It's a shame then that they don't practice what they preach and "Think Differently".
Look, you can "think differently" all you like... but in an environment where lawyers, patents, and licensing fees affect every product you make or sell, if you didn't build your patent portfolio you'd be an idiot, and likely be failing in your duties to the shareholders.
You can try to agitate for change, but if you think Apple is going to be a martyr to the notion of patent reform... well, then you're horribly naive. If someone patented it out from underneath them, and they had to pay licensing, they'd be the ones getting fucked over for taking a moral stance. So, how would that benefit them?
It's simply not possible for a company the size of Apple to not engage in patents, even if they do suck. And, expecting that they should try is just a little too idealistic.
Experts also discussed the scenario of Apple licensing its patented technology or for that matter, the courts completely scrapping the patent in public's interest.
Don't hate the player, hate the game. The problem isn't so much specifically that Apple applied for (and got) this patent. It's that the patent system itself is out of control and stupid, and encourages companies to apply for overly broad patents.
I'm sure if Microsoft had a product in the works at that time, they'd have applied for this patent -- same goes for IBM, Google, or pretty much anybody.
If the courts are going to start scrapping individual patents in the public interest, they should do this for a very broad set of patents which do nothing but patent something which lots of people independently came up with.
Overhaul the patent system or fix the damned patent office... but don't cherry pick which patents we figure should be over-turned so other companies can come out with products as well. Because there's a lot of patents which are just as fundamentally blocking to developing products as this multi-touch one.
I just can't wait for the cloud bubble to burst so we can go back to having traditional software again.
I just can't wait for the web bubble to burst so we can go back to having traditional software again.
The world has never really been the same since we developed this "everything is a web page" model. In a lot of ways, I don't find web-pages to actually be a good replacement for a traditional applications; the interface usability has greatly suffered.
(Yes, there are still some things which don't run as web pages... who knows, maybe we'll get good old-fashioned native clients pulling in data from the cloud, and there will be unicorns and bunnies and all will be good.)
Keep in mind too that not everything you sign in those agreements will hold up in court. I believe those forced-arbitration clauses have been successfully fought against in court.
Well, except for the fact that SCOTUS actually allowed forced arbitration fairly recently.
So, you may have less recourse than you might think. I'm not 100% sure of the scope of it, but at least some aspects of it have been upheld.
How is a scam like Bitcoin in any way related to "defending freedom?"
The same way 'capitalism' is -- the freedom to bilk people out of their money if they're willing/uninformed enough to participate.
To the strict free market folks, that's a transaction which is just part of the system, and is 'self correcting'. That's why regulation is considered bad.
They aren't going to default on existing contracts.
It's not called 'defaulting' when you can change the TOS on a whim because the contract says you can.
Do you really think there isn't a clause in there that says they can change the definition of 'unlimited' or simply stop offering it to existing customers at their discretion? Those contracts are written in such a way that they can do pretty much anything they like.
In terms of the level of trust I apply to them, not at all.
First off, everything is "in the cloud", which means you don't really know where it is and who has access to it. Second, this isn't the first security issue they've had. And, finally, they've pretty much admitted that if law enforcement comes knocking, they'll hand over your files.
From the get-go I've been fairly convinced that their stuff was weak security at best. Were you of the impression that the security they have is in any way robust?
As soon as your data is in someone else's hands, you more or less have to assume that without your own level of encryption, the files are vulnerable. Which, pretty much sums up Dropbox.
Don't get me wrong, I have used it for quite a while now -- I'm just very selective about what I use it for. Work stuff that I wouldn't be able to put on a US based server due to data protection laws, for example, I wouldn't put it on there. I explicitly don't assign that level of trust to them.
Seems to me that the threat of phishing can be mitigated my requiring the entity registering the domain name to show proof that the name in the *.brand is in fact a registered trademark.
I plan on mitigating this by treating every single one of these new TLDs as if they're likely be to scams, and not visiting them. No more than I will click on a link ending in.ly -- I have no idea of what it is, and I have no trust in the domain.
I have no interest in vetting a crapload of new domain extensions, and I will likely simply refuse to follow a link into anything which goes outside of the ones I'm familiar with now.
While I'm sure ICANN will be happy to rake in the $185K for each of these, I simply can't see why this actually improves anything on the internet... it just gives yet another source of confusion for identifying legitimate web sites.
Well, gee, that makes me feel good about their security...
I've never treated Dropbox like it's secure. It's convenient for copying around files, but I wouldn't use it for anything sensitive.
I think if you're aware of the fact that it's only *slightly* more secure than a public folder on a shared network and use it accordingly, you can still make use of Dropbox as a tool. Although, admittedly, my usage of it has diminished since I initially got it.
Sounds like you, too, are ready to move on to Indy Cinema - those films where you have good cast, good direction and a story which could end in any way possible. Much more impressive than anything at the corporate cinemas these days, where you see the trailer, you see the film.
Or, you end up watching something like Enter The Void, and wishing you could have the last 161 minutes of your life back.
It may have been a good film, but it was well over 2 hours of film what was a cross between Midnight Express, Trainspotting, and something out of a Hunter S. Thompson novel... all while having had a generous dose of peyote. The 5 minute cut scenes of nothing but sound and light, for instance, left me wanting to stop the DVD.
Sometimes Indy films are art-house and fringy to the point that everyone else finds themselves wondering WTF they've been watching -- while die-hard cinema geeks talk about imagery and subtext the rest of us never saw, and sneering how the uneducated masses can't appreciate a film like that.
I'm the first to admit my film tastes run to the mindless action film -- because I hate watching a movie that at the end I don't know anything more about than before I watched it. Give me car chases, giant robots, spaceships, and girls in tight spandex. I'm sure the fault lies in me, but I've decided I'm OK with that.
Unfortunately, the list of "critically acclaimed" indy films that I've watched and simply didn't "get" has pretty much soured me on them. It's like post-modernism -- if you're not deeply involved in it, it just sounds like gibberish.
Before this thread goes off the rails about Best Buy trying to censor free speech, under US law (the Lanham Act), trademark rights apply only to uses in commerce. So you can be a geek, call people geeks, this article can discuss geeks, that's all fine. However, when you start a "Squad o'Geeks" computer repair service, only then are you going to run into a potential problem.
Except that except for the fact that someone tried to turn it into a trademark... the people doing the computer repair service were pretty well established as being called geeks long before Best Buy had a "Geek Squad". Much like you couldn't trademark the use of the word "gardener" or "snow plowing"... the word is descriptive of the job function. Lots of us were self professed geeks before Best Buy decided it was a cool marketing term.
So, maybe they trademarked something which actually is far too generic. Certainly, by the time Best Buy had that service, that name pretty much already relied on everybody knowing what it meant. I hope they get told "too damned bad".
Really? So what will it take to convince you that "trickle down economics" actually accomplishes the opposite of what its proponents claim it will?
Surprisingly little, but in the interests of being somewhat balanced, I chose to highlight that the two extremes are both a little shaky without actually focusing too much on one or the other.
Because from there, it's an easy walk over to being convinced that those proponents know this and have been lying about their intentions the whole time.
As someone I used to work for used to say... it's not a lie if you believe it.
I believe it's entirely possible to believe that trickle down economics would work, and that it it would begin by benefiting those advocating it... as I said, after a certain point, one's economic theories become closely tied with one's beliefs.
Trying to falsify the beliefs of another is usually an impossible task. I don't need to believe them to be intellectually dishonest... I just think that the belief that trickle down economics is so tied into the rest of how they perceive economics as working, that there's no separating the two. It's an article of faith.
Those who worship at the feet of "The Free Market" will pretty much always take it as a given that tax cuts for the rich will trigger spending which will in turn excite the economy, and therefore benefit everyone. I think it lets the wealthy skim off the cream, leaving the rest of us with less (which is why the top richest people get richer and everyone else ends up broke).
Somehow, they think that's to everyone's benefit, but I've never been clear on exactly how that was supposed to work for the rest of us.
To a certain extent, Capitalism seems like a ponzi scheme. Certainly, that's how they're running the stock market over the last decade or so.
I didn't assume anything... I said "if", as in the purely speculative "if". It's a hypothetical statement, bounded by what, exactly, they're installing -- which, I obviously don't know.
For security issues, my default stance is trust nobody. I already don't trust Facebook, and the article is them talking about putting their own 'apps' onto an iOS device. So, depending on what it is that they're installing, and what it has access to... it would be possible, in a purely hypothetical scenario, for them to have access to stuff you wouldn't normally give them. If it's running local, does it have access to more stuff than it would through the web browser?
The conditional tenses in English are very fascinating, and allow us to explore scenarios without making definitive statements. No assumption is required.:-P
If a local install gave them access to more that they would otherwise have, then there might be some basis to the question as to if that could make the phones less secure. If not, then the answer is probably no.
Hmmm... maybe you should sue the owners of the building for taking part in your experiences!
No, but in this context, I just think copyright is totally mis-applied. You don't want me to be able to see and photograph your building? Don't put it in public.:-P
If it's visible from blocks away, and all over the place... can you really assert copyright on it? And, is taking an image of its likeness a copy? Once it becomes part of the skyline, well, that's why companies pay to put logos on them.
Taking picture of a building is not depriving them of use of the building, nor is it depriving them of any revenue. It mostly means you get a bunch of idiots trying to tell tourists they can't photograph something due to copyright restrictions.
And, really, I also just don't get why it makes any sense to be able to prevent me from making money off my picture of the building if it's an especially cool shot. That would be like saying I can't photograph the Chrysler building or the Sears Tower or the Golden Gate bridge or the Atlantic Ocean or Hoover Dam... I just don't understand how copyright law is even applicable here. The object is not being copied, and I'm not using the picture to create my own copy of the building.
In fact, photography of a building which is visible from public places to me seems like exactly the kind of exceptions we should be explicitly preserving.
I am beginning to think that everyone should be forced to take an economics course in their lifetime.
The problem is... which version of 'economics'?
It seems there's the broad, general sense of economics which attempts to explain how things work as an interconnected system. And, then there's the economics which is almost dogmatic... it's a belief that under certain circumstances, and given a set of assumptions, a given outcome would naturally occur. Those, I'm not convinced are supported by anything more than a desire for it to be true.
I, for instance, have yet to be convinced that "trickle down economics" actually accomplishes what its proponents claim it will. I also, am completely unconvinced by things that the rampant socialists say would happen if we listened to them since their numbers are equally imaginary. They both amount to wishful thinking.
At a certain point, economics devolves into ideology and philosophy. And your belief in what works ceases to be empirical, and more focused on how you think the world should operate if you could rewrite reality to suit your own needs (or, force everyone to adopt your theories long enough for them to be proven true/fail utterly).
I agree that some understanding of economics is valuable... but then it breaks down to become a belief system, and goes all to hell. Modern economics is like the Emperor's New Clothes... as long as we all keep deluding ourselves that it works, everyone is happy. Occasionally, a glaring counter example comes along that people chalk up as being an anomaly.
It seems that goes for both ends of how people believe economics works.
It partly boils down to how significant is the copyrighted image in your photo - you couldn't take a picture of a copyrighted object where the object is basically the picture; and how you use it - and then use it commercially. Your snapshots are safe.
Sadly, I've heard numerous stories about security guards telling people they can't photograph a building or a piece of art.
How much of that is legal and now much is rent-a-cops trying to enforce a policy which is utterly indefensible, I don't know. But, security guards (and even police) have been known to assert than you have to delete the pictures from your memory card despite that being patently untrue. You pretty much need to know how to navigate that and say "wow, fascinating" and walk away from them. I've known people who have had to tell rent-a-cops that if they actually lay hands on their person, they will be charged with assault -- some times they mistakenly believe they can compel you to delete the pictures they believe they're entitled to prevent you from taking.
But, the assholes who would abuse this technology to disable photography of stuff they don't want you to take pictures of... they won't care so much about the niceties of it. They'll just blanket everything.
I just find it obscene that the SNTE feels they can take a 120 year old landmark, and copyright the lighting on it and have any legal standing for anything. It's stupid and a gross violation of what copyright is intended for.
And, it's one of those things where they claim to be able to confer obligations onto me without me actually being involved... as much as possible, I ignore those. So, I hereby claim that all people driving on the road near me owe me money... because it's about as sensible as saying you own the copyrights to all night-time pictures of the Eiffel Tower.
Short of it? That wasn't even covered in the original post. That was the point.
Except, in the links provided in TFS, DropBox had been asserting that the data was stored securely, and they couldn't look at them if they wanted. Turns out, they can, and if they wanted to (or were compelled to), they could.
So, it was covered in the article, and unless you applied your own crypto to your files, the question about how to protect your files from someone with physical access to the machine boils down to "you can't". So, short of encrypting your files before uploading them, you can't keep your data secret when you use dropbox.
And, just because DropBox initially said your data was secure, even from them... well, that doesn't make it true. In fact, it's utterly false.
As for privacy it's identical to what people plug into Facebook today.
There's nothing new or surprising here.
If it's truly just a web page, maybe.
If it's got access to your phone book and other things you haven't given to Facebook... well, then I wouldn't trust them. (Well, I don't trust Facebook now -- certainly not with real information about me.)
This could blow up into "next they'll shutdown cameras during a Rodney King beating", and iPhone becomes the Brave New World gateway device.
And, given that I'm one of the people saying that... I personally fail to see how this technology wouldn't be abused.
Apparently, you can't publish pictures of the friggin' Eiffel tower, because some company owns the copyright on the lighting. Concert promoters will be all over this. Fireworks. Buildings. Public art. Free Speech Zones. Governments who have no qualms abusing their people (ok, that's all of them).
As someone who tends to carry a camera around an awful lot, the idea that someone else can disable that is a little worrying... if I'm in public, and if I can see it, I'm entitled to take a picture of it. I don't give a damn that some idiot asserts he owns the copyright to a building... I'm not copying the building, I'm taking a picture of my experiences.
Sure, Apple can use this to negotiate better deals on iTunes. But, speaking as someone who actually owns some Apple products... if they think I'm going to accept a limitation on when I can use my camera, they're horribly wrong.
This just puts too much power in the hands of people who I don't place any trust in.
How would you tell the difference (in software) between "no infrared signal because I'm not in a movie theater" and "no infrared signal because I am in a movie theater and someone put tape over the sensor"?
By putting this in the CCD that is the thing that takes the actual picture? If you do that, 'blocking' the filter means you block the lens.
Remember, these are digital cameras, so you do all of this stuff behind the lens. It's not like they're going to build a separate sensor which can be spoofed/blocked.
But I think as soon as we start making such devices so they are geared to have copyright (and whim) enforced upon you, it's a bad thing.
Sooner or later, governments or police will be sure that you can't film them doing things they don't want by blanketing the place in IR that says "no recording". And, really, this will be abused both domestically, and abroad. Having the ability to shut off recording devices remotely is a horrible idea.
This is caving in way too much, and continues the trend that sooner or later we won't be able to have general purpose computers because rights-holders figure they're all going to be used to steal their stuff.
what does a rumored product have to do with being secure "today"?
I think the reasoning goes something like... since we don't trust Facebook not to be dickheads, allowing them to install software on your device likely wouldn't be very secure since they might "decide" that you actually did opt-in for something you've never heard of.
Facebook does have a bit of a history of deciding that their partners should have access to your data, because it's beneficial for them. Or changing the defaults of things to be permissive because that's what they want.
Facebook, from what I've read, might not be perceived as a company one would actually want to put that much trust in. They'll hand over all of your details to Zynga in a heartbeat if it makes them a few bucks.
Slashdot Mirror
Look, you can "think differently" all you like ... but in an environment where lawyers, patents, and licensing fees affect every product you make or sell, if you didn't build your patent portfolio you'd be an idiot, and likely be failing in your duties to the shareholders.
You can try to agitate for change, but if you think Apple is going to be a martyr to the notion of patent reform ... well, then you're horribly naive. If someone patented it out from underneath them, and they had to pay licensing, they'd be the ones getting fucked over for taking a moral stance. So, how would that benefit them?
It's simply not possible for a company the size of Apple to not engage in patents, even if they do suck. And, expecting that they should try is just a little too idealistic.
Don't hate the player, hate the game. The problem isn't so much specifically that Apple applied for (and got) this patent. It's that the patent system itself is out of control and stupid, and encourages companies to apply for overly broad patents.
I'm sure if Microsoft had a product in the works at that time, they'd have applied for this patent -- same goes for IBM, Google, or pretty much anybody.
If the courts are going to start scrapping individual patents in the public interest, they should do this for a very broad set of patents which do nothing but patent something which lots of people independently came up with.
Overhaul the patent system or fix the damned patent office ... but don't cherry pick which patents we figure should be over-turned so other companies can come out with products as well. Because there's a lot of patents which are just as fundamentally blocking to developing products as this multi-touch one.
I just can't wait for the web bubble to burst so we can go back to having traditional software again.
The world has never really been the same since we developed this "everything is a web page" model. In a lot of ways, I don't find web-pages to actually be a good replacement for a traditional applications; the interface usability has greatly suffered.
(Yes, there are still some things which don't run as web pages ... who knows, maybe we'll get good old-fashioned native clients pulling in data from the cloud, and there will be unicorns and bunnies and all will be good.)
Well, except for the fact that SCOTUS actually allowed forced arbitration fairly recently.
So, you may have less recourse than you might think. I'm not 100% sure of the scope of it, but at least some aspects of it have been upheld.
The same way 'capitalism' is -- the freedom to bilk people out of their money if they're willing/uninformed enough to participate.
To the strict free market folks, that's a transaction which is just part of the system, and is 'self correcting'. That's why regulation is considered bad.
And, sadly, I'm only being partly sarcastic.
It's not called 'defaulting' when you can change the TOS on a whim because the contract says you can.
Do you really think there isn't a clause in there that says they can change the definition of 'unlimited' or simply stop offering it to existing customers at their discretion? Those contracts are written in such a way that they can do pretty much anything they like.
In terms of the level of trust I apply to them, not at all.
First off, everything is "in the cloud", which means you don't really know where it is and who has access to it. Second, this isn't the first security issue they've had. And, finally, they've pretty much admitted that if law enforcement comes knocking, they'll hand over your files.
From the get-go I've been fairly convinced that their stuff was weak security at best. Were you of the impression that the security they have is in any way robust?
As soon as your data is in someone else's hands, you more or less have to assume that without your own level of encryption, the files are vulnerable. Which, pretty much sums up Dropbox.
Don't get me wrong, I have used it for quite a while now -- I'm just very selective about what I use it for. Work stuff that I wouldn't be able to put on a US based server due to data protection laws, for example, I wouldn't put it on there. I explicitly don't assign that level of trust to them.
Ummm ... from what I've read about how lucrative that can be, the $185K might actually be chump change.
I plan on mitigating this by treating every single one of these new TLDs as if they're likely be to scams, and not visiting them. No more than I will click on a link ending in .ly -- I have no idea of what it is, and I have no trust in the domain.
I have no interest in vetting a crapload of new domain extensions, and I will likely simply refuse to follow a link into anything which goes outside of the ones I'm familiar with now.
While I'm sure ICANN will be happy to rake in the $185K for each of these, I simply can't see why this actually improves anything on the internet ... it just gives yet another source of confusion for identifying legitimate web sites.
Do we need a .cocacola TLD? And if so, why?
I've never treated Dropbox like it's secure. It's convenient for copying around files, but I wouldn't use it for anything sensitive.
I think if you're aware of the fact that it's only *slightly* more secure than a public folder on a shared network and use it accordingly, you can still make use of Dropbox as a tool. Although, admittedly, my usage of it has diminished since I initially got it.
Or, you end up watching something like Enter The Void, and wishing you could have the last 161 minutes of your life back.
It may have been a good film, but it was well over 2 hours of film what was a cross between Midnight Express, Trainspotting, and something out of a Hunter S. Thompson novel ... all while having had a generous dose of peyote. The 5 minute cut scenes of nothing but sound and light, for instance, left me wanting to stop the DVD.
Sometimes Indy films are art-house and fringy to the point that everyone else finds themselves wondering WTF they've been watching -- while die-hard cinema geeks talk about imagery and subtext the rest of us never saw, and sneering how the uneducated masses can't appreciate a film like that.
I'm the first to admit my film tastes run to the mindless action film -- because I hate watching a movie that at the end I don't know anything more about than before I watched it. Give me car chases, giant robots, spaceships, and girls in tight spandex. I'm sure the fault lies in me, but I've decided I'm OK with that.
Unfortunately, the list of "critically acclaimed" indy films that I've watched and simply didn't "get" has pretty much soured me on them. It's like post-modernism -- if you're not deeply involved in it, it just sounds like gibberish.
Except that except for the fact that someone tried to turn it into a trademark ... the people doing the computer repair service were pretty well established as being called geeks long before Best Buy had a "Geek Squad". Much like you couldn't trademark the use of the word "gardener" or "snow plowing" ... the word is descriptive of the job function. Lots of us were self professed geeks before Best Buy decided it was a cool marketing term.
So, maybe they trademarked something which actually is far too generic. Certainly, by the time Best Buy had that service, that name pretty much already relied on everybody knowing what it meant. I hope they get told "too damned bad".
Surprisingly little, but in the interests of being somewhat balanced, I chose to highlight that the two extremes are both a little shaky without actually focusing too much on one or the other.
As someone I used to work for used to say ... it's not a lie if you believe it.
I believe it's entirely possible to believe that trickle down economics would work, and that it it would begin by benefiting those advocating it ... as I said, after a certain point, one's economic theories become closely tied with one's beliefs.
Trying to falsify the beliefs of another is usually an impossible task. I don't need to believe them to be intellectually dishonest ... I just think that the belief that trickle down economics is so tied into the rest of how they perceive economics as working, that there's no separating the two. It's an article of faith.
Those who worship at the feet of "The Free Market" will pretty much always take it as a given that tax cuts for the rich will trigger spending which will in turn excite the economy, and therefore benefit everyone. I think it lets the wealthy skim off the cream, leaving the rest of us with less (which is why the top richest people get richer and everyone else ends up broke).
Somehow, they think that's to everyone's benefit, but I've never been clear on exactly how that was supposed to work for the rest of us.
To a certain extent, Capitalism seems like a ponzi scheme. Certainly, that's how they're running the stock market over the last decade or so.
I didn't assume anything ... I said "if", as in the purely speculative "if". It's a hypothetical statement, bounded by what, exactly, they're installing -- which, I obviously don't know.
For security issues, my default stance is trust nobody. I already don't trust Facebook, and the article is them talking about putting their own 'apps' onto an iOS device. So, depending on what it is that they're installing, and what it has access to ... it would be possible, in a purely hypothetical scenario, for them to have access to stuff you wouldn't normally give them. If it's running local, does it have access to more stuff than it would through the web browser?
The conditional tenses in English are very fascinating, and allow us to explore scenarios without making definitive statements. No assumption is required. :-P
If a local install gave them access to more that they would otherwise have, then there might be some basis to the question as to if that could make the phones less secure. If not, then the answer is probably no.
No, but in this context, I just think copyright is totally mis-applied. You don't want me to be able to see and photograph your building? Don't put it in public. :-P
If it's visible from blocks away, and all over the place ... can you really assert copyright on it? And, is taking an image of its likeness a copy? Once it becomes part of the skyline, well, that's why companies pay to put logos on them.
Taking picture of a building is not depriving them of use of the building, nor is it depriving them of any revenue. It mostly means you get a bunch of idiots trying to tell tourists they can't photograph something due to copyright restrictions.
And, really, I also just don't get why it makes any sense to be able to prevent me from making money off my picture of the building if it's an especially cool shot. That would be like saying I can't photograph the Chrysler building or the Sears Tower or the Golden Gate bridge or the Atlantic Ocean or Hoover Dam ... I just don't understand how copyright law is even applicable here. The object is not being copied, and I'm not using the picture to create my own copy of the building.
In fact, photography of a building which is visible from public places to me seems like exactly the kind of exceptions we should be explicitly preserving.
The problem is ... which version of 'economics'?
It seems there's the broad, general sense of economics which attempts to explain how things work as an interconnected system. And, then there's the economics which is almost dogmatic ... it's a belief that under certain circumstances, and given a set of assumptions, a given outcome would naturally occur. Those, I'm not convinced are supported by anything more than a desire for it to be true.
I, for instance, have yet to be convinced that "trickle down economics" actually accomplishes what its proponents claim it will. I also, am completely unconvinced by things that the rampant socialists say would happen if we listened to them since their numbers are equally imaginary. They both amount to wishful thinking.
At a certain point, economics devolves into ideology and philosophy. And your belief in what works ceases to be empirical, and more focused on how you think the world should operate if you could rewrite reality to suit your own needs (or, force everyone to adopt your theories long enough for them to be proven true/fail utterly).
I agree that some understanding of economics is valuable ... but then it breaks down to become a belief system, and goes all to hell. Modern economics is like the Emperor's New Clothes ... as long as we all keep deluding ourselves that it works, everyone is happy. Occasionally, a glaring counter example comes along that people chalk up as being an anomaly.
It seems that goes for both ends of how people believe economics works.
Sadly, I've heard numerous stories about security guards telling people they can't photograph a building or a piece of art.
How much of that is legal and now much is rent-a-cops trying to enforce a policy which is utterly indefensible, I don't know. But, security guards (and even police) have been known to assert than you have to delete the pictures from your memory card despite that being patently untrue. You pretty much need to know how to navigate that and say "wow, fascinating" and walk away from them. I've known people who have had to tell rent-a-cops that if they actually lay hands on their person, they will be charged with assault -- some times they mistakenly believe they can compel you to delete the pictures they believe they're entitled to prevent you from taking.
But, the assholes who would abuse this technology to disable photography of stuff they don't want you to take pictures of ... they won't care so much about the niceties of it. They'll just blanket everything.
I just find it obscene that the SNTE feels they can take a 120 year old landmark, and copyright the lighting on it and have any legal standing for anything. It's stupid and a gross violation of what copyright is intended for.
And, it's one of those things where they claim to be able to confer obligations onto me without me actually being involved ... as much as possible, I ignore those. So, I hereby claim that all people driving on the road near me owe me money ... because it's about as sensible as saying you own the copyrights to all night-time pictures of the Eiffel Tower.
Try here, or here, or here, or here.
Every time this topic comes up, people suggest these guys. There used to be PGP, I think it's commercial now, but there's GNU PGP.
I think any manner of Google searches will tell you how to do this. It's something that's been around for quite some time in various incarnations.
Except, in the links provided in TFS, DropBox had been asserting that the data was stored securely, and they couldn't look at them if they wanted. Turns out, they can, and if they wanted to (or were compelled to), they could.
So, it was covered in the article, and unless you applied your own crypto to your files, the question about how to protect your files from someone with physical access to the machine boils down to "you can't". So, short of encrypting your files before uploading them, you can't keep your data secret when you use dropbox.
And, just because DropBox initially said your data was secure, even from them ... well, that doesn't make it true. In fact, it's utterly false.
I'm not even sure we are disagreeing here.
Short of heavy-duty crypto ... I think most security falls apart when someone can have physical access to the machine.
And, even then, someone with the resources might be able to get through it if they were determined enough.
You want security, keep your files on your own machine, not in the cloud or on someone else's server.
If it's truly just a web page, maybe.
If it's got access to your phone book and other things you haven't given to Facebook ... well, then I wouldn't trust them. (Well, I don't trust Facebook now -- certainly not with real information about me.)
And, given that I'm one of the people saying that ... I personally fail to see how this technology wouldn't be abused.
Apparently, you can't publish pictures of the friggin' Eiffel tower, because some company owns the copyright on the lighting. Concert promoters will be all over this. Fireworks. Buildings. Public art. Free Speech Zones. Governments who have no qualms abusing their people (ok, that's all of them).
As someone who tends to carry a camera around an awful lot, the idea that someone else can disable that is a little worrying ... if I'm in public, and if I can see it, I'm entitled to take a picture of it. I don't give a damn that some idiot asserts he owns the copyright to a building ... I'm not copying the building, I'm taking a picture of my experiences.
Sure, Apple can use this to negotiate better deals on iTunes. But, speaking as someone who actually owns some Apple products ... if they think I'm going to accept a limitation on when I can use my camera, they're horribly wrong.
This just puts too much power in the hands of people who I don't place any trust in.
By putting this in the CCD that is the thing that takes the actual picture? If you do that, 'blocking' the filter means you block the lens.
Remember, these are digital cameras, so you do all of this stuff behind the lens. It's not like they're going to build a separate sensor which can be spoofed/blocked.
Yes, this story is obviously a dupe.
But I think as soon as we start making such devices so they are geared to have copyright (and whim) enforced upon you, it's a bad thing.
Sooner or later, governments or police will be sure that you can't film them doing things they don't want by blanketing the place in IR that says "no recording". And, really, this will be abused both domestically, and abroad. Having the ability to shut off recording devices remotely is a horrible idea.
This is caving in way too much, and continues the trend that sooner or later we won't be able to have general purpose computers because rights-holders figure they're all going to be used to steal their stuff.
I think the reasoning goes something like ... since we don't trust Facebook not to be dickheads, allowing them to install software on your device likely wouldn't be very secure since they might "decide" that you actually did opt-in for something you've never heard of.
Facebook does have a bit of a history of deciding that their partners should have access to your data, because it's beneficial for them. Or changing the defaults of things to be permissive because that's what they want.
Facebook, from what I've read, might not be perceived as a company one would actually want to put that much trust in. They'll hand over all of your details to Zynga in a heartbeat if it makes them a few bucks.