Two years? That's far too short. Even for regular PCs it'd be a too short time span - 20, 30 years ago the normal lifespan of a PC was considered to be about three years, now it's more like five. Many LTS releases of Linux get security fixes for at least five years. Debian releases maybe even longer, but that's more to do with the slow release cycle itself.
Anyway, here you're talking about devices that last easily a decade, such as fridges. My own fridge is older than that, should be about 12 years now. Our TV is nearing 3 years now, the one before that we had for 8-9 years at least. Manufacturers will have to provide support for 10, 15 years. At the very least. Otherwise you either have to deal with "planned obsolescence" (something we at/. love to hate), where you have to replace your expensive devices every two years. Expensive, and very bad from an environmental perspective.
Now with these support periods there are all kinds of practical and maybe even technical challenges - such as keeping people employed that actually know how to work with that old technology and companies going out of business.
This attack model assumes there is an app on the phone able to listen all time for ultrasounds.
TFA suggests that this even is the case for many phones already: they say many advertising APIs (which programmers simply link to in order to get ads in their apps) already include ultrasound listening options. This is supposedly yet another way for the advertisement provider to get more information on individual users, in this case by linking separate devices as belonging to the same user.
It's not meant for desktop computers; it's meant for automated vehicles to help them find the way.
And that I also think is the wrong approach. Maps are NEVER correct. There are accidental errors, there are changes to the landscape, temporary obstacles, etc. Normal maps should be good enough for a self-driving vehicle to find its way, just like people find the way: by looking at the actual streets, not by (literally) blindly following a map and hoping that works out fine. So even if maps are detailed enough to follow streets and lanes on streets and so, the cars anyway have to be very aware of the actual place, to the extent that those maps are not needed any more.
I.e. Volvo patented the safety belt, they implemented it and let all use it royalty free for the betterment of humans, as safety first.
You can not patent "the seat belt". You can, however, patent a certain way of making seat belts, e.g. the locking mechanism that stops the belt when it's pulled quickly. Other manufacturers are free to implement a different version of the seat belt, such as the one used on airplanes for example.
Your example is more to how horrible software patents are, as it seems Apple patented an idea ("stop certain function driving") rather then a technology (which would be more like "a specific method of recognising someone is driving and using that to block certain functions on the phone"). There may be several ways to detect whether someone is driving (GPS speed, shaking of the vehicle, acceleration, a bluetooth link to the car, whatever) so the patent of Apple shouldn't be able to prevent someone to implement a similar feature, they would only be prevented from using a specific, non-obvious way of detecting whether the phone's owner is driving.
Nobody is "being sold" for sex these days except in exceptionally rare circumstances. It does not work economically.
That argument doesn't make sense. I'd guess it works great, from an economical point of view. Force the girl to prostitute herself, take most or even all of the pay, great profit potential for those with low morals.
It does seem to happen a lot, all over the world, and not just to children. Europe with its refugee crisis may also see refugees end up in forced prostitution - e.g. to "pay off debts" to people smugglers. Even before the refugee crisis there were ample examples of women ending up in forced prostitution rings. Them being adults just made it not make the news that big. Easiest accomplished in places where brothels are commonplace, as it makes it so much easier to control the victims by keeping them within the building.
That, and the part where the driver thought she looked just 12 years old. I don't think there are many if any place in the world where the age of consent is that low, and in places where prostitution is legal the age of consent for that is often even higher. Certainly not even 16, her actual age.
You'll have to read the actual patent application carefully before calling "prior art!". The linked articles don't provide a link to the actual patent application, so it's a bit difficult to know what they actually patented.
I'm not even sure if it's a technological patent or a design patent in this case. It seems to be the first, though can't be sure without a link to the actual patent.
That's just something I don't get. Investing USD 1 million in something and then creating just a single job in the process?! It's as if there's at least a zero wrong somewhere.
It's not loyalty to Android indeed. It's loyalty to Samsung. That's made clear even in TFS. That Samsung phones use the Android system is probably largely irrelevant to this loyalty.
...just like guns "can be exploited" to shoot people, and vehicles "can be exploited" to run over them.
Big difference. Guns are designed to shoot projectiles and destroy targets, that's their stated function. What other uses are there for a gun, really?
Cars are designed to drive, and to roll over not too big obstacles.
TVs are meantto show broadcast images or pictures from other sources, either in motion or static. That's the normal function of a TV. Getting hijacked by ransomware is not - it's more like your car getting stolen due to the electronic key being compromised by a thief. That's something you can definitely blame the manufacturer for.
"He claims LG wouldn't help him with perform factory reset of the device."
"[...] the company told him to visit one of their service centers, where one of its employees could reset his TV."
How's that "wouldn't help"? He obviously gets help offered. Maybe not what he hopes to get, but it's a clear offer of help getting the TV working again.
Still wondering why so many such companies insist on setting up shop in the US, instead of other (more copyright-friendly) parts of the world. Thanks to the Internet they can serve the rest of the world (including USA) just fine.
And if it's to do with payments, well, time to release the stranglehold by that one country over the rest of the world as well.
Buying a DVD does give you rights to format-shift from DVD to something else. So VidAngel is selling the DVD to people, and format-shifting it to digital for people, and then delivering it to them.
This is exactly where I see this may go wrong for VidAngel. It's not you (the DVD owner) doing the format shifting, but someone else. Probably no-where in the law is written explicitly that this is OK so there may be room for legal argument, especially as the physical original never gets shipped to the new owner. Gotta be interesting to see what happens, even more so if they start to ignore national borders and go worldwide (why wouldn't they be allowed to sell a US original disk to me living in Hong Kong?).
Except, they realize a lot of people (basically, everyone) don't want the physical DVD, so they also offer the option to stream the video for you
This part may be in legal grey area as it's format shifting (not sure what US law had to say about that but it's certainly been discussed a lot), especially if they never physically ship the DVD to the renter/buyer where plaintiff may argue it's effectively just a streaming service, and that vidangel doesn't have the license to stream the content - even if it's to just one customer per physically available DVD at the same time.
My parents, quite recently. Medical emergency prevented them from flying. Yet another reason for why this may happen.
So that were total four flights with two empty seats (well, possibly resold to someone else). Airline got to keep their money; parents will have to claim with their travel insurance.
Also it may be hard to believe and go against popular opinion especially in that part of the world, but trust me, when you actually need it, it's really nice to have. Unfortunately I have direct personal experience with the matter...
That is a general problem when it comes to laws broken by companies. No-one is personally responsible, no-one really cares. At worst the company goes bankrupt and those responsible take their severance packages and move on to the board of another company.
I wonder what kind of serious problems Uber has with their self-driving cars that they suspend the testing without fuss over something as trivial as breaking the law. This must be one of the very first times.
The goal is not, nor will it ever be, 0 accidents.
The goal SHOULD be 0 accidents. Now that may never be possible, we should still be working towards that goal by making roads and vehicles as safe as possible. In the end we could reach aviation-level standards where every accident is thoroughly researched to find out how it happened and how it could have been prevented.
Well, a possible solution would be to not allow software updates at all. Have the OS of the fridge/TV/whatever baked into the chip somehow (physically baked, or write-once EPROM or whatever). With no possibility of having the thing run new software there is no way for any attacker to take over the device.
Slashdot Mirror
Considering how "insignificant" Hangouts has become, it appears that most developers already abandoned the service.
Two years? That's far too short. Even for regular PCs it'd be a too short time span - 20, 30 years ago the normal lifespan of a PC was considered to be about three years, now it's more like five. Many LTS releases of Linux get security fixes for at least five years. Debian releases maybe even longer, but that's more to do with the slow release cycle itself.
Anyway, here you're talking about devices that last easily a decade, such as fridges. My own fridge is older than that, should be about 12 years now. Our TV is nearing 3 years now, the one before that we had for 8-9 years at least. Manufacturers will have to provide support for 10, 15 years. At the very least. Otherwise you either have to deal with "planned obsolescence" (something we at /. love to hate), where you have to replace your expensive devices every two years. Expensive, and very bad from an environmental perspective.
Now with these support periods there are all kinds of practical and maybe even technical challenges - such as keeping people employed that actually know how to work with that old technology and companies going out of business.
This attack model assumes there is an app on the phone able to listen all time for ultrasounds.
TFA suggests that this even is the case for many phones already: they say many advertising APIs (which programmers simply link to in order to get ads in their apps) already include ultrasound listening options. This is supposedly yet another way for the advertisement provider to get more information on individual users, in this case by linking separate devices as belonging to the same user.
It's not meant for desktop computers; it's meant for automated vehicles to help them find the way.
And that I also think is the wrong approach. Maps are NEVER correct. There are accidental errors, there are changes to the landscape, temporary obstacles, etc. Normal maps should be good enough for a self-driving vehicle to find its way, just like people find the way: by looking at the actual streets, not by (literally) blindly following a map and hoping that works out fine. So even if maps are detailed enough to follow streets and lanes on streets and so, the cars anyway have to be very aware of the actual place, to the extent that those maps are not needed any more.
I.e. Volvo patented the safety belt, they implemented it and let all use it royalty free for the betterment of humans, as safety first.
You can not patent "the seat belt". You can, however, patent a certain way of making seat belts, e.g. the locking mechanism that stops the belt when it's pulled quickly. Other manufacturers are free to implement a different version of the seat belt, such as the one used on airplanes for example.
Your example is more to how horrible software patents are, as it seems Apple patented an idea ("stop certain function driving") rather then a technology (which would be more like "a specific method of recognising someone is driving and using that to block certain functions on the phone"). There may be several ways to detect whether someone is driving (GPS speed, shaking of the vehicle, acceleration, a bluetooth link to the car, whatever) so the patent of Apple shouldn't be able to prevent someone to implement a similar feature, they would only be prevented from using a specific, non-obvious way of detecting whether the phone's owner is driving.
Nobody is "being sold" for sex these days except in exceptionally rare circumstances. It does not work economically.
That argument doesn't make sense. I'd guess it works great, from an economical point of view. Force the girl to prostitute herself, take most or even all of the pay, great profit potential for those with low morals.
It does seem to happen a lot, all over the world, and not just to children. Europe with its refugee crisis may also see refugees end up in forced prostitution - e.g. to "pay off debts" to people smugglers. Even before the refugee crisis there were ample examples of women ending up in forced prostitution rings. Them being adults just made it not make the news that big. Easiest accomplished in places where brothels are commonplace, as it makes it so much easier to control the victims by keeping them within the building.
That, and the part where the driver thought she looked just 12 years old. I don't think there are many if any place in the world where the age of consent is that low, and in places where prostitution is legal the age of consent for that is often even higher. Certainly not even 16, her actual age.
You'll have to read the actual patent application carefully before calling "prior art!". The linked articles don't provide a link to the actual patent application, so it's a bit difficult to know what they actually patented.
I'm not even sure if it's a technological patent or a design patent in this case. It seems to be the first, though can't be sure without a link to the actual patent.
Only possible if your browser is willing to part with that information in the first place.
Well, one car accident victim, chopped up properly, may save a dozen lives. A net bonus.
That's just something I don't get. Investing USD 1 million in something and then creating just a single job in the process?! It's as if there's at least a zero wrong somewhere.
It's not loyalty to Android indeed. It's loyalty to Samsung. That's made clear even in TFS. That Samsung phones use the Android system is probably largely irrelevant to this loyalty.
...just like guns "can be exploited" to shoot people, and vehicles "can be exploited" to run over them.
Big difference. Guns are designed to shoot projectiles and destroy targets, that's their stated function. What other uses are there for a gun, really?
Cars are designed to drive, and to roll over not too big obstacles.
TVs are meantto show broadcast images or pictures from other sources, either in motion or static. That's the normal function of a TV. Getting hijacked by ransomware is not - it's more like your car getting stolen due to the electronic key being compromised by a thief. That's something you can definitely blame the manufacturer for.
"He claims LG wouldn't help him with perform factory reset of the device."
"[...] the company told him to visit one of their service centers, where one of its employees could reset his TV."
How's that "wouldn't help"? He obviously gets help offered. Maybe not what he hopes to get, but it's a clear offer of help getting the TV working again.
Still wondering why so many such companies insist on setting up shop in the US, instead of other (more copyright-friendly) parts of the world. Thanks to the Internet they can serve the rest of the world (including USA) just fine.
And if it's to do with payments, well, time to release the stranglehold by that one country over the rest of the world as well.
\
Buying a DVD does give you rights to format-shift from DVD to something else. So VidAngel is selling the DVD to people, and format-shifting it to digital for people, and then delivering it to them.
This is exactly where I see this may go wrong for VidAngel. It's not you (the DVD owner) doing the format shifting, but someone else. Probably no-where in the law is written explicitly that this is OK so there may be room for legal argument, especially as the physical original never gets shipped to the new owner. Gotta be interesting to see what happens, even more so if they start to ignore national borders and go worldwide (why wouldn't they be allowed to sell a US original disk to me living in Hong Kong?).
Except, they realize a lot of people (basically, everyone) don't want the physical DVD, so they also offer the option to stream the video for you
This part may be in legal grey area as it's format shifting (not sure what US law had to say about that but it's certainly been discussed a lot), especially if they never physically ship the DVD to the renter/buyer where plaintiff may argue it's effectively just a streaming service, and that vidangel doesn't have the license to stream the content - even if it's to just one customer per physically available DVD at the same time.
My parents, quite recently. Medical emergency prevented them from flying. Yet another reason for why this may happen.
So that were total four flights with two empty seats (well, possibly resold to someone else). Airline got to keep their money; parents will have to claim with their travel insurance.
Indeed. You're totally correct there.
Also it may be hard to believe and go against popular opinion especially in that part of the world, but trust me, when you actually need it, it's really nice to have. Unfortunately I have direct personal experience with the matter...
For USAians, including US based companies, the USA is the world. I'm used to that already, being a non-USAian.
That is a general problem when it comes to laws broken by companies. No-one is personally responsible, no-one really cares. At worst the company goes bankrupt and those responsible take their severance packages and move on to the board of another company.
I wonder what kind of serious problems Uber has with their self-driving cars that they suspend the testing without fuss over something as trivial as breaking the law. This must be one of the very first times.
The goal is not, nor will it ever be, 0 accidents.
The goal SHOULD be 0 accidents. Now that may never be possible, we should still be working towards that goal by making roads and vehicles as safe as possible. In the end we could reach aviation-level standards where every accident is thoroughly researched to find out how it happened and how it could have been prevented.
True - like using Windows to run a cash dispensing machine. With all the unused functionality that can't be switched off.
Well, a possible solution would be to not allow software updates at all. Have the OS of the fridge/TV/whatever baked into the chip somehow (physically baked, or write-once EPROM or whatever). With no possibility of having the thing run new software there is no way for any attacker to take over the device.
I'm probably missing something here, though.