You'll need to explain why such advanced tech would be kept useless. Trillions of dollars worth of commercial applications, the ability to render any threat harmless, the leverage knowledge of it would provide... It's like sitting on a winning lotto ticket.
Consider this - the Star Wars program back in the 80's didn't exist. The idea that it might was a major factor leading to the collapse of the USSR. What you're talking about would pull the rug right out from under North Korea and Iran. Hell, it could be used to strike the Ayatollah dead with what would look to observers like an act of God. It would take at most two such strikes to put an end to Islamic radicalism. Why keep it secret?
Greed and a lust for power can't be why, the tech you describe is a direct path to both.
That's like saying there would be no more crime if we just got rid of the police. International affairs have barely begun to move past the Hobbesian "state of nature" (without civil society life is "nasty, brutish and short"), and even then it is only between the Liberal democracies where some semblance of a civil society exists. Morality does not apply or even exist at the level of the Nation State, leaving only interest, advantage and the necessities of survival to guide them.
Anglo-American hegemony (not imperialism, wrong term) is unique in human history as it provides a pathway to civil society through penetration. Yeah, sounds funny but "penetrated hegemony" means that unlike every other hegemony in history, instead of enthralled client states it has vocal partners which consent to cooperate while retaining independence constrained only by the bonds of agreement and shared values.
But not every nation participates in this burgeoning civil society. There is evil in the world. There are those who want to take what others have, fanatics bent on eradicating modernity and Liberal democracy, power hungry maniacs with genocidal intentions, and on and on and on...
It's a dangerous world and there is dirty work that must be done.
No other country imposes this kind of rule. China won't let data be stored outside its borders, fine. But it won't let a foreign company own and operate a data center within its borders, so Apple now has to pay the Chinese government to use servers in a datacenter owned by the government. So, since the government own the servers on which any Apple user's data would be stored, it has access to the user data and Apple's data. IP ripe for harvesting.
Which is a bad thing. The NSA and CIA are foreign intelligence agencies, spying on other countries is their job. Spying on Americans is what they aren't allowed to do, spying on the Chinese is what they're for.
The biggest problem here isn't even about government spying, it's that China won't let Apple do business without handing control to the Chinese government.
Was it the CIA? NSA? AP? Wikileaks? Trump, Hillary, or Russia's FSB? Swap your tinfoil hat for your betting beanie and put your money where your mouth is!
The administration has been talking about banning personal devices in the White House since at least November. Well before Wolff's book was finished. Mentioning Wolff's wholly unrelated book is at best innapropriate and superfluous, at worst it's politically motivated deception.
True, the cop didn't commit murder. By putting innocent people in front of armed police expecting to see a hostage situation where one person has already been shot, the idiot who made the false report did.
Seems that the connection between a death and an "inherently dangerous" felony can be pretty thin and still bring 1st degree murder charges. For unlisted felonies it has to be more directly related to the commission, escape or concealment of the crime. I'd say the connection between this death and the compound felony of a false report of a violent crime, with the reporter's identity electronically concealed, is pretty direct.
If somehow it isn't connected enough, it could still be 2nd degree murder for a few different reasons.
As I read it, it depends on what crime was falsely reported. There's also this from a local TV station - http://www.kake.com/story/3716... - indicating that a felony was being committed because they used an "electronic device or software" to conceal their identity when making the report, made worse if it was a violent crime being reported, which was the case.
Judging from the statute, it could very well be charged as 1st degree murder. If the actual target (who was not shot) was underage, or there was even one child on the premises, they could also go for 2nd degree murder as the swatting would have an inherent child endangerment component.
First, it's at least $2B, and that's if and only if the author's assumptions about Comcast's pre-cut/pre-repeal plans were correct. That's a lot of money.
Second, it isn't their "typical expenditure" that was being used in the projection, it was their expenditure for one quarter and the rate of change from the two before it. For all anyone outside Comcast knows, they were planning to invest $0 over the next five years.
Third, since all of the data used in the author's projection is from the first three quarters of 2017, even if those projections are correct the conclusions are still wrong.
Why? I'll tell you. Comcast looked at the political landscape and figured it was probably getting a tax cut and that the FCC would repeal NN, so they started the ball rolling, knowing that they could cut back if things turned out differently.
It doesn't matter how good the plan is, it still bears a fatal flaw. We're involved. The FSB is every bit as good as the CIA and has none of its constraints. There is no way to keep our fingerprints off the operation, and even a hint of Western involvement would bring it all down.
The whole thing, start to finish, would have to be conceived, run and funded solely and entirely by Russians. Not one sticker from outside. The most we can do is to encourage someone to have the idea. Even then there's the candidate certification issue. The new party would have to build so much popular support that refusing to certify its candidate would blow up in Putin's face. For that to work, it would need to have enough support in Parliament to at least make stripping that authority from the Presidency a real possibility.
Even if battery life degrades as they claim, the only reasonable way to throttle performance is dynamically according to actual battery health info, not force it through OS updates. The only consumer friendly option is to let us decide if we prefer charge or performance.
Why? Because this - "their batteries are no longer capable of supporting maximum phone performance." - is a lie. Even an old battery is perfectly capable of providing enough power to keep clocks at max, the charge just won't last as long. A true statement would be, "old batteries can't support both our advertised performance and advertised battery time" (I'm blanking on the right term for how long a full charge lasts).
An actual fix would be to allow users to decide whether they want performance or battery time.
Slashdot Mirror
50 years old and it still looks futuristic.
Consider this - the Star Wars program back in the 80's didn't exist. The idea that it might was a major factor leading to the collapse of the USSR. What you're talking about would pull the rug right out from under North Korea and Iran. Hell, it could be used to strike the Ayatollah dead with what would look to observers like an act of God. It would take at most two such strikes to put an end to Islamic radicalism. Why keep it secret?
Greed and a lust for power can't be why, the tech you describe is a direct path to both.
I wish the 72 was as sexy. Looks too boxy to get my juices flowing.
Anglo-American hegemony (not imperialism, wrong term) is unique in human history as it provides a pathway to civil society through penetration. Yeah, sounds funny but "penetrated hegemony" means that unlike every other hegemony in history, instead of enthralled client states it has vocal partners which consent to cooperate while retaining independence constrained only by the bonds of agreement and shared values.
But not every nation participates in this burgeoning civil society. There is evil in the world. There are those who want to take what others have, fanatics bent on eradicating modernity and Liberal democracy, power hungry maniacs with genocidal intentions, and on and on and on...
It's a dangerous world and there is dirty work that must be done.
That was the caption on a funny pic from back then. It cracked me up.
Who did?
No it isn't! No government tells a company they can't run their own datacenter or require them to use one owned by that government.
Did an EU government tell MS that they couldn't build their own datacenter, they had to use one owned by the government?
No other country imposes this kind of rule. China won't let data be stored outside its borders, fine. But it won't let a foreign company own and operate a data center within its borders, so Apple now has to pay the Chinese government to use servers in a datacenter owned by the government. So, since the government own the servers on which any Apple user's data would be stored, it has access to the user data and Apple's data. IP ripe for harvesting.
The biggest problem here isn't even about government spying, it's that China won't let Apple do business without handing control to the Chinese government.
Nothing to worry about, this Chinese "company" is a government owned entity, so you know you can trust it.
Was it the CIA? NSA? AP? Wikileaks? Trump, Hillary, or Russia's FSB? Swap your tinfoil hat for your betting beanie and put your money where your mouth is!
The administration has been talking about banning personal devices in the White House since at least November. Well before Wolff's book was finished. Mentioning Wolff's wholly unrelated book is at best innapropriate and superfluous, at worst it's politically motivated deception.
Now I can say, "Hah!" in addition to, "I don't have Intel money".
Okay, you're right about that. It wasn't immediately clear that's what was going on.
True, the cop didn't commit murder. By putting innocent people in front of armed police expecting to see a hostage situation where one person has already been shot, the idiot who made the false report did.
If somehow it isn't connected enough, it could still be 2nd degree murder for a few different reasons.
Judging from the statute, it could very well be charged as 1st degree murder. If the actual target (who was not shot) was underage, or there was even one child on the premises, they could also go for 2nd degree murder as the swatting would have an inherent child endangerment component.
Second, it isn't their "typical expenditure" that was being used in the projection, it was their expenditure for one quarter and the rate of change from the two before it. For all anyone outside Comcast knows, they were planning to invest $0 over the next five years.
Third, since all of the data used in the author's projection is from the first three quarters of 2017, even if those projections are correct the conclusions are still wrong.
Why? I'll tell you. Comcast looked at the political landscape and figured it was probably getting a tax cut and that the FCC would repeal NN, so they started the ball rolling, knowing that they could cut back if things turned out differently.
Well, thin excuses to take a vacation on the taxpayer's dime aside...
The whole thing, start to finish, would have to be conceived, run and funded solely and entirely by Russians. Not one sticker from outside. The most we can do is to encourage someone to have the idea. Even then there's the candidate certification issue. The new party would have to build so much popular support that refusing to certify its candidate would blow up in Putin's face. For that to work, it would need to have enough support in Parliament to at least make stripping that authority from the Presidency a real possibility.
Even if battery life degrades as they claim, the only reasonable way to throttle performance is dynamically according to actual battery health info, not force it through OS updates. The only consumer friendly option is to let us decide if we prefer charge or performance.
Maybe I'm fine with a 6 hour charge and max performance.
And since it's based on OS versions instead of actual battery health info, it looks ever more like another lie.
An actual fix would be to allow users to decide whether they want performance or battery time.
If you disregard the official statement, then what? What makes a reporter's naive assumption about Comcast's investment trends any more meaningful?