When I use WhatsApp through my phone, it shows the history of my conversations. Presumably the police have recovered Masoods phone, can use one of the numerous ways to get into it, and can thus see what messages he sent over WhatsApp and to whom.
In short, why the hell can't Plod read Masoods last words over WhatsApp? Also if they knew he used WhatsApp, that shows they have either broken into his phone already or picked up some data from his ISP already.
Further, the latest UK Investigatory Powers Act regarding security only wanted metadata, not content, and a great deal of effort was spent convincing the general public that this was all that is needed.
So my question is, is my view of the situation wrong or is Amber Rudd technologically clueless?
This is precisely what I was wondering. Encryption means that only the specified destination of the message gets to decrypt it. In other words, if I send you a WhatsApp message, nobody else gets it but you, and anyone who tries intercepting it doesn't get to examine the contents.
But if Masood was killed, his phone would presumably be in the hands of authorities. In which case, the first issue would be getting into his phone (or PC, if he used the PC version of it). Once they got in, they could see all his messages on WhatsApp, as well as the contents there. Or they could look at his contacts list, get warrants for those people and then examine their communications to Masood as well.
The way that works, from what I understand, is that if your car is stolen, or your spouse was in the car while it was hijacked, you can call OnStar and ask them to disable the vehicle and sabotage the plot of the carjackers. In other words, it's disabled at the owners discretion.
However, in this situation, a terrorist rented a car, making him the temporary 'owner' of the car: if the rental company had known that he was out to do Jihad by car, they'd obviously not have rented it to him (aside from calling law enforcement). But once they did, he's the de-facto 'owner' of the car until he turns it back in. So if OnStar were to disable the car, they'd be doing the greater good all right, but at the same time, they'd be on the borderline of violating his rights. In this case, he was just renting, but what if he were to buy a fully loaded car and then use it this way? Here, if OnStar did disable the car, he'd have a potential case against them. Of course, since he's now dead, he can't do anything about it.
"I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it"... privately.
Looks like that is easily arranged, as the allahu-akbar crowd would happily arrange for your death while you defend their right to say what they want - privately
One of the biggest opportunities that OS/2 had - and ultimately lost - was OS/2 for PowerPC. That was something that could have brought IBM back into the workstation game, when NT/RISC was just coming out, and Apple was struggling w/ Copeland. Unfortunately, its architecture was totally different from OS/2 on Intel, and IBM aborted that project.
Incidentally, whatever happened to the osFree project - which was an FOSS OS/2 project using L4 instead of Mach as the underlying microkernel?
It was an IBM PS/Valuepoint. IBM doesn't get to deliver a PC that OS/2 won't run on while they are shipping OS/2.
You forget that short lived IBM spinoff 'Amber', which specifically told customers that they don't support OS/2 on their computers, to customers who asked.
Actually, Windows 8, w/ its Metro UI, horrible that it was for desktop use, would actually be ideal for an ATM. Just have a customized subset of that system - lose the desktop on that and have just the buttons - and then have buttons for Savings, Checkin, Deposits, Withdrawals, Balance Transfers, Check Balances, et al. It would be ideal.
In fact, make it Windows RT, so that it could be based on an inexpensive ARM based subsystem and could be sourced from a variety of vendors, rather than being locked to Intel/AMD
Well, a couple of good reasons for OS/2 to exist, such as REXX and SOM. Not Windows 3.1 support.
One reason I can think of is for people who want out of Windows, particularly Windows 10, but can't afford a Mac, and find Linux too challenging. OS/2 Warp could be a good alternative. Remember, back in the day, when OS/2 was around, one of the major beefs against it was that it was rather power hungry: that when people were used to 4MB of RAM in their computers, and thought that 8MB was too rich. Today, assuming that OS/2 is still a 32-bit OS, a 2GB would be the max it could run - or need.
Looking at the listed features, one of the things I wonder - will it be an FOSS, or at least an OSS? So that we don't have the code fossilize again, like in the case of IBM's OS/2? About the features, it should have SMP support (OS/2 server supported dual CPUs), OpenGL, IPv6, cryptography... On the issue of support, support for DOS or Windows 3.1 is less important: they should take a page from FreeBSD and support jails. Pick a few: Debian, Fedora, Gentoo and FreeBSD, and run such apps via those jails, rather than 'ported Linux applications'. In the meantime, pick some of the most common applications that people use - email, internet, videos, music, conferencing, a VM client and provide an outstanding client of each on this platform. Like Thunderbird, Chromium, VLC, WhatsApp, Netflix and VMware. In fact, they should have a VM client for things like XP, 2000, and if possible, even 7.
From a user interface standpoint, OS/2 could be interesting. Remember when one could print a file just by dragging the file to the printer icon - an ultimate use of OOP? Similarly, one could drag a text file to an email icon to mail it, or a movie file to VLC to watch it. Would be a lot more interesting than what we've had for a while.
Uh, why can't they recreate the i960 or even i860 for this, and release that? Where is it written that an embedded processor for IoT has to be an ARM or an x86? Granted, their attempts at going away from x86 had repeated failures, but that doesn't imply that they can't produce a successful non x86 CPU for non Wintel applications
You joke, but a few weeks ago, there was a little girl who used her mom's fingerprint while mom was sleeping to get into the phone, and then order a whole bunch of toys for herself. So kids already know how to manipulate unconscious parents
Actually, reading down, it is there in the PIN code screen. Problem is - since I use the fingerprint, I often bypass it. Of course, if one does, one can then invoke the Phone icon and simply dial 911
Android has an emergency link in the lock screen. I don't see one in iOS. Despite having swipe down/right and left, it doesn't have an emergency link or icon anywhere - talking about iOS 10.2.1
No, but a 4-year boy may not know that, and presumably you need to unlock the phone for Siri to respond to activation command.
From the lock screen, if you swipe down, you get the search box, w/ the mic icon on the right, which would enable Siri. Granted, the 4 yr old may not know that, but if he's smart enough to use mom's finger, I'd expect he's smart enough to have explored such nooks & cranies of an iPhone. Of course, I'm talking here about iOS 10.2.1: not sure whether they would have had an older version, for whatever reason.
If the Senate voted approximately along party lines to repeal this, then chances are the GOP as a whole is for it. They already have a major advantage in the House, and so it's unlikely that they would vote to repeal it.
That then leaves the question of where the president stands on this. While he does have opinions on everything up to the future of 'The Apprentice', I wonder whether he has one on this particular issue. Also, in the Senate, how did Libertarians, such as Rand Paul, vote? If they voted for it, then there's probably a reason other than that - like negating bureaucratic overreach and putting the issue before Congress
Rather than focus on phones, shouldn't they focus on making 4G widely accessible to the infrastructure equipment of developing markets? It's not tough to have a 4G phone such as a Galaxy, iPhone or even a Lumia in a developing country, but if their telco companies don't offer 4G services, it's pretty worthless
Uh, most people are. They'd either use Notepad, or if they are stuck in DOS, Edit. Here, on my TrueOS box, I use Lumina text editor, or whatever default editor comes w/ the DE I'm using. But I'd have to have one of those O'Reilly books handy if I had to work in either vim or emacs (let alone vi)
Intel is pretty much the best that's left of manufacturing in the US - most R&D, most innovative and headed by someone from their fabs. In the worst case situation - assume that the market for x86/x64 completely dries up, they can simply be a US version of a TSMC/GSMC, and still be above water.
Most companies would kill to be in that predicament. AMD, OTOH, has nothing left but the x64, and its hybrid ARM/x64 lines look interesting, but it's not much more valuable than any of the myriad number of fabless semiconductor companies out there. They are behind Intel in a 2 horse (or a horse vs donkey) race in CPUs, and they are behind NVIDIA in a 3 horse race in GPUs. Every other business they once had - be it FPGAs, Flash, Embedded CPUs, et al has been closed or sold, so there's not much else they have, really
But IBM already exited the semiconductor market a while ago - in fact, they too outsourced it to Global Foundries. Hardly much of a volume driver, which is what any semiconductor house needs in order to be able to recoup its investments quickly.
1. How would anything Intel did prevent AMD from investing in their own fabs? The ones they had were anaemic - and while they attempted some good ones, like Dresden, their process methodologies never advanced much beyond their basics
2. They did decide to focus on CPUs that would beat Intel in price, ignoring the huge advantage Intel had in cost. Instead, had they focused more aggressively on next gen process nodes and improving their yields, they'd have done a lot better
3. Intel is widely recognized as a leader in fabs, ahead of the best of them - previously IBM, TSMC, Samsung, et al
4. Whether they sold or spun off is a distinction w/o a difference: bottom line is that AMD has less control on their supply, and Global Foundries is at liberty to give them a lower priority if they get better customers
Intel's technology is worse? Only in some alternate universe
I agree w/ this completely. The submitter seems to be looking for a master of all trades, let alone a jack. Yeah, people develop various skills to avoid letting the support staff be a bottleneck, but that shouldn't be the requirement of them going in. Otherwise, where does it end - next, engineers will be expected to do business development and cold call prospective customers, and have their performance assessed based on that.
Between then and now, AMD acquired a part of the DEC Alpha team, and had Dirk Meyer as their CEO. They did well w/ the Athlon, and later achieved a coup w/ the AMD 64 architecture, by getting Microsoft's endorsement. This was at a time when Intel was struggling w/ the Pentium 4, and the Itanium was such a disaster that Intel had to follow AMD's lead.
But AMD never grabbed the initiative to build on their fab capabilities and manufacturing processes, instead continuing to focus just on low cost CPUs. Never a winning strategy, since not only did Intel have pockets deep enough to price match them anywhere they chose, they also had a 2-3 generation advantage in terms of process nodes. Ultimately, AMD threw in the towel and sold off their fabs to Global Foundries.
And unlike the time when AMD acquired another great CPU team, this time, there are no CPU teams left to acquire. All that there is in the market are Intel and ARM. For ARM, there are all the major licensees - Qualcomm, Phillips, TI, Samsung, et al, so there are no great teams they can really acquire. Despite the occasional flashes in the pan, AMD is pretty much where Cyrix, Winchip and Centaur are - swimming w/ the fishes
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When I use WhatsApp through my phone, it shows the history of my conversations. Presumably the police have recovered Masoods phone, can use one of the numerous ways to get into it, and can thus see what messages he sent over WhatsApp and to whom.
In short, why the hell can't Plod read Masoods last words over WhatsApp? Also if they knew he used WhatsApp, that shows they have either broken into his phone already or picked up some data from his ISP already.
Further, the latest UK Investigatory Powers Act regarding security only wanted metadata, not content, and a great deal of effort was spent convincing the general public that this was all that is needed.
So my question is, is my view of the situation wrong or is Amber Rudd technologically clueless?
This is precisely what I was wondering. Encryption means that only the specified destination of the message gets to decrypt it. In other words, if I send you a WhatsApp message, nobody else gets it but you, and anyone who tries intercepting it doesn't get to examine the contents.
But if Masood was killed, his phone would presumably be in the hands of authorities. In which case, the first issue would be getting into his phone (or PC, if he used the PC version of it). Once they got in, they could see all his messages on WhatsApp, as well as the contents there. Or they could look at his contacts list, get warrants for those people and then examine their communications to Masood as well.
The way that works, from what I understand, is that if your car is stolen, or your spouse was in the car while it was hijacked, you can call OnStar and ask them to disable the vehicle and sabotage the plot of the carjackers. In other words, it's disabled at the owners discretion.
However, in this situation, a terrorist rented a car, making him the temporary 'owner' of the car: if the rental company had known that he was out to do Jihad by car, they'd obviously not have rented it to him (aside from calling law enforcement). But once they did, he's the de-facto 'owner' of the car until he turns it back in. So if OnStar were to disable the car, they'd be doing the greater good all right, but at the same time, they'd be on the borderline of violating his rights. In this case, he was just renting, but what if he were to buy a fully loaded car and then use it this way? Here, if OnStar did disable the car, he'd have a potential case against them. Of course, since he's now dead, he can't do anything about it.
"I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it" ... privately.
Looks like that is easily arranged, as the allahu-akbar crowd would happily arrange for your death while you defend their right to say what they want - privately
Can't one take FreeDOS and add all the network stacks & sockets that you mention? Including tossing in IPv6 support?
One of the biggest opportunities that OS/2 had - and ultimately lost - was OS/2 for PowerPC. That was something that could have brought IBM back into the workstation game, when NT/RISC was just coming out, and Apple was struggling w/ Copeland. Unfortunately, its architecture was totally different from OS/2 on Intel, and IBM aborted that project.
Incidentally, whatever happened to the osFree project - which was an FOSS OS/2 project using L4 instead of Mach as the underlying microkernel?
I played Civ II pretty successfully under XP. For 7, I needed XP mode before I could play it.
It was an IBM PS/Valuepoint. IBM doesn't get to deliver a PC that OS/2 won't run on while they are shipping OS/2.
You forget that short lived IBM spinoff 'Amber', which specifically told customers that they don't support OS/2 on their computers, to customers who asked.
OS/2 1.x was 16-bit. OS/2 2.0, 2.1 and 3.0 (Warp) were 32-bit.
Actually, Windows 8, w/ its Metro UI, horrible that it was for desktop use, would actually be ideal for an ATM. Just have a customized subset of that system - lose the desktop on that and have just the buttons - and then have buttons for Savings, Checkin, Deposits, Withdrawals, Balance Transfers, Check Balances, et al. It would be ideal.
In fact, make it Windows RT, so that it could be based on an inexpensive ARM based subsystem and could be sourced from a variety of vendors, rather than being locked to Intel/AMD
Well, a couple of good reasons for OS/2 to exist, such as REXX and SOM. Not Windows 3.1 support.
One reason I can think of is for people who want out of Windows, particularly Windows 10, but can't afford a Mac, and find Linux too challenging. OS/2 Warp could be a good alternative. Remember, back in the day, when OS/2 was around, one of the major beefs against it was that it was rather power hungry: that when people were used to 4MB of RAM in their computers, and thought that 8MB was too rich. Today, assuming that OS/2 is still a 32-bit OS, a 2GB would be the max it could run - or need.
Looking at the listed features, one of the things I wonder - will it be an FOSS, or at least an OSS? So that we don't have the code fossilize again, like in the case of IBM's OS/2? About the features, it should have SMP support (OS/2 server supported dual CPUs), OpenGL, IPv6, cryptography... On the issue of support, support for DOS or Windows 3.1 is less important: they should take a page from FreeBSD and support jails. Pick a few: Debian, Fedora, Gentoo and FreeBSD, and run such apps via those jails, rather than 'ported Linux applications'. In the meantime, pick some of the most common applications that people use - email, internet, videos, music, conferencing, a VM client and provide an outstanding client of each on this platform. Like Thunderbird, Chromium, VLC, WhatsApp, Netflix and VMware. In fact, they should have a VM client for things like XP, 2000, and if possible, even 7.
From a user interface standpoint, OS/2 could be interesting. Remember when one could print a file just by dragging the file to the printer icon - an ultimate use of OOP? Similarly, one could drag a text file to an email icon to mail it, or a movie file to VLC to watch it. Would be a lot more interesting than what we've had for a while.
Uh, why can't they recreate the i960 or even i860 for this, and release that? Where is it written that an embedded processor for IoT has to be an ARM or an x86? Granted, their attempts at going away from x86 had repeated failures, but that doesn't imply that they can't produce a successful non x86 CPU for non Wintel applications
You joke, but a few weeks ago, there was a little girl who used her mom's fingerprint while mom was sleeping to get into the phone, and then order a whole bunch of toys for herself. So kids already know how to manipulate unconscious parents
Actually, reading down, it is there in the PIN code screen. Problem is - since I use the fingerprint, I often bypass it. Of course, if one does, one can then invoke the Phone icon and simply dial 911
Android has an emergency link in the lock screen. I don't see one in iOS. Despite having swipe down/right and left, it doesn't have an emergency link or icon anywhere - talking about iOS 10.2.1
No, but a 4-year boy may not know that, and presumably you need to unlock the phone for Siri to respond to activation command.
From the lock screen, if you swipe down, you get the search box, w/ the mic icon on the right, which would enable Siri. Granted, the 4 yr old may not know that, but if he's smart enough to use mom's finger, I'd expect he's smart enough to have explored such nooks & cranies of an iPhone. Of course, I'm talking here about iOS 10.2.1: not sure whether they would have had an older version, for whatever reason.
If the Senate voted approximately along party lines to repeal this, then chances are the GOP as a whole is for it. They already have a major advantage in the House, and so it's unlikely that they would vote to repeal it.
That then leaves the question of where the president stands on this. While he does have opinions on everything up to the future of 'The Apprentice', I wonder whether he has one on this particular issue. Also, in the Senate, how did Libertarians, such as Rand Paul, vote? If they voted for it, then there's probably a reason other than that - like negating bureaucratic overreach and putting the issue before Congress
I thought that MOTIF/CDE were like the KDE of today, and that it was Open Look that didn't have a successor
Rather than focus on phones, shouldn't they focus on making 4G widely accessible to the infrastructure equipment of developing markets? It's not tough to have a 4G phone such as a Galaxy, iPhone or even a Lumia in a developing country, but if their telco companies don't offer 4G services, it's pretty worthless
Is it a Linux based OS, or based on something else, like QNX or L4 or Minix?
Uh, most people are. They'd either use Notepad, or if they are stuck in DOS, Edit. Here, on my TrueOS box, I use Lumina text editor, or whatever default editor comes w/ the DE I'm using. But I'd have to have one of those O'Reilly books handy if I had to work in either vim or emacs (let alone vi)
Intel is pretty much the best that's left of manufacturing in the US - most R&D, most innovative and headed by someone from their fabs. In the worst case situation - assume that the market for x86/x64 completely dries up, they can simply be a US version of a TSMC/GSMC, and still be above water.
Most companies would kill to be in that predicament. AMD, OTOH, has nothing left but the x64, and its hybrid ARM/x64 lines look interesting, but it's not much more valuable than any of the myriad number of fabless semiconductor companies out there. They are behind Intel in a 2 horse (or a horse vs donkey) race in CPUs, and they are behind NVIDIA in a 3 horse race in GPUs. Every other business they once had - be it FPGAs, Flash, Embedded CPUs, et al has been closed or sold, so there's not much else they have, really
But IBM already exited the semiconductor market a while ago - in fact, they too outsourced it to Global Foundries. Hardly much of a volume driver, which is what any semiconductor house needs in order to be able to recoup its investments quickly.
You are totally clueless, and it shows:
1. How would anything Intel did prevent AMD from investing in their own fabs? The ones they had were anaemic - and while they attempted some good ones, like Dresden, their process methodologies never advanced much beyond their basics
2. They did decide to focus on CPUs that would beat Intel in price, ignoring the huge advantage Intel had in cost. Instead, had they focused more aggressively on next gen process nodes and improving their yields, they'd have done a lot better
3. Intel is widely recognized as a leader in fabs, ahead of the best of them - previously IBM, TSMC, Samsung, et al
4. Whether they sold or spun off is a distinction w/o a difference: bottom line is that AMD has less control on their supply, and Global Foundries is at liberty to give them a lower priority if they get better customers
Intel's technology is worse? Only in some alternate universe
I agree w/ this completely. The submitter seems to be looking for a master of all trades, let alone a jack. Yeah, people develop various skills to avoid letting the support staff be a bottleneck, but that shouldn't be the requirement of them going in. Otherwise, where does it end - next, engineers will be expected to do business development and cold call prospective customers, and have their performance assessed based on that.
Between then and now, AMD acquired a part of the DEC Alpha team, and had Dirk Meyer as their CEO. They did well w/ the Athlon, and later achieved a coup w/ the AMD 64 architecture, by getting Microsoft's endorsement. This was at a time when Intel was struggling w/ the Pentium 4, and the Itanium was such a disaster that Intel had to follow AMD's lead.
But AMD never grabbed the initiative to build on their fab capabilities and manufacturing processes, instead continuing to focus just on low cost CPUs. Never a winning strategy, since not only did Intel have pockets deep enough to price match them anywhere they chose, they also had a 2-3 generation advantage in terms of process nodes. Ultimately, AMD threw in the towel and sold off their fabs to Global Foundries.
And unlike the time when AMD acquired another great CPU team, this time, there are no CPU teams left to acquire. All that there is in the market are Intel and ARM. For ARM, there are all the major licensees - Qualcomm, Phillips, TI, Samsung, et al, so there are no great teams they can really acquire. Despite the occasional flashes in the pan, AMD is pretty much where Cyrix, Winchip and Centaur are - swimming w/ the fishes