I have to kind of chuckle because, well, Android...
You didn't really read gp's post, right?
Google told the Android developers a long time ago that they should prepare their apps for a variety of resolutions and DPIs.
Apple on the other hand told their developers that they can expect fixed resolutions, and are now struggeling with the fact that they have different resolutions, different DPIs and different aspect ratios.
But Apple, like many other companies, wants to have the right to do anything without telling what they do.
Hate to be a defender of Apple, but you just took shit out of your butt and added it to the argument.
The issue is that they arent telling what they do, not that they "want to have the right to do anything." These things are not mutual, so you don't get to argue as if they were.
You quoted the relevant sentence of me. Can you read the last five words of it? They are 'without telling what they do'
So yeah, I did stick to the substance: They want to have the right to do anything WITHOUT TELLING WHAT THEY DO.
The ruling is not about connection data like IP addresses needed to establish connections. This is about the data that Apple collects outside of that: email addresses, contacts, geolocation.
If I use, say, iCalendar, obviously I allow Apple to collect and save the data of my appointments. But before Apple can share this data with third parties, they have to tell me which third parties and what data. This isn't 'the privacy policy of the internet at large'. This is Apples (and Googles, and Facebooks,...) policy of threating users data as their own just because it is saved on their servers.
There is no real need for these companies to share the data with third parties. They do this for their own benefit (usually ad revenue). And
Slashdot Mirror
If the UEFI firmware is implemented correctly, it offers an option for someone with physical access to the machine to see a list of the keys, add and (probably) remove keys at will.
Actually, if I'm not mistaken Microsoft demands this for machines to get the Windows 8-Logo.
Now suppose they perform competitive bidding to provide service to a separably maintained database of customers (or multiple such databases if you dislike centralization) which handled billing.
So... instead of having to hack the database of all service providers an attacker would only have to hack one (or a small number of) database(s) to get the data of all consumers?
No that's progress.
I wonder how this law is to be enforced. If nothing is ever told that the breach happened (and logs "expired" pertaining to the breach), then only the party that did the intrusion would really have proof it ever happened.
That a company does it's best to hide that their systems where breached doesn't mean that it will never come out.
If lists of passwords appear online, or if somebody abuses customer data that was only ever disclosed to that company, they will be in deep sh*t if it comes out that they knew about the breach and did not follow the law.
There is still an inofficial port for Linux that works just fine.
I just started using Songbird a few days ago, so they HAD to fold now.
In German we actually have two different words for this: Garantie for the (voluntary) warranty of a seller or manufacturer and GewÃhrleistung for the mandatory warranty.
No they were not covered. After the first six months you are responsible for proving that it was Apple's fault; with an extended warranty it's Apple that has to prove that it's not.
Not quite. With a usual warranty, like Apples extended warranty, it's basically up to the company to decide what they cover and what not.
You hear quite often about people who where denied a repair under warranty because the maker found some clause in their legalese that excludes that special case.
The mandatory warranty, on the other hand, is defined by law and companies can not as easily weasel out of it.
You are right, though, that only for the first 6 months it is assumed that a defect was there from the start. Afterwards, the customer has to prove that that is the case.
But the consumer is still covered for the remainder of the period (usually 2 years, less if the goods ar perishable or sold used).
Since european courts tend to be rather consumer-friendly, sellers don't demand proof even after more than 6 months as long as it is not obvious that the consumer is trying to scam them.
No word yet on when the rest of the EU will see those changes, but it would now seem to be just a matter of time before other countries get the new terms as well.
Nope. the customers in other EU countries already have the same (or very similar) terms. Because these terms are based on laws that are based on EU guidelines. And law trumps whatever Apple says they are willing to do.
The only thing missing is Apple admitting to the customers what rights they have under the law.
Yes, they do that.
Doesn't mean that I can't wish they worked differently.
First, we need to make sure that the current laws don't cover this action.
It doesn't. Otherwise it would have been pointed out by now. The law should also not be designed to address the direct issue, which came up recently, but it should address net-neutrality in general.
As I wrote: the consumer protection agencies (Verbraucherzentralen) and the cartel office (Bundeskartellamt) are analyzing the situation. So I'd say your wrong: It is not yet clear if the actions of the Deutsche Telekom can be addressed with current laws.
(BTW: I'm German, so I follow this situation in the German media.)
What should the government do?
Write a Lex Telekom, especially targeting this company?
The consumer protection agencies and the Federal Cartel Office are on the case and inspect if the Deutsche Telekom is breaking laws.
That's how it should be.
I'm opposed to the government changing legislation 'on the fly' just because one company does something bad.
First, we need to make sure that the current laws don't cover this action.
Then the parliament can look into the matter and if necessary make a new law after proper deliberations.
In other words Apple tried to do what they did with music , open up a market and allow everyone to make money and be of benefit to the users.
This model kept the ebook prices artificially high and removed competition on price.
How would that be to the benefit of the users?
You do realize that Amazon is paying $12.99 for new ebooks, and selling them at $9.99 right?
Nope. Amazon sells *some* eBooks for less than cost. With most eBooks they make some profit.
Please stop spreading the misinformation that Amazon sells all eBooks below cost.
Amazon regularly scans the prices for eBooks at competitive websites and will automatically drop the price of any title that it finds lower at another site, without giving notice to the publisher (or, for a self-published eBook, the author.)
Ok... can you explain how Amazon cutting their own profit is price fixing?
And why Amazon should give the publisher notice?
I assume that with the big publishers, Amazon has a deal where the company pays a fixed price for any sold book.
This is different with books self-published through Amazon. Those authors probably get a percentage of the profits. In this case (and only in this case) Amazon hurts the profits of the authors.
What island country are you talking about?
If you mean Vietnam, let me be the first to tell you that Vietnam is not an island. Vietnam lies on mainland asia, just south of China.
Quite frankly, you sound like a rabid apple-hater - Apple is far better than Amazon / Kobo or Google when it comes to DRM.
Oh, really?
So Apple has DRM-free books in their shop and marks them accordingly?
That's what Kobobooks does. And that's what Amazon does.
Google "epub download" and add some authors name and book title and you'll see why DRM doesn't work.
DRM doesn't change the availability of non-licensed download options.
There is really just one group of people that has to deal with DRM -- the people who actually are willing to buy your stuff. Anybody who doesn't want to pay will find the content DRM-free somewhere.
That's the lesson that the music industry learnt the hard way -- the people that aren't willing to pay are a lost cause either way, but DRM may alienate the paying customers. DRM hurts the honest customer. You know, the guy that you want to come back and buy more from you.
So not using DRM anymore didn't make the non-licensed downloads go away. But it increased the number of payed, licensed downloads.
So it's good for the bottom line.
Now, if the citizens of NZ decided to sue their government for wasting so many resources on a personal vendetta against a single individual... THAT I can see making it to court.
Kim seems to be (or have been) quite cozy with a few of NZ' officials.
So it's not so much a case of personal vendetta but one of those 'le'ts roll over for the US government' cases.
... maw?
I hope it was a thresher maw. There's no shame in being killed by one of those monsters.
They are stuck with a bunch of odd resolutions and encouraged developers to target them all directly, resulting in debacles like the black bars when they went widescreen.
I have to kind of chuckle because, well, Android...
You didn't really read gp's post, right?
Google told the Android developers a long time ago that they should prepare their apps for a variety of resolutions and DPIs.
Apple on the other hand told their developers that they can expect fixed resolutions, and are now struggeling with the fact that they have different resolutions, different DPIs and different aspect ratios.
Tell that to Apple's shareholders.
They don't care much about the money in the bank, but about the new money to be made.
So all of these papers where funded by the US government in one way or the other? Even those published in other countries?
You should really stop thinking that the world ends at the borders of the US.
There is a mobile version of the YouTube website, if I'm not mistaken.
So there is no need for Microsoft to write an app.
It isn't like an essential service is not available without Microsofts app for Youtube.
But Apple, like many other companies, wants to have the right to do anything without telling what they do.
Hate to be a defender of Apple, but you just took shit out of your butt and added it to the argument.
The issue is that they arent telling what they do, not that they "want to have the right to do anything." These things are not mutual, so you don't get to argue as if they were.
You quoted the relevant sentence of me. Can you read the last five words of it? They are 'without telling what they do'
So yeah, I did stick to the substance: They want to have the right to do anything WITHOUT TELLING WHAT THEY DO.
Stop reading sentences halfway through, please.
This is a strawman argument.
The ruling is not about connection data like IP addresses needed to establish connections.
This is about the data that Apple collects outside of that: email addresses, contacts, geolocation.
If I use, say, iCalendar, obviously I allow Apple to collect and save the data of my appointments. But before Apple can share this data with third parties, they have to tell me which third parties and what data. This isn't 'the privacy policy of the internet at large'. This is Apples (and Googles, and Facebooks, ...) policy of threating users data as their own just because it is saved on their servers.
There is no real need for these companies to share the data with third parties. They do this for their own benefit (usually ad revenue). And