Clearly the website is based on a loophole, which can/will be closed at any time. Given the litigious nature of most corporations (and in this case, possibly a government agency), I wouldn't be surprised if the author doesn't get a cease & desist and/or lawsuit coming his way.
Other than that, this is pretty awesome and a hacker-worthy effort.
I seriously doubt that intelligent people outside of the patent/legal profession would think any of either of their patents hold any merit. The best invention would be a way to send a message back to those who originally created patent law and tell them how ridiculous, abused, and twisted it is all going to become, so write it very carefully and define it very narrowly.
While the current patent legislation is insane, take a look at all those who benefit from it. You can always see who wants things *they way they are going* by following the money.
Big corporations, big banks, multinational law firms and their cronies in legislative and judicial branches all prefer the situation as it stands now.
Firstly, Samsung always wants to dictate terms, they never are on the other end of things.
So Samsung has huge contracts with Apple on processor/chipset manufacturing... on Apple's terms. How are they not already being used to being dictated to?
Aside from what the white papers say about a device's MTBF rate, I've always compared based on factory warranty. 3 yr vs 5 yr is pretty telling in most cases.
I'll counter with my anecdotal experience, I have yet to have any SSD fail (several owned since 2010) and I bought down-market (OCZ Vertex2) on-sale items. I've had one HDD fail, and that was on a work machine. I don't have any RAID5 volumes (I keep buying the next largest disks and RAID1 for my NAS - 4TB is good enough for now). Combine with an occasional system image for all the systems (using cheaper 2TB disks) and I'm not even passingly worried about disk failure. It's simply not worth it to me.
If they are symbolic bills, then all we'll get here is bullshit discussion about AGW or worse, politics. Must be a slow news day (well, other than the bigger-than-average daily shooting in San Bernardino)
I've seen "enterprise" disks that were just consumer disks with a fancy housing. There were some electronics for things like hot-swap and interface adapting. But no difference in terms of the storage media.
Did they or did they not come with additional warranties? Because while the consumer may just throw out the drive, business customers can and will claim the warranty... thus making the additional cost of the "enterprise" product worth it to their intended customers.
Oh, I'm sure they will sell the same user-capacity drive with a higher MTBF rate (and higher cost) as a "prosumer" product. How?? Same technology, feature, etc, only difference is they'll stamp more chips on board to be used a transparent spare cells as they die out; thus extending the life.
It's a dirty bolt-on solution to extending MTBF, but that's exactly what will happen.
It's not just a dirty bolt-on solution, but a time-honored tradition - it's called market segmentation (aka binning as per Intel), and it's how companies beat the race to the bottom on prices (and profitability). Let the super-price-conscious consumer buy the $80 500GB SSD and claim they got a good deal. The "prosumer" will buy the higher end model for $100 more and get a promise of reliability/performance that may or may not be worth that margin, but that they can afford.
Whenever these price comparisons come up, I get the feeling that there is a huge bias in favour of the statement that article wants to make. i.e. If its about the falling price of SSDs, then compare a low spec SSD with a high spec HDD. If you want to argue for HDD, do the reverse.
There will always be bias in these sort of comparisons where profits of large industry players is to be had. What matters is the sentiment and frequency of the messaging. SSDs start to erode HDD marketshare? You will see lots of anti-SSD articles. SSD players pushing back? A few articles claiming price parity or read/write speed differences.
Track the progress of these as data points on a timeline and you'll a trend.
Also of importance, are people/organizations that have taken a notable stance on a subject (an SSD/HDD critic finally claiming that they're giving up on their position, or a large organization (e.g. Apple, Google) making a shift to mainstream one technology over the other for a specific need.
I think you missed the part where this is for critical infrastructure. Banks, power plants, water companies. I'll agree that banks can sure as hell afford pay for this type of testing but they have no monetary incentive to get ahead of identity theft or the myriad of other problems their policies cause.
Make these industrial giants get audited. Make sure their software, hardware, and processes are certified. The compliance framework and confirmation of mandates (i.e., the meta-mod function) is what government does best. The actual pen-testing should be left to industry, and hell, make them craft and adhere to a certification as well.
You think corporate welfare is the angle the DHS is using? I guess you think we need to give up more rights to be safe also?
No I want valuable services rendered to be paid for. I also don't want to have to pay for banks (who are insanely profitable) should be paying for themselves. Government should mandate compliance for online security, and let the private sector handle the audits. The DHS testers can be the "meta-mod". I'd be wiling to part with taxes for that.
Highly apropos. For the uninitiated, http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmw... The campaign's byline should instead be "virtual racism, real glory" because that's what it's going to look like for the trolls.
I tried to move things from specific to general to help explain the problem
If you persist in calling VW "unfettered entirely amoral capitalism", why don't you tell us what kind of company and management you think would be better.
It can't be fully state owned facilities, because they had an even worse environmental record when they were tried in Europe.
The entire market is amoral-capitalist. If you can't keep up with the cheating, shareholders screw you over. That's not to excuse anything VW did. However, just because a single player is "partially owned by a government" doesn't make it any more likely to be moral; What it would take is for all the companies to be more strongly vetted/regulated.
So, just have a kid every year and live on the dole.
There is this little, teensy side effect of actually having the kids and having to take care of them... I take it you are not a parent. After having a few, you might understand that the first year is likely not the most difficult - especially with multiple kids.
Why would non-Facebook employees be interested in this at all?
I have a friend who works at another silicon valley startup (same VC partners as Facebook) who recently adopted Netflx's unlimited vacation, and they may also be interested in doing the 4-month prenatal leave as well.
Facebook could be a high-profile benefits leader here. As much as I don't like FB, I respect this move. At least Zuck is fair and consistent on this, unlike Meyer.
you think there will be social security when we retire? (im under 30) doubt it
Social Security trust fund is solvent till ~2035 given current input percentages and projected workforce makeup .
What's likely is that GOP and corporate-licking Dems will both agree to fuck you over in the meanwhile and do something shitty like raise retirement age, or twist verbiage to deny COLA despite constant hikes in non-core inflation rate (why would energy - read gas - and healthcare costs not be "core inflation"?).
So you may be right, you may not have a meaningful Social Security when you retire. But I bet it'll be there.
Amazon has been in bed with the devil for a couple of years now. Nearly everything I order comes by USPS - the slowest, least reliable delivery service on Earth.
This is in direct opposition to my experience.
The Post Office doesn't seem to understand that this is their last best chance to stay relevant and possibly get out of the red. Nope, they're sticking to their old ways - yesterday's technology delivering your packages tomorrow (or next week).
Huh? Oh I see - your experience of their service is essentially filtered by your dogma (that the post office as part of the "government" is not hip enough). Keep in mind, that the USPS as a private entity that's highly controlled by Congressional edicts and orders (like this one mandating that they essentially have to run in debt to pay retirements for employees not even hired yet [1]. If you have an issue with USPS maybe you should take it up with your representative.
Another thing you have to keep in mind, is that the USPS actually fulfills a lot of orders for UPS/FedEx - UPS/Fedex simply can't compete with the USPS for hard-to-reach areas, whereas the USPS has mandates to do so, and so has found a way to do it. [2]
After I win All The Lotteries, I will form Big Dumb Company, with the principal division being Big Dumb Appliances, such as clothes and dish washers that are so well built, they can be handed down at least two generations, stupidly fixable with decades-long part availability, and that are designed to accomplish one task: WASH THINGS.
Same with TVs - or should I say monitors - with the best display possible, replaceable power supplies, interface ports (sans wireless nor Ethernet) out the kazoo, AND DUMB AS A BAG OF HAMMERS. Tuner? game console? Roku? Fantastic: PLUG THEM IN. What will the TVs do? DISPLAY THINGS, PERIOD.
Now, onto phone / Internet service: BIG DUMB PIPE.
Sadly you will likely go out of business - profit margins to sustain a business that doesn't sell out its customer base must be pretty big unless accompanied by a cult-like early adopter crowd.
The future of television is on-demand and not scheduled programming
Good luck getting the sport leagues to play matches when you want to watch them.
Many people years ago recorded matches for watching later. TiVo/DVR culture has long ago hit mainstream. It's not like VCRs couldn't do this - most 25 years ago could record on a schedule - just a PITA to set it.
The problem is that the screen itself is a large, beautiful, and relatively expensive piece compared to everything that puts content on it. The price point makes it impractical to upgrade and replace on the same cycle as an XBox, Playstation, Roku, Apple TV, etc. Personally, I replace the screen every 7-10 years, and the connected devices every 3-5 years. Until the screens drop sufficiently in price to be replaceable in sync with the content devices, it makes exactly zero sense to cram more stuff into them. Especially when you consider the security issues.
At some point, when more money is made from the connective devices and services than the TV itself, there will be one or more players (perhaps including Apple) who merges the set-top box into the TV while keeping upgradability separate.
One way this might come about while keeping the existing ecosystem intact might be to have a "made for AppleTV" or "made for Roku" type licensing scheme so TV features like video cams (e.g. FaceTime for TV) or 3D support or basics like screen size/refresh, etc may be bundled into a single approved profile that the smart device attached can use the features properly.
The U.S. Expatriation Tax is not a hardship by any reasonable definition of hardship...
It's not a question of "hardship". Stealing from people is wrong. Even when the victim has some money left over afterward.
Only tax cowards think the government is simply stealing from you. All your wealth you created in the USA was done because the USA has roads, public infrastructure and police, hospitals, and the *rule of law* to prevent others from stealing your wealth, or just stabbing you in your sleep for their own pleasure.
In short, your wealth was not created in a vacuum and it costs money to keep this infrastructure in place. You may bicker with the details or even a major part of how that tax is collected and spent (I sure do), but to claim it's stealing is to show ignorance of why it exists.
Or do you really think you'd have been better of born in Sierra Leone where there aren't such pesky taxes?
Slashdot Mirror
Clearly the website is based on a loophole, which can/will be closed at any time. Given the litigious nature of most corporations (and in this case, possibly a government agency), I wouldn't be surprised if the author doesn't get a cease & desist and/or lawsuit coming his way.
Other than that, this is pretty awesome and a hacker-worthy effort.
I seriously doubt that intelligent people outside of the patent/legal profession would think any of either of their patents hold any merit. The best invention would be a way to send a message back to those who originally created patent law and tell them how ridiculous, abused, and twisted it is all going to become, so write it very carefully and define it very narrowly.
While the current patent legislation is insane, take a look at all those who benefit from it. You can always see who wants things *they way they are going* by following the money.
Big corporations, big banks, multinational law firms and their cronies in legislative and judicial branches all prefer the situation as it stands now.
Firstly, Samsung always wants to dictate terms, they never are on the other end of things.
So Samsung has huge contracts with Apple on processor/chipset manufacturing... on Apple's terms. How are they not already being used to being dictated to?
Aside from what the white papers say about a device's MTBF rate, I've always compared based on factory warranty. 3 yr vs 5 yr is pretty telling in most cases.
I'll counter with my anecdotal experience, I have yet to have any SSD fail (several owned since 2010) and I bought down-market (OCZ Vertex2) on-sale items. I've had one HDD fail, and that was on a work machine. I don't have any RAID5 volumes (I keep buying the next largest disks and RAID1 for my NAS - 4TB is good enough for now). Combine with an occasional system image for all the systems (using cheaper 2TB disks) and I'm not even passingly worried about disk failure. It's simply not worth it to me.
Am I just lucky?
If they are symbolic bills, then all we'll get here is bullshit discussion about AGW or worse, politics. Must be a slow news day (well, other than the bigger-than-average daily shooting in San Bernardino)
I've seen "enterprise" disks that were just consumer disks with a fancy housing. There were some electronics for things like hot-swap and interface adapting. But no difference in terms of the storage media.
Did they or did they not come with additional warranties? Because while the consumer may just throw out the drive, business customers can and will claim the warranty... thus making the additional cost of the "enterprise" product worth it to their intended customers.
Oh, I'm sure they will sell the same user-capacity drive with a higher MTBF rate (and higher cost) as a "prosumer" product. How?? Same technology, feature, etc, only difference is they'll stamp more chips on board to be used a transparent spare cells as they die out; thus extending the life.
It's a dirty bolt-on solution to extending MTBF, but that's exactly what will happen.
It's not just a dirty bolt-on solution, but a time-honored tradition - it's called market segmentation (aka binning as per Intel), and it's how companies beat the race to the bottom on prices (and profitability). Let the super-price-conscious consumer buy the $80 500GB SSD and claim they got a good deal. The "prosumer" will buy the higher end model for $100 more and get a promise of reliability/performance that may or may not be worth that margin, but that they can afford.
Whenever these price comparisons come up, I get the feeling that there is a huge bias in favour of the statement that article wants to make. i.e. If its about the falling price of SSDs, then compare a low spec SSD with a high spec HDD. If you want to argue for HDD, do the reverse.
There will always be bias in these sort of comparisons where profits of large industry players is to be had. What matters is the sentiment and frequency of the messaging. SSDs start to erode HDD marketshare? You will see lots of anti-SSD articles. SSD players pushing back? A few articles claiming price parity or read/write speed differences.
Track the progress of these as data points on a timeline and you'll a trend.
Also of importance, are people/organizations that have taken a notable stance on a subject (an SSD/HDD critic finally claiming that they're giving up on their position, or a large organization (e.g. Apple, Google) making a shift to mainstream one technology over the other for a specific need.
We keep finding new uses for Helium, but not new supplies.
IIRC, this isn't the "pure" helium (i.e., used for MRI machines/etc) but more akin to what you find in balloons, right?
I think you missed the part where this is for critical infrastructure. Banks, power plants, water companies. I'll agree that banks can sure as hell afford pay for this type of testing but they have no monetary incentive to get ahead of identity theft or the myriad of other problems their policies cause.
Make these industrial giants get audited. Make sure their software, hardware, and processes are certified. The compliance framework and confirmation of mandates (i.e., the meta-mod function) is what government does best. The actual pen-testing should be left to industry, and hell, make them craft and adhere to a certification as well.
You think corporate welfare is the angle the DHS is using? I guess you think we need to give up more rights to be safe also?
No I want valuable services rendered to be paid for. I also don't want to have to pay for banks (who are insanely profitable) should be paying for themselves. Government should mandate compliance for online security, and let the private sector handle the audits. The DHS testers can be the "meta-mod". I'd be wiling to part with taxes for that.
Another example of corporate welfare... pen-testing costs time and money, why should I as a taxpayer be out this money?
Half of Europe was run entirely without capitalism, and the environmental record of that half was abysmal.
Can you back this up with facts, or are you just talking nonsense?
Highly apropos. For the uninitiated, http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmw...
The campaign's byline should instead be "virtual racism, real glory" because that's what it's going to look like for the trolls.
If you persist in calling VW "unfettered entirely amoral capitalism", why don't you tell us what kind of company and management you think would be better.
It can't be fully state owned facilities, because they had an even worse environmental record when they were tried in Europe.
The entire market is amoral-capitalist. If you can't keep up with the cheating, shareholders screw you over. That's not to excuse anything VW did. However, just because a single player is "partially owned by a government" doesn't make it any more likely to be moral; What it would take is for all the companies to be more strongly vetted/regulated.
I do own a VW (a 2014 Jetta 1.8T), and do indeed get better than the advertised millage.
Mileage and emissions are quite different measures, but thanks for adding your anecdote to the list of anecdata already being compiled.
So, just have a kid every year and live on the dole.
There is this little, teensy side effect of actually having the kids and having to take care of them... I take it you are not a parent. After having a few, you might understand that the first year is likely not the most difficult - especially with multiple kids.
Why would non-Facebook employees be interested in this at all?
I have a friend who works at another silicon valley startup (same VC partners as Facebook) who recently adopted Netflx's unlimited vacation, and they may also be interested in doing the 4-month prenatal leave as well.
Facebook could be a high-profile benefits leader here. As much as I don't like FB, I respect this move. At least Zuck is fair and consistent on this, unlike Meyer.
you think there will be social security when we retire? (im under 30) doubt it
Social Security trust fund is solvent till ~2035 given current input percentages and projected workforce makeup .
What's likely is that GOP and corporate-licking Dems will both agree to fuck you over in the meanwhile and do something shitty like raise retirement age, or twist verbiage to deny COLA despite constant hikes in non-core inflation rate (why would energy - read gas - and healthcare costs not be "core inflation"?).
So you may be right, you may not have a meaningful Social Security when you retire. But I bet it'll be there.
Amazon has been in bed with the devil for a couple of years now. Nearly everything I order comes by USPS - the slowest, least reliable delivery service on Earth.
This is in direct opposition to my experience.
The Post Office doesn't seem to understand that this is their last best chance to stay relevant and possibly get out of the red. Nope, they're sticking to their old ways - yesterday's technology delivering your packages tomorrow (or next week).
Huh? Oh I see - your experience of their service is essentially filtered by your dogma (that the post office as part of the "government" is not hip enough). Keep in mind, that the USPS as a private entity that's highly controlled by Congressional edicts and orders (like this one mandating that they essentially have to run in debt to pay retirements for employees not even hired yet [1]. If you have an issue with USPS maybe you should take it up with your representative.
Another thing you have to keep in mind, is that the USPS actually fulfills a lot of orders for UPS/FedEx - UPS/Fedex simply can't compete with the USPS for hard-to-reach areas, whereas the USPS has mandates to do so, and so has found a way to do it. [2]
[1] http://thinkprogress.org/econo...
[2] http://www.wsj.com/articles/u-...
After I win All The Lotteries, I will form Big Dumb Company, with the principal division being Big Dumb Appliances, such as clothes and dish washers that are so well built, they can be handed down at least two generations, stupidly fixable with decades-long part availability, and that are designed to accomplish one task: WASH THINGS.
Same with TVs - or should I say monitors - with the best display possible, replaceable power supplies, interface ports (sans wireless nor Ethernet) out the kazoo, AND DUMB AS A BAG OF HAMMERS. Tuner? game console? Roku? Fantastic: PLUG THEM IN. What will the TVs do? DISPLAY THINGS, PERIOD.
Now, onto phone / Internet service: BIG DUMB PIPE.
Sadly you will likely go out of business - profit margins to sustain a business that doesn't sell out its customer base must be pretty big unless accompanied by a cult-like early adopter crowd.
It's just OTA sources that will go away -- unless you count cellular video streaming to your phone followed by Chromecasting to the monitor
I'll count that once advertisers pay for all the data that such streaming uses.
Don't give them any ideas. Zero-rating ads seems like a very plausible move in the war for your eyeballs.
The future of television is on-demand and not scheduled programming
Good luck getting the sport leagues to play matches when you want to watch them.
Many people years ago recorded matches for watching later. TiVo/DVR culture has long ago hit mainstream. It's not like VCRs couldn't do this - most 25 years ago could record on a schedule - just a PITA to set it.
The problem is that the screen itself is a large, beautiful, and relatively expensive piece compared to everything that puts content on it. The price point makes it impractical to upgrade and replace on the same cycle as an XBox, Playstation, Roku, Apple TV, etc. Personally, I replace the screen every 7-10 years, and the connected devices every 3-5 years. Until the screens drop sufficiently in price to be replaceable in sync with the content devices, it makes exactly zero sense to cram more stuff into them. Especially when you consider the security issues.
At some point, when more money is made from the connective devices and services than the TV itself, there will be one or more players (perhaps including Apple) who merges the set-top box into the TV while keeping upgradability separate.
One way this might come about while keeping the existing ecosystem intact might be to have a "made for AppleTV" or "made for Roku" type licensing scheme so TV features like video cams (e.g. FaceTime for TV) or 3D support or basics like screen size/refresh, etc may be bundled into a single approved profile that the smart device attached can use the features properly.
The U.S. Expatriation Tax is not a hardship by any reasonable definition of hardship...
It's not a question of "hardship". Stealing from people is wrong. Even when the victim has some money left over afterward.
Only tax cowards think the government is simply stealing from you. All your wealth you created in the USA was done because the USA has roads, public infrastructure and police, hospitals, and the *rule of law* to prevent others from stealing your wealth, or just stabbing you in your sleep for their own pleasure.
In short, your wealth was not created in a vacuum and it costs money to keep this infrastructure in place. You may bicker with the details or even a major part of how that tax is collected and spent (I sure do), but to claim it's stealing is to show ignorance of why it exists.
Or do you really think you'd have been better of born in Sierra Leone where there aren't such pesky taxes?