Based on available classified and unclassified information, Huawei and ZTE cannot be trusted to be free of foreign state influence and thus pose a security threat to the United States and to our systems
This, coming from a nation that once rigged Zerox machines to covertly capture soviet documents, and rigged a SCADA controller to turn a gas pipeline into a 3 kiloton bomb in siberia.
Yeah, I think that's the point. It's not hypocrisy, it's making sure our own methods aren't used against us. I think you missed that point entirely. Also worth noting is that it's one thing when a country you have entirely embargoed, with only specific exceptions, steals technology from you which you then sabotage to piss in their canteen. It's another entirely when your largest economic trading partner abuses that relationship, by sabotaging the very items they worked hard to get you to buy in the first place.
They will most likely be replaced with equipment provided by vendors who are on the U.S. military's "Trusted Foundry" schedule. It doesn't matter if half the chips in those "Trusted Foundry" switches are manufactured in China - as a result of careful research, you can be "reasonably" sure they don't contain backdoors or malicious code.
"Reasonably."
There's another factor in this. A company like Huawei (founded by former members of the PRA, specifically ones from their cyber warfare capability) or H3C (owned by HP as a subsidiary, but otherwise entirely Chinese, top-to-bottom) can easily be argued to have interests that align with China. Cisco, on the other hand, is an American-founded company with American management.
If a Chinese national in China puts some nastiness into a switch/router/espresso machine that is then deployed in a sensitive location in the USA, well, it'll make a stink, but nobody will be all THAT shocked either, as the people behind it will be acting in their own nation's interests. Furthermore, they do not have the same market position in the West, and thus have less to lose economically. But if Cisco does this, they are really in deep trouble. I guarantee that the upper and middle management would have to prove their lack of knowledge of it. And that's a losing proposition right there: either you can't prove you knew about/controlled it (in which case you are now on the hook for espionage and other nasty things) or you successfully prove that you have no real control over your own products. At that point, you've proven either that you will screw your own customers AND countrymen, or that you really have no way of keeping your underlings from doing the same. So Cisco has an enormous incentive to make sure that no hanky-panky goes on at their manufacturing facilities, wherever they may be.
Most HP A-Series switches are just rebadged H3C hardware. Some still come direct from HP with the H3C badge on.
Given that the A-Series firmware is present across even the HP badged hardware, are they going to throw out all HP A-Series switches?
They'd have to have HP-made switches in the first place...I recall HP's market penetration, and from what I recall, neither of HP's customers are a National Laboratory...(snicker)
There's no need to elaborate, is there? The analogies you conjur up in your mind are sufficient to tell you just how stupid an idea this is.
Actually, yes...if you know in advance that what you're doing is actually facilitating a criminal act. It's called "being an accessory," or even falls under conspiracy, given the level of involvement needed to write software specifically to do certain things. Here's the difference:
1: Being a gunsmith, making a gun, and putting it up for sale in accordance with all laws. Some guy you don't know buys it and then uses it to commit murder; the first time you learn of his intent to do so is when you find out that he did it. Okay, you aren't accountable.
2: Being a gunsmith, and being approached by someone to make him a firearm with no serial number that wouldn't be traceable because it'd have no records. He pays you in cash, and tells you he intends to commit murder with it when you give it to him. Yeah, you're responsible in that case.
Gambling in New York isn't legal. Writing software to be used in New York for gambling is therefore committing a crime. Slashdot just gave this a stupid title, is all..the crux of the question is not whether "programmers are responsible for the actions of their clients," but whether programmers who knowingly and willfully contribute to the commission of a crime can be prosecuted. And they can.
They're only paying $20 per ticket if they see 1 movie per month. 2 movies, and they're at $10 per movie, which is average around me for a single ticket. If they see 4, they're at $5 per movie, in the ballpark of Blockbuster's old rental pricing and On Demand from Comcast/Cablevision. If they're really movie lovers and see 8 per month (2 per week), they're way ahead of my local price at $2.50 per movie, and getting into the ballpark of Redbox's price if you're renting each movie for 2 days.
I don't know about you, but I consider myself a big movie-goer...and I don't find that there are many more than 12 movies I really care to see, each year. Think about it. Sure, if you see 8 movies a month, it ends up being really cheap. But are there 8 new movies every month that you want to go see? There aren't even 8 new movies every month at any cinema I've ever seen, period.
If this is the crux of their value proposition, they are fucked. The fact of the matter is, at least 80% of mobile phone users don't even know what "openness" means, and if you can explain it to them, almost none of them will care. You can argue about open source vs. closed source, about how Android isn't really open, about flexibility, even about how open source gets patched faster on the whole.
Explain it to them as configurability and they'll love it. I have yet to buy a phone with enough configurability to truly soften all the rough edges that interfere with usability. Even worse, every few years, when I get a new phone, there is a different set of rough edges not covered by the new phone's configurable options.
No, they won't...most people are afraid of having all those settings, the choices, the options. Because the basic settings get hidden in a forest of settings that most people won't ever use. And to be honest, when you get into the "configurability" of Linux, you're not doing it in a way that is accessible to most people. So you either make it confusing for them because there are too many choices, or simplify the main interface...in which case they think you lied to them, because they don't know how to take advantage of the configurability. Linux is powerful...but most people don't want that kind of power. iOS, when you think about it, went the other way...they simplified the interface, and gradually added configurability (custom email notificattions, anyone?) over time to make sure they didn't overdo it. And the masses went freaking apeshit with joy as a result.
There's this MMO that an AI is writing...you basically go to war against another army, and see how many you can wipe out! It looks REALLY realistic too...I can't wait! I think they're going to call it "Skynet for Idiots." The graphics and realism are incredible.
It will be really open unlike Android. As you point out Google is trying to stamp out forking which is really hypocritcal given Android is basically a fork itself and it wasn't that long ago that the Linux community was complaining that Google take without giving back.
If this is the crux of their value proposition, they are fucked. The fact of the matter is, at least 80% of mobile phone users don't even know what "openness" means, and if you can explain it to them, almost none of them will care. You can argue about open source vs. closed source, about how Android isn't really open, about flexibility, even about how open source gets patched faster on the whole.
The vast majority of people will not care. Should they? Sure. But they don't. And they aren't going to either. How do I know this? Because this whole discussion is vaguely familiar...I remember it over a decade ago, when it was about Linux on desktops instead of Linux on smartphones. All that time has passed, and you still can't get people to buy Linux-based computers based on the openness argument.
James Nelson, 30, a life coach who defines his specialty as "figuring out how to make the impossible possible," was driving back from a wealth-training seminar when his wife told him about the theater going under.
This sounds to me like they're doomed. A 30-year-old life coach, freshly back from a "wealth-training" (aka "get rich quick") seminar when his wife tells him about this. I'm sorry, but this guy at first blush sounds like he's got no real business acumen. So I think nrozema is spot-on...sure, they have the subscribers now while the buzz is up and everyone's afraid to lose their theater. But what happens after they realize that they're all paying $20/ticket to see movies, when tourists don't go to see movies there, or if they'll be unable to get movies far enough ahead of Netflix/Redbox/cable/piracy to keep their customers?
Depends who they're "stealing" from, doesn't it? Since Apple makes so much money from their app store, maybe they feel entitled after overpaying for the hardware...
A feeling of entitlement is a bit natural and expected after taking a financial ass-raping by visiting an Apple store.
How is buying an iPhone being assraped? It sounds entirely consentual to me. The biggest whiners I know about the iPhone's price are the people who are first to get the latest one. It's like being an intern who competes for the position then complains they don't get paid. They knew full well what they were doing, and they signed up for it. If it's so awful, maybe they shouldn't keep buying the iPhones?
Depends who they're "stealing" from, doesn't it? Since Apple makes so much money from their app store, maybe they feel entitled after overpaying for the hardware.
I have a Nexus 7 tablet, my only gadget and a stupid phone, I really don't see the point of pirating apps when so many free (not pirated) and sometimes better alternatives exist.
Yeah, that's good thinking. "I spent so much for this BMW, I deserve free gasoline!" As though the primary victim of software piracy is Apple. Sure, they lose their cut, but the real theft is from the developers.
While not condoning software piracy, I don't think it is wise to repeat the myth that "Pirated software is chock-full of malware". It is true that some pirated software has malware just as it is true that Windows has malware and some apps from the Apple or Android app stores have malware or may spy on you. The point is that you need to trust the source and not just download random stuff. I don't know about the quality of the software from this web site (I've never heard of it) but presumably if it had malware, this fact would be outed quickly. Linux and the other Unixes have a big advantage in that they have "repositories" for their software which are controlled and monitored carefully by the authors and the community and any malware is excluded or outed and fixed rapidly.
I dare you to take any DVD of cheap, obviously-pirated software from Asia and scan it with any decent AV tool, and then to repeat what you just said without significantly adjusting it. Yes, some valid apps are very sketchy on privacy. But I'd rather hand my personal information to a valid corporation than a criminal organization any day of the week. As has been shown with such apps, pressure from watchdog groups and government agencies actually helps with *their* behavior. You can't say the same of true criminals.
Well, yeah...it's HP we're talking about. I mean, this is the company that spied on journalists who didn't say nice things about their products. Anytime you have a company that gets dragged before Congress to account for what they've done, you know something's wrong. Anytime you have a company whose actions resulted in new laws to clarify why what they did should be illegal, you know someone's willing to play around with the fine line between simply immoral and actually illegal. And people that make such distinctions...or think they count, in an ethical sense, are nothing more than intelligent lowlives.
I'm from the DC area, and we had the same problem. Chief Lanier (our chief of police) along with other counterparts from other major urban centers with a lot of iPhones, have had the same problem...and they pushed the cellular carriers to make it possible (as it already has been in Europe for a long time) to essentially blacklist stolen devices. As we speak, the system is going into use, and soon stolen iPhones will be basically worthless. iPads are a little different, since you can do most of what you want with one using only wifi, but these are also less prevalent and less often stolen.
On one hand, how batshit crazy paranoid do you have to be to befriend a lookalike and maintain that relationship for many, many years, even getting him to change his name to yours. On the other hand, that same batshit insanity probably leads to situations where you would need said body double...
Your sentiment is not lost on me, but that is why we must remember we cannot force our ways or our means of producing a safe and poductive society on others. This is a bit of case for the prime directive.
There's no way to win this issue without completely destroying these peoples autonomy. Whats worse 100,000 cases of polio or cultural eradication?
Thats not to say we shouldnt freely provide information, or allow people to ask us for help, that contradicts there beliefs, but we should be careful how we do it.
"Prime Directive?" This is Pakistan, not some fledgling civilization in danger of being contaminated by knowledge of alien life with far superior technology, who might be mistaken for deities upon sighting. It's just Pakistan. Many of their doctors and engineers studied in the West, for fuck's sake...even if there was a question of cultural contamination, that line is waaaaaaaay behind us all.
Vaccinating people against polio and "cultural eradication," to use your terms, aren't even on the same plane of possibility. As for your third paragraph, I'm not even sure what you're trying to say (so I'm guessing) but no, you don't have to honor everyone's beliefs. You have to acknowledge them, yes, but some beliefs are just plain batshit crazy, and should be called out as such. At the end of the day, you have to have SOME consensus as to what truth is, you know...there is such a thing as true and false. Or do you really think that maybe Scientology is right, too? That the Mormon belief that God and Jesus have their own planets has a good bit of merit to it? Or perhaps that the Flat Earth Society has it right...and the world is flat? Oh, and also, that it's totally round at the same time, like everyone else believes...
No, there is such a thing as objective, provable, scientific truth. For example...
Polio vaccines wipe out a needless and preventable disease that still wreaks havoc among the child populations of three nations = true.
Polio vaccines make children sterile = insanely, provably, ass-poundingly false.
The Prime Directive is real = also incredifuckingly false.
This man has technology from 70 years ago, all the way up to what is current and cool. Forget buying him technology...especially since something that involves a project is best purchased by the person who finds that project interesting at a particular moment in time.
I would ask this: how technically savvy are you? How much are you like him?
Your father sounds a lot like my grandfather. The man was an electrical engineer, and I have memories of him working at his workbench...he was retired by then, mind you...fixing TVs and other electronics for his friends. He'd get up in the morning, make breakfast, and talk to his friends via CB radio. He kept active, was the first person I knew to get a computer (even before I got mine, back in the mid-80s), and was always looking at new technology.
I'll get to the point in a minute...it's this. One day, I found myself getting up in the morning, making coffee and breakfast, and then talking with my friends on IRC as I read the first emails of the day. I was working from home as a consultant, good at what I do and successful professionally. I help my friends with their computers, and am always playing around with new technologies. And I have to think that perhaps my grandfather would be so happy to know that I followed in his footsteps in so many ways.
So, whether you're highly technical or not, see if you can get involved in what he's doing, a project, an interest. Or, if you have a son or daughter, see if your grandfather can do the same with him/her. At his age, progeny is more precious than any gadget...the idea that things keep flowing forward, the glimpse of the future, the marvel at what technologies his son or grandson/granddaughter will get to play with, even after he's passed away after a long, happy, and fruitful life. This, sir, (I assume sir...forgive me if I'm wrong) is more precious than any gadget you could give him.
Deadlines are fine.... but when scope and resources change, the deadline slips. That is simple project management 101.
I guess you've never worked at a real company where the management's bonuses are based on a shipping date they pulled out of thin air. So the project has to meet that date even if it means dropping features and shipping with bugs.
I guess *you've* never worked at a real company, where changes to resource allocation or project scope mean that you get to adjust the project plan. This is totally normal, whether it's an internal project, or something that's being done by a vendor. In either case, if a change to the scope of what you have to deliver takes place (which was the case for most of the Kickstarter projects that missed their initial deadlines) and you don't have a process or verbiage to allow for project adjustment, then whoever set up that project was brutally incompetent. This, too, is simple project management 101. It's simple: it takes X resources Y amount of time to produce Z. If the value for Z is increased, then either Y or X (or both) must change. Even if management doesn't understand what went into determining Y, they can grasp the simple math of this. If not, then I assume you work for HP, my friend:)
Okay, there are two kinds of body scanners. One uses backscatter x-rays, the other uses millimeter-wave radio waves. The ones deployed at airports are the latter, not the former; x-rays are not being used to scan people in airports in the United States. So let's recognize that what the TSA is doing here is evaluating a kind of scanner that they have not deployed . In other words, they're making sure it's safe before they use it. Backscatter x-ray scanners are more commonly used to examine vehicles; they produce a 2-d image rather than the 3-d representation you get from a millimeter wave scanner, so they aren't nearly as good at detecting hidden objects under clothing.
I hate the TSA at least as much as anyone else (I'm a frequent business traveler...so yeah...they are a huge pain in my ass between the security lines, the extra time needed, the restrictions on what I can carry, and the surly inspectors doing the "Uncle Touchy" routine), but facts are still facts, and in this case they haven't deployed first, tested later.
This was the department of revenue. At some point, the SSN is important to use for *something,* you know. It wasn't like there was a pizza delivery company using SSNs as customer numbers. It was the Department of Revenue. SSNs are, in effect, meant to be the individual account numbers for state and federal revenue tracking.
If this was any other kind of situation, I would absolutely agree with you. But the way that taxes are handled, using SSNs as an identifier is valid, because of all the background systems meant to prevent money laundering, tax evasion, illegal employment, etc.
Ebook readers aren't like tablets, smart phones or computers. The second generation of them, out of the gate, were quite capable...and it's not like you need a faster processor or bigger storage. I still have my 2nd gen Kindle, and love it...it's loaded with books and still at half capacity. The Paperwhite appeals somewhat because of the better display, but it's not like it's a huge deal. Meanwhile, they've been shipping tens of millions of units...sooner or later, the market was due to become more saturated. But so what? That's just fine; the real money isn't in the readers, it's in the profit margins of books that take less pennies to deliver and nothing to print or store.
Slashdot Mirror
Based on available classified and unclassified information, Huawei and ZTE cannot be trusted to be free of foreign state influence and thus pose a security threat to the United States and to our systems
This, coming from a nation that once rigged Zerox machines to covertly capture soviet documents, and rigged a SCADA controller to turn a gas pipeline into a 3 kiloton bomb in siberia.
Yeah, I think that's the point. It's not hypocrisy, it's making sure our own methods aren't used against us. I think you missed that point entirely. Also worth noting is that it's one thing when a country you have entirely embargoed, with only specific exceptions, steals technology from you which you then sabotage to piss in their canteen. It's another entirely when your largest economic trading partner abuses that relationship, by sabotaging the very items they worked hard to get you to buy in the first place.
They will most likely be replaced with equipment provided by vendors who are on the U.S. military's "Trusted Foundry" schedule. It doesn't matter if half the chips in those "Trusted Foundry" switches are manufactured in China - as a result of careful research, you can be "reasonably" sure they don't contain backdoors or malicious code.
"Reasonably."
There's another factor in this. A company like Huawei (founded by former members of the PRA, specifically ones from their cyber warfare capability) or H3C (owned by HP as a subsidiary, but otherwise entirely Chinese, top-to-bottom) can easily be argued to have interests that align with China. Cisco, on the other hand, is an American-founded company with American management.
If a Chinese national in China puts some nastiness into a switch/router/espresso machine that is then deployed in a sensitive location in the USA, well, it'll make a stink, but nobody will be all THAT shocked either, as the people behind it will be acting in their own nation's interests. Furthermore, they do not have the same market position in the West, and thus have less to lose economically. But if Cisco does this, they are really in deep trouble. I guarantee that the upper and middle management would have to prove their lack of knowledge of it. And that's a losing proposition right there: either you can't prove you knew about/controlled it (in which case you are now on the hook for espionage and other nasty things) or you successfully prove that you have no real control over your own products. At that point, you've proven either that you will screw your own customers AND countrymen, or that you really have no way of keeping your underlings from doing the same. So Cisco has an enormous incentive to make sure that no hanky-panky goes on at their manufacturing facilities, wherever they may be.
Most HP A-Series switches are just rebadged H3C hardware. Some still come direct from HP with the H3C badge on.
Given that the A-Series firmware is present across even the HP badged hardware, are they going to throw out all HP A-Series switches?
They'd have to have HP-made switches in the first place...I recall HP's market penetration, and from what I recall, neither of HP's customers are a National Laboratory...(snicker)
"Two bots and a cup."
There's no need to elaborate, is there? The analogies you conjur up in your mind are sufficient to tell you just how stupid an idea this is.
Actually, yes...if you know in advance that what you're doing is actually facilitating a criminal act. It's called "being an accessory," or even falls under conspiracy, given the level of involvement needed to write software specifically to do certain things. Here's the difference:
1: Being a gunsmith, making a gun, and putting it up for sale in accordance with all laws. Some guy you don't know buys it and then uses it to commit murder; the first time you learn of his intent to do so is when you find out that he did it. Okay, you aren't accountable.
2: Being a gunsmith, and being approached by someone to make him a firearm with no serial number that wouldn't be traceable because it'd have no records. He pays you in cash, and tells you he intends to commit murder with it when you give it to him. Yeah, you're responsible in that case.
Gambling in New York isn't legal. Writing software to be used in New York for gambling is therefore committing a crime. Slashdot just gave this a stupid title, is all..the crux of the question is not whether "programmers are responsible for the actions of their clients," but whether programmers who knowingly and willfully contribute to the commission of a crime can be prosecuted. And they can.
They're only paying $20 per ticket if they see 1 movie per month. 2 movies, and they're at $10 per movie, which is average around me for a single ticket. If they see 4, they're at $5 per movie, in the ballpark of Blockbuster's old rental pricing and On Demand from Comcast/Cablevision. If they're really movie lovers and see 8 per month (2 per week), they're way ahead of my local price at $2.50 per movie, and getting into the ballpark of Redbox's price if you're renting each movie for 2 days.
I don't know about you, but I consider myself a big movie-goer...and I don't find that there are many more than 12 movies I really care to see, each year. Think about it. Sure, if you see 8 movies a month, it ends up being really cheap. But are there 8 new movies every month that you want to go see? There aren't even 8 new movies every month at any cinema I've ever seen, period.
If this is the crux of their value proposition, they are fucked. The fact of the matter is, at least 80% of mobile phone users don't even know what "openness" means, and if you can explain it to them, almost none of them will care. You can argue about open source vs. closed source, about how Android isn't really open, about flexibility, even about how open source gets patched faster on the whole.
Explain it to them as configurability and they'll love it.
I have yet to buy a phone with enough configurability to truly soften all the rough edges that interfere with usability.
Even worse, every few years, when I get a new phone, there is a different set of rough edges not covered by the new phone's configurable options.
No, they won't...most people are afraid of having all those settings, the choices, the options. Because the basic settings get hidden in a forest of settings that most people won't ever use. And to be honest, when you get into the "configurability" of Linux, you're not doing it in a way that is accessible to most people. So you either make it confusing for them because there are too many choices, or simplify the main interface...in which case they think you lied to them, because they don't know how to take advantage of the configurability. Linux is powerful...but most people don't want that kind of power. iOS, when you think about it, went the other way...they simplified the interface, and gradually added configurability (custom email notificattions, anyone?) over time to make sure they didn't overdo it. And the masses went freaking apeshit with joy as a result.
There's this MMO that an AI is writing...you basically go to war against another army, and see how many you can wipe out! It looks REALLY realistic too...I can't wait! I think they're going to call it "Skynet for Idiots." The graphics and realism are incredible.
It will be really open unlike Android. As you point out Google is trying to stamp out forking which is really hypocritcal given Android is basically a fork itself and it wasn't that long ago that the Linux community was complaining that Google take without giving back.
If this is the crux of their value proposition, they are fucked. The fact of the matter is, at least 80% of mobile phone users don't even know what "openness" means, and if you can explain it to them, almost none of them will care. You can argue about open source vs. closed source, about how Android isn't really open, about flexibility, even about how open source gets patched faster on the whole.
The vast majority of people will not care. Should they? Sure. But they don't. And they aren't going to either. How do I know this? Because this whole discussion is vaguely familiar...I remember it over a decade ago, when it was about Linux on desktops instead of Linux on smartphones. All that time has passed, and you still can't get people to buy Linux-based computers based on the openness argument.
From the article:
This sounds to me like they're doomed. A 30-year-old life coach, freshly back from a "wealth-training" (aka "get rich quick") seminar when his wife tells him about this. I'm sorry, but this guy at first blush sounds like he's got no real business acumen. So I think nrozema is spot-on...sure, they have the subscribers now while the buzz is up and everyone's afraid to lose their theater. But what happens after they realize that they're all paying $20/ticket to see movies, when tourists don't go to see movies there, or if they'll be unable to get movies far enough ahead of Netflix/Redbox/cable/piracy to keep their customers?
Depends who they're "stealing" from, doesn't it? Since Apple makes so much money from their app store, maybe they feel entitled after overpaying for the hardware...
A feeling of entitlement is a bit natural and expected after taking a financial ass-raping by visiting an Apple store.
How is buying an iPhone being assraped? It sounds entirely consentual to me. The biggest whiners I know about the iPhone's price are the people who are first to get the latest one. It's like being an intern who competes for the position then complains they don't get paid. They knew full well what they were doing, and they signed up for it. If it's so awful, maybe they shouldn't keep buying the iPhones?
Depends who they're "stealing" from, doesn't it? Since Apple makes so much money from their app store, maybe they feel entitled after overpaying for the hardware.
I have a Nexus 7 tablet, my only gadget and a stupid phone, I really don't see the point of pirating apps when so many free (not pirated) and sometimes better alternatives exist.
Yeah, that's good thinking. "I spent so much for this BMW, I deserve free gasoline!" As though the primary victim of software piracy is Apple. Sure, they lose their cut, but the real theft is from the developers.
While not condoning software piracy, I don't think it is wise to repeat the myth that "Pirated software is chock-full of malware".
It is true that some pirated software has malware just as it is true that Windows has malware and some apps from the Apple or Android app stores have malware or may spy on you.
The point is that you need to trust the source and not just download random stuff. I don't know about the quality of the software from this web site (I've never heard of it) but presumably if it had malware, this fact would be outed quickly.
Linux and the other Unixes have a big advantage in that they have "repositories" for their software which are controlled and monitored carefully by the authors and the community and any malware is excluded or outed and fixed rapidly.
I dare you to take any DVD of cheap, obviously-pirated software from Asia and scan it with any decent AV tool, and then to repeat what you just said without significantly adjusting it. Yes, some valid apps are very sketchy on privacy. But I'd rather hand my personal information to a valid corporation than a criminal organization any day of the week. As has been shown with such apps, pressure from watchdog groups and government agencies actually helps with *their* behavior. You can't say the same of true criminals.
Just have two people with Asperger's have unprotected sex...make sure one of them is a woman...
Someone is lying
Well, yeah...it's HP we're talking about. I mean, this is the company that spied on journalists who didn't say nice things about their products. Anytime you have a company that gets dragged before Congress to account for what they've done, you know something's wrong. Anytime you have a company whose actions resulted in new laws to clarify why what they did should be illegal, you know someone's willing to play around with the fine line between simply immoral and actually illegal. And people that make such distinctions...or think they count, in an ethical sense, are nothing more than intelligent lowlives.
I'm from the DC area, and we had the same problem. Chief Lanier (our chief of police) along with other counterparts from other major urban centers with a lot of iPhones, have had the same problem...and they pushed the cellular carriers to make it possible (as it already has been in Europe for a long time) to essentially blacklist stolen devices. As we speak, the system is going into use, and soon stolen iPhones will be basically worthless. iPads are a little different, since you can do most of what you want with one using only wifi, but these are also less prevalent and less often stolen.
On one hand, how batshit crazy paranoid do you have to be to befriend a lookalike and maintain that relationship for many, many years, even getting him to change his name to yours. On the other hand, that same batshit insanity probably leads to situations where you would need said body double...
Your sentiment is not lost on me, but that is why we must remember we cannot force our ways or our means of producing a safe and poductive society on others. This is a bit of case for the prime directive.
There's no way to win this issue without completely destroying these peoples autonomy. Whats worse 100,000 cases of polio or cultural eradication?
Thats not to say we shouldnt freely provide information, or allow people to ask us for help, that contradicts there beliefs, but we should be careful how we do it.
"Prime Directive?" This is Pakistan, not some fledgling civilization in danger of being contaminated by knowledge of alien life with far superior technology, who might be mistaken for deities upon sighting. It's just Pakistan. Many of their doctors and engineers studied in the West, for fuck's sake...even if there was a question of cultural contamination, that line is waaaaaaaay behind us all.
Vaccinating people against polio and "cultural eradication," to use your terms, aren't even on the same plane of possibility. As for your third paragraph, I'm not even sure what you're trying to say (so I'm guessing) but no, you don't have to honor everyone's beliefs. You have to acknowledge them, yes, but some beliefs are just plain batshit crazy, and should be called out as such. At the end of the day, you have to have SOME consensus as to what truth is, you know...there is such a thing as true and false. Or do you really think that maybe Scientology is right, too? That the Mormon belief that God and Jesus have their own planets has a good bit of merit to it? Or perhaps that the Flat Earth Society has it right...and the world is flat? Oh, and also, that it's totally round at the same time, like everyone else believes...
No, there is such a thing as objective, provable, scientific truth. For example...
Polio vaccines wipe out a needless and preventable disease that still wreaks havoc among the child populations of three nations = true.
Polio vaccines make children sterile = insanely, provably, ass-poundingly false.
The Prime Directive is real = also incredifuckingly false.
...this gives me a whole new perspective on the practice of "teabagging" someone you've just shot in a multiplayer setting...
This man has technology from 70 years ago, all the way up to what is current and cool. Forget buying him technology...especially since something that involves a project is best purchased by the person who finds that project interesting at a particular moment in time.
I would ask this: how technically savvy are you? How much are you like him?
Your father sounds a lot like my grandfather. The man was an electrical engineer, and I have memories of him working at his workbench...he was retired by then, mind you...fixing TVs and other electronics for his friends. He'd get up in the morning, make breakfast, and talk to his friends via CB radio. He kept active, was the first person I knew to get a computer (even before I got mine, back in the mid-80s), and was always looking at new technology.
I'll get to the point in a minute...it's this. One day, I found myself getting up in the morning, making coffee and breakfast, and then talking with my friends on IRC as I read the first emails of the day. I was working from home as a consultant, good at what I do and successful professionally. I help my friends with their computers, and am always playing around with new technologies. And I have to think that perhaps my grandfather would be so happy to know that I followed in his footsteps in so many ways.
So, whether you're highly technical or not, see if you can get involved in what he's doing, a project, an interest. Or, if you have a son or daughter, see if your grandfather can do the same with him/her. At his age, progeny is more precious than any gadget...the idea that things keep flowing forward, the glimpse of the future, the marvel at what technologies his son or grandson/granddaughter will get to play with, even after he's passed away after a long, happy, and fruitful life. This, sir, (I assume sir...forgive me if I'm wrong) is more precious than any gadget you could give him.
Deadlines are fine.... but when scope and resources change, the deadline slips. That is simple project management 101.
I guess you've never worked at a real company where the management's bonuses are based on a shipping date they pulled out of thin air. So the project has to meet that date even if it means dropping features and shipping with bugs.
I guess *you've* never worked at a real company, where changes to resource allocation or project scope mean that you get to adjust the project plan. This is totally normal, whether it's an internal project, or something that's being done by a vendor. In either case, if a change to the scope of what you have to deliver takes place (which was the case for most of the Kickstarter projects that missed their initial deadlines) and you don't have a process or verbiage to allow for project adjustment, then whoever set up that project was brutally incompetent. This, too, is simple project management 101. It's simple: it takes X resources Y amount of time to produce Z. If the value for Z is increased, then either Y or X (or both) must change. Even if management doesn't understand what went into determining Y, they can grasp the simple math of this. If not, then I assume you work for HP, my friend :)
Okay, there are two kinds of body scanners. One uses backscatter x-rays, the other uses millimeter-wave radio waves. The ones deployed at airports are the latter, not the former; x-rays are not being used to scan people in airports in the United States. So let's recognize that what the TSA is doing here is evaluating a kind of scanner that they have not deployed . In other words, they're making sure it's safe before they use it. Backscatter x-ray scanners are more commonly used to examine vehicles; they produce a 2-d image rather than the 3-d representation you get from a millimeter wave scanner, so they aren't nearly as good at detecting hidden objects under clothing.
I hate the TSA at least as much as anyone else (I'm a frequent business traveler...so yeah...they are a huge pain in my ass between the security lines, the extra time needed, the restrictions on what I can carry, and the surly inspectors doing the "Uncle Touchy" routine), but facts are still facts, and in this case they haven't deployed first, tested later.
This was the department of revenue. At some point, the SSN is important to use for *something,* you know. It wasn't like there was a pizza delivery company using SSNs as customer numbers. It was the Department of Revenue. SSNs are, in effect, meant to be the individual account numbers for state and federal revenue tracking.
If this was any other kind of situation, I would absolutely agree with you. But the way that taxes are handled, using SSNs as an identifier is valid, because of all the background systems meant to prevent money laundering, tax evasion, illegal employment, etc.
I wish I had mod points right now so that I could mod you both up :)
Ebook readers aren't like tablets, smart phones or computers. The second generation of them, out of the gate, were quite capable...and it's not like you need a faster processor or bigger storage. I still have my 2nd gen Kindle, and love it...it's loaded with books and still at half capacity. The Paperwhite appeals somewhat because of the better display, but it's not like it's a huge deal. Meanwhile, they've been shipping tens of millions of units...sooner or later, the market was due to become more saturated. But so what? That's just fine; the real money isn't in the readers, it's in the profit margins of books that take less pennies to deliver and nothing to print or store.