How long before we have Minority Report type crimes?
"Sir, you're going to have to have to come with us. Our metadata surveillance indicates you are likely to commit a crime, and our tracking of your phone indicates you were recently at a hardware store. We need to take you to the internment camp."
Some days I just want to turn into Reg the Blank and hide.
When they can know everything about you even when you've done nothing wrong, you're not so much free anymore as you are being allowed to pretend you are until such time as they decide to cart you off.
Could it be that Slashdot is rasist as fuck against a black president? No, it couldn't be that.
No, it isn't be that. Because nobody is talking about the color of his skin.
See, being a person who is working against your freedoms and trying to keep government activities a secret isn't an issue of the color of your skin.
It's an issue of your integrity and your campaign promises. If your president isn't working to improve or maintain your liberties, he's working against them.
We're not seeing a whole lot of 'audacity of hope' these days. We're seeing someone who is helping reduce your freedoms and curtail your press from telling people what it is they're actually doing when that might be illegal.
This is very much a "meet the new boss, same as the old boss" kind of thing.
This pretty well describes the stock market. I buy a piece of the company, and if they make profits they give dividends (or the price increases and I can sell some or all of my stock to make money as well).
No, that's how the stock market used to work.
Now people expect to buy a stock, and have it grow linearly so they can sell it.
The stock market has become so horrible separated from fundamentals as to make it unrelated to the performance of the company. A company can have a good quarter but the stock goes down because they didn't have as good of a quarter as the analysts had predicted.
It used to be you bought a stock, and held onto it. If they were profitable they might pay dividends. Over time, the stock could go up.
Now investors just demand that the stock always goes up. The stock market has become a whole lot stranger over the years, and no longer has anything to do with actual valuation or performance.
Wake me up when you can print from Android without problems.
Define 'without problems'. As in no problem ever, or you can mostly do it and it's not that bad?
You can use the Google cloud print, and Chrome and set your tablet up to print to a PC you control and are logged into Chrome with.
It may not be ideal, but you can print from Android without too much difficulty. In fact, it took me about 10-15 minutes to set it up for my mother in law.
I don't see Android being any better of an alternative than Windows.
Well, it has the benefit of not being Windows.
Android has quite a bit of fragmentation
Buy the Google branded products. That's precisely why I bought a Nexus 7, so I didn't have to worry about vendors taking forever to roll out updates.
has malware and exploit issues (I have some sort of pesky nuisance-ware on my Android phone, apparently from installing some free game outside the Google Play ecosystem)
So, you turned off the thing which prevents you from side loading, side loaded something, and have problems with it? You can do the exact same thing in Windows. But it was you who took responsibility for that and did it. Google just provided the option to shoot yourself in the foot.
and if ends up encroaching onto the traditional desktop/laptop space --- then you are back to hardware interoperability/printer drivers/etc
Which is hardly unique to Android. But I set up cloud printing for my mother in law in about 10 minutes, and she can happily print from her tablet through to her PC.
Maybe what we need are better standards for those devices so it's not the user's problem to sort out interoperability.
Since, obviously, the fact that it uses an ARM/runs Android is evidence it's a mobile device, and not a computer.
Why is that? Because that ARM device running Android does a crap load more than the first PCs I owned.
If it's Turing complete, it's a computer. If it's got a general instruction set in the CPU, it's a computer. Running Android or being on an ARM processor doesn't magically make it not a computer.
Modern 'mobile devices' have far more computational power than any PC made 10 years ago -- and they were still called computers.
I don't understand where this arbitrary distinction of "that's not a computer" comes from. Because it's wrong.
I paid $50 to get a leather case for my Nexus 7 which has a Bluetooth keyboard and a stylus holder. I think it's made by Hipstreet or something, and I think I even just bought it at Wal Mart.
If all you want is a keyboard for your Nexus 7, it's a solved problem.
The short answer is "anything they damned well want to".
If in 10 years they need to dig up dirt on you, they'll have it. If they want to question you because you knew someone with a criminal past, they will.
They're collecting it for terrorism reasons, but using for anything else they damned well please.
So in the two times we invaded Iraq, how many of them resulted in us taking oil?
Do you know that before the second time the US went into Iraq American politicians were saying they could fund the war with sweetheart deals on oil from Iraq? It was pretty much a stated intent.
Do you know that none of the reasons for invading Iraq the second time were true? And that everyone knew they weren't true?
So, if it wasn't economics, what was the purpose of the war in Iraq? To stroke Bush's ego?
our postmodern liberal ideals dictate that it isn't up to us to judge their culture.
Alternately, your modern conservative ideals say that you'll only intervene in places which have oil and economic interests -- but anything can happen in places which don't.
The morality of government is closely tied to economics, which means they get selectively applied.
Because if we had any real and informed choice between product A whose money stays in the local economy and product B foxconn style, we'd have chosen A even if we had to fork more money.
Except Wal Mart has more or less proved that to be untrue.
See, since everyone's job has been eliminated or off-shored, most people don't have the luxury of buying ethical. They just need to buy cheap to stretch what little money they have.
Lastly, I think we'd rather have the jobs over here. ..
And Sony (a Japanese firm) would give a damn about that why?
Obviously, they've done the math, and even with all of the shipping costs, it's cheaper to have someone in China who gets paid very little than it would be to have people in places where wages are higher do the work.
And I'm sure they'll just say "hey, we're complying with local labor laws, we're the good guys".
Any executive worth his/her weight in warm spit would look at the problems Foxconn is constantly having and give a hard second look at producing equipment in the states.
Sadly, most executives are going to say "are we still profitable? Awesome" and not give a damn.
Making the equipment in the US will likely cost more, cut down on profits, and therefore reduce executive bonuses.
The current mentality says "cheap as possible and cut as many jobs as you can". I don't see that changing any time soon.
Most executives are worth their weight in warm spit, and that's the problem.
please tell me which pipe is the correct on in this tiny fraction of a plumbing schematic for a power plant
See, if I was actually qualified for, and responsible to do that, I might try.
That I don't know how to do it is irrelevant. That they don't know is appalling.
Because every place I've worked in that had extensive piping that carried dangerous stuff... the piped were clearly labelled, and people had good schematics of them.
My dad makes hockey ice, and you can bet your ass that the pipes that carry ammonia for the cooling are all brightly labelled as such. And if the sensors detect anything, he and several other people are all getting paged to look at it right away, because an ammonia leak could wipe out a few city blocks.
Are you telling me the Japanese nuclear industry can't label pipes and keep good schematics, but people who make hockey ice are onto something new?
How do you accidentally remove the wrong pipe when you're working with nuclear stuff?
I've worked in the software and IT industry for quite a few years, and in that time I've learned that there are things you do that need to be precise, because you can make a hell of a mess if you don't. To do this, you measure twice, measure a few more times, and have your second who has been watching what you're doing confirm you're doing what you expect to be.
I learned this from maintaining production systems for business critical stuff, and a few things for which lives could literally be on the line. But at the end of the day, it's still less dangerous and critical than working on a nuclear plant.
This just sounds to me like either they're fumbling around in the dark, working from incomplete plans and don't actually know what the parts are, or are just simply not taking time to do the diligence on what they're doing.
Especially when it's your ass that's going to get splashed with highly radioactive water.
For a nation which has a reputation for fastidious attention to detail, obsessive safety drills, and engineering excellence... how the hell are they ending up with a company which has made so many 'mistakes' in this?
Once again, I have to wonder if these guys are actually qualified to be running nuclear reactors. Because this is two accidents in a few days, and I get the impression that a lot of this was also caused by human error.
OK, show of hands, how many of us want our cars to behave like smartphones?
Now, the second show of hands, how many of us think this is probably not what you want in the dash of your car?
Driving your car is not the place to be reading restaurant reviews, and once some moron can text from his dash, we'll get the same problem we have with people with their phones now. Hell, from what I can tell if you put most people in a car with the radio off, they still wouldn't be able to safely operate the car.
I don't imagine it would be long before places started outlawing using the screen in your car for some of this stuff while you're driving.
Me, I think most forms of 'infotainment' in a car is a potentially fatal combination. I see enough drivers that can't actually stay within their lane now, let alone while trying to catch up on Breaking Bad while in their car. The last thing most drivers need is even more shiny things to distract them while driving.
A coding error, which got into CVS and bypassed BitKeeper, for which there's no commit logs to account for it? And which by sheer fluke would also have been an exploit?
Sure, it could have been a coding error, but the description of how they found it and what they couldn't subsequently find would strongly suggest that this got in there by some really, er, 'unusual' mechanism.
It sounds like they did the forensics at the time, and that it didn't come in through any mechanism any of them could account for.
If I understood correctly, this didn't get into CVS from a commit, it just ended up in there. And in many years of working with CVS, I'm pretty sure I've never seen that happen.
was not the claim that someone was trying to insert a backdoor into the Linux kernel, but that that someone was the NSA, as there is zero evidence to point to any suspect
Except nobody is saying "it was the NSA".
In fact, the last sentence of TFS says
Bould this have been an NSA attack? Maybe. But there were many others who had the skill and motivation to carry out this attack,' writes Felton. 'Unless somebody confesses, or a smoking-gun document turns up, we'll never know.'
Which means all arguments which follow from the claim someone is asserting it was the NSA are horseshit, and have nothing to do with the article. Because the article isn't claiming it was the NSA, and bitching about conclusions the article didn't make are pointless.
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How long before we have Minority Report type crimes?
"Sir, you're going to have to have to come with us. Our metadata surveillance indicates you are likely to commit a crime, and our tracking of your phone indicates you were recently at a hardware store. We need to take you to the internment camp."
Some days I just want to turn into Reg the Blank and hide.
When they can know everything about you even when you've done nothing wrong, you're not so much free anymore as you are being allowed to pretend you are until such time as they decide to cart you off.
Wow, I be typing goodly today ...
No, it isn't be that. Because nobody is talking about the color of his skin.
See, being a person who is working against your freedoms and trying to keep government activities a secret isn't an issue of the color of your skin.
It's an issue of your integrity and your campaign promises. If your president isn't working to improve or maintain your liberties, he's working against them.
We're not seeing a whole lot of 'audacity of hope' these days. We're seeing someone who is helping reduce your freedoms and curtail your press from telling people what it is they're actually doing when that might be illegal.
This is very much a "meet the new boss, same as the old boss" kind of thing.
No, that's how the stock market used to work.
Now people expect to buy a stock, and have it grow linearly so they can sell it.
The stock market has become so horrible separated from fundamentals as to make it unrelated to the performance of the company. A company can have a good quarter but the stock goes down because they didn't have as good of a quarter as the analysts had predicted.
It used to be you bought a stock, and held onto it. If they were profitable they might pay dividends. Over time, the stock could go up.
Now investors just demand that the stock always goes up. The stock market has become a whole lot stranger over the years, and no longer has anything to do with actual valuation or performance.
Pretty much what I was thinking.
Then we'll have an entire market of speculators who define the price for us because they bought it six months ago.
Stupid idea.
Define 'without problems'. As in no problem ever, or you can mostly do it and it's not that bad?
You can use the Google cloud print, and Chrome and set your tablet up to print to a PC you control and are logged into Chrome with.
It may not be ideal, but you can print from Android without too much difficulty. In fact, it took me about 10-15 minutes to set it up for my mother in law.
Well, it has the benefit of not being Windows.
Buy the Google branded products. That's precisely why I bought a Nexus 7, so I didn't have to worry about vendors taking forever to roll out updates.
So, you turned off the thing which prevents you from side loading, side loaded something, and have problems with it? You can do the exact same thing in Windows. But it was you who took responsibility for that and did it. Google just provided the option to shoot yourself in the foot.
Which is hardly unique to Android. But I set up cloud printing for my mother in law in about 10 minutes, and she can happily print from her tablet through to her PC.
Maybe what we need are better standards for those devices so it's not the user's problem to sort out interoperability.
Why is that? Because that ARM device running Android does a crap load more than the first PCs I owned.
If it's Turing complete, it's a computer. If it's got a general instruction set in the CPU, it's a computer. Running Android or being on an ARM processor doesn't magically make it not a computer.
Modern 'mobile devices' have far more computational power than any PC made 10 years ago -- and they were still called computers.
I don't understand where this arbitrary distinction of "that's not a computer" comes from. Because it's wrong.
Really?
That's annoying ... the one I have still works, but that doesn't help anybody.
And, yes, I'm running Android 4.3.
You can if you want to.
I paid $50 to get a leather case for my Nexus 7 which has a Bluetooth keyboard and a stylus holder. I think it's made by Hipstreet or something, and I think I even just bought it at Wal Mart.
If all you want is a keyboard for your Nexus 7, it's a solved problem.
The short answer is "anything they damned well want to".
If in 10 years they need to dig up dirt on you, they'll have it. If they want to question you because you knew someone with a criminal past, they will.
They're collecting it for terrorism reasons, but using for anything else they damned well please.
Do you know that before the second time the US went into Iraq American politicians were saying they could fund the war with sweetheart deals on oil from Iraq? It was pretty much a stated intent.
Do you know that none of the reasons for invading Iraq the second time were true? And that everyone knew they weren't true?
So, if it wasn't economics, what was the purpose of the war in Iraq? To stroke Bush's ego?
Alternately, your modern conservative ideals say that you'll only intervene in places which have oil and economic interests -- but anything can happen in places which don't.
The morality of government is closely tied to economics, which means they get selectively applied.
Stop having all of that lovely oil?
When your former presidents are business partners with them, that tells you a little about why nobody is really pushing them on this.
Follow the money.
Except Wal Mart has more or less proved that to be untrue.
See, since everyone's job has been eliminated or off-shored, most people don't have the luxury of buying ethical. They just need to buy cheap to stretch what little money they have.
I fear this race to the bottom is far from over.
And Sony (a Japanese firm) would give a damn about that why?
Obviously, they've done the math, and even with all of the shipping costs, it's cheaper to have someone in China who gets paid very little than it would be to have people in places where wages are higher do the work.
And I'm sure they'll just say "hey, we're complying with local labor laws, we're the good guys".
Sadly, most executives are going to say "are we still profitable? Awesome" and not give a damn.
Making the equipment in the US will likely cost more, cut down on profits, and therefore reduce executive bonuses.
The current mentality says "cheap as possible and cut as many jobs as you can". I don't see that changing any time soon.
Most executives are worth their weight in warm spit, and that's the problem.
See, if I was actually qualified for, and responsible to do that, I might try.
That I don't know how to do it is irrelevant. That they don't know is appalling.
Because every place I've worked in that had extensive piping that carried dangerous stuff ... the piped were clearly labelled, and people had good schematics of them.
My dad makes hockey ice, and you can bet your ass that the pipes that carry ammonia for the cooling are all brightly labelled as such. And if the sensors detect anything, he and several other people are all getting paged to look at it right away, because an ammonia leak could wipe out a few city blocks.
Are you telling me the Japanese nuclear industry can't label pipes and keep good schematics, but people who make hockey ice are onto something new?
Sorry, not buying it.
How do you accidentally remove the wrong pipe when you're working with nuclear stuff?
I've worked in the software and IT industry for quite a few years, and in that time I've learned that there are things you do that need to be precise, because you can make a hell of a mess if you don't. To do this, you measure twice, measure a few more times, and have your second who has been watching what you're doing confirm you're doing what you expect to be.
I learned this from maintaining production systems for business critical stuff, and a few things for which lives could literally be on the line. But at the end of the day, it's still less dangerous and critical than working on a nuclear plant.
This just sounds to me like either they're fumbling around in the dark, working from incomplete plans and don't actually know what the parts are, or are just simply not taking time to do the diligence on what they're doing.
Especially when it's your ass that's going to get splashed with highly radioactive water.
For a nation which has a reputation for fastidious attention to detail, obsessive safety drills, and engineering excellence ... how the hell are they ending up with a company which has made so many 'mistakes' in this?
Once again, I have to wonder if these guys are actually qualified to be running nuclear reactors. Because this is two accidents in a few days, and I get the impression that a lot of this was also caused by human error.
The mind boggles.
Bite me. ;-)
OK, show of hands, how many of us want our cars to behave like smartphones?
Now, the second show of hands, how many of us think this is probably not what you want in the dash of your car?
Driving your car is not the place to be reading restaurant reviews, and once some moron can text from his dash, we'll get the same problem we have with people with their phones now. Hell, from what I can tell if you put most people in a car with the radio off, they still wouldn't be able to safely operate the car.
I don't imagine it would be long before places started outlawing using the screen in your car for some of this stuff while you're driving.
Me, I think most forms of 'infotainment' in a car is a potentially fatal combination. I see enough drivers that can't actually stay within their lane now, let alone while trying to catch up on Breaking Bad while in their car. The last thing most drivers need is even more shiny things to distract them while driving.
A coding error, which got into CVS and bypassed BitKeeper, for which there's no commit logs to account for it? And which by sheer fluke would also have been an exploit?
Sure, it could have been a coding error, but the description of how they found it and what they couldn't subsequently find would strongly suggest that this got in there by some really, er, 'unusual' mechanism.
It sounds like they did the forensics at the time, and that it didn't come in through any mechanism any of them could account for.
If I understood correctly, this didn't get into CVS from a commit, it just ended up in there. And in many years of working with CVS, I'm pretty sure I've never seen that happen.
It doesn't need to be corruption.
It could merely be incompetence and stupidity.
In the absence of evidence, I would be more likely to refrain from naming anybody.
Some unknown actor did it, how and for what reasons is completely unknown. Had it worked it would have resulted in a backdoor.
Listing shady entities it could have been might be a fun game, but it's meaningless. And TFS pretty much says that.
Except nobody is saying "it was the NSA".
In fact, the last sentence of TFS says
Which means all arguments which follow from the claim someone is asserting it was the NSA are horseshit, and have nothing to do with the article. Because the article isn't claiming it was the NSA, and bitching about conclusions the article didn't make are pointless.
Have you stopped beating your wife?