True, but all that would mean to me is that much of the web would become effectively dead. Which is why I said in an earlier comment that the adoption of EME is a sad thing.
Fortunately, much of the most valuable (to me) parts of the web are not the sorts of sites that would use the EME for any purpose at all, so will remain unaffected. And it still leaves the rest of the internet intact.
If that were actually an option for most people, there wouldn't really be a net neutrality push. The problem is that there isn't really such an option for too many people, unless you're counting "don't have an internet connection" as an option.
DMCA is clearly not the best tool, but as a game company there is little else in the arsenal
Using the DMCA to censor is not just "not the best tool", it's unambiguously the wrong tool, and an abuse of the law. Abusing the law this way makes you wrong and deserving of condemnation.
Whether or not there are other avenues available is 100% irrelevant.
The open source model, as far as income goes, is for those who see "5 minutes of fame" as currency.
This is simply not true. I know a number of developers who make a good income developing and selling software that happens to be open source. Making a living and OSS are not mutually exclusive.
However, OSS does not make being an entrepreneur any easier (or harder) -- it's hard, and has a low chance of success, no matter which way you go. Nonetheless, there is a noticeable tendency for people whose business ventures with OSS fail to blame OSS for the failure. Odd that when closed-source business ventures fail, nobody blames closed-source for it.
In terms of the "best" business model, OSS is no different than closed source, in that there is no one absolute "best".
What you need to do is determine what your specific business priorities are and which approach to business is most in line with them. Are you in it to maximize profit? To be able to work on interesting things? To advance a social good? Etc.
Each of those goal has a different "best" model.
If you're like most entrepreneurs, your goal is most likely a mix of things, which complicates the equation, but still the answer to what is "best" entirely depends on your particular motivations.
I guess what I'm saying is, who still has a nice little mom & pop shop left that they can get mad at bodega?
This is very, very region-dependent. Some parts of the nation are chains as far as the eye can see (I call those areas "cultural wastelands). Other parts have many more genuine small businesses than chains.
For some weird reason, people accept that past productivity improvements were good, but think future improvements will obviously be bad.
It's not a weird reason, nor is it difficult to understand. Most people are concerned about their own immediate well-being, and productivity improvements threaten their jobs -- so it's perfectly understandable why they'd view them as being bad.
That they may be good for the economy overall in the long term is cold comfort when you need to pay your bills right now.
Interesting. Did not know such devices would give such data.
They can if you hack them. And, if you don't mind spending more than a little money and violating the law or FCC rules, you can get devices that tell you much more than that (basically, your own functional equivalent of a Stingray).
How do you run a firewall on cell data networks?
The cell data network is handled by Linux the same way that other data interfaces are (it just looks like another network interface), and iptables handles them just fine.
Trusting the firewall you run implies all the data goes through it.
Indeed so, and this is another point of uncertainty. For instance, the cell modem blob communicates without going through the operating system at all, so any traffic that does not originate from the OS side, or if the OS itself is talking directly to the blob instead of going through the network stack, won't be filtered by the firewall.
There's not much that can be done about this aspect. My approach to this is twofold: I install my own "plain vanilla" Android (ensuring that Google binaries aren't in there), and I accept that this is an attack vector.
My approach isn't perfect by any means, but I think it's reasonably hardened. Given that perfect security is impossible, all that anyone can do is harden to the extent that they are comfortable with, and to always treat computers and devices that communicate with the outside worlds as risky, regardless of security measures.
I cannot do that for other people's WiFi or while using cell data.
True, I can't run a sniffer on other people's networks. I can on my own, though, and I can when using the cell data from my home (I have an active cell booster that I can extract the usage data from -- I can't decode the actual packets, but I can see when the data link is being used, by what device, and the pattern of data sizes and times).
So you never use the "phone in your pocket" anywhere but where there is WiFi you control...
I'm not sure what that has to do with the firewall...
Of course I use the phone in uncontrolled environments and yes, there is obviously a risk in doing so. That's why I didn't say I'm 100% certain.
However, my level of confidence is high enough the meet my comfort level, and that level of confidence is based on evidence, not blind faith.
That may be true, but I don't disable all that stuff in order to make it work right, I disable all that stuff because I don't want it. I could change to another desktop (and probably should), but... well... if it ain't broke, and all that.
Nothing is certain, but I'm over 90% sure. I test my security arrangements regularly.
I have had "background data" and "auto update apps" turned off for as long as I've known about that setting, and yet magically some of my apps updated themselves.
I don't trust the operating system to keep me secure, for pretty obvious reasons.
Who is to say Google or any other app developer cannot do the same thing?
My firewall. Neither the OS nor any app can send data out without me specifically allowing it. Yes, it's technically possible for this to be bypassed, but as I said, I test regularly and, when I'm home, my network logs all internet accesses. I've not caught anything sneaky coming from my phone yet.
you can't go into a bank with a water gun in your hand either and expect that the teller is going to have a sense of humor about it.
True, but doing so isn't illegal (unless you're using it to threaten people or as part of the commission of a crime). The bank will just tell you to leave (and if you don't, then you're committing an actual crime of trespassing).
but the action is still criminal, and in some jurisdictions could be prosecutable by the state, or the communications commission.
Maybe. I am very far from convinced that this is an illegal action, but stranger things have happened.
What makes BK's stunt "in poor faith" and this one not?
I would never go along with it, but I agree with another commenter here that I don't think it's reasonable to say that people who are OK with all of that have something wrong with them.
That is, in effect, saying that anyone who has different priorities than you are in some way broken or wrong. It's just not true -- they merely have different priorities.
If other people are OK with privacy invasions I am not OK with, that's no skin off of my nose. We each get to choose how we live our lives.
Most people cannot remove Play though, as it's completely unremovable without modifying the device to allow root access.
That's not Google's doing, that's the doing of the cellular provider that sold you your phone -- and you can avoid it by not buying your phone from such a provider.
Slashdot Mirror
This whole thing is another great reason to avoid using the manufacturer's operating system install whenever possible.
Yeah, I know -- but old habits die hard, and I don't use anything zeroconf. This has been on my "to fix" list for a while now, though.
I've been using ".local" for years. I'd have no problem with ".localhost".
Personally, I just won't watch any streaming media that requires EME to be enabled. That's even simpler!
True, but all that would mean to me is that much of the web would become effectively dead. Which is why I said in an earlier comment that the adoption of EME is a sad thing.
Fortunately, much of the most valuable (to me) parts of the web are not the sorts of sites that would use the EME for any purpose at all, so will remain unaffected. And it still leaves the rest of the internet intact.
And before you tell them to just turn it off, go over the social coercion used to get them to get one and you'll notice that it has to be on.
They need better friends. I know that anyone trying to pressure me into any particular thing is someone I would simply start avoiding.
Life's too short to put up with crap like that.
Well, there's a pretty easy way of avoiding it -- disable EME in your browser. That's what I do.
That this was entirely expected makes it no less sad.
If that were actually an option for most people, there wouldn't really be a net neutrality push. The problem is that there isn't really such an option for too many people, unless you're counting "don't have an internet connection" as an option.
DMCA is clearly not the best tool, but as a game company there is little else in the arsenal
Using the DMCA to censor is not just "not the best tool", it's unambiguously the wrong tool, and an abuse of the law. Abusing the law this way makes you wrong and deserving of condemnation.
Whether or not there are other avenues available is 100% irrelevant.
The open source model, as far as income goes, is for those who see "5 minutes of fame" as currency.
This is simply not true. I know a number of developers who make a good income developing and selling software that happens to be open source. Making a living and OSS are not mutually exclusive.
However, OSS does not make being an entrepreneur any easier (or harder) -- it's hard, and has a low chance of success, no matter which way you go. Nonetheless, there is a noticeable tendency for people whose business ventures with OSS fail to blame OSS for the failure. Odd that when closed-source business ventures fail, nobody blames closed-source for it.
In terms of the "best" business model, OSS is no different than closed source, in that there is no one absolute "best".
What you need to do is determine what your specific business priorities are and which approach to business is most in line with them. Are you in it to maximize profit? To be able to work on interesting things? To advance a social good? Etc.
Each of those goal has a different "best" model.
If you're like most entrepreneurs, your goal is most likely a mix of things, which complicates the equation, but still the answer to what is "best" entirely depends on your particular motivations.
I guess what I'm saying is, who still has a nice little mom & pop shop left that they can get mad at bodega?
This is very, very region-dependent. Some parts of the nation are chains as far as the eye can see (I call those areas "cultural wastelands). Other parts have many more genuine small businesses than chains.
For some weird reason, people accept that past productivity improvements were good, but think future improvements will obviously be bad.
It's not a weird reason, nor is it difficult to understand. Most people are concerned about their own immediate well-being, and productivity improvements threaten their jobs -- so it's perfectly understandable why they'd view them as being bad.
That they may be good for the economy overall in the long term is cold comfort when you need to pay your bills right now.
I've also omitted the more mundane hardening I do -- period MAC randomization, using a VPN, etc.
Interesting. Did not know such devices would give such data.
They can if you hack them. And, if you don't mind spending more than a little money and violating the law or FCC rules, you can get devices that tell you much more than that (basically, your own functional equivalent of a Stingray).
How do you run a firewall on cell data networks?
The cell data network is handled by Linux the same way that other data interfaces are (it just looks like another network interface), and iptables handles them just fine.
Trusting the firewall you run implies all the data goes through it.
Indeed so, and this is another point of uncertainty. For instance, the cell modem blob communicates without going through the operating system at all, so any traffic that does not originate from the OS side, or if the OS itself is talking directly to the blob instead of going through the network stack, won't be filtered by the firewall.
There's not much that can be done about this aspect. My approach to this is twofold: I install my own "plain vanilla" Android (ensuring that Google binaries aren't in there), and I accept that this is an attack vector.
My approach isn't perfect by any means, but I think it's reasonably hardened. Given that perfect security is impossible, all that anyone can do is harden to the extent that they are comfortable with, and to always treat computers and devices that communicate with the outside worlds as risky, regardless of security measures.
I cannot do that for other people's WiFi or while using cell data.
True, I can't run a sniffer on other people's networks. I can on my own, though, and I can when using the cell data from my home (I have an active cell booster that I can extract the usage data from -- I can't decode the actual packets, but I can see when the data link is being used, by what device, and the pattern of data sizes and times).
So you never use the "phone in your pocket" anywhere but where there is WiFi you control...
I'm not sure what that has to do with the firewall...
Of course I use the phone in uncontrolled environments and yes, there is obviously a risk in doing so. That's why I didn't say I'm 100% certain.
However, my level of confidence is high enough the meet my comfort level, and that level of confidence is based on evidence, not blind faith.
I buy it to analyze our business' customers' shopping habits.
Whoa, wait a minute -- you're criticizing people for selling their privacy while at the same time you're buying the privacy they're selling?
How can I put this delicately... I think you don't exactly have the moral high ground here.
That may be true, but I don't disable all that stuff in order to make it work right, I disable all that stuff because I don't want it. I could change to another desktop (and probably should), but ... well... if it ain't broke, and all that.
Are you sure?
Nothing is certain, but I'm over 90% sure. I test my security arrangements regularly.
I have had "background data" and "auto update apps" turned off for as long as I've known about that setting, and yet magically some of my apps updated themselves.
I don't trust the operating system to keep me secure, for pretty obvious reasons.
Who is to say Google or any other app developer cannot do the same thing?
My firewall. Neither the OS nor any app can send data out without me specifically allowing it. Yes, it's technically possible for this to be bypassed, but as I said, I test regularly and, when I'm home, my network logs all internet accesses. I've not caught anything sneaky coming from my phone yet.
you can't go into a bank with a water gun in your hand either and expect that the teller is going to have a sense of humor about it.
True, but doing so isn't illegal (unless you're using it to threaten people or as part of the commission of a crime). The bank will just tell you to leave (and if you don't, then you're committing an actual crime of trespassing).
but the action is still criminal, and in some jurisdictions could be prosecutable by the state, or the communications commission.
Maybe. I am very far from convinced that this is an illegal action, but stranger things have happened.
What makes BK's stunt "in poor faith" and this one not?
BK's stunt was not illegal, either.
What the hell is wrong with people?
I would never go along with it, but I agree with another commenter here that I don't think it's reasonable to say that people who are OK with all of that have something wrong with them.
That is, in effect, saying that anyone who has different priorities than you are in some way broken or wrong. It's just not true -- they merely have different priorities.
If other people are OK with privacy invasions I am not OK with, that's no skin off of my nose. We each get to choose how we live our lives.
Not the commenter you're asking, but I'll chime in...
Why do you not extend that same level of distrust to the phone in your pocket?
I do.
It also has a camera, GPS, and contains your browsing history.
Indeed! Except for browsing history, anyway.
But it also can't send any of that data out without me specifically allowing it to, which I rarely do.
Most people cannot remove Play though, as it's completely unremovable without modifying the device to allow root access.
That's not Google's doing, that's the doing of the cellular provider that sold you your phone -- and you can avoid it by not buying your phone from such a provider.
A lot of my tax dollars goes to pay for things that I am 100% opposed to. Do I get to pick and choose too?