If so, then why are you giving them parole in the first place?
Because CA is under a court order to release 40-50K prisoners, although the Supreme Court might modify it when they get around to hearing it.
Given that CA already doesn't jail non-violent drug offenders, I find it hard to believe that they can release 1/4 of the prisoners without releasing some seriously violent criminals. Parole, even with fancy GPS monitoring, costs a small fraction of incarceration and might actually work if implemented right.
For example, I want my user rights to be just as important - if it fails, it has to fail "open". If the company goes out of business, I must still be able to use the stuff I paid for. Likewise, it must automatically unlock/decrypt the content when the copyright term is over and the stuff enters the public domain.
According to the TFA (the claim is, the standard isn't written), it does "fail open" since you have both the key and the media in question even before failure. That seem to be a key ingredient in the whole scheme -- that you need not be connected to any network to play it.
Controlling the playkey means that you control the media, and you truly own it, since no part of the system needs to phone home, and it imposes no restrictions on copying [the media, not the key -- which can only be "moved", not "copied"].
Now, this scheme relies on magic tamper-proof hardware and so the usual caveats about DRM apply as always -- if it is possible to read a key it is possible to copy it. That said, it does appear (on its face) to give the moderate consumer (e.g. not the "all bits are free" people) just about everything they asked for. You can use it without phoning home (and hence fail-open) and you can loan it to your buddy or sell it on eBay.
As for the public domain stuff, I don't see any particular reason for that. Public domain doesn't mean they aren't allowed to sell it and you can just as well grab a free copy from wherever you want. Plus, I'll likely be dead by that point.
I am upset that Facebook keeps stuff that I have deleted in their records.
Then don't use Facebook. You gave them something, you don't get to just take it back because you feel like it.
It's like me telling you a story and then two weeks later demanding that you forget it, or at least not ever retell it. Tough luck -- you tell someone a piece of information and (barring an NDA) they are entitled to repeat it as often and loudly as they want.
Taking your questions in reverse order (if I may):
As to the second question, why is accessing an unencrypted network so commonly and cavalierly assumed to be legal?
It is emphatically not.
My claim is that the world "access" requires a request and a response. If I connect to your unencrypted network and look for open SMB shares, I have accessed it. That means that I am now guilty of accessing a computer network without authorization, which is a Federal (and most States) crime. On the other hand, if I make no requests from your network but merely record packets that were already going to be sent anyway then I cannot be said to "access" the system.
That is the distinction that I believe is critical in these cases. If Google associated to the network or did anything (even request a IP from DHCP) then it would be unauthorized access. So long as they look but don't touch, I consider that OK.
Given this, is it really fair to expect her and many millions of people who don't read Slashdot or xkcd to in order to guarantee a legal right to privacy?
Everyone has the right to privacy. Privacy cannot cover, however, things that you expose to the world -- there is no privacy interest there by the explicit action of having exposed it.
I am a techie. But how about my relatives who live two doors down? They use WiFi. They don't know what makes it all work, except that it lets their laptops "use the internet" without any wires. Read your wireless router's documentation. It most probably uses fancy words like WPA, encryption keys, etc. How many of the general public really understand it? Encryption is VERY difficult to get right and one of the main elements is educating the proper use of it.
When you chose to use a device without understand what it does, you are taking responsibility for any unintentional side-effects that you could have learned about but chose not to. Wireless routers do not just magic themselves into people's residences -- they chose to buy them and they chose not to learn how they operate.
We know that Silverlight is suppoting 64-bit. We know that Microsoft has been pushing 64-bit since 2003. We know all new Windows 7 PCs are coming 64-bit. And we will continue to keep our heads in the sand.
To be fair to Microsoft (gasp, yes, even they deserve minimally that), they were planning on making Windows7 x64 only since every chip since 2006 (that was Conroe's launch, many NetBurst supported it as well but not all) supported it. Then Intel came along and released a glorified 486 called Atom which sold like hotcakes (for $40/unit, why wouldn't it -- netbooks are great in their niche) and completely screwed their plans.
The new Atoms support x86_64 and Microsoft has hinted that Windows 8 will be x64 only. Anyone with a pre-2010 (PineTrail) netbook will be SoL but the expect replacement cycle for $200 netbooks is probably less than that for $500 laptops.
If I leave my door unlocked, I don't think it's right to strangers to come in and snoop around.
There is a difference between not locking your door (inaction) and broadcasting the data to the world (action).
Google did not "come in and snoop around", they passively listened from the street -- hence the analogy to a big sign on top of the house. If they have connected to the network and started making requests (e.g. connecting to SMB shares, reading shared iTunes playlists) then your analogy would be absolutely correct.
You have a private conversation about your MP3 collection with your friend in the park. A 3rd party picks it up with a mic. Don't broadcast that stuff?
Yes. If you want to have a private conversation, a public park is not the best place for it.
You route your data through your ISP. Your ISP records whatever it wants. Don't broadcast that stuff?
Use SSH/SSL.
You post a comment on Facebook. It's forever in Facebook's database. Don't broadcast that stuff?
The entire purpose of Facebook is to broadcast stuff. I would be very upset if I posted a comment to Facebook and it wasn't immediately available for everyone to see.
Your phone calls are recorded by your phone provider, who gives you a "convenient web-based interface to replay conversations whenever, wherever you want." (Gosh, all email is like this, and people are fine with it.). Don't broadcast that stuff?
The Stored Communications Act places certain statutory legal restrictions on these activities. Phone conversations (when not conducted on a bluetooth headset so loudly that everyone on the bus can hear you) are protected from third-party recording (and, in some states, first-party).
No, the data is really private to you and whoever you intended it for
Here we agree. It's just that you seem to think "intended" means "what recipients you had in mind" not "what recipients you know will be able to read/listen".
If I send Facebook a status update, I must intend for Facebook LLC to receive it. If I have a conversation in a public place, I must intend for anyone walking by to hear it. If I paint the outside of my house pink, I must intend for anyone walking by to see it.
Mod me into oblivion, but I don't get how you can have a privacy interest in data that you are transmitting unencrypted. This is not just like leaving a door unlocked or a window un-blinded (which is inaction), there is a positive action of transmitting that information in such a way that anyone can read it. Calling this unauthorized access is really bizarre -- it's like saying I eavesdrop on my neighbors when they get drunk and start yelling very loudly at each other. Is it too much to ask that if you want to keep something private you ought to refrain from actively broadcasting it to the world? To be clear, I'm not talking about inferring a lack of a right from inaction (not locking your door is not an excuse for thieves) -- only conscious actions.
Google might yet make a public service of this and send out a postcard to these addresses explaining that they have chosen to make their internet usage public and they might do well to revisit their wireless setup. Of course, normatively they should probably discard any private data they collected just as matter of decency but that's not the same as saying they should be required to by some novel notion of privacy that extends to private information even when the rightful owner has willingly made it public.
[ Also, an aside, it's 2010! Who still uses an email client that's not https (web) or SSL (pop/imap/exchange)? GMail certainly is https (all of it, not just the login). ]
By a "build your own smartphone" model using a couple of different form factors (tablet, slider, flip) with commodity snap in parts that are user customizable (screen tech/screen size/flash space/CPU+GPU combo/camera) that would allow them to deliver any phone in any segment at any price point.
Ever notice how phones and tablets tend to have SoC's from 6-12 months ago? Like the Snapdragon here when they've already got Snapdragon II running or the Droid/Pre/iPhone/Pod/Pad's A8 when the A9 has been out for a while and they are already flogging the A10 at Computex? A device that small has to be drawn out months in advance so all the components can be fabricated and any glitches in the assembly process ironed out. This isn't like plugging a PCI card into a motherboard -- almost every component is a custom part and every cubic millimeter of the device is taken.
Make a generic firmware, stuff it with all the drivers you might need for all of the hardware used in the different combinations and release it quick.
I don't know about the Android ecosystem but I used to be into WinMo hacking (before the birth of Android and the death of my free time )and this was straight impossible. Even the bootstrap sequence varied from phone to phone, as did vital kernel settings, radio settings and really just about everything. I would not be at all surprised if this was simply impossible.
Also, in the official world, you have to get validation from the OEM, the carriers and the regulatory agencies (if you touched the baseband) before pushing firmware. That alone takes time, plus they might bump it back to you if they don't like it.
You are right, the blame lies with the urban planners but also with the fact that we have historically narrow roads that cannot just be arbitrarily widened. No amount of urban planning can will a bike lane into a spot where there is no room for it.
More importantly, however, there is no excuse for endangering everyone around you by breaking the traffic rules. Despite your lame protests they do, in fact, apply to everyone (the PD here has no remorse ticketing cyclists either) even if, in your opinion, it would be safer if you broke the law. As an avid biker (during summer anyway), I can assure you that you can bike safely without splitting lanes or running lights -- the only risk is that it will take you a little longer to get where you want to be.
Also, I've never seen a critical mass but it seems kind of counter-productive to encourage traffic harmony by committing senseless violence against cars. Anyone who expects cars to be kinder to cyclists after having their mirrors bashed has probably hit their head too many times.
Roads are for road users. I ride a bike, I obey the laws (ALL of them - way better than ANY car I ever see on the road)
I would like to personally applaud you, since you are a better biker than virtually all the ones here in Boston. Our bikers pay no to stop signs or red lights, swerve between lanes, cut cars off, dodge back and forth from the sidewalks and generally make an unsafe nuisance of themselves.
Perhaps where you live, those people are a minority and most of the bikers are like you. Until we all get to that level, please excuse the more rabid anti-bike folks (the GP) because they what they are really angry about is the arrogant rules-violating bikers that are the majority here.
Why the cheap shot against the "left"? You could say I'm a "leftie" (especially by US standards), and I'm pissed off by this.
Because there has been an internal division among the left (of which I consider myself a proud member) about the limits of free speech. Some openly deride the value of free speech in favor of hate speech laws, campus/employer speech codes[3][5], laws prohibiting "defaming or insulting religion"[6]. Outside the US, there appears to be no limit to prosecutions for even trivial insults against Christianity[1] or Islam[2]. In a most bizarre ruling from Canada, apparently you can be sued for libel for calling someone an 'enemy of free speech' in response the plaintiff's initiation of various cases before the CHRC that were, in fact, attacks on speech[4].
Slashdot has a particular brand of leftism that is largely against these attacks on free speech but it would be silly to think that this represents a worldwide view. There are significant attacks on free speech from the left (and, as always, from the right as well on different issues) and it would behoove us to pay attention and confront our fellow lefties that are clamoring for European-style (or even Canadian-style) regulations of 'hate speech' and the like.
Why is everyone so eager to suddenly replace one proprietary format for another?
H264 is not even close to proprietary. It is an open specification (actually an ISO standard[1]) that is entirely complete. You can even download an entirely open source implementation of the decoder[2] or the encoder[3], both of with are fully standards compliant and L/GPL licensed.
Now, the patent-license situation is not ideal, but it's worlds better than the situation with Flash, which is not an ISO standard (actually, actionscript is a bastardized javascript), of which there are no fully compliant open source implementations (sorry, Gnash really sucks, I wish it were good) and which is entirely under the control of Adobe, not the ISO.
IMO, we should be very eager to replace one proprietary system with a patent-encumbered open standard with opensource encoders/decoders. The best is not the enemy of the good -- and this is a hell of a good step in the right direction, even if it's a step from worse to merely bad.
It seem to be a part of an overall push not just to wring the last bits of control from the hands of the users, but to ensure that the users will be content consumers, not content creators.
Since when does everything have to be geared around content creation? Content creators are not the target audience here, the audience is regular users and the UI is designed to fulfill the kind of uses they will likely make from the device.
Not every device has to be geared towards the tech-savvy. It is OK for technology to be simplified to present the casual user with something they can use. No one on/. needs to buy it (I certainly wouldn't get an iPad, for instance) but that doesn't mean that it doesn't have a place as one product for a particular market.
But usually when a chart contains a combination of past data and future predictions, it is customary to color the two sections differently or otherwise make a clear distinction between the two. I read that plot and thought (for a second) "Holy shit there are only 2/8s left!" before realizing that it wasn't December 2010.
The US "rejects" changes to its currency because it never pushes changes properly. The dollar coin being one example. How do you get people to switch from dollar bills to dollar coins? By not printing dollar bills any more and taking them out of circulation when they go through clearing. Eventually everyone switches whether they want to or not.
Did it occur to you that if Americans (collectively) don't want to change it then perhaps the government ought not to do so? The government is not an entity of its own creation -- it was created to carry out the will of the people* and has no existence outside that will. When you say "the government should force people to switch whether they want to or not" is roughly equivalent to saying "the people should force the people to switch whether they want to or not" -- it's grammatically ridiculous.
Now, I'm not going to claim that representative democracy is everywhere and always perfect (far from it) but I cannot possibly fathom why the American People do not have the right to have a currency the way they want it. This isn't an issue of popular tyranny, it's a simple preference for dollar bills over dollar coins that was plainly evidenced by everyone's actions. No one liked the dollar coins, they were awkward and not particularly useful and so the Treasury was right not to insist on a forcible change.
Ultimately, I can't understand the argument that it is legitimate to force people to do something for their own good. If it was really for their own good, you would be able to convince them by reason and, if you can't, perhaps you ought to defer to their judgment because they probably know better what's good for them than you do. That's not to say you have to accept their judgment as correct, you are welcome to persist in the belief they are simply wrong but it does mean you ought to respect their contrary opinion.
* Nominally, obviously there are some implementation issues plus the the usual restrictions about inalienable rights and tyranny of the majority. The fact that rep. democracy is not perfect does not impact the basic legitimacy of popular sovereignty.
just rolls right on past the fact that, if what he was installing was -- oh, say -- a Linux distribution, he wouldn't have an opaque "I'm uncompressing files" thermometer, he'd have real progress status messages, with, y'know, *parameters* and stuff, and -- unlike me this morning with my boss's iPhone -- a hope of actually figuring out what's broken.
And what specific parameter in any Linux installation error message is likely to point towards the CPU being defective? Most of them would be generic hardware-has-shit-itself errors (DMA failures, null pointer exceptions, hash failures) that could mean any of the cpu/motherboard/ram/psu/hdd are defective. It's impossible, even in principle, for any installer to be able to pinpoint with specificity what hardware is fucked.
Just for lols, I wish you would get modded up (me too, of course:-P) so that the OP can install $DISTRO on that original setup and see what error we get and whether it exactly pinpoints the cpu or whether it spits out a generic hardware error.
Now that said, if you were to venture away from the self delusional 'free phone mentality' and just bought something outright, you would find even in America, a vast array of hardware to choose from. Hardware without all the draconian operator restrictions programmed in.
First, my phone has no draconian operator restrictions, despite being made by the evil corporation that is Microsoft (switching to Android very soon, it wasn't an option 18 months ago when I bought this WinMo phone). I have root, I can reflash, I can installs apps without an intermediate, the whole shebang.
Second, what seems delusional is to buy a phone outright and then spend the same amount of money every month as I would with a subsidized phone. It would be throwing money away, roughly the $300-400 difference between the subsidized and unsubsidized price. At the end of any 24 month period, I'm still going to have to pay (24 * $MONTHLY_COST) since I will never be without cell service.
IMO, RD is supposed to entail a good-faith effort to notify the vendor and delay public disclosure for a reasonable amount of time (i.e. not dragging their feet) while they push a patch. If you notify the vendor, preferably including a test case, and they refuse to acknowledge that it is a security issue or suggest ridiculous fixes, that's the end of your RD duties. Ethically speaking, you are in the clear. RD requires you to give them a chance to fix the problem before publicizing it, nothing more.
Now, vendor/rube relations are another matter entirely that are distinct from your duty of responsible disclosure. I don't envy being in the situation where you fear their wrath for disclosure but want to do the right thing.
I mean he's actually saying that teaching a kid how to use a condom encourages the kid to seek out becoming a rape victim?! HOW?!
Any sex with a person under 18 is rape in the State of WI. See 948.02 for the under-16 case and 940.09 for the over-16 but under-18 case (first link). So if a 17 year old has sex with a 16 year old, they have both raped each other. It's a perversion of language to call that a rape (even if it remains a crime, I'm not going to wade into that minefield of the exact numerical value for the age of consent) but that's the law. A 17 year old out to lose his virginity is, in fact, seeking to become a rape victim.
Now, the theory that because of this the teacher that showed the kid year old how to use a condom is responsible for the crime because he encouraged (statutory,willing)-rape is bizarre, to say the least.
The Honorable Representative should read her own laws, because it most certainly is a crime for a person to use a condom (properly) if the other party to the condom usage is under 18 (under 16 and it's a felony). If both are under 18, then it is mutual statutory rape under the laws of the fine state of Wisconsin. So yeah, Mrs. Roys, using a condom is a crime for the vast majority of high school students in your state.
I hasten to say that I'm not at all supportive of the DA's theory that a teacher who instructs students on proper condom usage is somehow responsible for their subsequent crimes. I just wanted to point of that the Representative made a transparently false factual statement about the law in her own State.
Slashdot Mirror
If so, then why are you giving them parole in the first place?
Because CA is under a court order to release 40-50K prisoners, although the Supreme Court might modify it when they get around to hearing it.
Given that CA already doesn't jail non-violent drug offenders, I find it hard to believe that they can release 1/4 of the prisoners without releasing some seriously violent criminals. Parole, even with fancy GPS monitoring, costs a small fraction of incarceration and might actually work if implemented right.
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/02/10/us/10prison.html
http://www.mercurynews.com/news/ci_15293678?nclick_check=1
For example, I want my user rights to be just as important - if it fails, it has to fail "open". If the company goes out of business, I must still be able to use the stuff I paid for. Likewise, it must automatically unlock/decrypt the content when the copyright term is over and the stuff enters the public domain.
According to the TFA (the claim is, the standard isn't written), it does "fail open" since you have both the key and the media in question even before failure. That seem to be a key ingredient in the whole scheme -- that you need not be connected to any network to play it.
Controlling the playkey means that you control the media, and you truly own it, since no part of the system needs to phone home, and it imposes no restrictions on copying [the media, not the key -- which can only be "moved", not "copied"].
Now, this scheme relies on magic tamper-proof hardware and so the usual caveats about DRM apply as always -- if it is possible to read a key it is possible to copy it. That said, it does appear (on its face) to give the moderate consumer (e.g. not the "all bits are free" people) just about everything they asked for. You can use it without phoning home (and hence fail-open) and you can loan it to your buddy or sell it on eBay.
As for the public domain stuff, I don't see any particular reason for that. Public domain doesn't mean they aren't allowed to sell it and you can just as well grab a free copy from wherever you want. Plus, I'll likely be dead by that point.
I am upset that Facebook keeps stuff that I have deleted in their records.
Then don't use Facebook. You gave them something, you don't get to just take it back because you feel like it.
It's like me telling you a story and then two weeks later demanding that you forget it, or at least not ever retell it. Tough luck -- you tell someone a piece of information and (barring an NDA) they are entitled to repeat it as often and loudly as they want.
Taking your questions in reverse order (if I may):
As to the second question, why is accessing an unencrypted network so commonly and cavalierly assumed to be legal?
It is emphatically not.
My claim is that the world "access" requires a request and a response. If I connect to your unencrypted network and look for open SMB shares, I have accessed it. That means that I am now guilty of accessing a computer network without authorization, which is a Federal (and most States) crime. On the other hand, if I make no requests from your network but merely record packets that were already going to be sent anyway then I cannot be said to "access" the system.
That is the distinction that I believe is critical in these cases. If Google associated to the network or did anything (even request a IP from DHCP) then it would be unauthorized access. So long as they look but don't touch, I consider that OK.
Given this, is it really fair to expect her and many millions of people who don't read Slashdot or xkcd to in order to guarantee a legal right to privacy?
Everyone has the right to privacy. Privacy cannot cover, however, things that you expose to the world -- there is no privacy interest there by the explicit action of having exposed it.
I am a techie. But how about my relatives who live two doors down? They use WiFi. They don't know what makes it all work, except that it lets their laptops "use the internet" without any wires. Read your wireless router's documentation. It most probably uses fancy words like WPA, encryption keys, etc. How many of the general public really understand it? Encryption is VERY difficult to get right and one of the main elements is educating the proper use of it.
When you chose to use a device without understand what it does, you are taking responsibility for any unintentional side-effects that you could have learned about but chose not to. Wireless routers do not just magic themselves into people's residences -- they chose to buy them and they chose not to learn how they operate.
When did the users take this "action"? This is due to their "inaction".
They set up and configured an unencrypted wireless network. Do you think the router/AP just magicked itself in there?
We know that Silverlight is suppoting 64-bit. We know that Microsoft has been pushing 64-bit since 2003. We know all new Windows 7 PCs are coming 64-bit. And we will continue to keep our heads in the sand.
To be fair to Microsoft (gasp, yes, even they deserve minimally that), they were planning on making Windows7 x64 only since every chip since 2006 (that was Conroe's launch, many NetBurst supported it as well but not all) supported it. Then Intel came along and released a glorified 486 called Atom which sold like hotcakes (for $40/unit, why wouldn't it -- netbooks are great in their niche) and completely screwed their plans.
The new Atoms support x86_64 and Microsoft has hinted that Windows 8 will be x64 only. Anyone with a pre-2010 (PineTrail) netbook will be SoL but the expect replacement cycle for $200 netbooks is probably less than that for $500 laptops.
If I leave my door unlocked, I don't think it's right to strangers to come in and snoop around.
There is a difference between not locking your door (inaction) and broadcasting the data to the world (action).
Google did not "come in and snoop around", they passively listened from the street -- hence the analogy to a big sign on top of the house. If they have connected to the network and started making requests (e.g. connecting to SMB shares, reading shared iTunes playlists) then your analogy would be absolutely correct.
You have a private conversation about your MP3 collection with your friend in the park. A 3rd party picks it up with a mic. Don't broadcast that stuff?
Yes. If you want to have a private conversation, a public park is not the best place for it.
You route your data through your ISP. Your ISP records whatever it wants. Don't broadcast that stuff?
Use SSH/SSL.
You post a comment on Facebook. It's forever in Facebook's database. Don't broadcast that stuff?
The entire purpose of Facebook is to broadcast stuff. I would be very upset if I posted a comment to Facebook and it wasn't immediately available for everyone to see.
Your phone calls are recorded by your phone provider, who gives you a "convenient web-based interface to replay conversations whenever, wherever you want." (Gosh, all email is like this, and people are fine with it.). Don't broadcast that stuff?
The Stored Communications Act places certain statutory legal restrictions on these activities. Phone conversations (when not conducted on a bluetooth headset so loudly that everyone on the bus can hear you) are protected from third-party recording (and, in some states, first-party).
No, the data is really private to you and whoever you intended it for
Here we agree. It's just that you seem to think "intended" means "what recipients you had in mind" not "what recipients you know will be able to read/listen".
If I send Facebook a status update, I must intend for Facebook LLC to receive it.
If I have a conversation in a public place, I must intend for anyone walking by to hear it.
If I paint the outside of my house pink, I must intend for anyone walking by to see it.
Mod me into oblivion, but I don't get how you can have a privacy interest in data that you are transmitting unencrypted. This is not just like leaving a door unlocked or a window un-blinded (which is inaction), there is a positive action of transmitting that information in such a way that anyone can read it. Calling this unauthorized access is really bizarre -- it's like saying I eavesdrop on my neighbors when they get drunk and start yelling very loudly at each other. Is it too much to ask that if you want to keep something private you ought to refrain from actively broadcasting it to the world? To be clear, I'm not talking about inferring a lack of a right from inaction (not locking your door is not an excuse for thieves) -- only conscious actions.
Google might yet make a public service of this and send out a postcard to these addresses explaining that they have chosen to make their internet usage public and they might do well to revisit their wireless setup. Of course, normatively they should probably discard any private data they collected just as matter of decency but that's not the same as saying they should be required to by some novel notion of privacy that extends to private information even when the rightful owner has willingly made it public.
[ Also, an aside, it's 2010! Who still uses an email client that's not https (web) or SSL (pop/imap/exchange)? GMail certainly is https (all of it, not just the login). ]
By a "build your own smartphone" model using a couple of different form factors (tablet, slider, flip) with commodity snap in parts that are user customizable (screen tech/screen size/flash space/CPU+GPU combo/camera) that would allow them to deliver any phone in any segment at any price point.
Ever notice how phones and tablets tend to have SoC's from 6-12 months ago? Like the Snapdragon here when they've already got Snapdragon II running or the Droid/Pre/iPhone/Pod/Pad's A8 when the A9 has been out for a while and they are already flogging the A10 at Computex? A device that small has to be drawn out months in advance so all the components can be fabricated and any glitches in the assembly process ironed out. This isn't like plugging a PCI card into a motherboard -- almost every component is a custom part and every cubic millimeter of the device is taken.
Make a generic firmware, stuff it with all the drivers you might need for all of the hardware used in the different combinations and release it quick.
I don't know about the Android ecosystem but I used to be into WinMo hacking (before the birth of Android and the death of my free time )and this was straight impossible. Even the bootstrap sequence varied from phone to phone, as did vital kernel settings, radio settings and really just about everything. I would not be at all surprised if this was simply impossible.
Also, in the official world, you have to get validation from the OEM, the carriers and the regulatory agencies (if you touched the baseband) before pushing firmware. That alone takes time, plus they might bump it back to you if they don't like it.
You are right, the blame lies with the urban planners but also with the fact that we have historically narrow roads that cannot just be arbitrarily widened. No amount of urban planning can will a bike lane into a spot where there is no room for it.
More importantly, however, there is no excuse for endangering everyone around you by breaking the traffic rules. Despite your lame protests they do, in fact, apply to everyone (the PD here has no remorse ticketing cyclists either) even if, in your opinion, it would be safer if you broke the law. As an avid biker (during summer anyway), I can assure you that you can bike safely without splitting lanes or running lights -- the only risk is that it will take you a little longer to get where you want to be.
Also, I've never seen a critical mass but it seems kind of counter-productive to encourage traffic harmony by committing senseless violence against cars. Anyone who expects cars to be kinder to cyclists after having their mirrors bashed has probably hit their head too many times.
Roads are for road users. I ride a bike, I obey the laws (ALL of them - way better than ANY car I ever see on the road)
I would like to personally applaud you, since you are a better biker than virtually all the ones here in Boston. Our bikers pay no to stop signs or red lights, swerve between lanes, cut cars off, dodge back and forth from the sidewalks and generally make an unsafe nuisance of themselves.
Perhaps where you live, those people are a minority and most of the bikers are like you. Until we all get to that level, please excuse the more rabid anti-bike folks (the GP) because they what they are really angry about is the arrogant rules-violating bikers that are the majority here.
Funny, I just bought an Android phone and I had to go through ridiculous hoops just to get a root account on it. Where's the freedom in that?
Why the cheap shot against the "left"? You could say I'm a "leftie" (especially by US standards), and I'm pissed off by this.
Because there has been an internal division among the left (of which I consider myself a proud member) about the limits of free speech. Some openly deride the value of free speech in favor of hate speech laws, campus/employer speech codes[3][5], laws prohibiting "defaming or insulting religion"[6]. Outside the US, there appears to be no limit to prosecutions for even trivial insults against Christianity[1] or Islam[2]. In a most bizarre ruling from Canada, apparently you can be sued for libel for calling someone an 'enemy of free speech' in response the plaintiff's initiation of various cases before the CHRC that were, in fact, attacks on speech[4].
Slashdot has a particular brand of leftism that is largely against these attacks on free speech but it would be silly to think that this represents a worldwide view. There are significant attacks on free speech from the left (and, as always, from the right as well on different issues) and it would behoove us to pay attention and confront our fellow lefties that are clamoring for European-style (or even Canadian-style) regulations of 'hate speech' and the like.
[1] http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/crime/atheist-given-asbo-for-leaflets-mocking-jesus-1952985.html
[2] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trial_of_Geert_Wilders
[3] http://volokh.com/tag/rodriguez-v-maricopa/
[4] http://www.nelligan.ca/e/PDF/Warman_Court_Decision.pdf
[5] http://www.tuftsdaily.com/2.5511/csl-hearing-turns-spotlight-on-controversial-source-pieces-1.590986
[6] http://theamericanmuslim.org/tam.php/features/articles/combating_defamation_of_religions/
Why is everyone so eager to suddenly replace one proprietary format for another?
H264 is not even close to proprietary. It is an open specification (actually an ISO standard[1]) that is entirely complete. You can even download an entirely open source implementation of the decoder[2] or the encoder[3], both of with are fully standards compliant and L/GPL licensed.
Now, the patent-license situation is not ideal, but it's worlds better than the situation with Flash, which is not an ISO standard (actually, actionscript is a bastardized javascript), of which there are no fully compliant open source implementations (sorry, Gnash really sucks, I wish it were good) and which is entirely under the control of Adobe, not the ISO.
IMO, we should be very eager to replace one proprietary system with a patent-encumbered open standard with opensource encoders/decoders. The best is not the enemy of the good -- and this is a hell of a good step in the right direction, even if it's a step from worse to merely bad.
[1] http://www.iso.org/iso/iso_catalogue/catalogue_tc/catalogue_detail.htm?csnumber=50726 -- The full ISO144926-10 specification.
[2] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Libavcodec, part of the FFMPEG project -- licensed under the LPGL.
[3] http://www.videolan.org/developers/x264.html, licensed under the GPL.
It seem to be a part of an overall push not just to wring the last bits of control from the hands of the users, but to ensure that the users will be content consumers, not content creators.
Since when does everything have to be geared around content creation? Content creators are not the target audience here, the audience is regular users and the UI is designed to fulfill the kind of uses they will likely make from the device.
Not every device has to be geared towards the tech-savvy. It is OK for technology to be simplified to present the casual user with something they can use. No one on /. needs to buy it (I certainly wouldn't get an iPad, for instance) but that doesn't mean that it doesn't have a place as one product for a particular market.
But usually when a chart contains a combination of past data and future predictions, it is customary to color the two sections differently or otherwise make a clear distinction between the two. I read that plot and thought (for a second) "Holy shit there are only 2 /8s left!" before realizing that it wasn't December 2010.
Here is a good example: http://media3.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/graphic/2009/03/21/GR2009032100104.gif
The US "rejects" changes to its currency because it never pushes changes properly. The dollar coin being one example. How do you get people to switch from dollar bills to dollar coins? By not printing dollar bills any more and taking them out of circulation when they go through clearing. Eventually everyone switches whether they want to or not.
Did it occur to you that if Americans (collectively) don't want to change it then perhaps the government ought not to do so? The government is not an entity of its own creation -- it was created to carry out the will of the people* and has no existence outside that will. When you say "the government should force people to switch whether they want to or not" is roughly equivalent to saying "the people should force the people to switch whether they want to or not" -- it's grammatically ridiculous.
Now, I'm not going to claim that representative democracy is everywhere and always perfect (far from it) but I cannot possibly fathom why the American People do not have the right to have a currency the way they want it. This isn't an issue of popular tyranny, it's a simple preference for dollar bills over dollar coins that was plainly evidenced by everyone's actions. No one liked the dollar coins, they were awkward and not particularly useful and so the Treasury was right not to insist on a forcible change.
Ultimately, I can't understand the argument that it is legitimate to force people to do something for their own good. If it was really for their own good, you would be able to convince them by reason and, if you can't, perhaps you ought to defer to their judgment because they probably know better what's good for them than you do. That's not to say you have to accept their judgment as correct, you are welcome to persist in the belief they are simply wrong but it does mean you ought to respect their contrary opinion.
* Nominally, obviously there are some implementation issues plus the the usual restrictions about inalienable rights and tyranny of the majority. The fact that rep. democracy is not perfect does not impact the basic legitimacy of popular sovereignty.
it boggles my mind that windows has no built in utilities for querying hardware sensors or SMART data.
Yup, it boggles my mind too. Wait, what?
smartctl 5.39 2009-12-09 r2995 [i686-pc-cygwin-win7(64)] (cygwin-5.39-1)
just rolls right on past the fact that, if what he was installing was -- oh, say -- a Linux distribution, he wouldn't have an opaque "I'm uncompressing files" thermometer, he'd have real progress status messages, with, y'know, *parameters* and stuff, and -- unlike me this morning with my boss's iPhone -- a hope of actually figuring out what's broken.
And what specific parameter in any Linux installation error message is likely to point towards the CPU being defective? Most of them would be generic hardware-has-shit-itself errors (DMA failures, null pointer exceptions, hash failures) that could mean any of the cpu/motherboard/ram/psu/hdd are defective. It's impossible, even in principle, for any installer to be able to pinpoint with specificity what hardware is fucked.
Just for lols, I wish you would get modded up (me too, of course :-P) so that the OP can install $DISTRO on that original setup and see what error we get and whether it exactly pinpoints the cpu or whether it spits out a generic hardware error.
Now that said, if you were to venture away from the self delusional 'free phone mentality' and just bought something outright, you would find even in America, a vast array of hardware to choose from. Hardware without all the draconian operator restrictions programmed in.
First, my phone has no draconian operator restrictions, despite being made by the evil corporation that is Microsoft (switching to Android very soon, it wasn't an option 18 months ago when I bought this WinMo phone). I have root, I can reflash, I can installs apps without an intermediate, the whole shebang.
Second, what seems delusional is to buy a phone outright and then spend the same amount of money every month as I would with a subsidized phone. It would be throwing money away, roughly the $300-400 difference between the subsidized and unsubsidized price. At the end of any 24 month period, I'm still going to have to pay (24 * $MONTHLY_COST) since I will never be without cell service.
IMO, RD is supposed to entail a good-faith effort to notify the vendor and delay public disclosure for a reasonable amount of time (i.e. not dragging their feet) while they push a patch. If you notify the vendor, preferably including a test case, and they refuse to acknowledge that it is a security issue or suggest ridiculous fixes, that's the end of your RD duties. Ethically speaking, you are in the clear. RD requires you to give them a chance to fix the problem before publicizing it, nothing more.
Now, vendor/rube relations are another matter entirely that are distinct from your duty of responsible disclosure. I don't envy being in the situation where you fear their wrath for disclosure but want to do the right thing.
I mean he's actually saying that teaching a kid how to use a condom encourages the kid to seek out becoming a rape victim?! HOW?!
Any sex with a person under 18 is rape in the State of WI. See 948.02 for the under-16 case and 940.09 for the over-16 but under-18 case (first link). So if a 17 year old has sex with a 16 year old, they have both raped each other. It's a perversion of language to call that a rape (even if it remains a crime, I'm not going to wade into that minefield of the exact numerical value for the age of consent) but that's the law. A 17 year old out to lose his virginity is, in fact, seeking to become a rape victim.
Now, the theory that because of this the teacher that showed the kid year old how to use a condom is responsible for the crime because he encouraged (statutory,willing)-rape is bizarre, to say the least.
http://www.legis.state.wi.us/statutes/Stat0948.pdf [PDF]
http://law.marquette.edu/lawreview/Spring%202006/Olszewski.pdf [PDF]
[ AH FUCK UNCLOSED TAGS DAMNIT REPOST. ]
Using condoms isn't a crime for anyone.
The Honorable Representative should read her own laws, because it most certainly is a crime for a person to use a condom (properly) if the other party to the condom usage is under 18 (under 16 and it's a felony). If both are under 18, then it is mutual statutory rape under the laws of the fine state of Wisconsin. So yeah, Mrs. Roys, using a condom is a crime for the vast majority of high school students in your state.
I hasten to say that I'm not at all supportive of the DA's theory that a teacher who instructs students on proper condom usage is somehow responsible for their subsequent crimes. I just wanted to point of that the Representative made a transparently false factual statement about the law in her own State.
See 948.02 for the under-16 case and 940.09 for the over-16 but under-18 case.
http://www.legis.state.wi.us/statutes/Stat0948.pdf [PDF]
http://law.marquette.edu/lawreview/Spring%202006/Olszewski.pdf [PDF]