if HTML DRM isn't possible all that will happen is that video providers will continue to use Flash, Silverlight or another proprietary plugin (or make their own app)
Or they'll use the new HTML5 standard for DRM plug-ins. (Explanation: the W3C standard doesn't standardize any DRM systems. It merely provides a standardized means for communication with a browser/platform specific plug-in that provides DRM features. Essentially, if this is HTML5 DRM, then the VIDEO tag was never necessary because the W3C's OBJECT tag already does the same thing...)
For what it's worth (which is not a lot because I don't want to undermine your point which is good) that's a myth. GC DVDs spin the standard way. IIRC, certain headers or something similar are missing/done differently on GC DVDs which makes it difficult to read them without custom firmware on the reader itself. But they do spin the normal way.
Right, because Android users are forced to download malware to install on their phones, simply by virtue of having a more open operating system where you're not forced to install only apps from a walled garden...
I'm sorry, but this is ridiculous. Android gives plenty of warnings if you enable the ability to install downloaded applications. You do, actually, have to be some kind of complete idiot to install malware on your Android device, ignoring a clear warning, and then obtaining an APK from a source that's clearly dubious. Not simply "Not as smart as the GP" or "Not as smart as me", not "Grandmother material" (aside from anything else, Grandma isn't going to turn on the ability to install random APKs), I mean full on, Idiocracy, bad.
To the best of my knowledge, the only major area where malware is rampant in the Android subcommunities is the software piracy community. Saying it's Android's fault that pirates trade malware is like blaming Obamacare for Heroin addicts getting AIDS from tainted needles.
You're forgetting that the NSA is in the news right now, which creates an entirely new angle on it.
I was able to get a copy of the original submission:
Ed Felton writes about an incident, in 2003, in which someone tried to backdoor the Linux kernel, a key component of the GNU/Linux operating system. As you know, Apple just released a new operating system called iOS 6. Is it possible that an NSA contractor, paid in Bitcoins raised through an anonymous Kickstarter project to avoid detection, placed an exploit in the new iPhone 5S? And if so, should the government immediately investigate Google who might have used the feature to implement some sort of tracking bug for people using their iPhones in their Teslas?
As someone who worked in the industry, I know that the last thing any of the big three want are the current dealership laws.
The entire premise of your post is BS. Dealerships exist not because of lobbying by GM, but despite it. Early on in the 20th century, as car companies got started, they needed outlets to have cars sold and didn't have the resources to create their own nationwide networks. Once they had the resources to do so, the privately owned dealerships fought back, and lobbied for laws to protect them - from Ford, GM, et al.
The difficulty and inflexibilities inherent in managing private, independent, dealership networks contributed to the fall of GM and Chrysler, and very nearly destroyed Ford too.
They don't want this. They don't have the ability to change it. They're powerful politically, but not that powerful.
If that were remotely a factor, then the number of people under 25 who prefer not to use cars wouldn't be changing.
Being forced to drive everywhere sucks. It always has, it always will. What's changed are that there's been enough urban redevelopment over the last few decades focussing on TOD that slightly fewer people are being forced to drive everywhere. And people who grow up in areas that are well served by transit are less likely to drive than people who move to areas well served by transit who are used to driving everywhere.
It's true but it has nothing to do with whether GM is legally obliged to sell cars through dealerships or not. This generation is less interested in cars than the last one because there's been a substantial improvement in urban conditions over the last few decades.
Alas, it still remains the case that most people live in areas where they're forced to own cars. But an increasing number are having the option in live in urban areas, and that's a good thing.
Actually given the legal restraints imposed on GM (and most other large automobile manufacturers) GM is showing it's anything other than "functionally incompetent" by implementing this. It's a hack, but it's one that's absolutely necessary if GM is going to go on-line without being sued into oblivion by current franchise owners and being banned from selling its vehicles in other states.
Tesla isn't more responsive to the market: it sells cars that cost over $60,000 and the only people buying them are the ultra-rich. If Tesla is "more responsive to the market" then Bentley must be the world's most responsive car company!
Tesla can, at this point, afford to eschew dealerships despite the problems that imposes upon Tesla's ability to trade in certain states because of the expected low sales and the motivated buyers it targets, but without comprehensive reforms - reforms that would benefit GM and Ford just as much as Tesla and Bentley - it will have to stick to the elite market and avoid selling more popular platforms.
Note: I've worked in the industry, I'm familiar with the restraints car companies are under. The fact the average Slashdotter doesn't understand that the restraints are there doesn't mean they're not there. Yes, they may be poorly suited for the modern era, but, let me put it this way: the rail companies are still suffering from regulations designed in the early 1900s that worked under the assumption that rail was the only way to travel, and while there's been the occasional reform, the bulk of ludicrous regulations and taxes that afflict that industry are still in place - which is why Amtrak is making massive losses and can't run more trains. Now, that's a situation where it costs the government money to keep the current regulatory framework in place, so you'd have expected them to do more about it.
By comparison, keeping the laws that force automotive manufacturers that plan to sell large quantities of popular vehicles to do so through dealerships doesn't cost government anything. There are massive lobbies to keep those laws on the books.
So expect to deal with this for the time being. It's not going to change, and no, Tesla isn't going to change anything - it'll assimilate, or it'll remain a famous niche player. And GM and Ford will continue to have to hack around the edges to get things more consumer friendly than they are at present.
True story. Not so long ago (interestingly it appears to be fixed now), I did a Google search for CP/M submit (I was trying to remember whether submit was the command to run batch files in CP/M, for some pathetic joke that's lost in history. Anyway...)
The list of results was apparently enormous, but none of the pages that initially came up had anything whatsoever to do with CP/M. There was nothing to suggest they'd changed my search parameters in the usual annoying way (no "Searching for "Something really common", click here to search for the obscure thing you actually were trying to find stuff about" message), indeed there weren't even any suggestions. Then I looked a little closer, and noticed that the word "COM" was highlighted in each search excerpt. Usually like this: "Click here to get a subscription for 99c to nytimes.com"
Google had, bizarrely, changed, without even bothing to tell me, "CP/M submit" into "COM". And needless to say, with almost EVERY PAGE ON THE INTERNET containing the word "COM", usually after a dot, which in turn would follow the NAME OF THE SITE, Google had found a kagillion (or maybe a googleplex?) of search results.
They've fixed it now. Indeed, it even comes up with relevent search results on the first page, which is a fair miracle, but I'm still trying to work out the logic that would have Google's code convert C, P, a slash, M, and the word "Submit" into "COM". And to change this search without thinking it's a big enough change that, you know, maybe it's worth warning the user and providing them with a link to a more literal search.
I keep switching to Bing. I keep switching back because Bing is just as bad, and Google's the default setting for the three search boxes my browser provides me with whenever I open a new tab.
Not exactly. Your 60 year old home is better than the majority of homes built 60 years ago, which is why yours is still standing when most of them are not (well, it's one of the reasons.)
In 60 years, most of the homes built today will be gone. But I dare say a fair number, possibly a higher proportion, will be still standing. It'll probably be a higher proportion (than homes built 60 years ago from today are still standing today) because building codes are getting better, and we're getting better at enforcing them.
This is a common fallacy BTW. I usually see it in the form of "Urgh, electronics are so cheap these days. My dad has a 7" color TV made by RCA in 1953 and it still works!" I'm sure it does. I'm also pretty sure that if 7" color TVs made by RCA in 1953 were as reliable as that anecdote implied, we'd still see tons of them in use.
Didn't Apple do a public demo of their Copland operating system? Indeed, IIRC, they even distributed a few copies of an early alpha version to some developers, despite it reportedly being in a similar state.
You don't have to "jailbreak" an Android phone to install any software you want. Last time I looked, Android phones outnumber all over phones out there. How is this "small and insufficient"?
(Reposted as the moderators seem to be particularly moronic at the moment. Do you even bother to read what you're modding "Troll"? Do you understand what the term even means? We're trying to have an adult discussion here, if you can't do anything other than hurl insults at relatively uncontroversial statements that you apparently don't understand, get the fuck off Slashdot. Seriously. You're not helping. This is an important issue, it's important that the facts and the concepts are discussed in an adult fashion.)
Well, more like a safe company being asked to hand over a master skeleton key that happens to open every safe the company has, because the safe company doesn't have any other types of key, didn't open a specific safe, and pretended it was opening that specific safe but actually didn't. And the safe company being required to hand over that key to someone who, in the court's judgement, could be trusted to only use that key with the safe in question.
As far as what the FBI asked for, to be honest, it doesn't matter much. I say this not because it doesn't matter whether they went for a warrant early or late, but because when the FBI asks for something it's legally allowed to get through the courts, if you don't cooperate, they will end up using the courts.
(This is not to comment on the merits of the case, which I see at least one repondee has assumed I'm doing, simply to point out that the FBI's demand for the SSL key was, actually, a logical escalation based upon what the FBI was trying to do and didn't come out of left field and wasn't likely to be shot down by a judge as overly broad. As geeks, we should be looking at this as a set of lessons to be learned, not simply expressing outrage about a judge and/or the FBI being out of control. I'm not entirely sure that the key issue is pertenent to that, any more than if you were arrested for voting for Obama, the concern would be whether the officer should have used handcuffs on you.)
I know, right? All those high taxes punishing innocent job creators - it's a surprise he didn't go to a free country like (/continued on page 94 of "Reason" magazine.)
Drugs taken in a controlled manner rarely kill. You list heroin as a killer drug: I can tell you that prior to the 1970s, the drug was prescribed by doctors to addicts in the UK, who lead normal, ordinary lives (and interestingly the number of addicts was less than 1,000 - largely because there was no industry pushing the drug, if you managed to get someone hooked then they could get their supplies for free on the NHS, so why bother?) and rarely died.
Unregulated drugs creates an environment in which "drugs" are more likely to kill - you don't know what's in whatever it is you've bought, and there's little incentive for the criminal who sold it to you to be honest. Banning them makes them more dangerous. Wouldn't controlling and regulating their supply be preferable?
Well, more like a safe company being asked to hand over a master skeleton key that happens to open every safe the company has, because the safe company doesn't have any other types of key, didn't open a specific safe, and pretended it was opening that specific safe but actually didn't. And the safe company being required to hand over that key to someone who, in the court's judgement, could be trusted to only use that key with the safe in question.
As far as what the FBI asked for, to be honest, it doesn't matter much. I say this not because it doesn't matter whether they went for a warrant early or late, but because when the FBI asks for something it's legally allowed to get through the courts, if you don't cooperate, they will end up using the courts.
(This is not to comment on the merits of the case, which I see at least one repondee has assumed I'm doing, simply to point out that the FBI's demand for the SSL key was, actually, a logical escalation based upon what the FBI was trying to do and didn't come out of left field and wasn't likely to be shot down by a judge as overly broad. As geeks, we should be looking at this as a set of lessons to be learned, not simply expressing outrage about a judge and/or the FBI being out of control. I'm not entirely sure that the key issue is pertenent to that, any more than if you were arrested for voting for Obama, the concern would be whether the officer should have used handcuffs on you.)
Bad faith cooperation is likely to change what the other side asks for, and what the judge is likely to be willing to accept. You can't act in bad faith, and then expect the other side to agree to something that you can easily sabotage.
Essentially, if the FBI can't trust Lavabit, then the FBI may ask for things they wouldn't do otherwise, and the judge is likely to say "Well, because the FBI doesn't trust you - and legitimately doesn't trust you - the bar as to what the maximum they can ask of you just got raised. You can't any more say "But the FBI is asking for something that would mean it could theoretically bug ALL of our customers when we can provide them something more fine-tuned" because when the FBI asked for something less than that, you not only didn't provide it, but you clearly tried to stall them."
This is not to argue that the FBI has a right to use Lavabit to persecute Snowden, simply to point out the obvious about how the law would work even if it turned out to be a total coincidence the FBI was going after Lavabit the day after it was revealed that Snowden had a Lavabit account, and actually they had 24 hours to stop a terrorist from setting off a Nuke in the middle of Austin, Texas.
Well, I read the court documents and it appears the sequence of events went something like:
1. FBI asked for real time details of (Snowden? Everyone thinks Snowden, the request was one day after it was revealed he has an account with Lavabit) an account, specifically metadata relating to email exchanges.
2. Lavabit didn't respond.
3. FBI got pissed, involved courts
4. Lavabit made an offer to provide the information on a monthly basis, rather than a realtime basis, and asked for payment of $3,500 ($2,000 for labor and I can't remember what the other $1,500 was.)
5. FBI threw a fit, announced that instead they were now asking for a box to be installed to intercept communications. The box would be programmed to only transmit the required information about person-we-think-is-Snowden, but because of the way it's designed would require Lavabit's SSL keys.
5. Lavabit: Nu-uh.
6. Courts: Uh yeah, we're siding with the FBI on this one.
7. "But I don't trust the government to only intercept $PROBABLY_SNOWDEN's records. Also I want to talk about this case, first amendment and whatnot."
8. Courts: "Well the government doesn't trust you, has good reason not to trust you based on your history of non-cooperation, and I don't care whether you trust it, established precedent says you have to cooperate. Also I'm not going to let you tell anyone about anything so there."
At this point the courts started threatening fines. Lavabit gave up its key but in a way designed to piss off the FBI, which, of course, pissed off the court too. Court started imposing fines. Lavabit shut itself down.
My reading:
1. Lavabit wasn't as principled as claimed by Glenn Greenwald et al. They did actually plan (or told the courts and the FBI they would anyway) to release the records relating to $PROBABLY_SNOWDEN to the FBI. At best you can argue they were lying, but how's that showing integrity?
2. Lavabit made a number of elementary legal mistakes from the beginning, even avoiding using a lawyer in the first hearing. These mistakes made it easy for the FBI to argue that they couldn't trust Lavabit to do what Lavabit was offering to do. Lavabit should have contacted the FBI immediately, made it clear their concerns, and not made a clearly bad-faith offer to provide something useless to the FBI - I don't mean they should have offered something useful, they should have said instead "Look, this is a major problem for us, we have to investigate further and determine something that can satisfy the law and your requirements that does not damage the integrity of our system", and had a lawyer work with the courts on this.
3. Notwithstanding the above, the court's refusal to allow Lavabit to talk to politicians et al about the basic principles in the case seems absurd and completely unconstitutional. Given the circumstances, I have to assume that Snowden was the target - if $RANDOM_DRUGDEALER was the target, Lavabit going to a politician and saying "We've been told to hand over records of one of our 50,000 users" wouldn't tip anyone off.
This is a total fuck-up. The EFF and ACLU can get involved now, but so many mistakes were made early on it's going to be an uphill fight for everything except the free speech issue. In particular, if you're expecting this to end up with a judgement that it was wrong to demand access to Lavabit's data, you're going to be sorely disappointed.
It was only 36 Billion at the time the submitter submitted the article. Since then, because of fluctuations in the value of Bitcoins, it's gone from $36B to $17T back down to $3,000 and then up for a bit to $256M.
Wow, some people don't like having their sacred cows questioned.
You cannot respond to a fair question pointing out that if the problem with X11 is cruftiness, how is a "replacement" project that will start with only a subset of the features going to avoid having the exact same problems - earlier than the original indeed.
So I'm going to take that as meaning you don't have an answer. You're so wedded to this disruptive and unnecessary project that you'd rather stick your fingers in your ears when the obvious gets stated.
Wayland and Mir are not good projects. They've been started for entirely the wrong reasons. Indeed, they've been started for the classic wrong reason - "oh, the old code is imperfect, we have to rewrite!"
X11 works. It's here today. It's great. We should stick with it.
The anchor is never presented as an expert on anything. SOP is that the anchor reads a report that we assume has some degree of research behind it, and then introduces a journalist who's spent more time researching the story, who in turn interviews some "experts", be they witnesses, official spokespeople, or academics/veterans familiar with the field.
The problem the GP had was the habit of pulling in an author of some fiction to fill the academic/veteran position. That's not too far from saying "With me in the studio to talk about the decommisioning of the Mir space station is William Shatner. Mr Shatner, what can you tell me about conditions on board spacecraft like Mir?"
Yeah, yeah, cue all the "X11 is crufty and nobody needs all those awesome features it has". Sure. Right. One question: what do you think Wayland and Mir will look like in five years, especially if you're leaving out highly desirable features from day one?
Even more damning was that the Note 3 was still faster than the G2 when run using 'stealth' (basically renamed) versions of the benchmarking apps which did not get the boost."
Not sure how this is "damning". I'd have thought it would prove the principle that the optimizations aren't app specific.
Slashdot Mirror
Or they'll use the new HTML5 standard for DRM plug-ins. (Explanation: the W3C standard doesn't standardize any DRM systems. It merely provides a standardized means for communication with a browser/platform specific plug-in that provides DRM features. Essentially, if this is HTML5 DRM, then the VIDEO tag was never necessary because the W3C's OBJECT tag already does the same thing...)
For what it's worth (which is not a lot because I don't want to undermine your point which is good) that's a myth. GC DVDs spin the standard way. IIRC, certain headers or something similar are missing/done differently on GC DVDs which makes it difficult to read them without custom firmware on the reader itself. But they do spin the normal way.
Right, because Android users are forced to download malware to install on their phones, simply by virtue of having a more open operating system where you're not forced to install only apps from a walled garden...
I'm sorry, but this is ridiculous. Android gives plenty of warnings if you enable the ability to install downloaded applications. You do, actually, have to be some kind of complete idiot to install malware on your Android device, ignoring a clear warning, and then obtaining an APK from a source that's clearly dubious. Not simply "Not as smart as the GP" or "Not as smart as me", not "Grandmother material" (aside from anything else, Grandma isn't going to turn on the ability to install random APKs), I mean full on, Idiocracy, bad.
To the best of my knowledge, the only major area where malware is rampant in the Android subcommunities is the software piracy community. Saying it's Android's fault that pirates trade malware is like blaming Obamacare for Heroin addicts getting AIDS from tainted needles.
You're forgetting that the NSA is in the news right now, which creates an entirely new angle on it.
I was able to get a copy of the original submission:
Ed Felton writes about an incident, in 2003, in which someone tried to backdoor the Linux kernel, a key component of the GNU/Linux operating system. As you know, Apple just released a new operating system called iOS 6. Is it possible that an NSA contractor, paid in Bitcoins raised through an anonymous Kickstarter project to avoid detection, placed an exploit in the new iPhone 5S? And if so, should the government immediately investigate Google who might have used the feature to implement some sort of tracking bug for people using their iPhones in their Teslas?
As someone who worked in the industry, I know that the last thing any of the big three want are the current dealership laws.
The entire premise of your post is BS. Dealerships exist not because of lobbying by GM, but despite it. Early on in the 20th century, as car companies got started, they needed outlets to have cars sold and didn't have the resources to create their own nationwide networks. Once they had the resources to do so, the privately owned dealerships fought back, and lobbied for laws to protect them - from Ford, GM, et al.
The difficulty and inflexibilities inherent in managing private, independent, dealership networks contributed to the fall of GM and Chrysler, and very nearly destroyed Ford too.
They don't want this. They don't have the ability to change it. They're powerful politically, but not that powerful.
If that were remotely a factor, then the number of people under 25 who prefer not to use cars wouldn't be changing.
Being forced to drive everywhere sucks. It always has, it always will. What's changed are that there's been enough urban redevelopment over the last few decades focussing on TOD that slightly fewer people are being forced to drive everywhere. And people who grow up in areas that are well served by transit are less likely to drive than people who move to areas well served by transit who are used to driving everywhere.
It's true but it has nothing to do with whether GM is legally obliged to sell cars through dealerships or not. This generation is less interested in cars than the last one because there's been a substantial improvement in urban conditions over the last few decades.
Alas, it still remains the case that most people live in areas where they're forced to own cars. But an increasing number are having the option in live in urban areas, and that's a good thing.
Actually given the legal restraints imposed on GM (and most other large automobile manufacturers) GM is showing it's anything other than "functionally incompetent" by implementing this. It's a hack, but it's one that's absolutely necessary if GM is going to go on-line without being sued into oblivion by current franchise owners and being banned from selling its vehicles in other states.
Tesla isn't more responsive to the market: it sells cars that cost over $60,000 and the only people buying them are the ultra-rich. If Tesla is "more responsive to the market" then Bentley must be the world's most responsive car company!
Tesla can, at this point, afford to eschew dealerships despite the problems that imposes upon Tesla's ability to trade in certain states because of the expected low sales and the motivated buyers it targets, but without comprehensive reforms - reforms that would benefit GM and Ford just as much as Tesla and Bentley - it will have to stick to the elite market and avoid selling more popular platforms.
Note: I've worked in the industry, I'm familiar with the restraints car companies are under. The fact the average Slashdotter doesn't understand that the restraints are there doesn't mean they're not there. Yes, they may be poorly suited for the modern era, but, let me put it this way: the rail companies are still suffering from regulations designed in the early 1900s that worked under the assumption that rail was the only way to travel, and while there's been the occasional reform, the bulk of ludicrous regulations and taxes that afflict that industry are still in place - which is why Amtrak is making massive losses and can't run more trains. Now, that's a situation where it costs the government money to keep the current regulatory framework in place, so you'd have expected them to do more about it.
By comparison, keeping the laws that force automotive manufacturers that plan to sell large quantities of popular vehicles to do so through dealerships doesn't cost government anything. There are massive lobbies to keep those laws on the books.
So expect to deal with this for the time being. It's not going to change, and no, Tesla isn't going to change anything - it'll assimilate, or it'll remain a famous niche player. And GM and Ford will continue to have to hack around the edges to get things more consumer friendly than they are at present.
It's quite an achievement GM has gotten this far.
True story. Not so long ago (interestingly it appears to be fixed now), I did a Google search for CP/M submit (I was trying to remember whether submit was the command to run batch files in CP/M, for some pathetic joke that's lost in history. Anyway...)
The list of results was apparently enormous, but none of the pages that initially came up had anything whatsoever to do with CP/M. There was nothing to suggest they'd changed my search parameters in the usual annoying way (no "Searching for "Something really common", click here to search for the obscure thing you actually were trying to find stuff about" message), indeed there weren't even any suggestions. Then I looked a little closer, and noticed that the word "COM" was highlighted in each search excerpt. Usually like this: "Click here to get a subscription for 99c to nytimes.com"
Google had, bizarrely, changed, without even bothing to tell me, "CP/M submit" into "COM". And needless to say, with almost EVERY PAGE ON THE INTERNET containing the word "COM", usually after a dot, which in turn would follow the NAME OF THE SITE, Google had found a kagillion (or maybe a googleplex?) of search results.
They've fixed it now. Indeed, it even comes up with relevent search results on the first page, which is a fair miracle, but I'm still trying to work out the logic that would have Google's code convert C, P, a slash, M, and the word "Submit" into "COM". And to change this search without thinking it's a big enough change that, you know, maybe it's worth warning the user and providing them with a link to a more literal search.
I keep switching to Bing. I keep switching back because Bing is just as bad, and Google's the default setting for the three search boxes my browser provides me with whenever I open a new tab.
Ah, so you're one of the developers working on Google+!
Not exactly. Your 60 year old home is better than the majority of homes built 60 years ago, which is why yours is still standing when most of them are not (well, it's one of the reasons.)
In 60 years, most of the homes built today will be gone. But I dare say a fair number, possibly a higher proportion, will be still standing. It'll probably be a higher proportion (than homes built 60 years ago from today are still standing today) because building codes are getting better, and we're getting better at enforcing them.
This is a common fallacy BTW. I usually see it in the form of "Urgh, electronics are so cheap these days. My dad has a 7" color TV made by RCA in 1953 and it still works!" I'm sure it does. I'm also pretty sure that if 7" color TVs made by RCA in 1953 were as reliable as that anecdote implied, we'd still see tons of them in use.
Didn't Apple do a public demo of their Copland operating system? Indeed, IIRC, they even distributed a few copies of an early alpha version to some developers, despite it reportedly being in a similar state.
Has China banned Android phones, or are you simply making up hypothetical situations that are absurd in practice?
You don't have to "jailbreak" an Android phone to install any software you want. Last time I looked, Android phones outnumber all over phones out there. How is this "small and insufficient"?
(Reposted as the moderators seem to be particularly moronic at the moment. Do you even bother to read what you're modding "Troll"? Do you understand what the term even means? We're trying to have an adult discussion here, if you can't do anything other than hurl insults at relatively uncontroversial statements that you apparently don't understand, get the fuck off Slashdot. Seriously. You're not helping. This is an important issue, it's important that the facts and the concepts are discussed in an adult fashion.)
Well, more like a safe company being asked to hand over a master skeleton key that happens to open every safe the company has, because the safe company doesn't have any other types of key, didn't open a specific safe, and pretended it was opening that specific safe but actually didn't. And the safe company being required to hand over that key to someone who, in the court's judgement, could be trusted to only use that key with the safe in question.
As far as what the FBI asked for, to be honest, it doesn't matter much. I say this not because it doesn't matter whether they went for a warrant early or late, but because when the FBI asks for something it's legally allowed to get through the courts, if you don't cooperate, they will end up using the courts.
(This is not to comment on the merits of the case, which I see at least one repondee has assumed I'm doing, simply to point out that the FBI's demand for the SSL key was, actually, a logical escalation based upon what the FBI was trying to do and didn't come out of left field and wasn't likely to be shot down by a judge as overly broad. As geeks, we should be looking at this as a set of lessons to be learned, not simply expressing outrage about a judge and/or the FBI being out of control. I'm not entirely sure that the key issue is pertenent to that, any more than if you were arrested for voting for Obama, the concern would be whether the officer should have used handcuffs on you.)
I know, right? All those high taxes punishing innocent job creators - it's a surprise he didn't go to a free country like (/continued on page 94 of "Reason" magazine.)
Drugs taken in a controlled manner rarely kill. You list heroin as a killer drug: I can tell you that prior to the 1970s, the drug was prescribed by doctors to addicts in the UK, who lead normal, ordinary lives (and interestingly the number of addicts was less than 1,000 - largely because there was no industry pushing the drug, if you managed to get someone hooked then they could get their supplies for free on the NHS, so why bother?) and rarely died.
Unregulated drugs creates an environment in which "drugs" are more likely to kill - you don't know what's in whatever it is you've bought, and there's little incentive for the criminal who sold it to you to be honest. Banning them makes them more dangerous. Wouldn't controlling and regulating their supply be preferable?
Well, more like a safe company being asked to hand over a master skeleton key that happens to open every safe the company has, because the safe company doesn't have any other types of key, didn't open a specific safe, and pretended it was opening that specific safe but actually didn't. And the safe company being required to hand over that key to someone who, in the court's judgement, could be trusted to only use that key with the safe in question.
As far as what the FBI asked for, to be honest, it doesn't matter much. I say this not because it doesn't matter whether they went for a warrant early or late, but because when the FBI asks for something it's legally allowed to get through the courts, if you don't cooperate, they will end up using the courts.
(This is not to comment on the merits of the case, which I see at least one repondee has assumed I'm doing, simply to point out that the FBI's demand for the SSL key was, actually, a logical escalation based upon what the FBI was trying to do and didn't come out of left field and wasn't likely to be shot down by a judge as overly broad. As geeks, we should be looking at this as a set of lessons to be learned, not simply expressing outrage about a judge and/or the FBI being out of control. I'm not entirely sure that the key issue is pertenent to that, any more than if you were arrested for voting for Obama, the concern would be whether the officer should have used handcuffs on you.)
Bad faith cooperation is likely to change what the other side asks for, and what the judge is likely to be willing to accept. You can't act in bad faith, and then expect the other side to agree to something that you can easily sabotage.
Essentially, if the FBI can't trust Lavabit, then the FBI may ask for things they wouldn't do otherwise, and the judge is likely to say "Well, because the FBI doesn't trust you - and legitimately doesn't trust you - the bar as to what the maximum they can ask of you just got raised. You can't any more say "But the FBI is asking for something that would mean it could theoretically bug ALL of our customers when we can provide them something more fine-tuned" because when the FBI asked for something less than that, you not only didn't provide it, but you clearly tried to stall them."
This is not to argue that the FBI has a right to use Lavabit to persecute Snowden, simply to point out the obvious about how the law would work even if it turned out to be a total coincidence the FBI was going after Lavabit the day after it was revealed that Snowden had a Lavabit account, and actually they had 24 hours to stop a terrorist from setting off a Nuke in the middle of Austin, Texas.
Well, I read the court documents and it appears the sequence of events went something like:
1. FBI asked for real time details of (Snowden? Everyone thinks Snowden, the request was one day after it was revealed he has an account with Lavabit) an account, specifically metadata relating to email exchanges.
2. Lavabit didn't respond.
3. FBI got pissed, involved courts
4. Lavabit made an offer to provide the information on a monthly basis, rather than a realtime basis, and asked for payment of $3,500 ($2,000 for labor and I can't remember what the other $1,500 was.)
5. FBI threw a fit, announced that instead they were now asking for a box to be installed to intercept communications. The box would be programmed to only transmit the required information about person-we-think-is-Snowden, but because of the way it's designed would require Lavabit's SSL keys.
5. Lavabit: Nu-uh.
6. Courts: Uh yeah, we're siding with the FBI on this one.
7. "But I don't trust the government to only intercept $PROBABLY_SNOWDEN's records. Also I want to talk about this case, first amendment and whatnot."
8. Courts: "Well the government doesn't trust you, has good reason not to trust you based on your history of non-cooperation, and I don't care whether you trust it, established precedent says you have to cooperate. Also I'm not going to let you tell anyone about anything so there."
At this point the courts started threatening fines. Lavabit gave up its key but in a way designed to piss off the FBI, which, of course, pissed off the court too. Court started imposing fines. Lavabit shut itself down.
My reading:
1. Lavabit wasn't as principled as claimed by Glenn Greenwald et al. They did actually plan (or told the courts and the FBI they would anyway) to release the records relating to $PROBABLY_SNOWDEN to the FBI. At best you can argue they were lying, but how's that showing integrity?
2. Lavabit made a number of elementary legal mistakes from the beginning, even avoiding using a lawyer in the first hearing. These mistakes made it easy for the FBI to argue that they couldn't trust Lavabit to do what Lavabit was offering to do. Lavabit should have contacted the FBI immediately, made it clear their concerns, and not made a clearly bad-faith offer to provide something useless to the FBI - I don't mean they should have offered something useful, they should have said instead "Look, this is a major problem for us, we have to investigate further and determine something that can satisfy the law and your requirements that does not damage the integrity of our system", and had a lawyer work with the courts on this.
3. Notwithstanding the above, the court's refusal to allow Lavabit to talk to politicians et al about the basic principles in the case seems absurd and completely unconstitutional. Given the circumstances, I have to assume that Snowden was the target - if $RANDOM_DRUGDEALER was the target, Lavabit going to a politician and saying "We've been told to hand over records of one of our 50,000 users" wouldn't tip anyone off.
This is a total fuck-up. The EFF and ACLU can get involved now, but so many mistakes were made early on it's going to be an uphill fight for everything except the free speech issue. In particular, if you're expecting this to end up with a judgement that it was wrong to demand access to Lavabit's data, you're going to be sorely disappointed.
It was only 36 Billion at the time the submitter submitted the article. Since then, because of fluctuations in the value of Bitcoins, it's gone from $36B to $17T back down to $3,000 and then up for a bit to $256M.
It's now $5.23
Wow, some people don't like having their sacred cows questioned.
You cannot respond to a fair question pointing out that if the problem with X11 is cruftiness, how is a "replacement" project that will start with only a subset of the features going to avoid having the exact same problems - earlier than the original indeed.
So I'm going to take that as meaning you don't have an answer. You're so wedded to this disruptive and unnecessary project that you'd rather stick your fingers in your ears when the obvious gets stated.
Wayland and Mir are not good projects. They've been started for entirely the wrong reasons. Indeed, they've been started for the classic wrong reason - "oh, the old code is imperfect, we have to rewrite!"
X11 works. It's here today. It's great. We should stick with it.
The anchor is never presented as an expert on anything. SOP is that the anchor reads a report that we assume has some degree of research behind it, and then introduces a journalist who's spent more time researching the story, who in turn interviews some "experts", be they witnesses, official spokespeople, or academics/veterans familiar with the field.
The problem the GP had was the habit of pulling in an author of some fiction to fill the academic/veteran position. That's not too far from saying "With me in the studio to talk about the decommisioning of the Mir space station is William Shatner. Mr Shatner, what can you tell me about conditions on board spacecraft like Mir?"
I'd rather they stick with X.
Yeah, yeah, cue all the "X11 is crufty and nobody needs all those awesome features it has". Sure. Right. One question: what do you think Wayland and Mir will look like in five years, especially if you're leaving out highly desirable features from day one?
Not sure how this is "damning". I'd have thought it would prove the principle that the optimizations aren't app specific.
What am I missing?