Is there anyone on the planet who is going to invest in the failure that is Nook?
Amazon.
Because they're really close to becoming a monopoly.
The DoJ thought Apple was screwing with everyone by selling ebooks and raising prices. Except well, they seemed to keep competition happy - everyone except the market leader. And it seemed vibrant - you had Amazon, B&N, iBookstore, Kobo, Sony, etc.
Now the DoJ has practically killed the iBookstore by scrapping all agreements and limiting Apple to 1 agreement per 6 months. And B&N is circling the drain, Sony shut down, who knows how long Kobo will stay in the US (they're big outside the US), the iBookstore is crap,... and Amazon will mop up the ramains.
Amazon's going to soon be a monopsony if you want to sell an ebook. If you think Wal-Mart is bad, Amazon's just become the online version of Wal-Mart because there's no where to go but up (Amazon had 80% marketshare in ebooks prior to the iBookstore. These days, I'd be surprised if it wasn't higher).
Hatchette, Warner Brothers (WB caved), it's just the beginning.
Well, they ARE a solution looking for a problem. Or rather, a problem that's strictly manufactured by marketing.
See, the problem is, everyone "wants" a bigger screen. They're great for watching movies and playing games. But they're piss-poor at well, communicating. So the user buys this huge phablet, then enjoys it doing movies and games. But then they get around to tweeting and texting and calling, and realize that the damn phone is useless! They can't really hang it off their belt because it's too big and unwieldy, it's a solid slab in their pocket, so the phone migrates to less and less convenient locations.
Eventually, it migrates to a spot where it's not easy to get to. For a lady, that's their purse. For a man, it's one of those pockets that can tolerate the flatness without being too uncomfortable.
Of course, now you have a problem because the phone isn't readily available and they want to text and it's a huge pain because they text, and it's too big for their hands, so they have to use two hands to hold it.
Or they get a text, dig it out and find it was completely useless.
So the solution? A smartwatch! Because you bought an ill-sized phone that really is only good for a couple of things, and really, really lousy at everything else you use it for, you buy a smartwatch. Don't want to dig the phone out of your pocket or purse to read that text (because a lot of people have no-mo-phone-phobia (the real name is very close to that), the fear of missing out anything that happens on their phone). What's a person to do? Enter the smartwatch so you can glance at the text, reply, all without having to haul that massive slab out from god-knows-where.
Of course, some use it to cheat their "no phone" rule at some gatherings where the phones are placed on the table and the first guy to check it gets to pay the bill.
And you know what? I bet Apple is doing the same thing - they're going to introduce the 5.5" iPhone 6, and sell it with the iWatch because user testing has shown that the big phone is completely hard to hold, carry and use for texting and calling and is dumped in the deepest reaches of some pocket.
(Of course, Apple will probably do it right with a "leading" battery life of a week. But still, my point remains - thanks to marketing, everyone wants big screen phones despite their complete impracticality. Big screen is beautiful. Big screen is also PITA to use.)
Hell, you can't even buy half decent Androids that don't compromise on something with a smaller, more usable screen.
I mean, our office gets one ticket to Google I/O and it's usually fought over to get the stuff that's given away more than the keynotes or anything else.
Last year it was a Chromebook Pixel (much to the disappointment to the person who went), the year before that it was a Gnex, Nexus 7 and Nexus Q, etc.
pisses me off when they do that. It's why I don't buy games-on-disc anymore, you don't get what you already paid for. If it's not a standalone like KSP or a free persistent MMO like Battlestar Galactica, fucking keep it.
Well, then you don't know the gaming industry. Basically people work on a game and then get laid off.
This was fine back in the days where once you release, you can't patch (which was really helped because consoles of yore were a lot simpler to test for - nowadays you have to check out your 3D models and for glitching that could let players walk through walls because a/b/c/d/e was just right). Then there's the gameplay breaking bugs where if you save at the wrong moment, you can't restore.
Problem is, you can't patch the game if the developers aren't there anymore, and there's about a 2 month leadtime between submission of a game and when it appears on the shelf - pressing discs can easily be a month (your disc is just another one in the big press queue), and distribution another month (from disc factory to factory to distributiors and then to retail warehouses, etc).
So you have a team of devs sitting idle for two months. Well, you could put them on fixing some of the more egregious bugs found (leading to day 1 patches) because they have an extra 2 months to fix it, and the other devs (and artists, etc) can work on making extras (day 1 DLC). Because the moment the game is released, gamers might find a bug and you need to get people fixing it.
Developers can't sit around idle, and if a game's done, either you reallocate them to a new project, or lay them off. Either option doesn't work if you need to fix bugs. That's why you have day 1 patches (extra 2 months to fix bugs), day 1 DLC (2 months to generate content), and day 1 gamebreaking bugs.
And once someone is reassigned to another project, it's damn near impossible to get them to go back and fix issues with the existing code (just getting them back up to speed and building the code can be challenge all in itself).
Very few games get patched after the first month as that gets treated as the official close of the project. Unless there's a business case to keep DLC going in which case you'll have a small team for that. But that's it, and most games on the shelves are dead after the first month.
The biggest problem is that physicists do not want a new theory. Everyone gets paid and paid well to keep doing the usual stuff -- CMB, inflation, Big Bang, String Theory, smashing particles together and looking for the oldest star.
Well, that's because when you're hunting for grants, it's far easier to get funding for something close to what everyone is used to than to get a grant to study something farfetched. And scientists are basically paid for by grants.
The grant committee doesn't want to hear farfetched ideas because they're subjected to a lot of them during grant applications, and without a clear path from "what we know" to "your pet theory" there's no way to tell which ones are simply the result of a creative mind and are total BS, and which ones might be legitimate science.
Even those theories we take for granted now were farfetched back then, and really only came out because the math suddenly lined up (someone is studying something, then ends up with an equation that you derived from your theory, like string theory), or an observation that just lined up with your predictions (like cosmic microwave background radiation).
I don't know about this... because geez, before now how many people have heard of this guy?
For little-known people the Streisand effect could be desirable (remember "there's no such thing as bad publicity"?) because it now puts you in the spotlight. For people who are stuck dealing with locals, this could put their name out there and let them be discovered. For activities that require publicity to get your name out, being at top of mind isn't a bad thing.
Everyone hopes that some pro league would come around and hire them right out of high school, but if you're a no-name going to a no-name school, it doesn't happen. Until something big puts your name on the map and gets scouts coming.
The irony of the whole thing is that it's a death spiral. By asking employees to do more with less and get less sleep, their health suffers which is a negative on the company in MANY ways. First, tired workers simply are less productive, period. It's very possible that the 10, 12 hour days they're putting in they're simply not going to be as productive than if you forced them to go home after 8 and let them have a good rest, ready to take on the challenge tomorrow.
Second, there are health issues.First, weakened immune systems mean workers get sicker easier. And sick employees almost always come to work (a term we call "presenteeism", the opposite of absenteeism). Well, you have a sniffling, sneezing, coughing worker spreading their germs to everyone. What's THAT going to do for productivity?
Third, safety and quality. A tired worker just isn't safe, period. Accidents in the workplace, increased workplace compensation costs. Quality goes down because workers are less attentive and less likely to spot flaws.
Of course, short term crunches do work. In the short term. Once they become chronic, well, the whole workplace suffers and you end up at some middling level of productivity caused by sick employees, tired less productive employees, and the lack of safety and quality in the final product.
Perhaps the phrase "they don't make 'em like they used to" might actually be true - workers end up producing crap because they're too tired to take pride in their work and to do a good job!
The other problem is cultural - who hasn't heard the old brag "I work hard! I did 100 hours last week!" as if working long days at the office was something to be proud of?
Finally, we're not Japanese. The Japanese get away with overwork because companies generally care about their employees - they get hired from university or high school and work until retirement where their every need is taken care of, including family. Here you're lucky to even get a email on your birthday or anniversary.
But I suppose that's what happens when you boil everything down to numbers.
Small anecdote - there was a company that bought a bunch of coconuts for their ship's provisions. They usually bought 100 coconuts a day, at around $1 a coconut. They asked how much it would be if they increased their order to 200 coconuts a day. The price rose to $2 a coconut! (you'd expect what, 75 cents or so, right?). The reason is that the coconut gatherer would have to work that much harder to collect their 200 coconuts, the increase in stress and longer working hours meant in effect the guy had to do a lot more, and earn less on it, and that's bad for business when your employees have to work their butts off just to be in the same place.
For our own protection of course. And that someday is coming soon. How much longer can Richard Stallman and I hold out on owning one of these dream (Stalin's) -machines?
Is it any surprise they're in Italy? Where the per-capita cellphone ratio is over 2? Yes, they really like their cellphones, and most people have two, or three. Work phone, play (domestic life) phone, and a third just because ("mistress" phone).
Heck, the worldwide number of cellphones has recently exceeded the population of the world.
And even though you have a cellphone, you can always turn them off or not have it with you. (I generally leave my cellphone at my desk, even if I wander off. Yes, I can be unreachable). It's like having a facebook account - just because you have one doesn't mean you have to post your entire life onto it - my facebook page just has a photo. I've never posted a single thing, nor do I intend to.
Remember that we sacrifice safety for convenience every time we get into a vehicle. I'd like to see data comparing speeds to using a cell phone: if allowing drivers to use phones is as dangerous as increasing the speed limit by 30 mph, that's one thing. If using a cell phone only translates to the same risk as raising the speed limit by 5 mph, then I say allow it.
Well, TECHNICALLY it's safer when there are people using cellphones because they naturally drive slower than traffic. And slowing down traffic means the damage caused by an accident is far lower.
Yes, if you see a car driving erratically and definitely not doing the limit in perfectly dry and sunny conditions, they're always with a phone in their hand.
So yeah, if you're going 20 in a 35mph area, you are technically safer since 20mph has a lot less energy if you hit something than 35.
I suppose if the goal is to lower the speed limit, yeah, allowing cellphones will probably do it because you'll end up with sufficient users going slow enough to hold up traffic so the 90 percentile speed would drop. Do it right and you can drop a road from 35mph to 30, then 25, then 20 or so.
Gmail doesn't manage most of the planet's email by a long shot (Hotmail, ISPs email, Web hosting accounts email, China and other countries who try to avoid USA-based Internet services, etc) and email is compatible everywhere anyway. There's no lock-in.
Actually, they could very well be close.
Benjamin Mako Hill analyzed his email records and found that Google handled over half of his personal email. It doesn't matter that he runs his own mail server or anything, Google still acquired half of his personal correspondence - sending OR receiving.
Sure they don't have a monopoly, but if everyone else has similar statistics, it means Google handles roughly 1 in 2 non-spam non-autogenerated, non-mailing list email.
Heck, many legitimate companies I've seen lately (usually Chinese ones) use Gmail addresses. Usually along the lines of user-company@gmail.com or company-user@gmail.com.
But this does raise a real point. Kickstarter needs some basic donor protections and means of reporting scams. Otherwise they'll just devolve in a feeding ground for con men and no one will take any project posted there seriously.
Why?
Part of Kickstarter's success and the whole "crowdfunding" thing is that people make an "investment" (in quotes since there's no real financial benefit) is that people need to be able to decide for themselves.
It doesn't matter if you're buying stocks, bonds, foreign currency, microloans, Kickstarter projects, whatever. You, as the source of money have to do your due diligence. If it seems scammy, well, close the tab and move on. Or invest only the money you can afford to lose.
It doesn't matter if you're investing in this, a blue-chip company, Apple/Microsoft/Google, or whatever. You invest as much as you're willing to lose.
On the whole risk thing, well, Kickstarter is a bit riskier, and there are many non-scams that simply failed to deliver as well. Just like there are tons of companies out there with interesting technology that also fail to deliver.
My Asus machines have out lasted my ownership and the second owners are still using them.... Since when does everything fall apart because it's not apple? Lol Next time look at the Apple desks at the Apple store and realize that most of those people are receiving support or repairs
Work bough an Asus Zenbook Prime, one of the BEST Ultrabooks out there. Dollar for dollar, it beats the Macbook Air at its own game. Spec sheet wise, ditto - it simply outclassed it in every way we could measure - for the same price, you got a computer with a higher res screen, good construction, etc.
But you know what? The power cable broke off the adapter! We ended up with an interesting jury rigged thing involving a Kingston Traveller power supply and lots of pigtails until our hardware technician saw the mess, and redid it nicely with solder and heatshrink tubing making a nice cable.
Oh, and the keyboard cable works itself out every couple of weeks or so - you'll notice it when it starts misses letters when you type, or the power button goes flaky. Then it's undo the (what used to be what, 10-15 screws and is down to half that because you lose one every time you open it) re-seat the keyboard cable, then seal it up and it's good to go for another couple of weeks.
We made the mistake of sending it in once for that fault, took a couple of months to get back to us.
Other than a keyboard that doesn't type, and a power adapter that had to be replaced, it's a nice machine. The Macbook Airs we used inhouse died because the owners wanted to take it swimming or were a bit tipsy with their beer.
And why did we have the Asus around? It was issued to a manager who didn't want another Macbook Air. Ironically, in the end, he ended up with a Macbook Air to replace it.
Nice machine, but if Apple had keyboards that died that frequently, there would be a national scandal that would have Tim Cook keel hauled in front of Congress to explain himself.
As for the Apple store crowd? Most I've seen were shopping, there was a good chunk (at least a third) were actually in for some training or other courses, or were getting help setting up their new machine (including some brave ones who brought their PCs with them). Genius Bar is packed with people wanting to fix their iPhones and iPads it seems, or a simple software fault that they happily back up your data, reinstall, and restore. I'm sure Geek Squad and the like all over the place get their share of PCs brought in, and they're a helluva lot less friendly than Geniuses.
Practically speaking, almost all shark attacks on humans are accidental. We're just not that tasty to a Great White. More often than not, said shark saw you as a tasty sea lion or seal and wanted a snack.
Of course, it doesn't help that said animals generally are black, and people like to wear dark swim clothes (wetsuits, etc) making humans appear to be said food.
Of course, you could also try to befriend some dolphins, who do seem to be the shark's worst enemy. Or at least dolphins appear to repel sharks for whatever reason.
any slashdotter who uses the same password as for banking or auction or bitcoin site deserves what they get
Nope, and to be honest, they even have a handy "auto login" link that puts your password in the URL.
To be certain, well, there's nothing at risk for/. - so what - someone can post as yourself? I've been to worse sites that demanded way more stringent policies for far less than what/. offers.
Right. Super serious about security, enough to give the decryption keys to any country that asks. I feel very safe knowing the Indian and Saudi governments can read any of my messages.
Actually, they can't read all messages. Even RIM can't read all messages.
There are two modes a Blackberry can work in - BES mode and BIS mode. BES mode is when your Blackberry is attached to a Blackberry Enterprise Server machine. What happens in this case is all traffic between your phone and BES is encrypted with a per-device key known only to BES and your phone. While your phone forwards traffic to RIM (or a country server), that traffic is encrypted using that key, and no one handling the traffic between your phone and BES can see it. Basically your phone sends data to RIM, and RIM forwards it onto your BES server, but RIM cannot see the traffic as the keys are held by BES and the phone.
In BIS mode (Blackberry Internet Service, I think) which is the "consumer" mode of operation, RIM etc., hold the keys. Your traffic is encrypted by the phone and decrypted by RIM before being sent on the general Internet (unencypted). The only people who cannot see the traffic is the carriers and gateways between the carrier and RIM.
The country servers that do the decryption can decrypt in this mode as well, for obvious reasons.
It's a fairly secure setup, as long as you're attached to BES. The phones you buy from a carrier and you enter your POP or IMAP information into? Not so much.
Your right. search and Android are their only successes. Oh, you forgot to mention all their other failures like Gmail, maps, Google apps, chrome, hangouts, chrome cast, etc.
Don't forget their ad business. Google Ads, AdMob, DoubleClick, etc.
You can bet most ads distributed are provided by Google or a company owned by Google whom Google seems to distance themselves from.
I mean, Google Ads, Google DoubleClick, Google AdMob,...
And wasn't it Google Nest that introduced "innovative" ad media, like say, thermostats?
This is to be expected, the only organizations that were going to aggressively patch HB were going to be the googles, the microsofts, the ones with millions of assets and awareness of how much damage that it can cause. The ones that aren't going to patch are going to be your Bob and Joe's Bait Shop with the inexplicable online shop that's being managed by their nephew whenever he's in town from college, if he knows to.
Or the "smart" software developer who sees Apples and Googles and Microsfots charging 30% for their app store, and thinking they can just "save the money" and "do it themselves".
After all, it's just a few web servers, HTML and anyone can download Ubuntu and get it working. And after you set it up once, it's all you need. Right?
Why pay Apple/Google/Microsoft 30% when you can do it yourself? After all, it's just a one-time set up cost and then the devs can get back to developing the product, the site doesn't need maintenance or anything.
Selling your eyeballs and your habits are pretty strictly in Google's and Microsoft's purview.
Yeah, not so much. Though based on news reports they're not not very good at it yet.
iAds? They're a joke. First, Apple doesn't give out customer information - at least not to the extent the competition (i.e., Google/AdMob) does. And the exorbitant buy in fee?
To be honest, I think the ONLY reason Apple has iAds is because Google is paying Apple off. Remember when the DoJ was investigating Google's purchase of AdMob? What did they see as "competition"? Yes, iAds.
Now, given AdMob's practically 99% marketshare (they do web, app, etc advertising on Android, iOS, Windows Phone,...) versus iAds practically nil marketshare (and only on iOS),
I can't even see iAds being a significant revenue source for Apple, and Apple's killed projects that did more. (To be honest, the only iAds I see are ads about... iAds)
Steve Jobs introduced iAds to the world back in 2010 as part of the iOS 5 or something release. I don't know about you, but 4 years later, there's no business reason to have it. Sure, NIH, maybe, but given its rather pathetic performance (Apple's letting devs use it to advertise their apps too, now, and yet I don't see it happening), you'd think Apple would shutter it. The fact they're not probably indicates a backrrom deal. Probably Google pays Apple enough money to keep it running as part of the whole Google default payment.
The easiest way to get a customer's permission is to simply do what Google did and "unify" the privacy policy of everything.
Google did it to enable sharing of data between services. Google can easily do it again. And you can bet Google did it "with the customer's permission" because well, the alternative was giving it all up - either you agree ("give permission") or you don't (close your account).
Given a choice like this, Google will get 99% of the permission they require. And Google can easily do it again - by asking customers agree to the new privacy policy or give persmission to do so. Yes, the thermostat would work, and the camera would work, but the most compelling features of it won't until you agree. So you'll just end up with a very expensive dumb thermostat, and an IP camera. No features like easy to use remote control, remote monitoring, etc. (Of course, you could buy the same much cheaper from someone else, but the enhanced features you bought it for require the new agreement).
That's the real reason why the words are useless - because it's REALLY easy to get "permission" when you force the customer's hand by withdrawing the features they know and love until they agree. And they'll click "Agree" just to get their remote control/monitoring features back.
The latter is still really a remote-controlled plane. I think the "maker culture" people have taken to using grandiose names in order to make it look like they have more advanced tech than they do. "I 3d-printed a remote-control plane" doesn't have the same ring to it as "I 3d-printed a drone".
The problem is, the drones that are available to the military are widely varied - from 1-2 lb tiny surveillance ones that are tossed like a paper plane (and they go smaller, too, think toy helicopter, but they're packed full of tech and can cost upwards of $10,000 each), to 18 lb ones with launchers to your predators on upwards. To hundred pound beats, etc.
Add in your quadrotors and really, if you give a weight range, there's a drone in inventory or a defense company has it in their catalog.
There's a drone for every purpose and desire in the military.
Here's my issue with the whole loud pipes thing. Take out a dB meter, pick an arbitrary cutoff, find a nice spot out in the open, and start your motorcycle. Now walk in front of it until you hit your target dB level, then walk around it maintaining the dB level and mapping out the distance you are from the motorcycle.
You'll find that loud pipes give you a quadrant behind the bike that's extremely noisy, noisy for a far longer distance than in other directions. But is that really the direction you want to be throwing off noise? Is that really the most likely direction for an accident to a motorcycle to come from? I really doubt it.
And let's be honest, are audio cues really the best cues? When people are driving along, they're not "listening for other vehicles", they're *looking* for them. If you really want to increase people's awareness of your bike, put little flashing lights or the like on them. But that'd "look gay" or something, right? It feels better to pick a "manly" way that makes you feel better about safety than something would have a lot more effect at getting drivers' attention, doesn't it? I'm not saying that sound doesn't play a role, but it mainly plays a role at the pedestrian level; pedestrians rely on sound cues far more than drivers.
My last problem is, picture what things would be like if everyone started driving their cars around with their hand on the horn at all times because "Constant honking saves lives!" Do you really have the right to create noise pollution so that you can get a greater feeling of safety for a means of travel that you yourself elected to take part in, knowing the risks? Does everyone else have to endure your pollution of the commons for your enjoyment? Do I have the right to jet-ski in a drinking water reservoir or offroad a caterpillar in a national park? The commons is just that - common. Everybody owns it and has a stake in it. Meaning you don't get unlimited access to dump into it without the consent of others, regardless of your intentions.
Wow, exactly right.
The other problem is loud pipes spew low frequency noise, which is highly non-directional. All you know is there's a bike around. You don't know where, you don't know how far, that's it.
To properly engage human direction finding requires a noise far higher in frequency - around 2-8 kHz or so, which most human hearing is well attuned to (since it's where a good chunk of human vocalizations are at).
Of course, this means your loud thumper pipes are turned into loud grandmother nagging pipes.
Also, in urban areas, the loud pipes reverberate for miles - and drivers (and the rest of the people in the area) simply tune it out, making them even worse than useless - the people who you want to hear you automatically tune you out because they've been hearing the noise for so long. Counterproductive.
Most people I've seen with loud pipes have 'em so they can goose the throttle when the light turns green and spew out 170db SPL to show off. The only time I've seen them not do this is when there's congestion and they don't have the wide open roads to accelerate.
Nothing beats visibility - including the clothes. And driving/riding responsibly - if there's places where a car can suddenly pop out because of a hidden driveway, then even car drivers slow down because a car and suddenly pop out on them.
Almost every app requests almost every permission anyways, so what was the point of fine-grained permissions? Why do I have to let you access the network and my contact list to play Tetris? It's frustrating.
Part of the problem is Google itself - when Android was released, the only place you could buy apps was in the US, which mean everywhere else trying to hit Google Marketplace was restricted to seeing free apps. Which means developers end up writing free apps loaded with advertising and having to request every damn permission to get that advertising module to run. Because they needed it free. In fact, comparisons between the various app stores showed the end result - Google Marketplace had approximately 50+% apps that were free, while Apple, Microsoft and Blackberry were averaging 25%.
So between advertising supported app models, the whole freemium thing also originated on Android because those apps could easily set up a Paypal account to handle in-app purchases.
End result today is that if an app is free, it's going to rape your data for advertising purposes. If you're lucky, the developer has an ad-free version available.
Of course, there are also some really strange permissions like "Read phone state and identity" which is needed if you just wanted to ensure that you went away if the phone rang.
Whilst all this may be valid and true, how are we going to prevent the "wrong people" from using this kill switch? Will it be hardware based, in which case, how will we be sure it won't be triggered/used remotely if we install a different OS on the device? Or if some script kiddie found a way of activating it by exploiting an insecure app?
Well, let's see how Apple does it.
When you activate a phone, it gets associated with an Apple ID. That Apple ID is required to erase, restore, and recover a phone. But only initially - to get to a stage just before running the new phone setup. So when you erase, restore or recover for sale, iTunes will ask for the old Apple ID before it lets you continue. Once that's entered, the phone can then be associated with a new Apple ID.
So that takes care of the simple "just format the hard drive" style solution - to initiate the process on the phone requires entering the Apple ID, and attempting to bypass it using DFU mode requires entering an Apple ID before iTunes will unlock the OS. Once unlocked, it's free to associate with a new Apple ID (allowing you to sell/transfer it).
That's one method. The other one is logging into iCloud, clicking "Find my iPhone", then clicking "Erase", which erases the phone's data and pops up the dialog asking for the Apple ID.
The common thread is you need an account - and if that account is compromised, you're SOL. But it's the same for Google or Microsoft - you'll need a Google/Gmail account, or a Microsoft Live account.
Not done through the carriers or anything (except maybe the Verizon Samsung phones).
Now, what happens if the person dies/etc. and the devices lock? Well, for Apple, you need to get your evidence and file a court order so Apple can unlock it. Presenting the evidence to Apple doesn't work so presumably the courts will verify the documents aren't forged and that also raises the effort required from simple document forgery to actually having to go to court. It's worth it for family members (I can buy an iPad for myself, but the iPad my aunt had is special it's something I can remember her by).
And since Apple did it, if it falsely locked continually, well, we'd have heard about it within days of the iOS 7 release.
The only real annoyance is when you're debugging something and continually restoring it - where you have to keep entering in your Apple ID.
So the TC developers, who are outside the US, receive a letter from the NSA that says include a backdoor or else. 1) So they include the backdoor and the code change is immediately apparent to everyone. How is that an effective technique to backdoor code? It merely exposes a backdooring technique that is easily removed from the source code or prompts a fork. 2) They ignore the letter because a letter from the NSA to someone outside the US has no legal significance. I am skeptical that this is anything but a group of developers who lost interest in a project a long time ago and finally pulled the plug. It's a shame, TC could have been turned into a financially viable project with the right leadership. I look forward to a fork doing exactly that.
I see it as people looking for government conspiracy where there isn't any.
Because it doesn't make sense.
First of all, there's a source code audit taking place. The source code audit has shown the binaries match the source, eliminating the possibility that the binaries were built with different source.
Second, it's open-source. If a backdoor is put in the code, it would be in the commits. I'd love to be able to make a change and not have it show up when someone does a diff, but that's not how the tools work, and quite an impressive feat if you can take a version with a backdoor, and a version without, do a diff, and have it come up with no changes in the source code.
And what, a new release happens, and people WON'T do a diff with the previous release?
Now, there are two vulnerabilities that would not be caught. Like the audit team is overlooking a backdoor on purpose. Perhaps they are and are overlooking a backdoor on purpose. But then the code is out there, and it would mean everyone doing the audit will have to be compromised. Including those who are looking through the code themselves at home.
The only other likely scenario is the compilers used to build the binaries are compromised. Possible, and still impressive.
The far more likely scenario is the audit found no big issues (as announced), but numerous little ones (as there will inevitably be). Perhaps fixing those issues overwhelmed the devs, or perhaps some issues just cannot be fixed cleanly without making a million little changes everywhere.
It seems way more likely that developers simply gave up and got bored. After all, open-source works great if you have itches that need scratching, but fails miserably when things need to be done but they aren't itches (e.g., documentation, bug fixing (unless it's needed), etc.). Hell, even in regular software development everyone knows developers would rather work on new features rather than bug fixes or code maintenance (and it's always a perennial problem on how to encourage developers to take on the more mundane stuff).
So TrueCrypt probably just suffered from developer burnout - they're fixing bugs and not really getting anywhere doing so.
Please, let's not let this Farmville jargon take over the net, including Slashdot. Nothing was 'gifted' unless it had certain special qualities. Things are given, not gifted.
Language changes. But not because fucking Zynga made a game.
Depends. "Given" just means something is passed onto someone. "Gifted" means something (an object only) is passed onto to someone as a gift. It's a more specific, more concise word.
You give gifts (or you gifted someone something). You give CPR (you don't gift it - the action is not something you can give to someone else. You TRAIN people in CPR). I was given a DVD from my friend who lent it to me.
Gifted is NOT a synonym for given. To gift something means to give them some _thing_ to someone without expectations of anything in return (i.e., a gift). But to be given something doesn't tell squat about what you received - perhaps it was loaned out to you, or you expected it as the result of something else (I asked my co worker for a thumbdrive, he gave me his).
In fact, there are two distinct meanings. See this example - "The barista gave me the coffee" vs. "The barista gifted me the coffee". They don't mean the same thing. The former means well, I got a coffee, perhaps because I ordered it and paid for it. The latter means I got a coffee "on the house" or it was complimentary.
In this case, "given" would be unspecific - was he given the ICs because it was his job and never returned them? Or was he gifted them which mean unquestionably that they are his to do as he wishes?
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Amazon.
Because they're really close to becoming a monopoly.
The DoJ thought Apple was screwing with everyone by selling ebooks and raising prices. Except well, they seemed to keep competition happy - everyone except the market leader. And it seemed vibrant - you had Amazon, B&N, iBookstore, Kobo, Sony, etc.
Now the DoJ has practically killed the iBookstore by scrapping all agreements and limiting Apple to 1 agreement per 6 months. And B&N is circling the drain, Sony shut down, who knows how long Kobo will stay in the US (they're big outside the US), the iBookstore is crap, ... and Amazon will mop up the ramains.
Amazon's going to soon be a monopsony if you want to sell an ebook. If you think Wal-Mart is bad, Amazon's just become the online version of Wal-Mart because there's no where to go but up (Amazon had 80% marketshare in ebooks prior to the iBookstore. These days, I'd be surprised if it wasn't higher).
Hatchette, Warner Brothers (WB caved), it's just the beginning.
Well, they ARE a solution looking for a problem. Or rather, a problem that's strictly manufactured by marketing.
See, the problem is, everyone "wants" a bigger screen. They're great for watching movies and playing games. But they're piss-poor at well, communicating. So the user buys this huge phablet, then enjoys it doing movies and games. But then they get around to tweeting and texting and calling, and realize that the damn phone is useless! They can't really hang it off their belt because it's too big and unwieldy, it's a solid slab in their pocket, so the phone migrates to less and less convenient locations.
Eventually, it migrates to a spot where it's not easy to get to. For a lady, that's their purse. For a man, it's one of those pockets that can tolerate the flatness without being too uncomfortable.
Of course, now you have a problem because the phone isn't readily available and they want to text and it's a huge pain because they text, and it's too big for their hands, so they have to use two hands to hold it.
Or they get a text, dig it out and find it was completely useless.
So the solution? A smartwatch! Because you bought an ill-sized phone that really is only good for a couple of things, and really, really lousy at everything else you use it for, you buy a smartwatch. Don't want to dig the phone out of your pocket or purse to read that text (because a lot of people have no-mo-phone-phobia (the real name is very close to that), the fear of missing out anything that happens on their phone). What's a person to do? Enter the smartwatch so you can glance at the text, reply, all without having to haul that massive slab out from god-knows-where.
Of course, some use it to cheat their "no phone" rule at some gatherings where the phones are placed on the table and the first guy to check it gets to pay the bill.
And you know what? I bet Apple is doing the same thing - they're going to introduce the 5.5" iPhone 6, and sell it with the iWatch because user testing has shown that the big phone is completely hard to hold, carry and use for texting and calling and is dumped in the deepest reaches of some pocket.
(Of course, Apple will probably do it right with a "leading" battery life of a week. But still, my point remains - thanks to marketing, everyone wants big screen phones despite their complete impracticality. Big screen is beautiful. Big screen is also PITA to use.)
Hell, you can't even buy half decent Androids that don't compromise on something with a smaller, more usable screen.
I mean, our office gets one ticket to Google I/O and it's usually fought over to get the stuff that's given away more than the keynotes or anything else.
Last year it was a Chromebook Pixel (much to the disappointment to the person who went), the year before that it was a Gnex, Nexus 7 and Nexus Q, etc.
Well, then you don't know the gaming industry. Basically people work on a game and then get laid off.
This was fine back in the days where once you release, you can't patch (which was really helped because consoles of yore were a lot simpler to test for - nowadays you have to check out your 3D models and for glitching that could let players walk through walls because a/b/c/d/e was just right). Then there's the gameplay breaking bugs where if you save at the wrong moment, you can't restore.
Problem is, you can't patch the game if the developers aren't there anymore, and there's about a 2 month leadtime between submission of a game and when it appears on the shelf - pressing discs can easily be a month (your disc is just another one in the big press queue), and distribution another month (from disc factory to factory to distributiors and then to retail warehouses, etc).
So you have a team of devs sitting idle for two months. Well, you could put them on fixing some of the more egregious bugs found (leading to day 1 patches) because they have an extra 2 months to fix it, and the other devs (and artists, etc) can work on making extras (day 1 DLC). Because the moment the game is released, gamers might find a bug and you need to get people fixing it.
Developers can't sit around idle, and if a game's done, either you reallocate them to a new project, or lay them off. Either option doesn't work if you need to fix bugs. That's why you have day 1 patches (extra 2 months to fix bugs), day 1 DLC (2 months to generate content), and day 1 gamebreaking bugs.
And once someone is reassigned to another project, it's damn near impossible to get them to go back and fix issues with the existing code (just getting them back up to speed and building the code can be challenge all in itself).
Very few games get patched after the first month as that gets treated as the official close of the project. Unless there's a business case to keep DLC going in which case you'll have a small team for that. But that's it, and most games on the shelves are dead after the first month.
Well, that's because when you're hunting for grants, it's far easier to get funding for something close to what everyone is used to than to get a grant to study something farfetched. And scientists are basically paid for by grants.
The grant committee doesn't want to hear farfetched ideas because they're subjected to a lot of them during grant applications, and without a clear path from "what we know" to "your pet theory" there's no way to tell which ones are simply the result of a creative mind and are total BS, and which ones might be legitimate science.
Even those theories we take for granted now were farfetched back then, and really only came out because the math suddenly lined up (someone is studying something, then ends up with an equation that you derived from your theory, like string theory), or an observation that just lined up with your predictions (like cosmic microwave background radiation).
I don't know about this... because geez, before now how many people have heard of this guy?
For little-known people the Streisand effect could be desirable (remember "there's no such thing as bad publicity"?) because it now puts you in the spotlight. For people who are stuck dealing with locals, this could put their name out there and let them be discovered. For activities that require publicity to get your name out, being at top of mind isn't a bad thing.
Everyone hopes that some pro league would come around and hire them right out of high school, but if you're a no-name going to a no-name school, it doesn't happen. Until something big puts your name on the map and gets scouts coming.
The irony of the whole thing is that it's a death spiral. By asking employees to do more with less and get less sleep, their health suffers which is a negative on the company in MANY ways. First, tired workers simply are less productive, period. It's very possible that the 10, 12 hour days they're putting in they're simply not going to be as productive than if you forced them to go home after 8 and let them have a good rest, ready to take on the challenge tomorrow.
Second, there are health issues.First, weakened immune systems mean workers get sicker easier. And sick employees almost always come to work (a term we call "presenteeism", the opposite of absenteeism). Well, you have a sniffling, sneezing, coughing worker spreading their germs to everyone. What's THAT going to do for productivity?
Third, safety and quality. A tired worker just isn't safe, period. Accidents in the workplace, increased workplace compensation costs. Quality goes down because workers are less attentive and less likely to spot flaws.
Of course, short term crunches do work. In the short term. Once they become chronic, well, the whole workplace suffers and you end up at some middling level of productivity caused by sick employees, tired less productive employees, and the lack of safety and quality in the final product.
Perhaps the phrase "they don't make 'em like they used to" might actually be true - workers end up producing crap because they're too tired to take pride in their work and to do a good job!
The other problem is cultural - who hasn't heard the old brag "I work hard! I did 100 hours last week!" as if working long days at the office was something to be proud of?
Finally, we're not Japanese. The Japanese get away with overwork because companies generally care about their employees - they get hired from university or high school and work until retirement where their every need is taken care of, including family. Here you're lucky to even get a email on your birthday or anniversary.
But I suppose that's what happens when you boil everything down to numbers.
Small anecdote - there was a company that bought a bunch of coconuts for their ship's provisions. They usually bought 100 coconuts a day, at around $1 a coconut. They asked how much it would be if they increased their order to 200 coconuts a day. The price rose to $2 a coconut! (you'd expect what, 75 cents or so, right?). The reason is that the coconut gatherer would have to work that much harder to collect their 200 coconuts, the increase in stress and longer working hours meant in effect the guy had to do a lot more, and earn less on it, and that's bad for business when your employees have to work their butts off just to be in the same place.
Is it any surprise they're in Italy? Where the per-capita cellphone ratio is over 2? Yes, they really like their cellphones, and most people have two, or three. Work phone, play (domestic life) phone, and a third just because ("mistress" phone).
Heck, the worldwide number of cellphones has recently exceeded the population of the world.
And even though you have a cellphone, you can always turn them off or not have it with you. (I generally leave my cellphone at my desk, even if I wander off. Yes, I can be unreachable). It's like having a facebook account - just because you have one doesn't mean you have to post your entire life onto it - my facebook page just has a photo. I've never posted a single thing, nor do I intend to.
Well, TECHNICALLY it's safer when there are people using cellphones because they naturally drive slower than traffic. And slowing down traffic means the damage caused by an accident is far lower.
Yes, if you see a car driving erratically and definitely not doing the limit in perfectly dry and sunny conditions, they're always with a phone in their hand.
So yeah, if you're going 20 in a 35mph area, you are technically safer since 20mph has a lot less energy if you hit something than 35.
I suppose if the goal is to lower the speed limit, yeah, allowing cellphones will probably do it because you'll end up with sufficient users going slow enough to hold up traffic so the 90 percentile speed would drop. Do it right and you can drop a road from 35mph to 30, then 25, then 20 or so.
That would improve safety quite a bit.
Actually, they could very well be close.
Benjamin Mako Hill analyzed his email records and found that Google handled over half of his personal email. It doesn't matter that he runs his own mail server or anything, Google still acquired half of his personal correspondence - sending OR receiving.
Sure they don't have a monopoly, but if everyone else has similar statistics, it means Google handles roughly 1 in 2 non-spam non-autogenerated, non-mailing list email.
Heck, many legitimate companies I've seen lately (usually Chinese ones) use Gmail addresses. Usually along the lines of user-company@gmail.com or company-user@gmail.com.
Why?
Part of Kickstarter's success and the whole "crowdfunding" thing is that people make an "investment" (in quotes since there's no real financial benefit) is that people need to be able to decide for themselves.
It doesn't matter if you're buying stocks, bonds, foreign currency, microloans, Kickstarter projects, whatever. You, as the source of money have to do your due diligence. If it seems scammy, well, close the tab and move on. Or invest only the money you can afford to lose.
It doesn't matter if you're investing in this, a blue-chip company, Apple/Microsoft/Google, or whatever. You invest as much as you're willing to lose.
On the whole risk thing, well, Kickstarter is a bit riskier, and there are many non-scams that simply failed to deliver as well. Just like there are tons of companies out there with interesting technology that also fail to deliver.
Work bough an Asus Zenbook Prime, one of the BEST Ultrabooks out there. Dollar for dollar, it beats the Macbook Air at its own game. Spec sheet wise, ditto - it simply outclassed it in every way we could measure - for the same price, you got a computer with a higher res screen, good construction, etc.
But you know what? The power cable broke off the adapter! We ended up with an interesting jury rigged thing involving a Kingston Traveller power supply and lots of pigtails until our hardware technician saw the mess, and redid it nicely with solder and heatshrink tubing making a nice cable.
Oh, and the keyboard cable works itself out every couple of weeks or so - you'll notice it when it starts misses letters when you type, or the power button goes flaky. Then it's undo the (what used to be what, 10-15 screws and is down to half that because you lose one every time you open it) re-seat the keyboard cable, then seal it up and it's good to go for another couple of weeks.
We made the mistake of sending it in once for that fault, took a couple of months to get back to us.
Other than a keyboard that doesn't type, and a power adapter that had to be replaced, it's a nice machine. The Macbook Airs we used inhouse died because the owners wanted to take it swimming or were a bit tipsy with their beer.
And why did we have the Asus around? It was issued to a manager who didn't want another Macbook Air. Ironically, in the end, he ended up with a Macbook Air to replace it.
Nice machine, but if Apple had keyboards that died that frequently, there would be a national scandal that would have Tim Cook keel hauled in front of Congress to explain himself.
As for the Apple store crowd? Most I've seen were shopping, there was a good chunk (at least a third) were actually in for some training or other courses, or were getting help setting up their new machine (including some brave ones who brought their PCs with them). Genius Bar is packed with people wanting to fix their iPhones and iPads it seems, or a simple software fault that they happily back up your data, reinstall, and restore. I'm sure Geek Squad and the like all over the place get their share of PCs brought in, and they're a helluva lot less friendly than Geniuses.
Practically speaking, almost all shark attacks on humans are accidental. We're just not that tasty to a Great White. More often than not, said shark saw you as a tasty sea lion or seal and wanted a snack.
Of course, it doesn't help that said animals generally are black, and people like to wear dark swim clothes (wetsuits, etc) making humans appear to be said food.
Of course, you could also try to befriend some dolphins, who do seem to be the shark's worst enemy. Or at least dolphins appear to repel sharks for whatever reason.
Nope, and to be honest, they even have a handy "auto login" link that puts your password in the URL.
To be certain, well, there's nothing at risk for /. - so what - someone can post as yourself? I've been to worse sites that demanded way more stringent policies for far less than what /. offers.
Actually, they can't read all messages. Even RIM can't read all messages.
There are two modes a Blackberry can work in - BES mode and BIS mode. BES mode is when your Blackberry is attached to a Blackberry Enterprise Server machine. What happens in this case is all traffic between your phone and BES is encrypted with a per-device key known only to BES and your phone. While your phone forwards traffic to RIM (or a country server), that traffic is encrypted using that key, and no one handling the traffic between your phone and BES can see it. Basically your phone sends data to RIM, and RIM forwards it onto your BES server, but RIM cannot see the traffic as the keys are held by BES and the phone.
In BIS mode (Blackberry Internet Service, I think) which is the "consumer" mode of operation, RIM etc., hold the keys. Your traffic is encrypted by the phone and decrypted by RIM before being sent on the general Internet (unencypted). The only people who cannot see the traffic is the carriers and gateways between the carrier and RIM.
The country servers that do the decryption can decrypt in this mode as well, for obvious reasons.
It's a fairly secure setup, as long as you're attached to BES. The phones you buy from a carrier and you enter your POP or IMAP information into? Not so much.
Don't forget their ad business. Google Ads, AdMob, DoubleClick, etc.
You can bet most ads distributed are provided by Google or a company owned by Google whom Google seems to distance themselves from.
I mean, Google Ads, Google DoubleClick, Google AdMob, ...
And wasn't it Google Nest that introduced "innovative" ad media, like say, thermostats?
Or the "smart" software developer who sees Apples and Googles and Microsfots charging 30% for their app store, and thinking they can just "save the money" and "do it themselves".
After all, it's just a few web servers, HTML and anyone can download Ubuntu and get it working. And after you set it up once, it's all you need. Right?
Why pay Apple/Google/Microsoft 30% when you can do it yourself? After all, it's just a one-time set up cost and then the devs can get back to developing the product, the site doesn't need maintenance or anything.
iAds? They're a joke. First, Apple doesn't give out customer information - at least not to the extent the competition (i.e., Google/AdMob) does. And the exorbitant buy in fee?
To be honest, I think the ONLY reason Apple has iAds is because Google is paying Apple off. Remember when the DoJ was investigating Google's purchase of AdMob? What did they see as "competition"? Yes, iAds.
Now, given AdMob's practically 99% marketshare (they do web, app, etc advertising on Android, iOS, Windows Phone, ...) versus iAds practically nil marketshare (and only on iOS),
I can't even see iAds being a significant revenue source for Apple, and Apple's killed projects that did more. (To be honest, the only iAds I see are ads about... iAds)
Steve Jobs introduced iAds to the world back in 2010 as part of the iOS 5 or something release. I don't know about you, but 4 years later, there's no business reason to have it. Sure, NIH, maybe, but given its rather pathetic performance (Apple's letting devs use it to advertise their apps too, now, and yet I don't see it happening), you'd think Apple would shutter it. The fact they're not probably indicates a backrrom deal. Probably Google pays Apple enough money to keep it running as part of the whole Google default payment.
The easiest way to get a customer's permission is to simply do what Google did and "unify" the privacy policy of everything.
Google did it to enable sharing of data between services. Google can easily do it again. And you can bet Google did it "with the customer's permission" because well, the alternative was giving it all up - either you agree ("give permission") or you don't (close your account).
Given a choice like this, Google will get 99% of the permission they require. And Google can easily do it again - by asking customers agree to the new privacy policy or give persmission to do so. Yes, the thermostat would work, and the camera would work, but the most compelling features of it won't until you agree. So you'll just end up with a very expensive dumb thermostat, and an IP camera. No features like easy to use remote control, remote monitoring, etc. (Of course, you could buy the same much cheaper from someone else, but the enhanced features you bought it for require the new agreement).
That's the real reason why the words are useless - because it's REALLY easy to get "permission" when you force the customer's hand by withdrawing the features they know and love until they agree. And they'll click "Agree" just to get their remote control/monitoring features back.
The problem is, the drones that are available to the military are widely varied - from 1-2 lb tiny surveillance ones that are tossed like a paper plane (and they go smaller, too, think toy helicopter, but they're packed full of tech and can cost upwards of $10,000 each), to 18 lb ones with launchers to your predators on upwards. To hundred pound beats, etc.
Add in your quadrotors and really, if you give a weight range, there's a drone in inventory or a defense company has it in their catalog.
There's a drone for every purpose and desire in the military.
Wow, exactly right.
The other problem is loud pipes spew low frequency noise, which is highly non-directional. All you know is there's a bike around. You don't know where, you don't know how far, that's it.
To properly engage human direction finding requires a noise far higher in frequency - around 2-8 kHz or so, which most human hearing is well attuned to (since it's where a good chunk of human vocalizations are at).
Of course, this means your loud thumper pipes are turned into loud grandmother nagging pipes.
Also, in urban areas, the loud pipes reverberate for miles - and drivers (and the rest of the people in the area) simply tune it out, making them even worse than useless - the people who you want to hear you automatically tune you out because they've been hearing the noise for so long. Counterproductive.
Most people I've seen with loud pipes have 'em so they can goose the throttle when the light turns green and spew out 170db SPL to show off. The only time I've seen them not do this is when there's congestion and they don't have the wide open roads to accelerate.
Nothing beats visibility - including the clothes. And driving/riding responsibly - if there's places where a car can suddenly pop out because of a hidden driveway, then even car drivers slow down because a car and suddenly pop out on them.
Part of the problem is Google itself - when Android was released, the only place you could buy apps was in the US, which mean everywhere else trying to hit Google Marketplace was restricted to seeing free apps. Which means developers end up writing free apps loaded with advertising and having to request every damn permission to get that advertising module to run. Because they needed it free. In fact, comparisons between the various app stores showed the end result - Google Marketplace had approximately 50+% apps that were free, while Apple, Microsoft and Blackberry were averaging 25%.
So between advertising supported app models, the whole freemium thing also originated on Android because those apps could easily set up a Paypal account to handle in-app purchases.
End result today is that if an app is free, it's going to rape your data for advertising purposes. If you're lucky, the developer has an ad-free version available.
Of course, there are also some really strange permissions like "Read phone state and identity" which is needed if you just wanted to ensure that you went away if the phone rang.
Well, let's see how Apple does it.
When you activate a phone, it gets associated with an Apple ID. That Apple ID is required to erase, restore, and recover a phone. But only initially - to get to a stage just before running the new phone setup. So when you erase, restore or recover for sale, iTunes will ask for the old Apple ID before it lets you continue. Once that's entered, the phone can then be associated with a new Apple ID.
So that takes care of the simple "just format the hard drive" style solution - to initiate the process on the phone requires entering the Apple ID, and attempting to bypass it using DFU mode requires entering an Apple ID before iTunes will unlock the OS. Once unlocked, it's free to associate with a new Apple ID (allowing you to sell/transfer it).
That's one method. The other one is logging into iCloud, clicking "Find my iPhone", then clicking "Erase", which erases the phone's data and pops up the dialog asking for the Apple ID.
The common thread is you need an account - and if that account is compromised, you're SOL. But it's the same for Google or Microsoft - you'll need a Google/Gmail account, or a Microsoft Live account.
Not done through the carriers or anything (except maybe the Verizon Samsung phones).
Now, what happens if the person dies/etc. and the devices lock? Well, for Apple, you need to get your evidence and file a court order so Apple can unlock it. Presenting the evidence to Apple doesn't work so presumably the courts will verify the documents aren't forged and that also raises the effort required from simple document forgery to actually having to go to court. It's worth it for family members (I can buy an iPad for myself, but the iPad my aunt had is special it's something I can remember her by).
And since Apple did it, if it falsely locked continually, well, we'd have heard about it within days of the iOS 7 release.
The only real annoyance is when you're debugging something and continually restoring it - where you have to keep entering in your Apple ID.
I see it as people looking for government conspiracy where there isn't any.
Because it doesn't make sense.
First of all, there's a source code audit taking place. The source code audit has shown the binaries match the source, eliminating the possibility that the binaries were built with different source.
Second, it's open-source. If a backdoor is put in the code, it would be in the commits. I'd love to be able to make a change and not have it show up when someone does a diff, but that's not how the tools work, and quite an impressive feat if you can take a version with a backdoor, and a version without, do a diff, and have it come up with no changes in the source code.
And what, a new release happens, and people WON'T do a diff with the previous release?
Now, there are two vulnerabilities that would not be caught. Like the audit team is overlooking a backdoor on purpose. Perhaps they are and are overlooking a backdoor on purpose. But then the code is out there, and it would mean everyone doing the audit will have to be compromised. Including those who are looking through the code themselves at home.
The only other likely scenario is the compilers used to build the binaries are compromised. Possible, and still impressive.
The far more likely scenario is the audit found no big issues (as announced), but numerous little ones (as there will inevitably be). Perhaps fixing those issues overwhelmed the devs, or perhaps some issues just cannot be fixed cleanly without making a million little changes everywhere.
It seems way more likely that developers simply gave up and got bored. After all, open-source works great if you have itches that need scratching, but fails miserably when things need to be done but they aren't itches (e.g., documentation, bug fixing (unless it's needed), etc.). Hell, even in regular software development everyone knows developers would rather work on new features rather than bug fixes or code maintenance (and it's always a perennial problem on how to encourage developers to take on the more mundane stuff).
So TrueCrypt probably just suffered from developer burnout - they're fixing bugs and not really getting anywhere doing so.
Depends. "Given" just means something is passed onto someone. "Gifted" means something (an object only) is passed onto to someone as a gift. It's a more specific, more concise word.
You give gifts (or you gifted someone something). You give CPR (you don't gift it - the action is not something you can give to someone else. You TRAIN people in CPR). I was given a DVD from my friend who lent it to me.
Gifted is NOT a synonym for given. To gift something means to give them some _thing_ to someone without expectations of anything in return (i.e., a gift). But to be given something doesn't tell squat about what you received - perhaps it was loaned out to you, or you expected it as the result of something else (I asked my co worker for a thumbdrive, he gave me his).
In fact, there are two distinct meanings. See this example - "The barista gave me the coffee" vs. "The barista gifted me the coffee". They don't mean the same thing. The former means well, I got a coffee, perhaps because I ordered it and paid for it. The latter means I got a coffee "on the house" or it was complimentary.
In this case, "given" would be unspecific - was he given the ICs because it was his job and never returned them? Or was he gifted them which mean unquestionably that they are his to do as he wishes?