Just because some nations with less than stellar reputations themselves are on the council and/or commission does not automatically invalidate their mission or what the UN commission / council have to say.
I understand the worry of "putting the fox in charge of the hen house" but one could put it another way: Even these countries see we (the US) is being hypocritical and violating human rights.
I've got a couple of Comcast DVRs instead of cable boxes... with a Cable box, you should be able to power off when not in use, but with a DVR, this could be a bit trickier... I suppose it could do some smart scheduling where it turns itself off unless actively recording shows - keep a sub-section with scheduling info running so it knows to spin up a few minutes before recording a show...
Still, I should think that DVR boxes on a per-box basis would be a bigger issue than regular cable boxes.
As for most electricity in the home? For me, the electric tumble drier and the electric oven/range (some day, I hope to replace with gas) would get second billing, then my computers / server.
Dear gods, please catch a ride on the clue train. Businesses don't want Windows 8 - the retraining necessary is just too costly, and all the cool features involving touch are useless for the cube farm drones.
So just stop your stupid shit, realize the Windows 7 is your nex XP, make sure that Windows 9 undoes a lot of the silly bullshit, and maybe you won't completely jump the shark.
Um also while I (fail to) have your attention - the Ribbon is still stupid. Stop wasting my screen real estate and go back to proper menus.// yeah I know it's a pipe dream, but I needed to rant and rage.
I am one of those "resisters" who still buys DVDs and only recently even started considering Blu-Rays.
I like Netflix enough, but for instance, they took the original Cosmos out of their lineup just before the series reboot - no warning, just FOOM... "HEY! I was WATCHING THAT"
I was also catching up on season 7.2 of Dr. Who... Concast had them free OnDemand just around the time of the big seacon finale..to get folks caught up.
Except when I convinced my partner that it was ok to watch again because Amy Pond was gond (she HATED her so much she stopped watching)... and we decided to have a Dr.Who catchup marathon... And it was gone.
The only way my DVDs disappear is if I'm stupid and loan them to friends (never again)... Yeah, I risk losing them physically, but that's why I stick with DVD - because I can easily make backup ISOs in a reasonable time and can store my whole collection in case of disaster. (Yeah, drive space is cheap, but Blu-Ray takes up SO MUCH more space)
Anyway, agreed... unless my physical DVDs are lost/stolen/damaged, I can watch/rewatch whenever I want without worrying whether some lawsuit/dispute over rights caused some jerkbag publisher to remove the stream.
I took a $10,000 a year paycut when I left my previous employer to come to work for my current company... because I felt that I'd be much happier/have a better quality of work-life (old job was starting to destroy my soul / passion for programming)
they wanted to hire me at my previous salary, but it was just not possible under their budgets/etc.
I took the job anyway because I felt their culture and my work quality of life would jsut be a great match.
Now, a couple years later, I've more than made up the difference in pay (proved my worth and the $$$ got found) and am just stupidly happy with this job.
It's actually true that the worst days at my current job are still better than most of the best days for the last 3 years of my previous one.
Basically, I've tried to always value happiness more than pure financial gain, and I've reaped the rewards of "love what you do for a living and you'll never ~work~ another day in your life".
I have three words to explain why these companies avoid cities: Quality of Life
Many of my friends work in and around Washington DC, and I hear horror stories about commute times and traffic jams. I moved down here from nowheresville Western MA where my commute was 20 minutes when there was no traffic and maybe 4o to an hour if there was and that sucked... but friends of mine down here? they're regularly looking at 2 hours + and anyone who wants to live close enough to only have an hour? yeah well, half a million might buy you a postage stamp to live on....
I telecommute today (live in VA and still work for a company in MA) and I tell you my quality of life is tenfold better not having to deal with commuting to/from the office and all the stress it caused. and yes, I know my piddly 20-60 minute commute is nothing compared to what a lot of folks put up with.
Big Cities are more hassle than they're worth for the most part
So, when the FCC re-rules ISPs as Common Carriers, the real good news is that means that 6 strikes rules and other copyright stuff is out the window... after all, a big part of common carrier status is taht you are exempt from having any responsibility for controlling the content you're carrying - so you can't be sued by a copyright owner because user susy q used your infrastructure to share/copy movie x.
(Ok, so I bet they still WILL do crap like that because they're so far in bed with copyright owners... HHHMMM COMCAST/NBC? but it would be nice to stop them having their cake and eating it too... one can dream)
I really am happy that the FCC and the Obama administration "get it" - the Internet has become vital to our economy and a free, fair, open Internet is key to innovation and continued growth. If the 'net were allowed to become an expensive toll road, it would only feed the pockets of the already wealthy whilst simultaneously raising the barrier to entry for anything new/innovative.
They do have test servers, but I'm talking about just researching the bot issue - looking up web sites that discussed technical information that maybe WOW would consider "cheat sites" -
Warcraft wasn't using VAC obviously, but I was trying to give an example of researching information that may be on sites that if you looked at my DNS, you might assume I was cheating - In other words: DNS doesn't in and of itself tell the actual story.
Yes, sure, if your dns cache is full of porn sites, one may be able do deduce that you're actively visiting porn sites, but there are lots of sites on blocked/porn net nanny lists that are not actually porn.
If your dns cache is full of right wing news sites, maybe you're right wing right? or wait, maybe you're not,but you keep tabs on them, or maybe your brother used them.
For instance, back when i was playing WOW a lot, I was also authoring (legal) addons for it. Since one of the activities I was supporting with dual boxing/multi-boxing (one player playing on multiple characters at once (each through their own paid account - legal under the TOS of the game), I did need to tread carefully to keep from crossing the line into what they'd consider "botting" (automation that allows an account to play without human intervention). I did research on some of the bots / botting that was available at the time - as part of understaning the difference (I never downloaded or used one, but yes, I surfed around and very likely included some "bad sites"
My point being that dns histroy is only the grossest of measures of what you're doing on your pc - yes, it may be true that someone who never visits hack sitex/cheat sites will be less likely to have them show up on dnscache, but if they're active in gaming forums or if they're jus plain inquisitive, they could so easily be falesly accused.
Someone who is actually cheating would likely be able to quickly figure out that they should use another computer to download/browse and/or ipconfig/flushdns before playing, etc...
Like most all copy protection - it only stops the casual user and inconveniences many legit users. Anyone actively cheating with any amount of effort will easily avoid this.
I was personally involved in a project to collect and analyze data for a plant floor at my previous job.
Plain and simple - QA and process engineers are asking for more and more data which simply can't work with an Air gap unless the entirety of the colleciotn and analysis systems are inside the Air Gapped network.
I know the company I was working for could not afford the cost of "doing it right" so I had to put routers in each production line's Industrial Ethernet internal network to NAT it out so I could get the data collection servers to gather data.
I made sure the router only allowed external requests coming from the specific data collection system's address - but I was unable to convince them of the need to set it up with a DMZ, so in theory, if you could break into our LAN and get to the correct server, you could use that to jump the air gap.
However, even then, the NAT I set up was for specific port that only allowed queries for settings/data, not for control, and there were far more juicy targets than a plastics extrusion line's controls, so even though it was a risk, the $9million / year they ended up realizing in savings due to the analysis of the data more than made up for the risk that someone would take the time to dig in to damage/control the extrusion lines.
As others have said, there are HUGE disincentives to taking down time to patch these systems... the Data Must Flow is the operational mantra, and they don't want to risk losing production time - even if the very real risk is of a break-in or even just break-down causing potential down time.
I wonder when wired broadband service providers will do that - as it is, I'm pretty sure Comcast/Xfinity is doing sort of the same thing - I can watch as many things "on demand" on my cable box as I want without touching my bandwidth cap, but if I stream the same movies/shows from Netflix/Hulu, etc... then it does count against my cap (which I will just preach to choir and say "what part of unlimited don't you understand")
I for one pretty much want them to NEVER get back to where they were - if the NSA wands to spy on every person outside our broders every waking moment, go ahead -... that's a political matter - I think it harms us more than it helps, but hey, that's what spys do.
However, the minute they turn their gaze inward - indiscriminately picking up communications / data/ video/ pictures, etc of ordinary Americans inside US borders well, that's where the line is drawn.
Hell, if they accidentally collected some citizens info in the course of monitoring a person of interest who has come into the US, ok, it's a fair cop - easy mistake... but it should be the exception, not the rule, and when you start to mix that unrestrained spy-agency level ability of snooping with federal and law enforcement officials for actions inside the US that have NOTHING TO DO with National Security: well, then you've gone too far.
This flies in the face of the 1st, 4th, and 5th amendments. This is about building a survailence and police state. This is not the direction I want to see our country take - we need to be directly speaking Truth to Power (which is what Chelsea Manning and Edward Snowden have done).
We need to stop living in utter fear of our own shadows - not letting the terrorists WIN by feeling terrorized and not let our government BECOME the terrorists (using intimidation and violence for political aims)
It's not just benefiting your employer, learning benefits you too:
Directly by keeping your mind active and engaged.
Directly by allowing you to experiment with ways to do things that might not be allowed in your work environment.
And not the least of which - it's "RBT" (Resume Building Technology) - While you may not be able to claim you did xyz on the job, you can at least indicate your familiarity with the technology.
With so many HR departments acting as gatekeepers - the first person who looks at your application may be someone who only knows to look for the correct buzzwords... when you can legitimately claim to have some knowledge of buzzword x, you improve your chances of getting in the door.
Then, when you talk to someone in the actual interview, you can mention that this is research you do on your own time - to improve/hone your skills.
If that doesn't get you points with the hiring person, well, you're likely interviewing for a place you're going to HATE.
Saying "I don't trust US-Based stuff" could be technical, but its more likely a means to punish the US... "making sure the chickens come home to roost"
Punishing the US which is about the ONLY THING that has any hope of real change - if big US corporations start losing deals because of the shenanigans form the NSA, they'll start throwing their weight around and the politicians will listen.
"Hi [insert computer bios maker here], I'm with the NSA - we've detected a BIOS damaging malware and we would like to you implement these changes to prevent it - No, we totally aren't actually just making shit up to get you to install a backdoor for us, okthxbie"-
I'm a developer support engineer for a company that sells several SDKs - It is absolutely invaluable tor our customers (and ourselves) to be able to see the change logs as they're depending on our product to work in certain ways and could be interacting with dozens of systems/components.
I can't tell you how many times I've found that a claimed bug in our product was actually an issue in Weblogic or Websphere or Tomcat, etc.. that was corrected in a given fix (sadly, its often a case of customers coming to us and saying "this is a bug" and us diggin in only to find that yes it was a bug in that outdated version of the web application server they're using and they should have been doing their homework..
So both our own change logs and those of others are absolutely crucial in troubleshooting problems.
My personal $0.02: saying "here's what was fixed and when is not going to draw ridicule. However, having your software be a "big magic black box" is likely to alienate highly technical customers.
My opinion is that we shouldn't shut the NSA down - they DO serve a valuable purpose for National Security.
What we SHOULD DO is force them to obey their charter and the law. If they want to spy on foreign nationals, crack enctyption, etc.. go right ahead.
If they DO sweep up some US citizens not involved in plotting against the US.. ok, that may happen tooo - but they should NOT be allowed to share results of illegal wiretaps/surveilance with law enforcement - and any evidence obtained in such an illegal manner should be inadmissable in court.
Basically, let the spooks spy all they want for actual National Security purposes, but don't allow that to become yet another extension to the already too long arm of the law.
I know... it's such a juicy target: "We were watching this guy because we thought he might be a terrorist but instead we uncovered that he's a drug smuggler... here you go FBI / Local Law Enforcement, you can use this to get him off the street."
well... as much as it might suck to let some guilty people get away with it because the evidence wasn't obtained legally... it sucks more to treat your citizens as the proles and outer party folks in Orwell's 1984 - the damage to society from pervasive surveillance and selective prosecution using the results of said surveillance is (to me) far greater.
Let the police do their own footwork - hell, if you can get a court order to "wiretap" someone fine... but we are a nation of laws and when the government forgets that, we all suffer.
Considering how important this is, YES!I would listen, openly and honestly, then vote to hang the guy.:P
Seriously though, I'd serve on that jury gladly and do my best to be fair and decide based on issues of law and evidence presented, not my own preconceptions.
Of course, it's easy for me to say - I'm a geek, this is important, and my company has a pretty good jury duty policy.
There were also POCs demonstrated at Black Hat where they put a fake charger up that had built in smarts and would hack the iPhone being charged - quite ingenious.
Granted, a charger condom would be a lot cheaper (a fitting that blocks the data lines and ONLY allows the power lines through so you can use an unknown/untrusted charger)
So, basically, I figure its part money grab from Apple and part intent to lock things down with software... of the two, I honestly think that a cable condom for using untrusted chargers, being the simpler solution, would be more reliable and less prone to countermeasures.
You know what? I really long for the "bad old days" when getting hacked just meant that some douche bricked your computer or maybe made it go "ha ha n008, you got h4x0r3d" - now, they brick your life and spam your contacts and steal your identity... with near impunity.
William Gibson's vision of cyberspace with the network being an incredibly hostile place and everyone out for themselves - well, it's pretty much come true.
So, I figure Apple has just enough plausible deniability - they can say 'no, we're doing this to protect you from faulty chargers and hacked chargers" and there's enough truth to the dangers that they can get away with also locking you out of the competition - win, win, win Apple, the only way to win for us is not to play (with them)
IE10 is available for Win7 - in fact, you need to apply an "IE10 Blocker" to keep MS Automatic Updates from forcing it down your throat.
Granted, from my experience, IE10 on Win7 is a bit different under the hood from IE10 on Win8 - I've run into quite a few issues where there was a problem in IE10 on Win7, but it was ok on Win8 - or vice versa.
The sad reality is that you should assume that any electronic communication you make - any electronic transaction you're a part of - is at least ~able~ to be read by the NSA if not actively being seen.
Now, from a practical standpoint, chances are that unless you're being explicitly targeted by federal agencies or law enforcement, no human being is actively looking at YOUR records.. but they ~could~.
However, it chills me to the bone that our government has and uses that power and the potential for abuse is massive... I really do feel that our government has seriously crossed the line... and we the people ~let it happen~... hell, a large number of us (I was not one of them, but I use "us" collectively) screamed to congress in September 2001 "DO SOMETHING" and they did.
The only way this can stop is if the American people decide that the level of surveillance and eavesdropping is unacceptable and demand that it stop. We need to elect lawmakers that value our privacy and freedom and we need to vote out those who would trade our essential liberties for security theater.
We did this to ourselves, and we are the only ones who can stop it... by speaking loud and strong that we DO NOT WANT.
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You're not listing the entire group membership
And you're mixing the human rights commission with the human rights council and cherrypicking from the bottom
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/U...
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/U...
Just because some nations with less than stellar reputations themselves are on the council and/or commission does not automatically invalidate their mission or what the UN commission / council have to say.
I understand the worry of "putting the fox in charge of the hen house" but one could put it another way: Even these countries see we (the US) is being hypocritical and violating human rights.
When I attempt to go to Plus, it still says my account is flagged for name violation...apparently, it's not fixed for those already so-flagged.
I've got a couple of Comcast DVRs instead of cable boxes... with a Cable box, you should be able to power off when not in use, but with a DVR, this could be a bit trickier... I suppose it could do some smart scheduling where it turns itself off unless actively recording shows - keep a sub-section with scheduling info running so it knows to spin up a few minutes before recording a show...
Still, I should think that DVR boxes on a per-box basis would be a bigger issue than regular cable boxes.
As for most electricity in the home? For me, the electric tumble drier and the electric oven/range (some day, I hope to replace with gas) would get second billing, then my computers / server.
Dear Microsoft,
Dear gods, please catch a ride on the clue train. Businesses don't want Windows 8 - the retraining necessary is just too costly, and all the cool features involving touch are useless for the cube farm drones.
So just stop your stupid shit, realize the Windows 7 is your nex XP, make sure that Windows 9 undoes a lot of the silly bullshit, and maybe you won't completely jump the shark.
Um also while I (fail to) have your attention - the Ribbon is still stupid. Stop wasting my screen real estate and go back to proper menus. // yeah I know it's a pipe dream, but I needed to rant and rage.
I'm with you 100%.
I am one of those "resisters" who still buys DVDs and only recently even started considering Blu-Rays.
I like Netflix enough, but for instance, they took the original Cosmos out of their lineup just before the series reboot - no warning, just FOOM... "HEY! I was WATCHING THAT"
I was also catching up on season 7.2 of Dr. Who ... Concast had them free OnDemand just around the time of the big seacon finale..to get folks caught up.
Except when I convinced my partner that it was ok to watch again because Amy Pond was gond (she HATED her so much she stopped watching) ... and we decided to have a Dr.Who catchup marathon... And it was gone.
The only way my DVDs disappear is if I'm stupid and loan them to friends (never again)... Yeah, I risk losing them physically, but that's why I stick with DVD - because I can easily make backup ISOs in a reasonable time and can store my whole collection in case of disaster. (Yeah, drive space is cheap, but Blu-Ray takes up SO MUCH more space)
Anyway, agreed... unless my physical DVDs are lost/stolen/damaged, I can watch/rewatch whenever I want without worrying whether some lawsuit /dispute over rights caused some jerkbag publisher to remove the stream.
I took a $10,000 a year paycut when I left my previous employer to come to work for my current company... because I felt that I'd be much happier/have a better quality of work-life (old job was starting to destroy my soul / passion for programming)
they wanted to hire me at my previous salary, but it was just not possible under their budgets/etc.
I took the job anyway because I felt their culture and my work quality of life would jsut be a great match.
Now, a couple years later, I've more than made up the difference in pay (proved my worth and the $$$ got found) and am just stupidly happy with this job.
It's actually true that the worst days at my current job are still better than most of the best days for the last 3 years of my previous one.
Basically, I've tried to always value happiness more than pure financial gain, and I've reaped the rewards of "love what you do for a living and you'll never ~work~ another day in your life".
Good Luck
I have three words to explain why these companies avoid cities: Quality of Life
Many of my friends work in and around Washington DC, and I hear horror stories about commute times and traffic jams. I moved down here from nowheresville Western MA where my commute was 20 minutes when there was no traffic and maybe 4o to an hour if there was and that sucked... but friends of mine down here? they're regularly looking at 2 hours + and anyone who wants to live close enough to only have an hour? yeah well, half a million might buy you a postage stamp to live on....
I telecommute today (live in VA and still work for a company in MA) and I tell you my quality of life is tenfold better not having to deal with commuting to/from the office and all the stress it caused. and yes, I know my piddly 20-60 minute commute is nothing compared to what a lot of folks put up with.
Big Cities are more hassle than they're worth for the most part
So, when the FCC re-rules ISPs as Common Carriers, the real good news is that means that 6 strikes rules and other copyright stuff is out the window... after all, a big part of common carrier status is taht you are exempt from having any responsibility for controlling the content you're carrying - so you can't be sued by a copyright owner because user susy q used your infrastructure to share/copy movie x.
(Ok, so I bet they still WILL do crap like that because they're so far in bed with copyright owners... HHHMMM COMCAST/NBC? but it would be nice to stop them having their cake and eating it too... one can dream)
I really am happy that the FCC and the Obama administration "get it" - the Internet has become vital to our economy and a free, fair, open Internet is key to innovation and continued growth. If the 'net were allowed to become an expensive toll road, it would only feed the pockets of the already wealthy whilst simultaneously raising the barrier to entry for anything new/innovative.
Well, indeed, with the way things are today, you may have a point. /looks nervously over shoulder
They do have test servers, but I'm talking about just researching the bot issue - looking up web sites that discussed technical information that maybe WOW would consider "cheat sites" -
Warcraft wasn't using VAC obviously, but I was trying to give an example of researching information that may be on sites that if you looked at my DNS, you might assume I was cheating - In other words: DNS doesn't in and of itself tell the actual story.
Yes, sure, if your dns cache is full of porn sites, one may be able do deduce that you're actively visiting porn sites, but there are lots of sites on blocked/porn net nanny lists that are not actually porn.
If your dns cache is full of right wing news sites, maybe you're right wing right? or wait, maybe you're not ,but you keep tabs on them, or maybe your brother used them.
For instance, back when i was playing WOW a lot, I was also authoring (legal) addons for it. Since one of the activities I was supporting with dual boxing/multi-boxing (one player playing on multiple characters at once (each through their own paid account - legal under the TOS of the game), I did need to tread carefully to keep from crossing the line into what they'd consider "botting" (automation that allows an account to play without human intervention). I did research on some of the bots / botting that was available at the time - as part of understaning the difference (I never downloaded or used one, but yes, I surfed around and very likely included some "bad sites"
My point being that dns histroy is only the grossest of measures of what you're doing on your pc - yes, it may be true that someone who never visits hack sitex/cheat sites will be less likely to have them show up on dnscache, but if they're active in gaming forums or if they're jus plain inquisitive, they could so easily be falesly accused.
Someone who is actually cheating would likely be able to quickly figure out that they should use another computer to download/browse and/or ipconfig /flushdns before playing, etc...
Like most all copy protection - it only stops the casual user and inconveniences many legit users. Anyone actively cheating with any amount of effort will easily avoid this.
Yeah,
I was personally involved in a project to collect and analyze data for a plant floor at my previous job.
Plain and simple - QA and process engineers are asking for more and more data which simply can't work with an Air gap unless the entirety of the colleciotn and analysis systems are inside the Air Gapped network.
I know the company I was working for could not afford the cost of "doing it right" so I had to put routers in each production line's Industrial Ethernet internal network to NAT it out so I could get the data collection servers to gather data.
I made sure the router only allowed external requests coming from the specific data collection system's address - but I was unable to convince them of the need to set it up with a DMZ, so in theory, if you could break into our LAN and get to the correct server, you could use that to jump the air gap.
However, even then, the NAT I set up was for specific port that only allowed queries for settings/data, not for control, and there were far more juicy targets than a plastics extrusion line's controls, so even though it was a risk, the $9million / year they ended up realizing in savings due to the analysis of the data more than made up for the risk that someone would take the time to dig in to damage/control the extrusion lines.
As others have said, there are HUGE disincentives to taking down time to patch these systems... the Data Must Flow is the operational mantra, and they don't want to risk losing production time - even if the very real risk is of a break-in or even just break-down causing potential down time.
Exactly - it's reverse net-neutrality.
I wonder when wired broadband service providers will do that - as it is, I'm pretty sure Comcast/Xfinity is doing sort of the same thing - I can watch as many things "on demand" on my cable box as I want without touching my bandwidth cap, but if I stream the same movies/shows from Netflix/Hulu, etc... then it does count against my cap (which I will just preach to choir and say "what part of unlimited don't you understand")
I for one pretty much want them to NEVER get back to where they were - if the NSA wands to spy on every person outside our broders every waking moment, go ahead - ... that's a political matter - I think it harms us more than it helps, but hey, that's what spys do.
However, the minute they turn their gaze inward - indiscriminately picking up communications / data/ video/ pictures, etc of ordinary Americans inside US borders well, that's where the line is drawn.
Hell, if they accidentally collected some citizens info in the course of monitoring a person of interest who has come into the US, ok, it's a fair cop - easy mistake... but it should be the exception, not the rule, and when you start to mix that unrestrained spy-agency level ability of snooping with federal and law enforcement officials for actions inside the US that have NOTHING TO DO with National Security: well, then you've gone too far.
This flies in the face of the 1st, 4th, and 5th amendments. This is about building a survailence and police state. This is not the direction I want to see our country take - we need to be directly speaking Truth to Power (which is what Chelsea Manning and Edward Snowden have done).
We need to stop living in utter fear of our own shadows - not letting the terrorists WIN by feeling terrorized and not let our government BECOME the terrorists (using intimidation and violence for political aims)
It's not just benefiting your employer, learning benefits you too:
Directly by keeping your mind active and engaged.
Directly by allowing you to experiment with ways to do things that might not be allowed in your work environment.
And not the least of which - it's "RBT" (Resume Building Technology) - While you may not be able to claim you did xyz on the job, you can at least indicate your familiarity with the technology.
With so many HR departments acting as gatekeepers - the first person who looks at your application may be someone who only knows to look for the correct buzzwords... when you can legitimately claim to have some knowledge of buzzword x, you improve your chances of getting in the door.
Then, when you talk to someone in the actual interview, you can mention that this is research you do on your own time - to improve/hone your skills.
If that doesn't get you points with the hiring person, well, you're likely interviewing for a place you're going to HATE.
Saying "I don't trust US-Based stuff" could be technical, but its more likely a means to punish the US... "making sure the chickens come home to roost"
Punishing the US which is about the ONLY THING that has any hope of real change - if big US corporations start losing deals because of the shenanigans form the NSA, they'll start throwing their weight around and the politicians will listen.
"Hi [insert computer bios maker here], I'm with the NSA - we've detected a BIOS damaging malware and we would like to you implement these changes to prevent it - No, we totally aren't actually just making shit up to get you to install a backdoor for us, okthxbie"-
I'm a developer support engineer for a company that sells several SDKs - It is absolutely invaluable tor our customers (and ourselves) to be able to see the change logs as they're depending on our product to work in certain ways and could be interacting with dozens of systems/components.
I can't tell you how many times I've found that a claimed bug in our product was actually an issue in Weblogic or Websphere or Tomcat, etc.. that was corrected in a given fix (sadly, its often a case of customers coming to us and saying "this is a bug" and us diggin in only to find that yes it was a bug in that outdated version of the web application server they're using and they should have been doing their homework..
So both our own change logs and those of others are absolutely crucial in troubleshooting problems.
My personal $0.02: saying "here's what was fixed and when is not going to draw ridicule. However, having your software be a "big magic black box" is likely to alienate highly technical customers.
"""
* 'There's not that much known about Canadian intelligence.'*
As A Canadian, I kinda resent that :)
"""
that just means they're doing a really good job. :)
My opinion is that we shouldn't shut the NSA down - they DO serve a valuable purpose for National Security.
What we SHOULD DO is force them to obey their charter and the law. If they want to spy on foreign nationals, crack enctyption, etc.. go right ahead.
If they DO sweep up some US citizens not involved in plotting against the US.. ok, that may happen tooo - but they should NOT be allowed to share results of illegal wiretaps/surveilance with law enforcement - and any evidence obtained in such an illegal manner should be inadmissable in court.
Basically, let the spooks spy all they want for actual National Security purposes, but don't allow that to become yet another extension to the already too long arm of the law.
I know... it's such a juicy target:
"We were watching this guy because we thought he might be a terrorist but instead we uncovered that he's a drug smuggler... here you go FBI / Local Law Enforcement, you can use this to get him off the street."
well... as much as it might suck to let some guilty people get away with it because the evidence wasn't obtained legally... it sucks more to treat your citizens as the proles and outer party folks in Orwell's 1984 - the damage to society from pervasive surveillance and selective prosecution using the results of said surveillance is (to me) far greater.
Let the police do their own footwork - hell, if you can get a court order to "wiretap" someone fine... but we are a nation of laws and when the government forgets that, we all suffer.
Considering how important this is, YES!I would listen, openly and honestly, then vote to hang the guy. :P
Seriously though, I'd serve on that jury gladly and do my best to be fair and decide based on issues of law and evidence presented, not my own preconceptions.
Of course, it's easy for me to say - I'm a geek, this is important, and my company has a pretty good jury duty policy.
There were also POCs demonstrated at Black Hat where they put a fake charger up that had built in smarts and would hack the iPhone being charged - quite ingenious.
Granted, a charger condom would be a lot cheaper (a fitting that blocks the data lines and ONLY allows the power lines through so you can use an unknown/untrusted charger)
So, basically, I figure its part money grab from Apple and part intent to lock things down with software... of the two, I honestly think that a cable condom for using untrusted chargers, being the simpler solution, would be more reliable and less prone to countermeasures.
You know what? I really long for the "bad old days" when getting hacked just meant that some douche bricked your computer or maybe made it go "ha ha n008, you got h4x0r3d" - now, they brick your life and spam your contacts and steal your identity... with near impunity.
William Gibson's vision of cyberspace with the network being an incredibly hostile place and everyone out for themselves - well, it's pretty much come true.
So, I figure Apple has just enough plausible deniability - they can say 'no, we're doing this to protect you from faulty chargers and hacked chargers" and there's enough truth to the dangers that they can get away with also locking you out of the competition - win, win, win Apple, the only way to win for us is not to play (with them)
This will not end well.
At first, the military will be all like "YAY, autonomous killer robots!"
Then someone will hack some of them... and they'l be all like "boo, they're using it against us and we never saw taht coming"
And then Politicians will be all "we gotta pass laws against being smart n stuff, because Turrhurrerristz"
And then a few years later, we're all just banging rocks together.
ok so my real answer is basically just /facelamp (for when facepalm is not sufficient)
IE10 is available for Win7 - in fact, you need to apply an "IE10 Blocker" to keep MS Automatic Updates from forcing it down your throat.
Granted, from my experience, IE10 on Win7 is a bit different under the hood from IE10 on Win8 - I've run into quite a few issues where there was a problem in IE10 on Win7, but it was ok on Win8 - or vice versa.
The sad reality is that you should assume that any electronic communication you make - any electronic transaction you're a part of - is at least ~able~ to be read by the NSA if not actively being seen.
Now, from a practical standpoint, chances are that unless you're being explicitly targeted by federal agencies or law enforcement, no human being is actively looking at YOUR records.. but they ~could~.
However, it chills me to the bone that our government has and uses that power and the potential for abuse is massive... I really do feel that our government has seriously crossed the line... and we the people ~let it happen~... hell, a large number of us (I was not one of them, but I use "us" collectively) screamed to congress in September 2001 "DO SOMETHING" and they did.
The only way this can stop is if the American people decide that the level of surveillance and eavesdropping is unacceptable and demand that it stop. We need to elect lawmakers that value our privacy and freedom and we need to vote out those who would trade our essential liberties for security theater.
We did this to ourselves, and we are the only ones who can stop it... by speaking loud and strong that we DO NOT WANT.