His apparent objective is to help the company move toward becoming a "devices and services company,"
Is this Microsoft's jumping the shark moment?
Whenever I hear of a large software company suddenly saying they're now a devices and services company, I have to wonder if they have a good grasp on what's happening.
They keep thinking they're going to move everything to the cloud and subscriptions, but I'm not sure if their customers actually want that from them.
One does have to wonder if they're not just trying to figure out what to do next to stay relevant in some segments -- but you have to be sure to not destroy the main revenue streams you already have.
Software gets slower faster than hardware gets faster
Running the same stuff, we'd see battery life go up. But for the same reason my desktop doesn't really feel that much faster than the one I had 10 years ago, I tend to agree... better batteries will just let us run what seems like the same stuff for the same amount of time.
Well, b) might be incidentally true... but I'm more inclined to believe they really were incompetent enough to let this stuff get broken into and stolen.
Some elaborate conspiracy to appear incompetent while fooling the Chinese hackers is a little harder to believe.
"We came here from another world" sounds more like an episode from Enterprise:TNG than a valid scientific theory.
It really depends on what you mean by 'we' and your stance on how life forms in the universe.
If by 'we came from another world' you mean the basic chemical precursors for life came to planet Earth through things like comets, and somewhere along the way something happened through chemical processes... sure. Because the elements in your body all came from burned up stars, so it's not like the selenium in your brain came from Earth. It ended up here from a bunch of other stuff floating around in space.
If you mean humans were transplanted here from another planet, then, yes, I'd say that sounds absurd.
and no possible way to test it until we can get to other planets and find some samples that haven't been corrupted by being on this planet
Actually, no. From TFS:
Comets contain a variety of simple molecules, such as water, ammonia, methanol and carbon dioxide, and an impact event with a planetary surface would provide an abundant supply of energy to drive chemical reactions
You can factually say that comets contain these things. We know that there's big clouds of alcohol floating around in space, for instance.
So, if you think life is simply a combination of chemical processes, a lot of time, and a lot of luck... given that the precursors are floating around in space, life (of some form) is pretty much inevitable over large enough scales if the right conditions present themselves.
At which point, saying that 'life came from stuff in space' isn't exactly a stretch.
No shit, but since it was you who suggested we could all just buy smart TVs and not hook them up to the network, telling me now that I could buy a non-smart TV seems kinda pointless.
That's wrong. It's not a simplification, it's plain wrong. He's not guilty until tried.
Well, when I file my legal brief I'll be sure to get that right, but for purposes of explaining to the person I responded to, it will suffice.
From TFS:
The decrypted contents contained child pornography, so a different judge said the direct evidence of criminal activity meant Feldman was not protected anymore by the Fifth Amendment.
So, maybe not 'guilty', but "we have evidence, so you're no longer entitled to your 5th amendment rights"... glad we cleared that up.
Agreed. I have no interest in having my TV connect to the internet.. or my fridge, or my toaster, or my toilet.
Everyone is in a big rush to say "ZOMG, it's on the intarwebs and has Facebook and Netflix", but I frequently find myself thinking "wow, what a massive security hole waiting to happen".
Vendors just want to get their product to market, and they rarely take the time to actually think about (or properly implement) security.
Every generation thinks the younger generation is the most authority phobic generation in history.
Usually because that older generation has become the authorities, and doesn't understand why the younger generation won't toe the line.
In the 60's the phrase was never trust anyone over 40. Now all of those people are wealthy and in power, and everyone still says don't trust anyone over 40.
How many ex-hippies and socialists are now accountants, CEOs and Republicans complaining about these young punks? The more you become the establishment, the less you remember what it's like to be on the other side.
I've worked in companies which have grown by acquisition before, and sometimes you end up with the head of R&D being the person who was head of R&D at the last major acquisition.
Those people frequently end up with a huge case of NIH, and any technologies they didn't oversee the creation of must be a waste of time.
So all of a sudden, your focus is on a specific type of widget instead of the general problem, and they start redirecting everyone to that.
And, for those of us who have had to listen to company roadmaps and the laughable vision for the future -- the executives who are setting strategy are often so far out of touch with reality or choose things which nobody is going to want in a few years that you wonder if they really have any clue.
Innovation by decree from corporate executives, in my experience, is usually a joke. I once sat in a presentation where the CEO was saying how in 3 years we'd all be working on something which they never got around to, and which never actually turned into the market force they'd hoped. But for about 6 months, that's all you heard about at company presentations, meanwhile the developers were rolling their eyes and laughing.
It's like a Dilbert cartoon some days. Whatever the current magic quadrant, or is the buzzword of the day is is a lousy way to drive your innovation. They might have been technical at one point, but now they're just upper management with delusions of still having their pulse on the industry.
If authorities there were behind the hack attack, it would mean that a NATO ally had attempted to spy on a U.S. citizen on U.S. soil, presumably without the knowledge or approval of U.S. authorities, and for reasons that don't appear to be related to a criminal or counter-terrorism investigation.
I'm pretty sure the US already does this -- possibly not for reasons other than criminal or counter-terrorism though.
But, really, since we know with Carnivore and pretty much everything else the US spies on NATO allies as well.
Unless we're meant to believe the US only does this on NATO allies with their express approval and oversight. Because, a t a minimum, we know the CIA has kidnapped people in Italy, a NATO member, without telling anybody.
Does anybody really think countries don't actively spy on their allies if they feel the need?
A judge initially said he was shielded from being required to decrypt due to the 5th amendment. After the police decrypted his hard drives anyway and found child porn, a second judge said that since they've already found stuff, he wasn't entitled to claim a defense against self incrimination. Basically said he would now have to decrypt because he was already guilty.
A third judge has now said that just because they cracked the encryption on some things and found incriminating evidence, it doesn't mean he's required to decrypt the rest (and in effect self incriminate).
So, he was protected by the 5th amendment, they decrypted *some* stuff, another judge said he would have to decrypt the rest (and violate his 5th amendment rights), but that judge has been overruled.
They will absolutely be able to charge him with the evidence they got when they decrypted the drives themselves. He won't get walking away. BUT, he doesn't need to help them convict him.
Again, I'm not a lawyer, but this is more about how much the accused needs to cooperate with police. In this case, he still doesn't need to cooperate, but the point might be moot, since they've already decrypted some of it.
They are NOT letting him walk away on charges of possessing child pornography. This dispute is entirely about if he is required to help the police convict him by being required to decrypt his data -- and *that* would violate his 5th amendment rights.
Perhaps this is simply due to risk-aversion: it's easier to just restrict fair-use than worry about how close to the line to get.
No, it's greed, pure and simple. Since the publishers and the copyright lobby don't believe in fair use, their position pretty much starts from there.
These are the people who want photocopiers outlawed because someone could be copying their stuff, and people who fight that people have right of first sale on books.
Pretty much uniformly, these guys all believe there shouldn't be fair use, because in their minds, it's not fair to them, and what we want doesn't matter.
If they had their way, we would have no fair use, and every time a physical copy of a book is read, they should get paid. These are the same people who equate libraries with theft.
In other words, buggy whip makers who think they should control everything.
Over 100,000 people were killed in the United States due to 1 paper that went unpublished.
Yup, the pharma companies have been well known to hide the parts that don't support their claims, and they've also been known to latch onto secondary effects if it doesn't pan out for the original intent.
I've never understood how they can skip the step where they provide all of the data for an independent body to review.
We know they're in it just for profit, and they've demonstrated they'll take short cuts (or outright lie) when it suits them.
What is stopping MS from creating an Android and/or Linux distro?
Their own pride, and probably corporate policy which says "all things must be Windows".
If Microsoft announced next week they were doing an Android or a Linux distro, their stock would probably tank because that would be interpreted as basically saying "we're losing the fight, so we're looking into other things".
I agree that Microsoft is far from dead, and are likely sitting on huge cash reserves. But I don't see Linux and Android as a way forward for them.
They'd do a better job of actually listening to what people want out of their products, instead of just releasing a much hated Win 8 only to have to reverse course with the changes in Win 8.1.
Me, I'll be curious to see how they fare with the next XBox -- because I suspect lots of people are reading these press releases and thinking "gee, that doesn't sound like what I want".
Then you're not thinking. Dealing with government systems can be a real pain in the ass, so a lot of people tend to go with an outside address just to save themselves some grief each day.
Then you have utterly failed to read and understand the article.
These aren't outside addresses -- these are secondary, government issued addresses at the exact same domains as the published ones.
This is not a case of "I will use my own email since the government infrastructure sucks" (which is still technically illegal but harder to find) -- this is setting up a second government email, and not publishing that address.
So, in the absence of any "outside email", you're wrong.
So, in context of your 'explanation' for this, explain how a second government address was used and how it differed from the first one.
Because, if you can access the second government issued email address on your smart phone, you bloody well could have accessed the first one.
See, there is no 'personal account' here. There's a second, government issued (but not published) email address. One which conveniently is difficult to track down to comply with FOIA requests.
I bet every senior executive in industry has a public facing email that their staff handles, and then a restricted email address that is disclosed only to people who he works closely with.
Under Sorbanes-Oxley, if a private corporation gets sued, they need to provide *all* relevant emails as part of discovery. That would include any restricted email addresses.
The same kind of things apply to government and the FOIA.
It seems to me this smells like the usual partisan bullshit.
Um, really? Government accountability is a partisan issue?
I don't care what side of the political spectrum you're on -- you have to follow the rules and laws, and this has the smell of being intended to skirt around those. Republican, Democrat, Communist -- just follow the damned rules.
In this case, FOIA requests failed to return the emails in these other addresses, and they didn't know how to find them all.
So, if it isn't just shady behavior, it has the net effect of hiding information because people don't know to go looking there.
Sorry, but Obama can't fix that. It would require a rewrite of current Patent law, which say that anyone who makes *or uses* a patented technology without license is infringing.
If he can ignore the 4th amendment, occasionally the 1st amendment, and target citizens for assassination why should patent law be any different?
When I buy something, I do not enter into a license with everyone who owns a patent on every aspect of what I buy. I buy a friggin' product -- the pissing contests aren't my problem.
Like I said, by the time I can walk into Wal Mart and buy something, you need to indemnify the consumer. Because at the check out, there isn't a place where I initial a license with some company I've never heard of. If the vendor isn't compliant, well, that's their problem.
So they could could engage in private conversations, and feel free to express their true opinions.
Except laws already say that all of this stuff needs to be recorded.
There is no private here. If you're doing Official Government Business, you have to comply with the law. The law says that any and all communications you do are covered under a FOIA request.
Setting up a second email account for the same person bypasses the whole process, and then you get a case like this where they have no idea if they've complied with the request or not, because nobody knew about the email account.
their comments might later be misconstrued by a journalist or lawyer that is either ignorant or unconcerned about the context
And if you hide half of the context, how would anybody ever take then in context??
Sorry, but I don't see any situation in which this is beneficial to anybody except for a bunch of political appointees trying to cover their asses, or possibly cover up questionable actions.
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Is this Microsoft's jumping the shark moment?
Whenever I hear of a large software company suddenly saying they're now a devices and services company, I have to wonder if they have a good grasp on what's happening.
They keep thinking they're going to move everything to the cloud and subscriptions, but I'm not sure if their customers actually want that from them.
One does have to wonder if they're not just trying to figure out what to do next to stay relevant in some segments -- but you have to be sure to not destroy the main revenue streams you already have.
Same idea as Wirth's Law:
Running the same stuff, we'd see battery life go up. But for the same reason my desktop doesn't really feel that much faster than the one I had 10 years ago, I tend to agree ... better batteries will just let us run what seems like the same stuff for the same amount of time.
Well, b) might be incidentally true ... but I'm more inclined to believe they really were incompetent enough to let this stuff get broken into and stolen.
Some elaborate conspiracy to appear incompetent while fooling the Chinese hackers is a little harder to believe.
Which, oddly enough, they never do.
Much of history boils down to "the world was invented by white Europeans because we wrote the history books".
People tend to downplay just how much stuff we actually knew even 2000 years ago and act like it wasn't there.
The exact same thing that happened when Apple decided not to update the original iPad ... they pissed off their early adopters, and life went on.
However, given the cost of an Apple TV versus a large HDTV screen, replacing the Apple TV is still the easier route.
It really depends on what you mean by 'we' and your stance on how life forms in the universe.
If by 'we came from another world' you mean the basic chemical precursors for life came to planet Earth through things like comets, and somewhere along the way something happened through chemical processes... sure. Because the elements in your body all came from burned up stars, so it's not like the selenium in your brain came from Earth. It ended up here from a bunch of other stuff floating around in space.
If you mean humans were transplanted here from another planet, then, yes, I'd say that sounds absurd.
Actually, no. From TFS:
You can factually say that comets contain these things. We know that there's big clouds of alcohol floating around in space, for instance.
So, if you think life is simply a combination of chemical processes, a lot of time, and a lot of luck ... given that the precursors are floating around in space, life (of some form) is pretty much inevitable over large enough scales if the right conditions present themselves.
At which point, saying that 'life came from stuff in space' isn't exactly a stretch.
No shit, but since it was you who suggested we could all just buy smart TVs and not hook them up to the network, telling me now that I could buy a non-smart TV seems kinda pointless.
Well, when I file my legal brief I'll be sure to get that right, but for purposes of explaining to the person I responded to, it will suffice.
From TFS:
So, maybe not 'guilty', but "we have evidence, so you're no longer entitled to your 5th amendment rights" ... glad we cleared that up.
Is this even a new idea?
I've heard this for quite some time now, and I thought this was a prevailing understanding.
Which is what the second judge said.
The 3rd judge came alone and said "hang on, hang on, that still violates his 5th amendment rights" and denied the order to decrypt.
Sorry, but you're wrong.
But then you'd still have to pay the extra for a smart TV that you're going to use as a dumb screen
Why would I spend more on a TV for features I don't want and don't plan to use?
Agreed. I have no interest in having my TV connect to the internet .. or my fridge, or my toaster, or my toilet.
Everyone is in a big rush to say "ZOMG, it's on the intarwebs and has Facebook and Netflix", but I frequently find myself thinking "wow, what a massive security hole waiting to happen".
Vendors just want to get their product to market, and they rarely take the time to actually think about (or properly implement) security.
Usually because that older generation has become the authorities, and doesn't understand why the younger generation won't toe the line.
In the 60's the phrase was never trust anyone over 40. Now all of those people are wealthy and in power, and everyone still says don't trust anyone over 40.
How many ex-hippies and socialists are now accountants, CEOs and Republicans complaining about these young punks? The more you become the establishment, the less you remember what it's like to be on the other side.
I've worked in companies which have grown by acquisition before, and sometimes you end up with the head of R&D being the person who was head of R&D at the last major acquisition.
Those people frequently end up with a huge case of NIH, and any technologies they didn't oversee the creation of must be a waste of time.
So all of a sudden, your focus is on a specific type of widget instead of the general problem, and they start redirecting everyone to that.
And, for those of us who have had to listen to company roadmaps and the laughable vision for the future -- the executives who are setting strategy are often so far out of touch with reality or choose things which nobody is going to want in a few years that you wonder if they really have any clue.
Innovation by decree from corporate executives, in my experience, is usually a joke. I once sat in a presentation where the CEO was saying how in 3 years we'd all be working on something which they never got around to, and which never actually turned into the market force they'd hoped. But for about 6 months, that's all you heard about at company presentations, meanwhile the developers were rolling their eyes and laughing.
It's like a Dilbert cartoon some days. Whatever the current magic quadrant, or is the buzzword of the day is is a lousy way to drive your innovation. They might have been technical at one point, but now they're just upper management with delusions of still having their pulse on the industry.
I'm pretty sure the US already does this -- possibly not for reasons other than criminal or counter-terrorism though.
But, really, since we know with Carnivore and pretty much everything else the US spies on NATO allies as well.
Unless we're meant to believe the US only does this on NATO allies with their express approval and oversight. Because, a t a minimum, we know the CIA has kidnapped people in Italy, a NATO member, without telling anybody.
Does anybody really think countries don't actively spy on their allies if they feel the need?
There's a step 3 in there you missed.
A judge initially said he was shielded from being required to decrypt due to the 5th amendment. After the police decrypted his hard drives anyway and found child porn, a second judge said that since they've already found stuff, he wasn't entitled to claim a defense against self incrimination. Basically said he would now have to decrypt because he was already guilty.
A third judge has now said that just because they cracked the encryption on some things and found incriminating evidence, it doesn't mean he's required to decrypt the rest (and in effect self incriminate).
So, he was protected by the 5th amendment, they decrypted *some* stuff, another judge said he would have to decrypt the rest (and violate his 5th amendment rights), but that judge has been overruled.
They will absolutely be able to charge him with the evidence they got when they decrypted the drives themselves. He won't get walking away. BUT, he doesn't need to help them convict him.
Again, I'm not a lawyer, but this is more about how much the accused needs to cooperate with police. In this case, he still doesn't need to cooperate, but the point might be moot, since they've already decrypted some of it.
They are NOT letting him walk away on charges of possessing child pornography. This dispute is entirely about if he is required to help the police convict him by being required to decrypt his data -- and *that* would violate his 5th amendment rights.
No, it's greed, pure and simple. Since the publishers and the copyright lobby don't believe in fair use, their position pretty much starts from there.
These are the people who want photocopiers outlawed because someone could be copying their stuff, and people who fight that people have right of first sale on books.
Pretty much uniformly, these guys all believe there shouldn't be fair use, because in their minds, it's not fair to them, and what we want doesn't matter.
If they had their way, we would have no fair use, and every time a physical copy of a book is read, they should get paid. These are the same people who equate libraries with theft.
In other words, buggy whip makers who think they should control everything.
Yup, the pharma companies have been well known to hide the parts that don't support their claims, and they've also been known to latch onto secondary effects if it doesn't pan out for the original intent.
I've never understood how they can skip the step where they provide all of the data for an independent body to review.
We know they're in it just for profit, and they've demonstrated they'll take short cuts (or outright lie) when it suits them.
The people who do the science and write the papers produce the content. Yet somehow the publisher controls how it gets used thereafter.
Everyone is so damned beholden to copyright that it more or less constrains how you do anything.
And they wonder why people are pushing for open access -- it's time to cut the buggy whip makers out of the equation.
If you took public money to do this, it should be open. If you want it to be locked down and proprietary, don't publish.
Their own pride, and probably corporate policy which says "all things must be Windows".
If Microsoft announced next week they were doing an Android or a Linux distro, their stock would probably tank because that would be interpreted as basically saying "we're losing the fight, so we're looking into other things".
I agree that Microsoft is far from dead, and are likely sitting on huge cash reserves. But I don't see Linux and Android as a way forward for them.
They'd do a better job of actually listening to what people want out of their products, instead of just releasing a much hated Win 8 only to have to reverse course with the changes in Win 8.1.
Me, I'll be curious to see how they fare with the next XBox -- because I suspect lots of people are reading these press releases and thinking "gee, that doesn't sound like what I want".
Then you have utterly failed to read and understand the article.
These aren't outside addresses -- these are secondary, government issued addresses at the exact same domains as the published ones.
This is not a case of "I will use my own email since the government infrastructure sucks" (which is still technically illegal but harder to find) -- this is setting up a second government email, and not publishing that address.
So, in the absence of any "outside email", you're wrong.
So, in context of your 'explanation' for this, explain how a second government address was used and how it differed from the first one.
Because, if you can access the second government issued email address on your smart phone, you bloody well could have accessed the first one.
See, there is no 'personal account' here. There's a second, government issued (but not published) email address. One which conveniently is difficult to track down to comply with FOIA requests.
Under Sorbanes-Oxley, if a private corporation gets sued, they need to provide *all* relevant emails as part of discovery. That would include any restricted email addresses.
The same kind of things apply to government and the FOIA.
Um, really? Government accountability is a partisan issue?
I don't care what side of the political spectrum you're on -- you have to follow the rules and laws, and this has the smell of being intended to skirt around those. Republican, Democrat, Communist -- just follow the damned rules.
In this case, FOIA requests failed to return the emails in these other addresses, and they didn't know how to find them all.
So, if it isn't just shady behavior, it has the net effect of hiding information because people don't know to go looking there.
If he can ignore the 4th amendment, occasionally the 1st amendment, and target citizens for assassination why should patent law be any different?
When I buy something, I do not enter into a license with everyone who owns a patent on every aspect of what I buy. I buy a friggin' product -- the pissing contests aren't my problem.
Like I said, by the time I can walk into Wal Mart and buy something, you need to indemnify the consumer. Because at the check out, there isn't a place where I initial a license with some company I've never heard of. If the vendor isn't compliant, well, that's their problem.
Except laws already say that all of this stuff needs to be recorded.
There is no private here. If you're doing Official Government Business, you have to comply with the law. The law says that any and all communications you do are covered under a FOIA request.
Setting up a second email account for the same person bypasses the whole process, and then you get a case like this where they have no idea if they've complied with the request or not, because nobody knew about the email account.
And if you hide half of the context, how would anybody ever take then in context??
Sorry, but I don't see any situation in which this is beneficial to anybody except for a bunch of political appointees trying to cover their asses, or possibly cover up questionable actions.