Re:What's good for others apparently is no good fo
on
Break Microsoft Up
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· Score: 3, Informative
I'd say that they at least deserved credit for Kinect.
Well, they bought the Kinect... so if the extent of Microsoft's 'innovation' is technology they buy, then yes. But in terms of a single really ground breaking piece of technology Microsoft developed in-house, it's much harder to think of recent examples.
Yes, the Kinect is a pretty good system, but let's not lose sight of the fact that it was purchased technology. All this means is Microsoft is still rich enough and occasionally observant enough to pick up technology other people have created.
In terms of their own creation of products from scratch -- I don't think their recent track record is all that impressive. Sure, they've got bazillions of dollars and can keep buying stuff, but as an innovative technology company goes, they've proven a little stagnant recently. Their tablets, phones, Windows 8... none of those are doing anywhere near as well as a company the size of Microsoft would expect, and Microsoft s bordering on being a bit player in the mobile market.
Re:What's good for others apparently is no good fo
on
Break Microsoft Up
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· Score: 4, Insightful
classic old-school, google gets praise for the chromecast, for having an OS, for being in mobile, being in search, being in social networks.. and that's all good. Apple ditto.. but not acceptable for MS.
I don't think anybody is saying Microsoft shouldn't be allowed to continue as a single entity with their current strategy. They're saying it's not proving to be a very good strategy, and that the entity known as Microsoft might be more profitable if it was broken into several things.
See, Apple and Google seem to be able to execute on their strategies. But Microsoft is so concerned about cutting into sales off Office or their desktop OSes that some of their other offerings aren't doing so well.
classic old-school, google gets praise for the chromecast, for having an OS, for being in mobile, being in search, being in social networks.. and that's all good. Apple ditto.. but not acceptable for MS.
Yes, but has it been working for them? Because, arguably, the Windows Phone and the Windows tablets aren't selling overly well, Windows 8 itself is proving a little lackluster, and Microsoft has generally been stuck doing "me too" for years.
So, either they need to start making different decisions (like allowing one division to do stuff that isn't dictated by another), start dropping products which are underperforming... or split into multiple divisions so that they can be separate businesses and actually try to thrive.
But I think it's hard to not come to the conclusion that something about how Microsoft is doing their strategy is causing some of their products to be selling terribly.
The "lose money on everything but make it up on volume" works when you're a hugely rich company, but it's still a terrible strategy.
Re:Good news for stockholders
on
Ballmer To Retire
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· Score: 3, Interesting
What about other wholly valid choices, like malicious, insane, or sadistic?
I'm giving him the benefit of the doubt that, as CEO, he actually did intend to make the company do better.
If someone truly wanted to put a company like Microsoft into the shitter, it's do-able, but takes a lot of effort. And you have to assume there are other people around who would be trying to stop it.
So, to me at least, it comes down to if Microsoft going forward is going to be capable of truly understanding what aspects of successful products people want, and actually being able to execute on delivering that. In the past, Microsoft has usually missed the boat on the execution and kept coming back to "Office + Outlook" as the entire purpose behind computers.
It's like when the first iMacs came out -- people rushed to put Windows machines in lovely candy colored cases, but underneath was the same old crashy turd. It wasn't just the bright colored cases that made it successful, it was the actual user experience.
If you only copy the superficial stuff and think that's close enough, you may never actually understand why your product isn't doing as well -- because all you see is that you also have a tangerine colored case, and people clearly want tangerine colored cases, so why aren't they buying your tangerine colored case?
If you don't realize that customers don't like the toxic fumes and broken glass in your product, you keep looking at the case. They're not just buying your competitor for the pretty case, but because they don't want the toxic fumes and broken glass you're giving them.
And I think it's that where Microsoft has been missing the plot the last few years.
The increase of free-to-play online gaming across all platforms over the years 'have opened the doors to micro-transactions in-game.
I've always avoided any game which relies on these in-game purchases.
Firstly, because I'm cheap and have no interest in having to pay for baubles in a video game with real money. But second, because I don't necessarily trust that companies put enough effort into safe-guarding my financial information -- they put a lot of work in the glossy bits and setting up a way to get my money, but they're not as interested in keeping it secure.
If you know that a system has a vast number of credit card details stored in it, it's going to be an attractive target, because any exploit of it is going to yield a lot of stuff. In this case, it's a big giant database of credit cards and names, stored by a company who may or may not have put enough effort into protecting that.
This is why I'm of the opinion that companies need both restrictions on the kind of data they collect and use, but also some steep penalties for failure to safeguard it once they have it.
If someone can do an incompetent job of security and have their users be the ones affected by it, it has to be a lot more than "ooops, sorry".
But it is the one written as "Oh, isn't it interesting that..." in the summary. I don't like *wink-nudge* suggestions like that in scientific summaries. Just say it's unrelated.
Except, can we conclusively say it's unrelated??
Certainly the two events were correlated -- if the CME happened at pretty much the same time as the comet impact, it's definitely interesting to note that.
I mean, what are the odds that at mostly the same time you're seeing the one event, the other has just happened? In all likelihood the comet didn't have enough mass to have any affect on the sun, but it's definitely not obvious why the two events should happen so closely together.
If I crash my car into a lamp post, and at that same time the building next to me explodes... it's hard not to think "WTF happened here?". You wouldn't expect my impact with the lamp post to have enough energy or connection to the exploding building but you'd certainly notice it.
So, either this is a really freak occurrence where two interesting but totally unrelated things happened at the same time (and I have no reason to believe it isn't).. or something really fascinating was at work that nobody has a clue about.
Of course, it's a completely un-testable thing since we can't just crash comets into the sun on demand... but I would definitely agree with wording at as "Interestingly", if for nothing else than the sheer coincidence of the timing when you're talking about things on an astronomical scale.
Re:Ballmer made $20 billion for investors today
on
Ballmer To Retire
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· Score: 5, Informative
It is funny that the value of MSFT with Ballmer in it is $20 Billion less than MSFT without Ballmer in it!
Today, on the initial news, based on speculative market players making trades... by next week the price of Microsoft will be fluctuating on some other random basis.
I've always found the stock market to be amusing -- because it makes huge swings on things which haven't happened yet, and by the time those things happen they've moved on to being excited/angry about something else entirely.
It's almost as if the stock market is more valuable at predicting the emotions of investors, than any actual financial factors. And in many cases, the actual financials don't seem important -- like when companies are worth more than they're going to earn for the next 20 years.
Re:Good news for stockholders
on
Ballmer To Retire
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· Score: 5, Insightful
....I swear I didn't look up the stock quote before posting. Microsoft is really up 8.5% right now.
Good guess, but I think you mostly mirrored what a lot of people think -- that clearly Ballmer hasn't fully understood the market in some places, and that Microsoft has had some misses lately.
Those are the kinds of things that, while not personally responsible for every detail, Ballmer as CEO gets to 'own' and take the blame for.
Microsoft may or may not fare better without Ballmer, but if the market watchers are looking at things which could bring Microsoft out of these doldrums, then the perception that his departure could change is bound to lift the stock.
Of course, this being the stock market, everybody is going to be buying and selling now based on what they think will be happening in 12 months or more from now -- and in 12 months, they'll be doing it based on something totally unrelated to this.
I will be interested to see if the next CEO is so arrogantly out of touch with what people want, or will continue with the standard party line of "we can do no wrong and people really want these things" even when nobody is buying them.
You know, the fact that you're both wrong AND and asshole isn't my fucking problem.
There are keys mandated by TPM which the owner does not control, and use of TPM in Win 8 isn't optional.
The entire fucking point of the article is that those keys exist, you don't control them, you can't turn TPM off in Win 8, and if you don't trust the source of this to tell you which applications the OS is going to allow you to run or not, you can't trust the entire platform.
Did you miss the whole article where the German security people are saying it's not a trustworthy platform for this exact fucking reason?
Seriously, it's YOU who don't seem to understand this. So fuck off.
People don't forget this... usually they decide it's too inconvenient and don't bother. People just get complacent over time.
But, I believe there are some exceptions where you don't need to be clipped in because there are other risks involved. Something about moving yourself and your tools making situations in which people are allowed to not be clipped in. And I'm pretty sure this kind of tower might be one of those.
Why is it that people on slashdot dont have a clue how technology works anymore?
Why is it that every smarmy little shit on Slashdot thinks everyone else is an idiot?
Don't want to run software that utilizes the TPM chip instead of some other certification method, then don't run that software.
Yes, exactly. But in this case "don't run that software" applies to Windows.
It's the OS which is utilizing the TPM, and therefore it's the OS you can't trust. What part of that are you not understanding?
This was the whole point of TFA -- since Windows 8 uses this TPM shit, and you can't turn that off, you inherently can't trust the OS. The software you stop using because you don't trust the TPM isn't your own software, it's the fucking OS.
Well, you can mitigate against the chips with some isolation onto an air-gapped network.
But having a component of your machine control your encryption keys, you can't. Because if MS has handed those over to the NSA (and there's no reason to believe they haven't), all they need to do then is try to gain access to systems they know they can decrypt. You can do more social engineering or other traditional espionage if you know you the systems exist, where they are, and have the encryption keys.
It's the stuff that is controlled by this TPM crap that you can't trust anymore, and that has a lot of ways it can be exploited. It makes the rest of the platform out of your control. An cryptography you don't control is essentially useless if there's any reason to believe you can't trust the entity who does control it.
I'm not saying you need to trust the Chinese chip makers any more than you trust Microsoft, but you can more readily mitigate against the Chinese-made chips than something which is tied into the operating system at a fundamental level.
When it comes to hardware, the only way to completely trust it is to go to where the chips are being manufactured, and study the entire design of each chip being used in whatever device you're worried about.
True as that may be, there are encryption keys stored in there that the owner of the device doesn't control.
So, if I'm building a secure environment, and I know there is a component I do not control or can't isolate (you can't disable this, remember) -- then I have to try to remove that component. That component is TPM, which is more about DRM than securing the computer for the owner.
I'd much rather trust Microsoft than some generic Chinese chip maker.
Well, have fun with that.
Due to the Patriot Act, Microsoft is no longer a trustworthy entity. In fact, no US company is anymore. Not for their cloud services, and not for any installation which needs to be secure.
If the US government wants to make US corporations an arm of their spy agencies, don't bitch and moan when other governments decide there are risks they can do without in using those products -- because unless they're willing to take MS or the NSA at their word (and, really, why would they?), they have to assume these systems are compromised.
A year or two ago when some of us were saying these cloud services were something you couldn't trust due to the Patriot Act, people were saying "oh, don't panic, it's no big deal". But since it's now patently obvious that the NSA can and does tap Microsoft to provide them some data -- I would have to say it's pretty much objective fact that, no, you really can't put trust in them beyond what you can 100% control.
You feel free to trust who you like. And the rest of the world will do the same. I'm sorry, but the US government and Microsoft have pretty much demonstrated that they're not something you can trust.
Unless one of the NSA requests was "we want a backdoor" then this by itself doesn't mean much because the NSA is a weird creation that not only spies on everyone, but has an "information assurance" department that tries to design secure systems for US usage.
But since nobody actually knows, and because if the NSA informed Microsoft to hand over the keys they'd be legally required to, and because while they help design 'secure systems for US usage' nobody trust them for anything that isn't the US.
So, it's OK if you want to trust TPM, Microsoft, and the NSA. But that doesn't mean that the rest of the world has any reason to do so.
I think you are increasingly going to see governments around the world look at Microsoft and say "do we want to put all of our infrastructure in the hands of someone who has to take orders from a US spy agency?" And I think the only logical conclusion is going to increasingly be "no, not really".
This doesn't make any sense. It's insecure because you can't NOT use TPM?
If you don't trust the security of TPM, or that it doesn't have in-built stuff the NSA can use to spy on you... then, yes, you have to consider it insecure.
It's a 'secure' system you don't control, which means if you need a secure environment, you need to trust a 3rd party.
If that 3rd party is Microsoft, who we know is beholden to the NSA -- then you betcherass it's considered insecure. Essentially, the German security people are saying "we don't trust Microsoft or the NSA/US government" -- therefore the entire platform is considered not secure.
One of the biggest complaints about TPM is that you have to explicitly trust whoever controls the keys and the like. And if you don't control it, and don't trust the 3rd party, the whole thing is garbage.
So, it makes perfect sense -- because TPM has never been about the users ability to define their own trust, it's about the manufacturer saying "you're going to have to trust us or not use our stuff". So, not using their stuff is the logical conclusion.
Only if they're morons and don't understand that cloning isn't miraculous resurrection of an individual.
I think you seriously underestimate just how much people don't understand cloning.
You're not getting Duncan Idaho here, you're getting some poor schmuck who is forever going to be pestered and annoyed by the comparison to John Lennon. Or he'll figure out he can make money off it, and you'll see the most cynical, jaded bastard imaginable -- "fine, I'll wear the glasses and do the accent, just give me my appearance fee".
Not necessarily.. if they're doing something equivalent to a poll where they can make predictions they might be able to paint trends.
If they're just saying "wow, there's a really happy person here it must be a happy place", not so much.
As you say, it's Twitter, and it definitely isn't representative of everybody. That doesn't mean that people don't pay attention to it for reasons I've never quite understood.
If you aren't just trolling then it may be defective.
LOL, no, I'm not trolling... and, yes, we've concluded that it's defective, just maybe not in the way you mean. For the stuff she runs on it, it has been a horrible mess, and I frequently get glared at since I'm the one who bought it for her.
The battery lasts for weeks with light use.
She found after one of the last updates they gave her battery life went up by quite a bit. But mostly she finds the hanging and crashing drives her insane.
If you would like to still use it I would suggest reinstalling the OS clean and see if it doesn't clear up.
Might try it. She only uses it occasionally, and increasingly it's looking like we'd probably just chuck it and get her an Android tablet or something. Just on sheer weight of the device alone, the PlayBook isn't such a great choice compared to my Nexus 7.
We're likely talking about shovelware, which doesn't really do much. If you just crank out an endless stream of nearly identical apps... well, you can produce useless garbage much faster than that.
Do you really think this 47k useful, well thought out apps that have any meaningful functionality? Me, I figure he's made a crap ton on minor variants of a handful of apps and submitted them.
This sounds more like the PT Barnum school of application development.
Putting this number in some perspective, the oldest person ever lived for 44724 days. So nobody would reach 47k applications at one per day.
Maybe not 'real' applications, but the 'give me some money, advertising revenue, and access to your personal information' things.
This is not too different from pushing penny stocks -- they're mostly worthless, but if you can convince someone else to buy it from you, you can still make money.
And it sounds like BB is perfectly willing to allow this to happen, likely so they can have the illusion that there are in fact apps for the platform.
I think it pretty much sums up their current state -- dying, and desperately hoping that someone else will write something to make their platform compelling.
Slashdot Mirror
Well, they bought the Kinect ... so if the extent of Microsoft's 'innovation' is technology they buy, then yes. But in terms of a single really ground breaking piece of technology Microsoft developed in-house, it's much harder to think of recent examples.
Yes, the Kinect is a pretty good system, but let's not lose sight of the fact that it was purchased technology. All this means is Microsoft is still rich enough and occasionally observant enough to pick up technology other people have created.
In terms of their own creation of products from scratch -- I don't think their recent track record is all that impressive. Sure, they've got bazillions of dollars and can keep buying stuff, but as an innovative technology company goes, they've proven a little stagnant recently. Their tablets, phones, Windows 8 ... none of those are doing anywhere near as well as a company the size of Microsoft would expect, and Microsoft s bordering on being a bit player in the mobile market.
I don't think anybody is saying Microsoft shouldn't be allowed to continue as a single entity with their current strategy. They're saying it's not proving to be a very good strategy, and that the entity known as Microsoft might be more profitable if it was broken into several things.
See, Apple and Google seem to be able to execute on their strategies. But Microsoft is so concerned about cutting into sales off Office or their desktop OSes that some of their other offerings aren't doing so well.
Yes, but has it been working for them? Because, arguably, the Windows Phone and the Windows tablets aren't selling overly well, Windows 8 itself is proving a little lackluster, and Microsoft has generally been stuck doing "me too" for years.
So, either they need to start making different decisions (like allowing one division to do stuff that isn't dictated by another), start dropping products which are underperforming ... or split into multiple divisions so that they can be separate businesses and actually try to thrive.
But I think it's hard to not come to the conclusion that something about how Microsoft is doing their strategy is causing some of their products to be selling terribly.
The "lose money on everything but make it up on volume" works when you're a hugely rich company, but it's still a terrible strategy.
I'm giving him the benefit of the doubt that, as CEO, he actually did intend to make the company do better.
If someone truly wanted to put a company like Microsoft into the shitter, it's do-able, but takes a lot of effort. And you have to assume there are other people around who would be trying to stop it.
So, to me at least, it comes down to if Microsoft going forward is going to be capable of truly understanding what aspects of successful products people want, and actually being able to execute on delivering that. In the past, Microsoft has usually missed the boat on the execution and kept coming back to "Office + Outlook" as the entire purpose behind computers.
It's like when the first iMacs came out -- people rushed to put Windows machines in lovely candy colored cases, but underneath was the same old crashy turd. It wasn't just the bright colored cases that made it successful, it was the actual user experience.
If you only copy the superficial stuff and think that's close enough, you may never actually understand why your product isn't doing as well -- because all you see is that you also have a tangerine colored case, and people clearly want tangerine colored cases, so why aren't they buying your tangerine colored case?
If you don't realize that customers don't like the toxic fumes and broken glass in your product, you keep looking at the case. They're not just buying your competitor for the pretty case, but because they don't want the toxic fumes and broken glass you're giving them.
And I think it's that where Microsoft has been missing the plot the last few years.
I've always avoided any game which relies on these in-game purchases.
Firstly, because I'm cheap and have no interest in having to pay for baubles in a video game with real money. But second, because I don't necessarily trust that companies put enough effort into safe-guarding my financial information -- they put a lot of work in the glossy bits and setting up a way to get my money, but they're not as interested in keeping it secure.
If you know that a system has a vast number of credit card details stored in it, it's going to be an attractive target, because any exploit of it is going to yield a lot of stuff. In this case, it's a big giant database of credit cards and names, stored by a company who may or may not have put enough effort into protecting that.
This is why I'm of the opinion that companies need both restrictions on the kind of data they collect and use, but also some steep penalties for failure to safeguard it once they have it.
If someone can do an incompetent job of security and have their users be the ones affected by it, it has to be a lot more than "ooops, sorry".
Except, can we conclusively say it's unrelated??
Certainly the two events were correlated -- if the CME happened at pretty much the same time as the comet impact, it's definitely interesting to note that.
I mean, what are the odds that at mostly the same time you're seeing the one event, the other has just happened? In all likelihood the comet didn't have enough mass to have any affect on the sun, but it's definitely not obvious why the two events should happen so closely together.
If I crash my car into a lamp post, and at that same time the building next to me explodes ... it's hard not to think "WTF happened here?". You wouldn't expect my impact with the lamp post to have enough energy or connection to the exploding building but you'd certainly notice it.
So, either this is a really freak occurrence where two interesting but totally unrelated things happened at the same time (and I have no reason to believe it isn't) .. or something really fascinating was at work that nobody has a clue about.
Of course, it's a completely un-testable thing since we can't just crash comets into the sun on demand ... but I would definitely agree with wording at as "Interestingly", if for nothing else than the sheer coincidence of the timing when you're talking about things on an astronomical scale.
Today, on the initial news, based on speculative market players making trades ... by next week the price of Microsoft will be fluctuating on some other random basis.
I've always found the stock market to be amusing -- because it makes huge swings on things which haven't happened yet, and by the time those things happen they've moved on to being excited/angry about something else entirely.
It's almost as if the stock market is more valuable at predicting the emotions of investors, than any actual financial factors. And in many cases, the actual financials don't seem important -- like when companies are worth more than they're going to earn for the next 20 years.
Good guess, but I think you mostly mirrored what a lot of people think -- that clearly Ballmer hasn't fully understood the market in some places, and that Microsoft has had some misses lately.
Those are the kinds of things that, while not personally responsible for every detail, Ballmer as CEO gets to 'own' and take the blame for.
Microsoft may or may not fare better without Ballmer, but if the market watchers are looking at things which could bring Microsoft out of these doldrums, then the perception that his departure could change is bound to lift the stock.
Of course, this being the stock market, everybody is going to be buying and selling now based on what they think will be happening in 12 months or more from now -- and in 12 months, they'll be doing it based on something totally unrelated to this.
I will be interested to see if the next CEO is so arrogantly out of touch with what people want, or will continue with the standard party line of "we can do no wrong and people really want these things" even when nobody is buying them.
You know, the fact that you're both wrong AND and asshole isn't my fucking problem.
There are keys mandated by TPM which the owner does not control, and use of TPM in Win 8 isn't optional.
The entire fucking point of the article is that those keys exist, you don't control them, you can't turn TPM off in Win 8, and if you don't trust the source of this to tell you which applications the OS is going to allow you to run or not, you can't trust the entire platform.
Did you miss the whole article where the German security people are saying it's not a trustworthy platform for this exact fucking reason?
Seriously, it's YOU who don't seem to understand this. So fuck off.
My understanding was TPM became mandatory with Win 8, and in previous versions was optional.
It's the non-optional part that is the problem. Microsoft made it mandatory, and that changed quite a bit.
So, if you deem TPM isn't trustworthy, it makes Win 8 not trustworthy.
People don't forget this ... usually they decide it's too inconvenient and don't bother. People just get complacent over time.
But, I believe there are some exceptions where you don't need to be clipped in because there are other risks involved. Something about moving yourself and your tools making situations in which people are allowed to not be clipped in. And I'm pretty sure this kind of tower might be one of those.
Why is it that every smarmy little shit on Slashdot thinks everyone else is an idiot?
Yes, exactly. But in this case "don't run that software" applies to Windows.
It's the OS which is utilizing the TPM, and therefore it's the OS you can't trust. What part of that are you not understanding?
This was the whole point of TFA -- since Windows 8 uses this TPM shit, and you can't turn that off, you inherently can't trust the OS. The software you stop using because you don't trust the TPM isn't your own software, it's the fucking OS.
Well, you can mitigate against the chips with some isolation onto an air-gapped network.
But having a component of your machine control your encryption keys, you can't. Because if MS has handed those over to the NSA (and there's no reason to believe they haven't), all they need to do then is try to gain access to systems they know they can decrypt. You can do more social engineering or other traditional espionage if you know you the systems exist, where they are, and have the encryption keys.
It's the stuff that is controlled by this TPM crap that you can't trust anymore, and that has a lot of ways it can be exploited. It makes the rest of the platform out of your control. An cryptography you don't control is essentially useless if there's any reason to believe you can't trust the entity who does control it.
I'm not saying you need to trust the Chinese chip makers any more than you trust Microsoft, but you can more readily mitigate against the Chinese-made chips than something which is tied into the operating system at a fundamental level.
No, just an abomination. ;-)
True as that may be, there are encryption keys stored in there that the owner of the device doesn't control.
So, if I'm building a secure environment, and I know there is a component I do not control or can't isolate (you can't disable this, remember) -- then I have to try to remove that component. That component is TPM, which is more about DRM than securing the computer for the owner.
Well, have fun with that.
Due to the Patriot Act, Microsoft is no longer a trustworthy entity. In fact, no US company is anymore. Not for their cloud services, and not for any installation which needs to be secure.
If the US government wants to make US corporations an arm of their spy agencies, don't bitch and moan when other governments decide there are risks they can do without in using those products -- because unless they're willing to take MS or the NSA at their word (and, really, why would they?), they have to assume these systems are compromised.
A year or two ago when some of us were saying these cloud services were something you couldn't trust due to the Patriot Act, people were saying "oh, don't panic, it's no big deal". But since it's now patently obvious that the NSA can and does tap Microsoft to provide them some data -- I would have to say it's pretty much objective fact that, no, you really can't put trust in them beyond what you can 100% control.
You feel free to trust who you like. And the rest of the world will do the same. I'm sorry, but the US government and Microsoft have pretty much demonstrated that they're not something you can trust.
But since nobody actually knows, and because if the NSA informed Microsoft to hand over the keys they'd be legally required to, and because while they help design 'secure systems for US usage' nobody trust them for anything that isn't the US.
So, it's OK if you want to trust TPM, Microsoft, and the NSA. But that doesn't mean that the rest of the world has any reason to do so.
I think you are increasingly going to see governments around the world look at Microsoft and say "do we want to put all of our infrastructure in the hands of someone who has to take orders from a US spy agency?" And I think the only logical conclusion is going to increasingly be "no, not really".
If you don't trust the security of TPM, or that it doesn't have in-built stuff the NSA can use to spy on you ... then, yes, you have to consider it insecure.
It's a 'secure' system you don't control, which means if you need a secure environment, you need to trust a 3rd party.
If that 3rd party is Microsoft, who we know is beholden to the NSA -- then you betcherass it's considered insecure. Essentially, the German security people are saying "we don't trust Microsoft or the NSA/US government" -- therefore the entire platform is considered not secure.
One of the biggest complaints about TPM is that you have to explicitly trust whoever controls the keys and the like. And if you don't control it, and don't trust the 3rd party, the whole thing is garbage.
So, it makes perfect sense -- because TPM has never been about the users ability to define their own trust, it's about the manufacturer saying "you're going to have to trust us or not use our stuff". So, not using their stuff is the logical conclusion.
I think you seriously underestimate just how much people don't understand cloning.
You're not getting Duncan Idaho here, you're getting some poor schmuck who is forever going to be pestered and annoyed by the comparison to John Lennon. Or he'll figure out he can make money off it, and you'll see the most cynical, jaded bastard imaginable -- "fine, I'll wear the glasses and do the accent, just give me my appearance fee".
Not necessarily .. if they're doing something equivalent to a poll where they can make predictions they might be able to paint trends.
If they're just saying "wow, there's a really happy person here it must be a happy place", not so much.
As you say, it's Twitter, and it definitely isn't representative of everybody. That doesn't mean that people don't pay attention to it for reasons I've never quite understood.
LOL, no, I'm not trolling ... and, yes, we've concluded that it's defective, just maybe not in the way you mean. For the stuff she runs on it, it has been a horrible mess, and I frequently get glared at since I'm the one who bought it for her.
She found after one of the last updates they gave her battery life went up by quite a bit. But mostly she finds the hanging and crashing drives her insane.
Might try it. She only uses it occasionally, and increasingly it's looking like we'd probably just chuck it and get her an Android tablet or something. Just on sheer weight of the device alone, the PlayBook isn't such a great choice compared to my Nexus 7.
True, but in my observation, once stuff gets piled onto exercise equipment, it never gets used as exercise equipment again.
My wife has one too. And it crashes, hangs, and is generally not very useful.
It's also had terrible battery life, and BB has stopped issuing updates for it.
It's a product which was DOA.
I'd say that's a very generous estimate.
We're likely talking about shovelware, which doesn't really do much. If you just crank out an endless stream of nearly identical apps ... well, you can produce useless garbage much faster than that.
Do you really think this 47k useful, well thought out apps that have any meaningful functionality? Me, I figure he's made a crap ton on minor variants of a handful of apps and submitted them.
This sounds more like the PT Barnum school of application development.
Maybe not 'real' applications, but the 'give me some money, advertising revenue, and access to your personal information' things.
This is not too different from pushing penny stocks -- they're mostly worthless, but if you can convince someone else to buy it from you, you can still make money.
And it sounds like BB is perfectly willing to allow this to happen, likely so they can have the illusion that there are in fact apps for the platform.
I think it pretty much sums up their current state -- dying, and desperately hoping that someone else will write something to make their platform compelling.
Sounds like how I've heard meth described. I've also heard it's awesome for weight loss too.
Do the mice feel the need to take apart their exercise wheel?
Bah, why have a six pack when you can have an entire keg? ;-)