Oh ya, I remember all the complaints about nanny states when they started to ban smoking in restaurants, and denial that second hand smoke caused any harm.
But it has so much credibility, overwhelmingly so. Except in political circles where they seem to think it's about socialism. Some rich people are afraid of spending money and so are creating disinformation and funding politicians to spread it.
But AT&T has had a cap for five years now, only they never enforced it for u-verse. The only new things are that they're finally enforcing it (maybe), and the caps are being increased at the same time. I knew there were caps in place when I first got u-verse but they were so high there was no way I was going to reach those limits, even now with streaming TV I'm not hitting them.
So really the only ones who should complain are those who had the service for more than 5 years who thought the "no cap" part would last for a lifetime, but they've had five years to complain about this cap or find a new ISP.
Technically U-Verse was capped at 250GB. However I've long suspected that they never actually did the cap, either being unable to figure how to do the accounting or else too lazy. For example there was no tool available to tell you how much data you have used so far, or when there was one and it worked it would claim it didn't know.
Anyway, this current news isn't bad for me, it ups my cap to 600GB and I think I only use around 175GB a month while streaming so I get to binge watch even more now.
And there are so few who've signed up that it's unlikely you'll see any acceptable ads anyway. I've got the "allow some non-intrusive ads" checked and I've never seen any.
The current all writs act was from 1911 though and supercedes the original. It also has conditions for when it applies. It was used to enable wiretapping and was then upheld by the Supreme Court. The modern cases with Apple and Google use that wiretapping as a precedent.
The constitution has been amended many times and interpreted many times. It's not the same thing that it started as. And yes, it needed interpretation because it is not clear and unambiguous.
Read the original, it is clunky and disjoint and just plain bad in places. It's a barely workable compromise between groups of people who didn't want to cooperate, federalists and anti-federalists. Two of the original colonies hadn't even signed it when the first congress met, and there were quite a few who felt that since the Articles of Confederation required a unanimous decision to amend it that the Constitution should also require a unanimous decision by the states before it could overturn the Articles of Confederation. So it's been on somewhat shaky grounds from the beginning. It only holds together out of inertia and the will of the people to abide by it, not because it's special or sacred.
The All Writs Act was written to cover necessary things that the government overlooked. Basically it allowed the courts to actually make decisions when there was no law guiding the courts. Ie, they can issue court orders. When there is actual law that is supposed to take precedent. The current All Writs Act however was issued in 1911 and has been amended since and comes with conditions that must be met, it's not really that ancient anymore. This was the law that was used to compel telephone companies to assist with wiretapping, in 1977, which was not difficult or time consuming for the telephone company instead it was very easy to do the wiretapping, and the Supreme Court upheld this district court ruling. This precedent was being re-used to try and get Apple to unlock it's phones, even though it is much more difficult and requires a lot more work and expense on Apple's part; so when it was relatively easy I suspect Google and Apple complied but when it got harder then Apple pushed back.
Why is it unconstitutional? Probably because it's akin to conscription which is a common argument. A company is being forced to do labor on behalf of the government. There is some debate about whether or not conscription or the draft is legal for various reasons so calling it unconstitutional is still vague on those grounds. The emotional argument is probably better since the constitution is all about rights and liberties andn restrictions on the government, whereas being forced to work for the government feels quite the opposite.
But the head of the FBI overall approved these actions against Apple publicly. Sure some parts of the FBI are full of very fine people, I have a friend in the FBI. But there is rot setting in at the higher levels of FBI management. They think that there is no step too far in their quest to find the bad guys, even if those steps are on top of people. Conviction counts are the goal, they make the budgets bigger and get people promotions and bonuses, and it's a flaw in most law enforcement bodies.
The FBI is the government. Technically the people are the FBI's boss and not vice versa.
Apple owed the FBI nothing, it was not obligated by any law to support the FBI and there was no final appeal to create an obligation. On the other hand, the government of which the FBI is a part have an obligation to defend and support Apple and uphold its rights. Apple was never charged with any crime or even any rumors of criminal activity and yet the government treated it with disdain and hostility.
Because if someone says "X, then Y, then Z will not unlock an iPhone 5c" then it casts doubt on the whole case.
Law enforcement must learn to be like Caesar's wife and be above suspicion and avoid anything with even an appearance of impropriety. Except that law enforcement has a long history of bending, breaking, and ignoring the rules. When people say "trust me!" at the same time their hands are down our underwear looking for evidence then that's a good sign that they can't be trusted. It's so incredibly obvious that the FBI only wanted this court order to set a precedent and that it really wasn't about this phone at all, so how is one supposed to trust anything they say in the future?
"Your honor, permission to treat the government as a hostile witness?" "Granted."
FBI is not legally obliged to share the details, but ethically and morally they should. If the FBI actually cared about the citizens and residents of its country then it would naturally want to cooperate in order to provide a more secure phone that could not be easily hacked by enemies of its country. If the FBI actually cared about the rule of law and the rights and limits granted to the people and government, then it would voluntarily limit itself instead of continually overreaching its power.
The link points to an EXE file, that's what hovering my mouse of the link says. I don't care if it's from Microsoft as they are not above suspicion. It should point to the page instead, and the page should have a SHA256 or MD5 sum on the executables contents. We spend so much time to try and teach the parents and grandparents to always check what a link points to and never download an executable and then Slashdot goes and undermines this.
Never download an EXE file in a link from an untrusted source people!
And you can't be too paranoid with Microsoft, better to wait until others install it and determine if it's not actually an advertisement for Windows 10.
That's true. I never get much of anything beyond security and critical updates. But it won't include all the other things they might have bug fixes for, and they have a lot of bug fixes. Most of them never applied for me but some did. So if there's a bug fix for "remote desktop not working when standing on one leg" that you need you won't be able to get that. What's critical to getting your system to work may not be considered a critical fix by Microsoft.
The confusing thing is that they have a lot more updates that say they require previous updates to be installed first.
But they are defining the support for newer systems to be shorter than the support for older systems, and that's just weird. They want new systems to be on new Windows versions so that it shortens the amount of time when they never have to worry about older systems ever again, except it won't happen as there will still be Broadwell and older systems still going strong in 2023. They're thinking about what's good for Microsoft and not what's good for their not-so-valued customers.
I'm pretty sure that after july you can't get a free copy. But who knows how Microsoft will handle things, they may extend the free copy. If they don't then there will at least be a reprieve from the automatic upgrades as they'll want payment:-)
But you can get a copy today for free and get it on ISO. Then you can authenticate later I would think as long as you have your license code. But if you want a free in-place upgrade over the internet you won't be able to do that after July.
Early on in the CISC days most compilers weren't all that good with optimization, they were just good enough. But when RISC systems became more popular the compilers had to up their game. They also got a lot more expensive (at least if you wanted performance), and because GCC was free-as-in-beer while also have better performance than the default made it very popular.
It was expensive enough that you weren't going to pay money for it for a home hobby. Minux you had to pay to get the book or at least to get a heavy tape or set of floppies mailed to you; it was also too weak and was a teaching system. The whole motivation for Linux was that Minux was designed around a flat addres space on a simple 286, whereas the 386 had come out which had the possibility of virtual memory so that you could have something that really felt like a real Unix from more expensive machines.
It didn't need to be GPL though. Open source software existed for GPL, there was nothing too special about a GPL kernel compared to other free kernels (though RMS would strongly disagree). What people wanted was a kernel free and independent of AT&T and its licensing. Even BSD was full of code having an AT&T copyright (or Bell Labs) and there was debate about whether or not you needed AT&T license to be able to use BSD at the time that Linux came out.
Most Unix users weren't considering PC for anything as it was too underpowered so they already had a Unix license from whatever vendor made their computer. Only with the 386 and its VM capabilities did people start considering it as a possible cheap Unix host. So the idea of a clean-room version of Unix unencumbered by AT&T became more popular and worth spending effort on. Exactly the time that Linux kernel was showing up. There was a bit of quandary for some people, as in BSD was arguably a better system but it also hadn't scrubbed itself clean of AT&T.
Actually many of the tools were significantly better. Unix was chock full of tools written a few years back but only slightly maintained over time. Each vendor might also have a different set of command line options or added features.
Ie, all the Unix vendors had a version of YACC but none of them wrote it, they certainly weren't going to go and muck with it to add a feature. When someone else wanted a better YACC but had no legal access to the source code they went and wrote Bison instead. And the first public releases were competitive. Similarly, Bash was mostly a combination of ksh, csh, some ideas in zsh, along with the readline library (by same author as bash) made it a very quick hit; compatible with the default sh for scripting while being easy to use interactively.
Also remember that before GNU and FSF tools we already had free software everywhere. People were regularly modifying the proprietary tools (as they came with source code if you had the license), patches were passed around back and forth to those who also had source licenses, and there were many utilities made from scratch that could be used anywhere (bash was just one of many possible free replacement shells). Even proprietary non-Unix systems would have source code passed around on mag tapes at user groups. It was just sort of accepted that the free software was available and that often it was better than the commercial alternatives or was a good addition to fill out the toolbox. The free software most certainly had better support than the commercial versions.
BSD also had a working kernel at the time. There was already something to fill the void. Linux really got off the ground as a group project, Linus needed help getting things together, like creating a distribution, contributing drivers, and so forth. It's easier to get behind that sort of new project as a helper than to get enthused about or accepted into an existing insular community. Ie, you say "hey, I've got a great idea for your kernel!" would make Linus listen, whereas the BSD folks might say "that's not how it's done in BSD, kid".
Slashdot Mirror
Oh ya, I remember all the complaints about nanny states when they started to ban smoking in restaurants, and denial that second hand smoke caused any harm.
But it has so much credibility, overwhelmingly so. Except in political circles where they seem to think it's about socialism. Some rich people are afraid of spending money and so are creating disinformation and funding politicians to spread it.
This is not key evidence. They don't know what's on the phones, they only hope that there might be evidence.
What kind of "outbreak" would require any of those medications: Valium, Prozac, Benadryl, and Lidocaine ???
Probably the election of Donald Trump as president.
But AT&T has had a cap for five years now, only they never enforced it for u-verse. The only new things are that they're finally enforcing it (maybe), and the caps are being increased at the same time. I knew there were caps in place when I first got u-verse but they were so high there was no way I was going to reach those limits, even now with streaming TV I'm not hitting them.
So really the only ones who should complain are those who had the service for more than 5 years who thought the "no cap" part would last for a lifetime, but they've had five years to complain about this cap or find a new ISP.
When the only choices are AT&T or Comcast, then what?
Technically U-Verse was capped at 250GB. However I've long suspected that they never actually did the cap, either being unable to figure how to do the accounting or else too lazy. For example there was no tool available to tell you how much data you have used so far, or when there was one and it worked it would claim it didn't know.
Anyway, this current news isn't bad for me, it ups my cap to 600GB and I think I only use around 175GB a month while streaming so I get to binge watch even more now.
And there are so few who've signed up that it's unlikely you'll see any acceptable ads anyway.
I've got the "allow some non-intrusive ads" checked and I've never seen any.
The current all writs act was from 1911 though and supercedes the original. It also has conditions for when it applies. It was used to enable wiretapping and was then upheld by the Supreme Court. The modern cases with Apple and Google use that wiretapping as a precedent.
The constitution has been amended many times and interpreted many times. It's not the same thing that it started as. And yes, it needed interpretation because it is not clear and unambiguous.
Read the original, it is clunky and disjoint and just plain bad in places. It's a barely workable compromise between groups of people who didn't want to cooperate, federalists and anti-federalists. Two of the original colonies hadn't even signed it when the first congress met, and there were quite a few who felt that since the Articles of Confederation required a unanimous decision to amend it that the Constitution should also require a unanimous decision by the states before it could overturn the Articles of Confederation. So it's been on somewhat shaky grounds from the beginning. It only holds together out of inertia and the will of the people to abide by it, not because it's special or sacred.
The All Writs Act was written to cover necessary things that the government overlooked. Basically it allowed the courts to actually make decisions when there was no law guiding the courts. Ie, they can issue court orders. When there is actual law that is supposed to take precedent. The current All Writs Act however was issued in 1911 and has been amended since and comes with conditions that must be met, it's not really that ancient anymore. This was the law that was used to compel telephone companies to assist with wiretapping, in 1977, which was not difficult or time consuming for the telephone company instead it was very easy to do the wiretapping, and the Supreme Court upheld this district court ruling. This precedent was being re-used to try and get Apple to unlock it's phones, even though it is much more difficult and requires a lot more work and expense on Apple's part; so when it was relatively easy I suspect Google and Apple complied but when it got harder then Apple pushed back.
Why is it unconstitutional? Probably because it's akin to conscription which is a common argument. A company is being forced to do labor on behalf of the government. There is some debate about whether or not conscription or the draft is legal for various reasons so calling it unconstitutional is still vague on those grounds. The emotional argument is probably better since the constitution is all about rights and liberties andn restrictions on the government, whereas being forced to work for the government feels quite the opposite.
But the head of the FBI overall approved these actions against Apple publicly. Sure some parts of the FBI are full of very fine people, I have a friend in the FBI. But there is rot setting in at the higher levels of FBI management. They think that there is no step too far in their quest to find the bad guys, even if those steps are on top of people. Conviction counts are the goal, they make the budgets bigger and get people promotions and bonuses, and it's a flaw in most law enforcement bodies.
Because Apple is big enough to actually fight back.
The FBI is the government. Technically the people are the FBI's boss and not vice versa.
Apple owed the FBI nothing, it was not obligated by any law to support the FBI and there was no final appeal to create an obligation. On the other hand, the government of which the FBI is a part have an obligation to defend and support Apple and uphold its rights. Apple was never charged with any crime or even any rumors of criminal activity and yet the government treated it with disdain and hostility.
Because if someone says "X, then Y, then Z will not unlock an iPhone 5c" then it casts doubt on the whole case.
Law enforcement must learn to be like Caesar's wife and be above suspicion and avoid anything with even an appearance of impropriety. Except that law enforcement has a long history of bending, breaking, and ignoring the rules. When people say "trust me!" at the same time their hands are down our underwear looking for evidence then that's a good sign that they can't be trusted. It's so incredibly obvious that the FBI only wanted this court order to set a precedent and that it really wasn't about this phone at all, so how is one supposed to trust anything they say in the future?
"Your honor, permission to treat the government as a hostile witness?"
"Granted."
FBI is not legally obliged to share the details, but ethically and morally they should. If the FBI actually cared about the citizens and residents of its country then it would naturally want to cooperate in order to provide a more secure phone that could not be easily hacked by enemies of its country. If the FBI actually cared about the rule of law and the rights and limits granted to the people and government, then it would voluntarily limit itself instead of continually overreaching its power.
The FBI is not standing up for anyone's freedom either.
The link points to an EXE file, that's what hovering my mouse of the link says. I don't care if it's from Microsoft as they are not above suspicion. It should point to the page instead, and the page should have a SHA256 or MD5 sum on the executables contents. We spend so much time to try and teach the parents and grandparents to always check what a link points to and never download an executable and then Slashdot goes and undermines this.
Never download an EXE file in a link from an untrusted source people!
And you can't be too paranoid with Microsoft, better to wait until others install it and determine if it's not actually an advertisement for Windows 10.
That's true. I never get much of anything beyond security and critical updates. But it won't include all the other things they might have bug fixes for, and they have a lot of bug fixes. Most of them never applied for me but some did. So if there's a bug fix for "remote desktop not working when standing on one leg" that you need you won't be able to get that. What's critical to getting your system to work may not be considered a critical fix by Microsoft.
The confusing thing is that they have a lot more updates that say they require previous updates to be installed first.
But they are defining the support for newer systems to be shorter than the support for older systems, and that's just weird. They want new systems to be on new Windows versions so that it shortens the amount of time when they never have to worry about older systems ever again, except it won't happen as there will still be Broadwell and older systems still going strong in 2023. They're thinking about what's good for Microsoft and not what's good for their not-so-valued customers.
I'm pretty sure that after july you can't get a free copy. But who knows how Microsoft will handle things, they may extend the free copy. If they don't then there will at least be a reprieve from the automatic upgrades as they'll want payment :-)
But you can get a copy today for free and get it on ISO. Then you can authenticate later I would think as long as you have your license code. But if you want a free in-place upgrade over the internet you won't be able to do that after July.
Early on in the CISC days most compilers weren't all that good with optimization, they were just good enough. But when RISC systems became more popular the compilers had to up their game. They also got a lot more expensive (at least if you wanted performance), and because GCC was free-as-in-beer while also have better performance than the default made it very popular.
It was expensive enough that you weren't going to pay money for it for a home hobby. Minux you had to pay to get the book or at least to get a heavy tape or set of floppies mailed to you; it was also too weak and was a teaching system. The whole motivation for Linux was that Minux was designed around a flat addres space on a simple 286, whereas the 386 had come out which had the possibility of virtual memory so that you could have something that really felt like a real Unix from more expensive machines.
You could be a Unix expert those days on many systems, then sit down at an AIX box and say "what the hell?" because it was so very different.
It didn't need to be GPL though. Open source software existed for GPL, there was nothing too special about a GPL kernel compared to other free kernels (though RMS would strongly disagree). What people wanted was a kernel free and independent of AT&T and its licensing. Even BSD was full of code having an AT&T copyright (or Bell Labs) and there was debate about whether or not you needed AT&T license to be able to use BSD at the time that Linux came out.
Most Unix users weren't considering PC for anything as it was too underpowered so they already had a Unix license from whatever vendor made their computer. Only with the 386 and its VM capabilities did people start considering it as a possible cheap Unix host. So the idea of a clean-room version of Unix unencumbered by AT&T became more popular and worth spending effort on. Exactly the time that Linux kernel was showing up. There was a bit of quandary for some people, as in BSD was arguably a better system but it also hadn't scrubbed itself clean of AT&T.
Actually many of the tools were significantly better. Unix was chock full of tools written a few years back but only slightly maintained over time. Each vendor might also have a different set of command line options or added features.
Ie, all the Unix vendors had a version of YACC but none of them wrote it, they certainly weren't going to go and muck with it to add a feature. When someone else wanted a better YACC but had no legal access to the source code they went and wrote Bison instead. And the first public releases were competitive. Similarly, Bash was mostly a combination of ksh, csh, some ideas in zsh, along with the readline library (by same author as bash) made it a very quick hit; compatible with the default sh for scripting while being easy to use interactively.
Also remember that before GNU and FSF tools we already had free software everywhere. People were regularly modifying the proprietary tools (as they came with source code if you had the license), patches were passed around back and forth to those who also had source licenses, and there were many utilities made from scratch that could be used anywhere (bash was just one of many possible free replacement shells). Even proprietary non-Unix systems would have source code passed around on mag tapes at user groups. It was just sort of accepted that the free software was available and that often it was better than the commercial alternatives or was a good addition to fill out the toolbox. The free software most certainly had better support than the commercial versions.
BSD also had a working kernel at the time. There was already something to fill the void. Linux really got off the ground as a group project, Linus needed help getting things together, like creating a distribution, contributing drivers, and so forth. It's easier to get behind that sort of new project as a helper than to get enthused about or accepted into an existing insular community. Ie, you say "hey, I've got a great idea for your kernel!" would make Linus listen, whereas the BSD folks might say "that's not how it's done in BSD, kid".