And never forgetting that no fossil fuel would be remotely competitive if their externalised costs were included on the sticker.
Your premise is correct but let's be accurate. Yes you are correct that fossil fuels do not have to include the cost of all their externalities (pollution, carbon, etc) which would add VERY substantially to their price. Not to mention the subsidies to the tune of several trillion dollars annually worldwide. But there are applications for fossil fuels for which there currently are no practical alternatives such as jet fuel, so saying they wouldn't be competitive requires some clarification about the circumstances. Furthermore there are use cases where fossil fuels are and will remain the most practical and economic source of power for the foreseeable future even if you suddenly were to burden them with the full cost of the pollution they cause.
Don't get me wrong, I think fossil fuels present a real and present danger but the goal should be to minimize their use since getting rid of them completely isn't going to happen.
I do work for Google, in security. And I don't have to be in a "privileged" position to know that. The internal architecture is such that providing such a backdoor would require willing collusion by multiple teams, and I know many of the people who would have to be involved.
Ok fair enough. Even if I take you at your word though it still doesn't solve the problem for most of us. There simply is no way to verify Google's security to any reasonable degree so the only reasonable course of action is to assume that my data will be exposed in ways you might not prefer.
I don't actually believe you when you claim that you wouldn't need to be in a privileged position to know if there was no back door. Unless you are actually involved in that code it's hard to believe that you can be sure it hasn't be compromised in some subtle (or not so subtle) way. I understand what you are saying and separation of roles is an important tool in security but it isn't a cure all either.
That means nothing to you of course. Just the word of some random guy on on the Internet who may be lying about working for Google, and could possibly even be lying about what Google does, since obviously he has a vested interest.
Well said.
Sure. What I do know is that Google does often refuse, and that Google's lawyers claim to be extremely picky about validating requests
I don't actually doubt this since I can see Google's self interest but like I said, I cannot be certain of Google's behavior so I should adjust my own behavior to appropriately compensate. While I don't distrust Google per se, I cannot actually rely on the company to be or remain trustworthy. That's not unique to Google of course nor is an indictment of Google or the people there. It's simple logic regarding security. You assume systems you don't control are insecure as a default practice.
" the rocket is carrying the fuel it needs for the landing with it to space. Carrying the fuel it needs is the biggest problem every rocket has, and now, Elon is adding EVEN MORE fuel to it."
Surprisingly few rocket launches are sent into orbit with a full tank. They don't need to make the rocket bigger as they are just using some excess fuel capacity of the rocket. The extra fuel is almost a rounding error in the cost and a little extra in an otherwise underutilized tank for the landing is no big deal in most cases. It's a practical solution for a wide variety of circumstances.
In some cases having a wing can be a good trade-off too: for example for a small unmanned space shuttle, a delta wing is a very efficient solution, if you have a runway and atmosphere.
There are corner cases for everything but as a general proposition it is safe to say that wings on a spacecraft are approximately as useful as tits on a bull. There are better solutions than a lifting surfaces most of the time. There are very good reasons why we don't use them on the majority of spacecraft.
Rocket science is really too complicated to explain it in a comment.
Nobody is trying to explain all of rocket science. But a comment is more than adequate to correct a clearly wrong statement from someone who seems to claim that the space shuttle was somehow an efficient or good solution.
Those rockets are half as efficient as the space shuttle. Just think about it... the rocket is carrying the fuel it needs for the landing with it to space. Carrying the fuel it needs is the biggest problem every rocket has, and now, Elon is adding EVEN MORE fuel to it. How dumb is that ?
Not nearly as dumb as spending fuel on carrying WINGS into space. In case you weren't aware, wings are utterly useless on a spacecraft for 99.999% of the journey and are completely useless for any purpose except landing on a nicely groomed runway. What you thought that it doesn't cost anything to lift those very heavy wings into orbit? Do you think there are a lot of prepared runways on Mars or the Moon?
Seriously my friend, do you really think that all those actual rocket scientists at SpaceX and elsewhere haven't given this issue any thought?
Surely you see the irony here. You are happy to give up everyone's freedom for a little bit of perceived safety for yourself.
Do you even know what irony is? Virtually every traffic law we have exists to ensure safe transit of the roads and every one of them constrains your behavior for the safety of yourself and others. That's why you stop at stop signs even when there is no traffic around you. It's why you drive on the proper side of the road even in the absence of oncoming traffic. It's why you have to register your car, get insurance, be trained how to drive, etc. Your argument has a false premise. Is your right to post to twitter while driving really in the best interest of society? I think not.
"I don't need my phone on mass transit, so nobody else should be allowed to use theirs."
Nice try. Explain to me what vital need you have for your phone while riding the bus that cannot abide a few minute wait. Then explain to me how your right to post to Twitter or Facebook or make calls while in transit is a civil right more important to society than the lives of several thousand people every year. Frankly I'm not feeling a lot of sympathy for people who have such a sense of entitlement that they cannot delay gratification on non-vital communication for a few minutes for the safety of others.
Furthermore there are technical solutions to the bus rider problem. Put wifi on the bus and use that for example. Poof, problem solved.
You could save more lives by banning unhealthy junk food (Roughly as many people died of diabetes as traffic fatalities last year) and a whole load of other things.
False equivalence. Eating badly only kills you. Distracted driving risks the lives of other people. If you want to slowly kill yourself with a bad diet or drug habit go ahead. But when your actions start to threaten others then absolutely the state should intervene. That's the whole point of a government and to solve problems that we cannot solve ourselves.
I reject your premise that people's fears have any worth in determining rules.
False premise again. What fears? Distracted driving is proven to cause thousands of unnecessary and preventable deaths every single year. All because people aren't willing to delay gratification on their entertainment for a few minutes.
If people are afraid of terrorists attacking shopping malls, should we put TSA stations up at every entrance point?
Oh I get it. You want to get all hyperbolic with absurdities rather than actually point out a better solution. What is your solution to distracted driving? Or maybe you think it is fine. Is your argument is that your right to send/receive text messages while driving is more valuable to our society than the lives of several thousand people and injuries to tens of thousands?
So in the absence of evidence, you declare the existence of a backdoor?
No, in the absence of evidence you assume there may be one and behave accordingly. I presume no knowledge for or against the existence of a back door.
I think you, being the one making the claim, needs to provide the evidence.
I don't need to present evidence of anything. I have no idea if there is or is not a backdoor and neither do you. What I do know is that I have no reasonable way to audit Google on the matter so the only safe course of action is to presume a backdoor exists which will keep you safe even if it does not exist. Unless you control a system it is idiotic to presume it to be secure.
Oh, and law enforcement does not have "backdoor access", at least not the way that I would interpret the phrase.
And you have what evidence for this? Unless you actually work at Google in a fairly technically privileged position you would have no way to know if they do or do not have backdoor access under any definition of the term you care to use. You would have to be daft to presume that organizations like the NSA or law enforcement agencies don't have or cannot get access to your communications with or without Google's permission. While you are correct that in general they would need to jump through hoops, there is substantial evidence to suggest that these hoops aren't much of an obstacle.
If law enforcement or other authorized agents of the courts present a valid and duly authorized document which legally compels Google to hand over your data, Google will hand over your data. If it's not correctly executed, is overly broad or has some other legal defect, Google will refuse.
No, Google MIGHT refuse at their discretion. You have no way to be certain of their behavior and you should adjust your own behavior accordingly.
Unfortunately, the cat is kind of out of the bag on this one. Let's forget about people who will go out of their way to disable this safety mechanism as there will probably only be a small subset of the population who knows how and wants to do that.
If they intentionally disable it of course they can do that but then they should be exposed to liability in the event something goes wrong.
There are tons and tons of cell phones out there now, and by all accounts their turnover rate is slowing down already. If all new cell phones have this technology from now on it will still take probably a decade to get the old ones out of circulation. I'm not saying we shouldn't do it, just that it won't solve the problem overnight at this point.
So we should do nothing because it won't solve the problem instantly? Stop making perfect the enemy of good. With a simple software update you could get huge swaths of the smartphones out there updated overnight and the rest could be handled over a few years as they get traded in. We don't have to get every phone out there to make a huge dent in the problem.
I think it would be relatively simple to determine who the driver is especially if you got the car manufacturers and/or the phone manufacturers involved.
How do you figure? You have some way to unambiguously and reliably determine who is in the driver's seat? I've never seen such a solution though I'd certainly welcome one. I think that would be an extremely difficult problem.
Problem #1 is that the car/phone company would be adding a "feature" that makes their product less desirable so you would have to get everyone to do it at the same time.
Easy to get most people with software updates and even if you can get most of the people it should have a herd immunity effect similar to vaccines. Make it a law that after a certain date all phones sold as new have to have the ability to limit use while on roads and force manufacturers like Apple and Samsung to update devices that can be updated. I don't think this is the difficult issue you make it out to be.
Problem #2 is that people now use their phone for navigation so you would likely want to exempt certain apps and who would decide which apps are exempt.
You'll note that I didn't suggest shutting off all functionality. Just functionality that results in distracted driving. GPS would be fine as a general proposition.
Banning texting was maybe a solution 5 years ago but today the majority of people using their phones while driving are likely doing stuff other than texting like facebook.
So apps are banned unless they get white listed in. GPS = fine. Facebook = no. Twitter = no. Basically if it doesn't serve the purpose of navigating the car or operating the vehicle you would have to pull off the road and stop the vehicle to use it. 911 and other emergency services would of course always be available. You can live without facebook while driving I assure you. Even as a passenger.
Our society has things called "laws" that we use to coerce the citizens into proper behavior. Welcome to civilization!
Yes and those laws have completely eliminated drunk driving as a problem and nobody ever talks on their phone while driving in a state where it's illegal. Spare me. Laws only provide a means to punish after the fact. They don't bring people back from the dead.
That will also prevent people on the bus from using their cell phones. I hate distracted driving too, but yours isn't an acceptable solution.
So what? Somehow the world survived for thousands of years without having people use smartphones on buses. It's amazing how entitled people get. I assure you you would survive the experience of not being able to use every feature of your phone for a few minutes. Furthermore there would be nothing preventing you from using a wifi enabled device like a tablet on a bus. It just means you aren't going to be texting or making phone calls while the vehicle is in motion. The point is to keep people from making calls and texting and similar activity while in motion.
I reject the premise that your right to play with your phone is more important than the right of people to travel without fear of dying because some idiot cannot pull off the road to send a text message. If you have a better solution to keep people from literally causing deaths then I'm all ears. Right now forced disabling during transit seems to be the only solution that would actually work. I agree that it isn't an ideal solution but I have yet to hear any other solution that would actually fix the problem.
Oh and I have no illusion that this will become a reality. I'm just pointing out that forced compliance is the only solution that would actually work. I don't see it actually happening.
If every car had by default some good way to mount a cell phone there would not be nearly so much distraction, since you could see the road and not have eyes diverted to the side for notifications or what have you.
There have been numerous studies showing that mounting the phone or even having hands free operation still results in unacceptable levels of distracted driving. And having a mount doesn't force people to use it.
I've said it before and I'll say it again even though it's not popular. The ONLY way to eliminate the problem is for the smartphones to utilize their tracking abilities and to cease most functioning aside from a few items like 911 calls and GPS when it shows you to be in a car traveling down a road. Since it is impossible to determine who the driver is then it would have to apply to everyone. Yes this will limit passengers use too and that's simply going to have to be a trade off to be made for safety. Exceptions can be made for properly designated first responders. There is no other technology nor any law that I'm aware of that will otherwise adequately mitigate the problem. If you have a better idea I'm all ears but as draconian as it sounds I think it's the only way to force people to be safer.
No, but it would be nice to keep it around alongside the new and unproven interface until that new interface becomes proven. We're talking about the (still) ubiquitious USB-A port, here, not some dead-end technology we've been trying to get away ffor years. Well, maybe some people have been trying, but even they seem to agree that jumping to USB-C before it was proven was a mistake.
Again, this is not a problem with USB-C. This is a problem with Apple's product design. Separate issues and nothing in either case that won't resolve itself with time.
USB-A (and B) is widespread but it was a badly designed connector and IS a dead end design. The power transmission in USB-C alone makes it a massive improvement. Yes it's reasonable to argue Apple got a little ahead of themselves but that doesn't mean their design instinct was wrong - just premature. They probably just should have waited one or two product generations. But the move to USB-C is a good one and I applaud them trying to move it along, however clumsily.
USB-A (and B) never had these problems, USB-C does, primarily because it's trying to be more than just USB.
Yes USB-A did have many teething problems similar to USB-C when it was first introduced. It also was a LOT simpler in its initial incarnations so there was less to go wrong. It took quite a while for drivers and other parts of the ecosystem to become sufficiently robust. I remember having all sorts of problems with USB hubs nearly identical to the issues in this article relating to USB-C. Heck I still have a few old pieces of hardware that I haven't bothered to dispose of yet that still don't play nice with USB hubs even today.
Yes, USB-C is a huge step forward... to a time I recall before USB-A took hold. If you're over 30 and remember that time as well, and still think USB-C is a net win, you'll be the first I've met.
I'm closer to 50 than to 30 and yes USB-C is a Good Thing and in my opinion replacing USB-A with USB-C cannot happen fast enough for me. It will take a few years but it's completely worth the trouble in the long run.
Yeah, that's right. Fuck You, for removing every proven interface off your latest hardware and replacing it with this proprietary crap.
What "proprietary crap" are you talking about? USB-C may have issues but it isn't proprietary anymore than previous versions of USB. And I'm not remotely interested in going back to 25 position D-Subs or other crappy serial bus interfaces from days of yore. Just because an interface is "proven" doesn't mean it is necessary. And just because it is "proven" doesn't mean we should be stuck with it for the rest of eternity. I'm not advocating removing interfaces that are necessary/useful currently for no good reason, but I am saying that compromising a product to remain compatible with dead end technology is a bad idea when it can be reasonably avoided.
I wish this kind of fucking courage would spell the demise of such stupidity, but chances are Apple's particular flavor of ignorant Greed will force them to double-down on proprietary interface bullshit to maximize revenue streams.
The problems with USB-C are not specific to Apple so I don't really get the point of your bile towards Apple here. Not saying Apple doesn't deserve criticism but let's save it for when it has something actually to do with Apple. If you don't like Apple products then buy something else that suits you. They aren't the only game in town by a long shot.
Scorsese is not saying only film history majors should be allowed to criticise his work, he is decrying that the movie-reviwing scene is now dominated by people with very little knowledge about movie making and cinema in general, and that good movies are being panned by those people.
That is exactly what he is saying. He is arguing that film review should be dominated by people who know a lot about film making which is a snobby and false argument. Knowledge of film history and cinema is largely irrelevant to determining whether or not someone likes a movie. The primary purpose of film review is to communicate to lay people whether or not they might enjoy a film and find it worth spending their money to see it. A deep knowledge of film history or how movies are made is not necessary to serve that role. Understanding how something was made doesn't matter at all to the vast majority of movie goers. That's just inside baseball among film buffs. Most people just want to be entertained and Scorsese seems to have forgotten that fact.
In fact, he wasn't even defending his own film, he was defending a film called "Mother!", directed by Darren Aronofsky.
Of course it is relevant. A good film critic should not only tell you whether a film is worth seeing, but can tell you why, and what other films you might enjoy if you enjoy this one (or what films succeed where this one fails).
You don't need to a deep knowledge of film history to know why a film is worth seeing any more than you need to be a professional musician to know if you like a piece of music. You merely need to be able to watch the movie and articulate your feelings about it. Being able to recommend other films is fine and all but again it's not really relevant. If I'm considering seeing a movie in a theater today, I don't really give a shit if I would be interesting in some other movie from 20 years ago. I want to know if it is worth spending the money to go to the theater TODAY. A degree in film history is completely NOT required to make that evaluation. I don't need to know where in the pantheon of film history this film resides in 99.999% of cases. I just want to know if I'll be entertained and feel like I got good value for money spent. Any additional information is bonus but unnecessary.
Haven't you ever heard about what happens to those who ignore history?
If the movie is shit then history was already ignored long before I got involved.
Just like a Wine Connoisseur. As the average guy knows if he liked or disliked a wine, but wouldn't be able to tell them apart. the Wine Connoisseur has learned to tell the differences, so a wine they may had liked decades back is now poor to him, because of that one undertone that they have caught on to.
You might have chosen a different example because wine tasting is complete BS and has been repeatedly shown to be so in all sorts of studies. So called wine experts are routinely anything but experts and are easily revealed as such. They often cannot tell the difference between "good" and "bad" wines under any sort of rigorous scrutiny. Very similar to audiophiles who like to pretend they can hear things the rest of us cannot.
I honestly can't think of a single movie I've seen in the theater in the last 5 years that I thought was worth going to the theater for. That's why I rarely go to the theater anymore.
Not being disrespectful but I think that says more about you than it does about the movies. I totally get that movies in general might not be your particular brand of vodka and that's fine. But there are good movies out there (yes within the last 5 years) which are fun for many of us to see in a theater. Maybe you feel the same way about movies that I do about live music concerts. Even live music that I acknowledge is very well done rarely holds my interest for long and so it's not really worth the effort to me. It's not that it is objectively bad or that I don't appreciate it on some level but it just isn't a form of entertainment that interests me greatly. Just my personal taste. I suspect you feel the same way about movies and there isn't anything wrong with that unless you extrapolate that to how you think other people should feel about them.
Martin Scorsese inveighs against two conjoined trends -- the widespread reporting of box-office results and the grading of movies by consumers on CinemaScore and by critics on Rotten Tomatoes -- and blames it for "a tone that is hostile to serious filmmakers." In particular, he contends that this hostile environment is worsening "as film criticism written by passionately engaged people with actual knowledge of film history has gradually faded from the scene.
Translation: "Serious film makers shouldn't have to care about whether or not their film appeals to anyone or makes money and anyone who isn't a film history major shouldn't be allowed to criticize my work because they are unworthy."
"Hostile to serious filmmakers"? What a joke. Just because you can't make money on a shit film anymore isn't our problem. Just because nobody wants to fund your risky art house film isn't our problem. Knowledge of film history is utterly irrelevant in determining whether or not a film is worth seeing. Popularity does not necessarily equal quality but it cannot be denied that there is a strong correlation. Rotten Tomatoes isn't the end-all-be-all of movie evaluation but it is useful information. If a movie gets a 13% on Rotten Tomatoes I'm probably going to skip seeing it in a theater. If a narcissistic director cannot handle that business reality then that isn't my problem.
You do realise that our recorded, written history already goes back several millennia, right?
In evolutionary terms that is a figurative blink of an eye for large animals like ourselves and the sort of ecosystems we can comfortably inhabit.
And that modern humans were around into the hundreds of millennia...
The ballpark consensus number is around 200,000 years from the first emergence of our species. Again in evolutionary time scales for non-microbes that is a short amount of time. We evidently nearly went extinct about 70,000 years ago thanks to a super-volcano eruption (Mt Tobo in Sumatra) and we only ventured out of Africa about 50-80K years ago.
There aren't dozens of damning new plagues daily that everyone has to take medicine for or they die.
Not sure what planet you live on but there literally are new diseases every day (ever hear of mutations?) and people do literally die from them. Every day, all around the world. Diseases like influenza and malaria are constantly mutating and overcoming even our best attempts to shield against them. And unlike you I'm not talking about a figurative death either. Literally millions of people die - literally die - every year because of new versions of diseases that our immune systems and medical technology cannot cope with.
IT security is a tough problem and I'm not diminishing it in the least. But spare me the dick measuring contest where you try to arrogantly assume that what you think you understand about IT security makes it more difficult than what other fields do or that the consequences are greater. If you seriously believe that medicine isn't as difficult as IT security then frankly I think you are an imbecile who doesn't really understand either field.
My opinion? This is what happens when you have BEAN COUNTERS and PAPER SHUFFLERS making engineering decisions, instead of engineers and other educated, qualified personnel!
I am an engineer and I also happen to be a certified accountant. I can assure you that engineers do not as a general proposition make better (or worse) business decisions than any other category of worker. The problem at equifax was NOT an engineering failure, nor did it happen because engineers weren't making engineering decisions. It was a failure of company culture and a lack of risk controls. The engineering flaws that were exposed were simply predictable knock-on effects of the poor business controls.
Don't get me wrong, I think that upper management at Equifax should find themselves in front of a judge as soon as possible. This was a failure that went FAR beyond mere incompetence. I think that Equifax should be buried under an avalanche of lawsuits and probably cease to exist because they clearly cannot be trusted to handle sensitive data with appropriate levels of care.
Slashdot Mirror
Kaspersky is popular because it wins at independent tests run by experts.
You forgot the air quotes around "experts"
And never forgetting that no fossil fuel would be remotely competitive if their externalised costs were included on the sticker.
Your premise is correct but let's be accurate. Yes you are correct that fossil fuels do not have to include the cost of all their externalities (pollution, carbon, etc) which would add VERY substantially to their price. Not to mention the subsidies to the tune of several trillion dollars annually worldwide. But there are applications for fossil fuels for which there currently are no practical alternatives such as jet fuel, so saying they wouldn't be competitive requires some clarification about the circumstances. Furthermore there are use cases where fossil fuels are and will remain the most practical and economic source of power for the foreseeable future even if you suddenly were to burden them with the full cost of the pollution they cause.
Don't get me wrong, I think fossil fuels present a real and present danger but the goal should be to minimize their use since getting rid of them completely isn't going to happen.
I do work for Google, in security. And I don't have to be in a "privileged" position to know that. The internal architecture is such that providing such a backdoor would require willing collusion by multiple teams, and I know many of the people who would have to be involved.
Ok fair enough. Even if I take you at your word though it still doesn't solve the problem for most of us. There simply is no way to verify Google's security to any reasonable degree so the only reasonable course of action is to assume that my data will be exposed in ways you might not prefer.
I don't actually believe you when you claim that you wouldn't need to be in a privileged position to know if there was no back door. Unless you are actually involved in that code it's hard to believe that you can be sure it hasn't be compromised in some subtle (or not so subtle) way. I understand what you are saying and separation of roles is an important tool in security but it isn't a cure all either.
That means nothing to you of course. Just the word of some random guy on on the Internet who may be lying about working for Google, and could possibly even be lying about what Google does, since obviously he has a vested interest.
Well said.
Sure. What I do know is that Google does often refuse, and that Google's lawyers claim to be extremely picky about validating requests
I don't actually doubt this since I can see Google's self interest but like I said, I cannot be certain of Google's behavior so I should adjust my own behavior to appropriately compensate. While I don't distrust Google per se, I cannot actually rely on the company to be or remain trustworthy. That's not unique to Google of course nor is an indictment of Google or the people there. It's simple logic regarding security. You assume systems you don't control are insecure as a default practice.
" the rocket is carrying the fuel it needs for the landing with it to space. Carrying the fuel it needs is the biggest problem every rocket has, and now, Elon is adding EVEN MORE fuel to it."
Surprisingly few rocket launches are sent into orbit with a full tank. They don't need to make the rocket bigger as they are just using some excess fuel capacity of the rocket. The extra fuel is almost a rounding error in the cost and a little extra in an otherwise underutilized tank for the landing is no big deal in most cases. It's a practical solution for a wide variety of circumstances.
In some cases having a wing can be a good trade-off too: for example for a small unmanned space shuttle, a delta wing is a very efficient solution, if you have a runway and atmosphere.
There are corner cases for everything but as a general proposition it is safe to say that wings on a spacecraft are approximately as useful as tits on a bull. There are better solutions than a lifting surfaces most of the time. There are very good reasons why we don't use them on the majority of spacecraft.
Rocket science is really too complicated to explain it in a comment.
Nobody is trying to explain all of rocket science. But a comment is more than adequate to correct a clearly wrong statement from someone who seems to claim that the space shuttle was somehow an efficient or good solution.
Those rockets are half as efficient as the space shuttle. Just think about it... the rocket is carrying the fuel it needs for the landing with it to space. Carrying the fuel it needs is the biggest problem every rocket has, and now, Elon is adding EVEN MORE fuel to it. How dumb is that ?
Not nearly as dumb as spending fuel on carrying WINGS into space. In case you weren't aware, wings are utterly useless on a spacecraft for 99.999% of the journey and are completely useless for any purpose except landing on a nicely groomed runway. What you thought that it doesn't cost anything to lift those very heavy wings into orbit? Do you think there are a lot of prepared runways on Mars or the Moon?
Seriously my friend, do you really think that all those actual rocket scientists at SpaceX and elsewhere haven't given this issue any thought?
Surely you see the irony here. You are happy to give up everyone's freedom for a little bit of perceived safety for yourself.
Do you even know what irony is? Virtually every traffic law we have exists to ensure safe transit of the roads and every one of them constrains your behavior for the safety of yourself and others. That's why you stop at stop signs even when there is no traffic around you. It's why you drive on the proper side of the road even in the absence of oncoming traffic. It's why you have to register your car, get insurance, be trained how to drive, etc. Your argument has a false premise. Is your right to post to twitter while driving really in the best interest of society? I think not.
"I don't need my phone on mass transit, so nobody else should be allowed to use theirs."
Nice try. Explain to me what vital need you have for your phone while riding the bus that cannot abide a few minute wait. Then explain to me how your right to post to Twitter or Facebook or make calls while in transit is a civil right more important to society than the lives of several thousand people every year. Frankly I'm not feeling a lot of sympathy for people who have such a sense of entitlement that they cannot delay gratification on non-vital communication for a few minutes for the safety of others.
Furthermore there are technical solutions to the bus rider problem. Put wifi on the bus and use that for example. Poof, problem solved.
You could save more lives by banning unhealthy junk food (Roughly as many people died of diabetes as traffic fatalities last year) and a whole load of other things.
False equivalence. Eating badly only kills you. Distracted driving risks the lives of other people. If you want to slowly kill yourself with a bad diet or drug habit go ahead. But when your actions start to threaten others then absolutely the state should intervene. That's the whole point of a government and to solve problems that we cannot solve ourselves.
I reject your premise that people's fears have any worth in determining rules.
False premise again. What fears? Distracted driving is proven to cause thousands of unnecessary and preventable deaths every single year. All because people aren't willing to delay gratification on their entertainment for a few minutes.
If people are afraid of terrorists attacking shopping malls, should we put TSA stations up at every entrance point?
Oh I get it. You want to get all hyperbolic with absurdities rather than actually point out a better solution. What is your solution to distracted driving? Or maybe you think it is fine. Is your argument is that your right to send/receive text messages while driving is more valuable to our society than the lives of several thousand people and injuries to tens of thousands?
So in the absence of evidence, you declare the existence of a backdoor?
No, in the absence of evidence you assume there may be one and behave accordingly. I presume no knowledge for or against the existence of a back door.
I think you, being the one making the claim, needs to provide the evidence.
I don't need to present evidence of anything. I have no idea if there is or is not a backdoor and neither do you. What I do know is that I have no reasonable way to audit Google on the matter so the only safe course of action is to presume a backdoor exists which will keep you safe even if it does not exist. Unless you control a system it is idiotic to presume it to be secure.
Oh, and law enforcement does not have "backdoor access", at least not the way that I would interpret the phrase.
And you have what evidence for this? Unless you actually work at Google in a fairly technically privileged position you would have no way to know if they do or do not have backdoor access under any definition of the term you care to use. You would have to be daft to presume that organizations like the NSA or law enforcement agencies don't have or cannot get access to your communications with or without Google's permission. While you are correct that in general they would need to jump through hoops, there is substantial evidence to suggest that these hoops aren't much of an obstacle.
If law enforcement or other authorized agents of the courts present a valid and duly authorized document which legally compels Google to hand over your data, Google will hand over your data. If it's not correctly executed, is overly broad or has some other legal defect, Google will refuse.
No, Google MIGHT refuse at their discretion. You have no way to be certain of their behavior and you should adjust your own behavior accordingly.
Unfortunately, the cat is kind of out of the bag on this one. Let's forget about people who will go out of their way to disable this safety mechanism as there will probably only be a small subset of the population who knows how and wants to do that.
If they intentionally disable it of course they can do that but then they should be exposed to liability in the event something goes wrong.
There are tons and tons of cell phones out there now, and by all accounts their turnover rate is slowing down already. If all new cell phones have this technology from now on it will still take probably a decade to get the old ones out of circulation. I'm not saying we shouldn't do it, just that it won't solve the problem overnight at this point.
So we should do nothing because it won't solve the problem instantly? Stop making perfect the enemy of good. With a simple software update you could get huge swaths of the smartphones out there updated overnight and the rest could be handled over a few years as they get traded in. We don't have to get every phone out there to make a huge dent in the problem.
I think it would be relatively simple to determine who the driver is especially if you got the car manufacturers and/or the phone manufacturers involved.
How do you figure? You have some way to unambiguously and reliably determine who is in the driver's seat? I've never seen such a solution though I'd certainly welcome one. I think that would be an extremely difficult problem.
Problem #1 is that the car/phone company would be adding a "feature" that makes their product less desirable so you would have to get everyone to do it at the same time.
Easy to get most people with software updates and even if you can get most of the people it should have a herd immunity effect similar to vaccines. Make it a law that after a certain date all phones sold as new have to have the ability to limit use while on roads and force manufacturers like Apple and Samsung to update devices that can be updated. I don't think this is the difficult issue you make it out to be.
Problem #2 is that people now use their phone for navigation so you would likely want to exempt certain apps and who would decide which apps are exempt.
You'll note that I didn't suggest shutting off all functionality. Just functionality that results in distracted driving. GPS would be fine as a general proposition.
Banning texting was maybe a solution 5 years ago but today the majority of people using their phones while driving are likely doing stuff other than texting like facebook.
So apps are banned unless they get white listed in. GPS = fine. Facebook = no. Twitter = no. Basically if it doesn't serve the purpose of navigating the car or operating the vehicle you would have to pull off the road and stop the vehicle to use it. 911 and other emergency services would of course always be available. You can live without facebook while driving I assure you. Even as a passenger.
Our society has things called "laws" that we use to coerce the citizens into proper behavior. Welcome to civilization!
Yes and those laws have completely eliminated drunk driving as a problem and nobody ever talks on their phone while driving in a state where it's illegal. Spare me. Laws only provide a means to punish after the fact. They don't bring people back from the dead.
That will also prevent people on the bus from using their cell phones. I hate distracted driving too, but yours isn't an acceptable solution.
So what? Somehow the world survived for thousands of years without having people use smartphones on buses. It's amazing how entitled people get. I assure you you would survive the experience of not being able to use every feature of your phone for a few minutes. Furthermore there would be nothing preventing you from using a wifi enabled device like a tablet on a bus. It just means you aren't going to be texting or making phone calls while the vehicle is in motion. The point is to keep people from making calls and texting and similar activity while in motion.
I reject the premise that your right to play with your phone is more important than the right of people to travel without fear of dying because some idiot cannot pull off the road to send a text message. If you have a better solution to keep people from literally causing deaths then I'm all ears. Right now forced disabling during transit seems to be the only solution that would actually work. I agree that it isn't an ideal solution but I have yet to hear any other solution that would actually fix the problem.
Oh and I have no illusion that this will become a reality. I'm just pointing out that forced compliance is the only solution that would actually work. I don't see it actually happening.
If every car had by default some good way to mount a cell phone there would not be nearly so much distraction, since you could see the road and not have eyes diverted to the side for notifications or what have you.
There have been numerous studies showing that mounting the phone or even having hands free operation still results in unacceptable levels of distracted driving. And having a mount doesn't force people to use it.
I've said it before and I'll say it again even though it's not popular. The ONLY way to eliminate the problem is for the smartphones to utilize their tracking abilities and to cease most functioning aside from a few items like 911 calls and GPS when it shows you to be in a car traveling down a road. Since it is impossible to determine who the driver is then it would have to apply to everyone. Yes this will limit passengers use too and that's simply going to have to be a trade off to be made for safety. Exceptions can be made for properly designated first responders. There is no other technology nor any law that I'm aware of that will otherwise adequately mitigate the problem. If you have a better idea I'm all ears but as draconian as it sounds I think it's the only way to force people to be safer.
No, but it would be nice to keep it around alongside the new and unproven interface until that new interface becomes proven. We're talking about the (still) ubiquitious USB-A port, here, not some dead-end technology we've been trying to get away ffor years. Well, maybe some people have been trying, but even they seem to agree that jumping to USB-C before it was proven was a mistake.
Again, this is not a problem with USB-C. This is a problem with Apple's product design. Separate issues and nothing in either case that won't resolve itself with time.
USB-A (and B) is widespread but it was a badly designed connector and IS a dead end design. The power transmission in USB-C alone makes it a massive improvement. Yes it's reasonable to argue Apple got a little ahead of themselves but that doesn't mean their design instinct was wrong - just premature. They probably just should have waited one or two product generations. But the move to USB-C is a good one and I applaud them trying to move it along, however clumsily.
USB-A (and B) never had these problems, USB-C does, primarily because it's trying to be more than just USB.
Yes USB-A did have many teething problems similar to USB-C when it was first introduced. It also was a LOT simpler in its initial incarnations so there was less to go wrong. It took quite a while for drivers and other parts of the ecosystem to become sufficiently robust. I remember having all sorts of problems with USB hubs nearly identical to the issues in this article relating to USB-C. Heck I still have a few old pieces of hardware that I haven't bothered to dispose of yet that still don't play nice with USB hubs even today.
Yes, USB-C is a huge step forward... to a time I recall before USB-A took hold. If you're over 30 and remember that time as well, and still think USB-C is a net win, you'll be the first I've met.
I'm closer to 50 than to 30 and yes USB-C is a Good Thing and in my opinion replacing USB-A with USB-C cannot happen fast enough for me. It will take a few years but it's completely worth the trouble in the long run.
Yeah, that's right. Fuck You, for removing every proven interface off your latest hardware and replacing it with this proprietary crap.
What "proprietary crap" are you talking about? USB-C may have issues but it isn't proprietary anymore than previous versions of USB. And I'm not remotely interested in going back to 25 position D-Subs or other crappy serial bus interfaces from days of yore. Just because an interface is "proven" doesn't mean it is necessary. And just because it is "proven" doesn't mean we should be stuck with it for the rest of eternity. I'm not advocating removing interfaces that are necessary/useful currently for no good reason, but I am saying that compromising a product to remain compatible with dead end technology is a bad idea when it can be reasonably avoided.
I wish this kind of fucking courage would spell the demise of such stupidity, but chances are Apple's particular flavor of ignorant Greed will force them to double-down on proprietary interface bullshit to maximize revenue streams.
The problems with USB-C are not specific to Apple so I don't really get the point of your bile towards Apple here. Not saying Apple doesn't deserve criticism but let's save it for when it has something actually to do with Apple. If you don't like Apple products then buy something else that suits you. They aren't the only game in town by a long shot.
Scorsese is not saying only film history majors should be allowed to criticise his work, he is decrying that the movie-reviwing scene is now dominated by people with very little knowledge about movie making and cinema in general, and that good movies are being panned by those people.
That is exactly what he is saying. He is arguing that film review should be dominated by people who know a lot about film making which is a snobby and false argument. Knowledge of film history and cinema is largely irrelevant to determining whether or not someone likes a movie. The primary purpose of film review is to communicate to lay people whether or not they might enjoy a film and find it worth spending their money to see it. A deep knowledge of film history or how movies are made is not necessary to serve that role. Understanding how something was made doesn't matter at all to the vast majority of movie goers. That's just inside baseball among film buffs. Most people just want to be entertained and Scorsese seems to have forgotten that fact.
In fact, he wasn't even defending his own film, he was defending a film called "Mother!", directed by Darren Aronofsky.
It doesn't matter whose work he was defending.
Of course it is relevant. A good film critic should not only tell you whether a film is worth seeing, but can tell you why, and what other films you might enjoy if you enjoy this one (or what films succeed where this one fails).
You don't need to a deep knowledge of film history to know why a film is worth seeing any more than you need to be a professional musician to know if you like a piece of music. You merely need to be able to watch the movie and articulate your feelings about it. Being able to recommend other films is fine and all but again it's not really relevant. If I'm considering seeing a movie in a theater today, I don't really give a shit if I would be interesting in some other movie from 20 years ago. I want to know if it is worth spending the money to go to the theater TODAY. A degree in film history is completely NOT required to make that evaluation. I don't need to know where in the pantheon of film history this film resides in 99.999% of cases. I just want to know if I'll be entertained and feel like I got good value for money spent. Any additional information is bonus but unnecessary.
Haven't you ever heard about what happens to those who ignore history?
If the movie is shit then history was already ignored long before I got involved.
Just like a Wine Connoisseur. As the average guy knows if he liked or disliked a wine, but wouldn't be able to tell them apart. the Wine Connoisseur has learned to tell the differences, so a wine they may had liked decades back is now poor to him, because of that one undertone that they have caught on to.
You might have chosen a different example because wine tasting is complete BS and has been repeatedly shown to be so in all sorts of studies. So called wine experts are routinely anything but experts and are easily revealed as such. They often cannot tell the difference between "good" and "bad" wines under any sort of rigorous scrutiny. Very similar to audiophiles who like to pretend they can hear things the rest of us cannot.
I honestly can't think of a single movie I've seen in the theater in the last 5 years that I thought was worth going to the theater for. That's why I rarely go to the theater anymore.
Not being disrespectful but I think that says more about you than it does about the movies. I totally get that movies in general might not be your particular brand of vodka and that's fine. But there are good movies out there (yes within the last 5 years) which are fun for many of us to see in a theater. Maybe you feel the same way about movies that I do about live music concerts. Even live music that I acknowledge is very well done rarely holds my interest for long and so it's not really worth the effort to me. It's not that it is objectively bad or that I don't appreciate it on some level but it just isn't a form of entertainment that interests me greatly. Just my personal taste. I suspect you feel the same way about movies and there isn't anything wrong with that unless you extrapolate that to how you think other people should feel about them.
Martin Scorsese inveighs against two conjoined trends -- the widespread reporting of box-office results and the grading of movies by consumers on CinemaScore and by critics on Rotten Tomatoes -- and blames it for "a tone that is hostile to serious filmmakers." In particular, he contends that this hostile environment is worsening "as film criticism written by passionately engaged people with actual knowledge of film history has gradually faded from the scene.
Translation: "Serious film makers shouldn't have to care about whether or not their film appeals to anyone or makes money and anyone who isn't a film history major shouldn't be allowed to criticize my work because they are unworthy."
"Hostile to serious filmmakers"? What a joke. Just because you can't make money on a shit film anymore isn't our problem. Just because nobody wants to fund your risky art house film isn't our problem. Knowledge of film history is utterly irrelevant in determining whether or not a film is worth seeing. Popularity does not necessarily equal quality but it cannot be denied that there is a strong correlation. Rotten Tomatoes isn't the end-all-be-all of movie evaluation but it is useful information. If a movie gets a 13% on Rotten Tomatoes I'm probably going to skip seeing it in a theater. If a narcissistic director cannot handle that business reality then that isn't my problem.
You do realise that our recorded, written history already goes back several millennia, right?
In evolutionary terms that is a figurative blink of an eye for large animals like ourselves and the sort of ecosystems we can comfortably inhabit.
And that modern humans were around into the hundreds of millennia...
The ballpark consensus number is around 200,000 years from the first emergence of our species. Again in evolutionary time scales for non-microbes that is a short amount of time. We evidently nearly went extinct about 70,000 years ago thanks to a super-volcano eruption (Mt Tobo in Sumatra) and we only ventured out of Africa about 50-80K years ago.
There aren't dozens of damning new plagues daily that everyone has to take medicine for or they die.
Not sure what planet you live on but there literally are new diseases every day (ever hear of mutations?) and people do literally die from them. Every day, all around the world. Diseases like influenza and malaria are constantly mutating and overcoming even our best attempts to shield against them. And unlike you I'm not talking about a figurative death either. Literally millions of people die - literally die - every year because of new versions of diseases that our immune systems and medical technology cannot cope with.
IT security is a tough problem and I'm not diminishing it in the least. But spare me the dick measuring contest where you try to arrogantly assume that what you think you understand about IT security makes it more difficult than what other fields do or that the consequences are greater. If you seriously believe that medicine isn't as difficult as IT security then frankly I think you are an imbecile who doesn't really understand either field.
My opinion? This is what happens when you have BEAN COUNTERS and PAPER SHUFFLERS making engineering decisions, instead of engineers and other educated, qualified personnel!
I am an engineer and I also happen to be a certified accountant. I can assure you that engineers do not as a general proposition make better (or worse) business decisions than any other category of worker. The problem at equifax was NOT an engineering failure, nor did it happen because engineers weren't making engineering decisions. It was a failure of company culture and a lack of risk controls. The engineering flaws that were exposed were simply predictable knock-on effects of the poor business controls.
Don't get me wrong, I think that upper management at Equifax should find themselves in front of a judge as soon as possible. This was a failure that went FAR beyond mere incompetence. I think that Equifax should be buried under an avalanche of lawsuits and probably cease to exist because they clearly cannot be trusted to handle sensitive data with appropriate levels of care.