Yet he doesn't even name a single piece of this GPLv3 software that Boxee uses. The entirety of his proof is:
Once you have a command prompt on your Boxee Box, type âoegpgv2 --helpâ et voila, you are greeted with the GPLv3 header.
Well, if there was no GPLv3 code on the device, then in precisely what way would it have the header for GPLv3 in the device?
That would imply two broad conclusions:
1) Boxee is including license headers for software they don't ship, just in case you would like to be able to read it, but that in no way implies they have any GPLv3 code. 2) They have GPLv3 code as evidenced by the fact that that it was there in the first place.
I don't know about you, but I have never included license information for software I'm not including in any product I've ever been party to creating or maintaining.
You're right that it's not possible to know what all is included, but I'm hard pressed to believe that if you have the headers you don't also have at least something using that license.
A settlement with a comment from the judge saying "she sees the GNU GPL to be an enforceable and binding license".
Some guy was denied standing to sue since he didn't establish a valid anti-trust claim.
In one case a judge ruled "the GPL was not material to a case dealing with trade secrets derived from GPL-licensed work".
A legal precedent in Germany.
Apparently BusyBox has mostly settled, and agreed to release code.
Again, Linsys and Cisco settled.
As much as we all would like to GPL upheld in court, and some of us would like to say that this has been definitively settled by a court, it seems like in a lot of ways it's a lot murkier than that. Some jurisdictions have upheld it, some judges have commented that it should be legally binding, and many cases have been settled... which means they don't really provide actual precedents in terms of case law.
I'm just not convinced that there is enough actual legal precedent to say in most jurisdictions that violating the terms of the GPL has been consistently upheld. So far, it seems to be a fairly hodge-podge collection of cases which established various things to various degrees.
I'm certainly not convinced that one of the references you cite actually authoritatively establish this in enough jurisdictions to say the matter has been resolved. I'm not arguing against the GPL... I'm saying I don't believe that the issue has become cut and dried enough that with enough lawyers you couldn't convince a judge otherwise.
My issue with GPL is that they call it 'free as in freedom' This is clearly not true. That should be the motto for BSD. GPL is more like free as in no cost to purchase, bit it is not free in the non monetary sense given the restrictions that come with it.
Well, yes... that's hard to dispute, and it more or less comes down to some philosophical stuff which not everyone always agrees with.
I guess it depends on "which" version of "free" you mean... free as in beer, free as in free, free as in Libre, and who knows what else.
BSD is free and unencumbered, and it has its place.
GPL is free almost in the sense that the software itself is "liberated" and has its own rights, intended to ensure that the software remains equally free for anybody who might ever want it, and that you can't take away the rights of the software to remain free -- I like to think of the GPL'd software as almost emancipated and with a stake in things.
Some software is free as in free, but you have no rights to do anything with it or make derivative works.
The GPL is more like a "bill of rights", both for the software and anybody who might like to use it, and is intended to benefit pretty much everybody, in perpetuity, and part of the way it achieves that is to limit the extent to which you can take it and stop adhering to that ideology. Since it uses copyright as its foundation, it necessarily has to retain restrictions to you... you only have rights to make copies of this work if you adhere to the terms. BSD is more along the lines of "have this for free and do anything you like", no restrictions or limitations, no obligations... just code to do with as you please.
Unfortunately, the two camps often have very opposite points of view in terms of which is "better" or "more free" -- I've used both fairly extensively, and they each have their place. It's really hard to come down on one side or another without it more or less devolving into screeching monkeys, which is what usually happens when this comes up on Slashdot.:-P
Basically GPL is a violation of my rights to publ,ish source code and make money off of it.
Not true... it prevents you from taking code you got under the GPL, modifying it, and releasing it as closed source. You are free to write your own code from scratch. You just can't write derivative works and not play by their terms.
Things like LGPL allow you to use the library to connect to, and the stuff you write is completely your own and you can do anything you like with it.
GPL is really another word for socialist run software development.
Yes, that's true. If you want to have your code not be "tainted" by the implied socialism of a license which forces you to share, then don't start with GPL'd code as a base.
You're arguing that you should be able to take the GPL code, modify it, and then change the terms of the license so you don't have to play by the rules. If you want to do that, something like a BSD or an Apache license might be more suited for you. But, just because you want to take GPL stuff and make it not GPL, doesn't mean you have any right to use the code in a way that violates their license.
You are completely free to write something from scratch and not look at anything GPL'd at all. If you don't have the time and energy (or the skillset) to write your own version... well, nobody is required to provide it to you. You're whining about the GPL being socialist while at the same time acting like it's someone else's responsibility to write the software you base your own off... which is socialism, but geared to your benefit.
No, they get sued if they don't bring the offending products into compliance with the GPL.
By whom? Maybe the EFF.
I think part of the problem is that, to the best of my knowledge, the GPL hasn't been fully tested in court, and there is no single body (and certainly not with a lot of resources) who can police this. I'm not even sure the EFF has standing to sue everybody who might do this... unless the GPL says they're the effective copyright holders for everything GPL'd, short of an amicus curiae the EFF doesn't own the code which is alleged to have been violated.
A lot of companies seem to more or less say "too bad" when it comes to the provisions and providing this stuff... they're just not willing to provide you with the details you'd need, admit that they're using the GPL'd software, or provide you with the sources even if they are. So, effectively they rip it off with impunity and laugh at you.
If there's no actual consequence for these companies, what is going to change? This is far from the first time we've heard about companies flipping the bird at the terms of the GPL.
And, really, based on my experience with my latest D-Link router... it might be time to consider a change anyway. My latest router has a tendency to lose connection on one of its ports, and has some issues which may or may not be the fault of Vista.
I continue to be stunned by the fact that Word will attempt to launch an embedded Flash object... I'm completely baffled by the fact that you can put a.swf file at all. Why the hell would you need that?
It's no wonder we get so many *(&$^& viruses when word-processors attempt to launch embedded executable files without asking or anything.
To me that sounds like the security equivalent of picking up used syringes off the ground and sticking them into your arm to see what's in them.
I mean, WTF? Does Microsoft just sit around and try to identify new sources of arbitrary code they can execute?
This is one of the reasons I don't install Flash on my machines.
Make one loop from a male DNA, one loop from female DNA and imagine the possibilities... Of course, even TFA is kinda skeptical on this point:
Of course, the researchers didnâ(TM)t actually make wedding rings, this technique doesnâ(TM)t have any immediate practical use and the technique itself isnâ(TM)t particularly innovative. But hey, a mention in scientific literature still trumps a bouquet of roses in the world of nerd love.
So, in answer to your question... pass the cheese.;-)
Every single company that thinks they can get away with harvesting your data by using a "third party affiliate" or offshore host, will do whatever they can get away with.
And, the governments will happily buy it from those 3rd parties as well since it lets them get around any restrictions on them actually gathering it themselves -- I seem to recall a story a couple of years ago where the CIA did exactly that to get around some legalities around domestic spying. Because, if it's capitalism it can't be violating the intent of the law.
Governments that don't care about the legalities will just harvest it themselves.
I think Berners Lee and others are assuming an importance to the web that it doesn't deserve. Sure, without it life can become harder if you do a lot of shopping and banking online , but jesus Tim , get a sense of perspective.
Given that it's how people look for jobs, conduct their livelihood, keep in touch with people, do their banking and loads of other stuff... you can make the argument that for a lot of us, the internet has become fundamental to how we do a lot of things.
If someone cuts me off from the internet for 6 months, my life reverts to the stone age in a lot of ways.
Now, it might seem laughable and trivial to call it a human right when people don't have really basic rights like personal liberty or religious freedom... but, in terms of how it impacts my ability to carry out my daily life (such as my job), it's difficult to express just how entwined it has become.
So, I can see why some of these "three strikes" laws whereby you suddenly can't access the internet would be fairly devastating to someone.
I think the guy who does xkcd should do a graph showing the probability of an xkcd link as a function of the number of comments in a story on Slashdot.
I'm betting by about 60 comments it's a mathematical certainty that someone has linked to it.;-)
Anyhow, if we're going for games-based legal systems, surely New Zealand should go for laws based on cricket (or rugby)?
Because, you would never be able to explain the rules to anybody from anywhere else in the world, so they'd never really understand if they've violated it -- pretty much the same as with rugby and cricket.;-)
Oh, and every time the law put to the test, it would take weeks... and at the end, it still might not be certain who won.;-) [ I kid, I kid, I'm sure someone actually does understand what is happening in a Test match... though, a friend from Sri Lanka tried to explain it once, and I didn't quite follow ]
Yeah, well I'm envisioning "Web 11.0", the last word in the internet... it'll be better, stronger, and faster... with more boobies than ever before... and a new minty fresh taste.
That's - that's good. That's good. Unless, of course, somebody comes up with Web 4.0. Then this guy's in trouble, huh?
He can call it "Web pi*r^2" for all I fucking care.
If he's stupid enough to be envisioning a world in which Facebook is a bank and that it becomes mandatory that I have a profile otherwise a "real" bank (you know, one that's regulated and covered by banking laws) won't have anything to do with me... well, then he's been smoking something which is likely illegal.
This is one of those random internet prognostications put forth by someone who is trying to sell this to people, not by someone who has insight into what is going to happen. This is a marketing statement, and is therefore worthy of a kick in the nuts, and not much else.
I find this article to be somewhat lacking on credibility.
This is some guy who claims to have invented "Web 3.0" telling us that traditional banks will be creating Facebook profiles on our behalf to track our credit rating? Based on what?
âoeWhy is its important to have a profile? They are going to start using that to determine what your credit worthiness is.â
âoeBy the way, if you donâ(TM)t have a profile they will make one for you so itâ(TM)s better for you to create it and manage it then them. Thatâ(TM)s why you want to be selective with what you put on there. If you have kids that are being idiots online make sure you stop them right away as they are creating a pretty negative profile long term and it happens often.â
This is some marketing idiot who is trying to push an idea.
I'm sorry, but this stupid article doesn't do anything to make me want to get a *(&%^&*$^ Facebook account. In fact, it reinforces the perception that Facebook is overhyped, with everybody thinking it's the most significant thing to ever happen.
Biggest bank by 2015? Mandatory Facebook accounts? What drivel. Someone needs to give this guys a smack.
Why would you even be doing that? I sure as hell wouldn't want to get close enough to a bear for a taser to be a viable option, and given the relative size of a bear, I'm not sure I'd trust it to incapacitate it.
I'm not suggesting that two wrongs make a right, or that what China does is right or even good. I definitely think they need to make some changes.
I'm saying that if the US goes around the world talking from a position of acting like they have a moral high-ground, it's all the more glaring when they're hypocrites about certain things.
In this case, the behavior of neither is necessarily good or acceptable -- but at least China isn't spouting off about how the US should be doing things. If the US is being judged by a higher standard, it's because that is the standard they have set for themselves.
My point is that eating something way too hot just because you can dull the pain with dairy is silly. If it hurts, don't do it, there's nothing really to be gained.
Yeah, at that point it's something of a frat boy competition to see who can eat the most absurdly hot item and survive. I used to really gravitate to things like this until a friendly pub owner offered to make me some wings with his secret "stupid sauce" recipe -- full blast habaneros plus some kerosene, formaldehyde and lighter fluid for some extra kick if I remember correctly. That pretty much put the end to my seeking out the hottest thing imaginable, and I'm sure likely actually did some physical damage to my digestive track.;-)
eat that pepper and vomit lava out your nose and try to figure out how to get ice cream up there.
While I can certainly see that some people may be taken advantage of via phishing scams, I just don't see this leading to a great rise in security threats to users. Anyone who *isn't* vigilant in filtering their email, not responding to strange/unknown email requests for information, etc. is likely ALREADY a target!
Well, as someone who is very vigilant and distrusting of emails in general... and as someone who has received at least one email indicating that my data may have been compromised, I'm still a little worried.
With better and more specific information, it's easier to craft a phishing email to be far more convincing and likely to catch people out. Instead of casting an extremely wide net and hoping that someone falls for it, you could be sending an email which targets people by name, and convincingly looking like it comes from a company you deal with.
This is made even worse by the sheer number of legitimate emails I see that actually come from a 3rd party because companies farm this stuff out (which is the root cause of this in the first place). Heck, I've lost track of the number of emails I've received on behalf of an employer that send me to a 3rd party site to do something -- usually a site which requires that I allow cookies, flash, and all sorts of crap I usually don't let unknown sites do. All because some twit in HR wanted to use Survey Monkey or something.
Even with a high level of paranoia, it's increasingly difficult to be 100% sure of the origins and authenticity of some things.
Who said anything about passwords being compromised?
Not as part of this breach, but as a possible consequence.
Bad guys get your email, name, and a couple of other things. Bad guys do a very targeted phishing exercise, and scam you into giving up credentials for one service. Bad guys then could potentially rely on the fact that people reuse passwords, and get into several other sites.
Depending on the uniqueness of your first/last name combination... there might actually be enough information in there to actually identify you in the real world.
You know, the things that TFA are actually saying.
If it's so hot that you need something to kill the pain, it's too hot to be reasonably enjoyed.
Which is why as I've gotten older I've more or less decided that anything beyond a banana pepper or a jalapeno is pointless.
I just don't enjoy it anymore, and my first encounter with habaneros pretty much showed me that things like a mouth that stays on fire for hours and burning hoop just aren't fun. I've just never been able to enjoy super spicy foods as much anymore -- at least not at the endurance end of the spectrum.
The dairy is nice because it's kind of an off-switch -- and, really, all the cultures that have the spicy food use dairy to quench the heat, so why is it cheating? It's not like it's some manly endurance test to take the full heat without any relief... well, I guess to some it might be.
I'm sure some people really do enjoy these things, but I've more or less given up. I know someone who has used so much spices over the years, and smoked for long enough that she has no taste buds left... if it's not spicy as hell, and/or salty as hell, she can barely taste it.
Mostly, however, this article makes me think of Guatamalan Insanity Peppers from the Simpsons.:-P
Is this the same country which has "designated free speech zones" so they can keep dissenting opinions in fenced off areas away from everyone else?
Or the one that allows your laptop to be arbitrarily seized at the border?
Or how about keeping prisoners without trial or recourese in a foreign country using a ginned up judicial system so they can get around their own laws and procedures?
How about one whose Attorney General posited that things like Habeus Corpus don't apply to people who aren't citizens?
Sadly, over the last bunch of years, there have been a fair few instances of America having a "do as I say, not as I do" attitude.
China shouldn't be calling anyone a hypocrite. As furious the barking in Washington has been there's no bite, and nothing compares to China's outright abuse of its people and efforts to censor the internet.
But the difference being, China doesn't go around telling other countries how they should be doing it.
China says something to the effect of "this is what we do, it's the law, if you don't like it tough".
The US says something to the effect of "you shouldn't censor people, and that the internet is a tool for social change and freedom" -- but they're also saying they want to be able to access all of your email without a warrant, and some people are calling for Wikileaks to be treated like terrorism and espionage (though, that seems to have died down).
Sure, China has a bad record of freedom and the like. But, they're not hypocritically telling other countries they should be more free and open and stop blocking the internet and then going around and making things less free and open.
They have a point: this is an aspect where the US very much says one thing internationally, and admonishes other countries for not living up to what the US thinks is best... and then they do it themselves and essentially do seem like hypocrites.
I mean, really, how many countries have been in the middle of civil war for a lot longer than Libyia, and a lot more severe... do we see the US pushing for NATO to get in an intervene in those places? Some might say "only if there's oil", or a particularly annoying dictator we really want to get rid of.
Just because China isn't necessarily doing a better job of it doesn't mean that they can't point out that the US is acting like hypocrites.
The Law of Unintended Consequences will probably come into play here.
Well, except I will cynically say that at the very least, this could be seen coming a mile away and was pointed out by people as having this very likely outcome. At very worst, the people who were planning this very much knew and intended that this would happen. They just either convinced us to the contrary, or picked the most naive spokesperson they could find who loudly said "Oh, they'd never do that".
By the time people clue in, it's too late.
You can't seriously expect that when you give governments access to surveillance and information about the citizenry that they won't turn around and is it for exactly what they claimed they wouldn't.
You can't say "we're going to monitor everybody, but only use it for terrorism" and not be lying, or too naive to think it through. Anybody who didn't think this would happen was fooling themselves.
This is why people go around citing the notion that "Those who desire to give up freedom in order to gain security will not have, nor do they deserve, either one".
Well, the cameras themselves doesn't seem so bad, but does anyone know how long data is retained? I don't want to be leaving records of where I've been for years...
Already happening, already too late, complete and utter surprise? Not so much.
A surveillance society takes an exceedingly short period of time to decide that the initial justifications for these things has so many other handy uses. Governments are completely interested in monitoring and recording everything so that eventually when they need something against you, they have it on file. Even the governments who pretend to be protecting "freedom" and the like.
There's a reason why all of this stuff has been rich fodder for sci-fi for decades... because you can see it coming, and pretty much anticipate the results.
Terrorism was the stated reason, but they're not going to miss out on using a treasure trove of such information. Give it time, and there won't be a single free society on the planet... least of all, the Western democracies who still pretend to be.
I may sound like my tin-foil hat is cutting off the blood supply, but it's hard not to see all of the dystopian stuff unfolding before us. Stuff that has happened in my life time was a work of fiction 50 years ago.
The consumers they speak of aren't the endusers. They're the third party developers.
Maybe, but never publicly.
If you don't keep up the illusion that "consumers" means the end users who buy the console and the games, the rubes might actually take notice and get annoyed with you.
You can't let them know that they're just sheep and a revenue stream and that anything they want is irrelevant. They are the source of cash, after all.
Slashdot Mirror
Well, if there was no GPLv3 code on the device, then in precisely what way would it have the header for GPLv3 in the device?
That would imply two broad conclusions:
1) Boxee is including license headers for software they don't ship, just in case you would like to be able to read it, but that in no way implies they have any GPLv3 code.
2) They have GPLv3 code as evidenced by the fact that that it was there in the first place.
I don't know about you, but I have never included license information for software I'm not including in any product I've ever been party to creating or maintaining.
You're right that it's not possible to know what all is included, but I'm hard pressed to believe that if you have the headers you don't also have at least something using that license.
And, from your own link:
A settlement with a comment from the judge saying "she sees the GNU GPL to be an enforceable and binding license".
Some guy was denied standing to sue since he didn't establish a valid anti-trust claim.
In one case a judge ruled "the GPL was not material to a case dealing with trade secrets derived from GPL-licensed work".
A legal precedent in Germany.
Apparently BusyBox has mostly settled, and agreed to release code.
Again, Linsys and Cisco settled.
As much as we all would like to GPL upheld in court, and some of us would like to say that this has been definitively settled by a court, it seems like in a lot of ways it's a lot murkier than that. Some jurisdictions have upheld it, some judges have commented that it should be legally binding, and many cases have been settled ... which means they don't really provide actual precedents in terms of case law.
I'm just not convinced that there is enough actual legal precedent to say in most jurisdictions that violating the terms of the GPL has been consistently upheld. So far, it seems to be a fairly hodge-podge collection of cases which established various things to various degrees.
I'm certainly not convinced that one of the references you cite actually authoritatively establish this in enough jurisdictions to say the matter has been resolved. I'm not arguing against the GPL ... I'm saying I don't believe that the issue has become cut and dried enough that with enough lawyers you couldn't convince a judge otherwise.
Well, yes ... that's hard to dispute, and it more or less comes down to some philosophical stuff which not everyone always agrees with.
I guess it depends on "which" version of "free" you mean ... free as in beer, free as in free, free as in Libre, and who knows what else.
BSD is free and unencumbered, and it has its place.
GPL is free almost in the sense that the software itself is "liberated" and has its own rights, intended to ensure that the software remains equally free for anybody who might ever want it, and that you can't take away the rights of the software to remain free -- I like to think of the GPL'd software as almost emancipated and with a stake in things.
Some software is free as in free, but you have no rights to do anything with it or make derivative works.
The GPL is more like a "bill of rights", both for the software and anybody who might like to use it, and is intended to benefit pretty much everybody, in perpetuity, and part of the way it achieves that is to limit the extent to which you can take it and stop adhering to that ideology. Since it uses copyright as its foundation, it necessarily has to retain restrictions to you ... you only have rights to make copies of this work if you adhere to the terms. BSD is more along the lines of "have this for free and do anything you like", no restrictions or limitations, no obligations ... just code to do with as you please.
Unfortunately, the two camps often have very opposite points of view in terms of which is "better" or "more free" -- I've used both fairly extensively, and they each have their place. It's really hard to come down on one side or another without it more or less devolving into screeching monkeys, which is what usually happens when this comes up on Slashdot. :-P
Not true ... it prevents you from taking code you got under the GPL, modifying it, and releasing it as closed source. You are free to write your own code from scratch. You just can't write derivative works and not play by their terms.
Things like LGPL allow you to use the library to connect to, and the stuff you write is completely your own and you can do anything you like with it.
Yes, that's true. If you want to have your code not be "tainted" by the implied socialism of a license which forces you to share, then don't start with GPL'd code as a base.
You're arguing that you should be able to take the GPL code, modify it, and then change the terms of the license so you don't have to play by the rules. If you want to do that, something like a BSD or an Apache license might be more suited for you. But, just because you want to take GPL stuff and make it not GPL, doesn't mean you have any right to use the code in a way that violates their license.
You are completely free to write something from scratch and not look at anything GPL'd at all. If you don't have the time and energy (or the skillset) to write your own version ... well, nobody is required to provide it to you. You're whining about the GPL being socialist while at the same time acting like it's someone else's responsibility to write the software you base your own off ... which is socialism, but geared to your benefit.
By whom? Maybe the EFF.
I think part of the problem is that, to the best of my knowledge, the GPL hasn't been fully tested in court, and there is no single body (and certainly not with a lot of resources) who can police this. I'm not even sure the EFF has standing to sue everybody who might do this ... unless the GPL says they're the effective copyright holders for everything GPL'd, short of an amicus curiae the EFF doesn't own the code which is alleged to have been violated.
A lot of companies seem to more or less say "too bad" when it comes to the provisions and providing this stuff ... they're just not willing to provide you with the details you'd need, admit that they're using the GPL'd software, or provide you with the sources even if they are. So, effectively they rip it off with impunity and laugh at you.
If there's no actual consequence for these companies, what is going to change? This is far from the first time we've heard about companies flipping the bird at the terms of the GPL.
And, really, based on my experience with my latest D-Link router ... it might be time to consider a change anyway. My latest router has a tendency to lose connection on one of its ports, and has some issues which may or may not be the fault of Vista.
I continue to be stunned by the fact that Word will attempt to launch an embedded Flash object ... I'm completely baffled by the fact that you can put a .swf file at all. Why the hell would you need that?
It's no wonder we get so many *(&$^& viruses when word-processors attempt to launch embedded executable files without asking or anything.
To me that sounds like the security equivalent of picking up used syringes off the ground and sticking them into your arm to see what's in them.
I mean, WTF? Does Microsoft just sit around and try to identify new sources of arbitrary code they can execute?
This is one of the reasons I don't install Flash on my machines.
Make one loop from a male DNA, one loop from female DNA and imagine the possibilities ... Of course, even TFA is kinda skeptical on this point:
So, in answer to your question ... pass the cheese. ;-)
And, the governments will happily buy it from those 3rd parties as well since it lets them get around any restrictions on them actually gathering it themselves -- I seem to recall a story a couple of years ago where the CIA did exactly that to get around some legalities around domestic spying. Because, if it's capitalism it can't be violating the intent of the law.
Governments that don't care about the legalities will just harvest it themselves.
Given that it's how people look for jobs, conduct their livelihood, keep in touch with people, do their banking and loads of other stuff ... you can make the argument that for a lot of us, the internet has become fundamental to how we do a lot of things.
If someone cuts me off from the internet for 6 months, my life reverts to the stone age in a lot of ways.
Now, it might seem laughable and trivial to call it a human right when people don't have really basic rights like personal liberty or religious freedom ... but, in terms of how it impacts my ability to carry out my daily life (such as my job), it's difficult to express just how entwined it has become.
So, I can see why some of these "three strikes" laws whereby you suddenly can't access the internet would be fairly devastating to someone.
I think the guy who does xkcd should do a graph showing the probability of an xkcd link as a function of the number of comments in a story on Slashdot.
I'm betting by about 60 comments it's a mathematical certainty that someone has linked to it. ;-)
Because, you would never be able to explain the rules to anybody from anywhere else in the world, so they'd never really understand if they've violated it -- pretty much the same as with rugby and cricket. ;-)
Oh, and every time the law put to the test, it would take weeks ... and at the end, it still might not be certain who won. ;-) [ I kid, I kid, I'm sure someone actually does understand what is happening in a Test match ... though, a friend from Sri Lanka tried to explain it once, and I didn't quite follow ]
Yeah, well I'm envisioning "Web 11.0", the last word in the internet ... it'll be better, stronger, and faster ... with more boobies than ever before ... and a new minty fresh taste.
Phear me, bitches. ;-)
He can call it "Web pi*r^2" for all I fucking care.
If he's stupid enough to be envisioning a world in which Facebook is a bank and that it becomes mandatory that I have a profile otherwise a "real" bank (you know, one that's regulated and covered by banking laws) won't have anything to do with me ... well, then he's been smoking something which is likely illegal.
This is one of those random internet prognostications put forth by someone who is trying to sell this to people, not by someone who has insight into what is going to happen. This is a marketing statement, and is therefore worthy of a kick in the nuts, and not much else.
I find this article to be somewhat lacking on credibility.
This is some guy who claims to have invented "Web 3.0" telling us that traditional banks will be creating Facebook profiles on our behalf to track our credit rating? Based on what?
This is some marketing idiot who is trying to push an idea.
I'm sorry, but this stupid article doesn't do anything to make me want to get a *(&%^&*$^ Facebook account. In fact, it reinforces the perception that Facebook is overhyped, with everybody thinking it's the most significant thing to ever happen.
Biggest bank by 2015? Mandatory Facebook accounts? What drivel. Someone needs to give this guys a smack.
WTF??? Are people really tasering moose or bears?
Why would you even be doing that? I sure as hell wouldn't want to get close enough to a bear for a taser to be a viable option, and given the relative size of a bear, I'm not sure I'd trust it to incapacitate it.
That's just plain bizarre!!
I'm not suggesting that two wrongs make a right, or that what China does is right or even good. I definitely think they need to make some changes.
I'm saying that if the US goes around the world talking from a position of acting like they have a moral high-ground, it's all the more glaring when they're hypocrites about certain things.
In this case, the behavior of neither is necessarily good or acceptable -- but at least China isn't spouting off about how the US should be doing things. If the US is being judged by a higher standard, it's because that is the standard they have set for themselves.
Yeah, at that point it's something of a frat boy competition to see who can eat the most absurdly hot item and survive. I used to really gravitate to things like this until a friendly pub owner offered to make me some wings with his secret "stupid sauce" recipe -- full blast habaneros plus some kerosene, formaldehyde and lighter fluid for some extra kick if I remember correctly. That pretty much put the end to my seeking out the hottest thing imaginable, and I'm sure likely actually did some physical damage to my digestive track. ;-)
LOL ... now that paints a mental image. :-P
Well, as someone who is very vigilant and distrusting of emails in general ... and as someone who has received at least one email indicating that my data may have been compromised, I'm still a little worried.
With better and more specific information, it's easier to craft a phishing email to be far more convincing and likely to catch people out. Instead of casting an extremely wide net and hoping that someone falls for it, you could be sending an email which targets people by name, and convincingly looking like it comes from a company you deal with.
This is made even worse by the sheer number of legitimate emails I see that actually come from a 3rd party because companies farm this stuff out (which is the root cause of this in the first place). Heck, I've lost track of the number of emails I've received on behalf of an employer that send me to a 3rd party site to do something -- usually a site which requires that I allow cookies, flash, and all sorts of crap I usually don't let unknown sites do. All because some twit in HR wanted to use Survey Monkey or something.
Even with a high level of paranoia, it's increasingly difficult to be 100% sure of the origins and authenticity of some things.
Not as part of this breach, but as a possible consequence.
Bad guys get your email, name, and a couple of other things. Bad guys do a very targeted phishing exercise, and scam you into giving up credentials for one service. Bad guys then could potentially rely on the fact that people reuse passwords, and get into several other sites.
Depending on the uniqueness of your first/last name combination ... there might actually be enough information in there to actually identify you in the real world.
You know, the things that TFA are actually saying.
Which is why as I've gotten older I've more or less decided that anything beyond a banana pepper or a jalapeno is pointless.
I just don't enjoy it anymore, and my first encounter with habaneros pretty much showed me that things like a mouth that stays on fire for hours and burning hoop just aren't fun. I've just never been able to enjoy super spicy foods as much anymore -- at least not at the endurance end of the spectrum.
The dairy is nice because it's kind of an off-switch -- and, really, all the cultures that have the spicy food use dairy to quench the heat, so why is it cheating? It's not like it's some manly endurance test to take the full heat without any relief ... well, I guess to some it might be.
I'm sure some people really do enjoy these things, but I've more or less given up. I know someone who has used so much spices over the years, and smoked for long enough that she has no taste buds left ... if it's not spicy as hell, and/or salty as hell, she can barely taste it.
Mostly, however, this article makes me think of Guatamalan Insanity Peppers from the Simpsons. :-P
Is this the same country which has "designated free speech zones" so they can keep dissenting opinions in fenced off areas away from everyone else?
Or the one that allows your laptop to be arbitrarily seized at the border?
Or how about keeping prisoners without trial or recourese in a foreign country using a ginned up judicial system so they can get around their own laws and procedures?
How about one whose Attorney General posited that things like Habeus Corpus don't apply to people who aren't citizens?
Sadly, over the last bunch of years, there have been a fair few instances of America having a "do as I say, not as I do" attitude.
But the difference being, China doesn't go around telling other countries how they should be doing it.
China says something to the effect of "this is what we do, it's the law, if you don't like it tough".
The US says something to the effect of "you shouldn't censor people, and that the internet is a tool for social change and freedom" -- but they're also saying they want to be able to access all of your email without a warrant, and some people are calling for Wikileaks to be treated like terrorism and espionage (though, that seems to have died down).
Sure, China has a bad record of freedom and the like. But, they're not hypocritically telling other countries they should be more free and open and stop blocking the internet and then going around and making things less free and open.
They have a point: this is an aspect where the US very much says one thing internationally, and admonishes other countries for not living up to what the US thinks is best ... and then they do it themselves and essentially do seem like hypocrites.
I mean, really, how many countries have been in the middle of civil war for a lot longer than Libyia, and a lot more severe ... do we see the US pushing for NATO to get in an intervene in those places? Some might say "only if there's oil", or a particularly annoying dictator we really want to get rid of.
Just because China isn't necessarily doing a better job of it doesn't mean that they can't point out that the US is acting like hypocrites.
Well, except I will cynically say that at the very least, this could be seen coming a mile away and was pointed out by people as having this very likely outcome. At very worst, the people who were planning this very much knew and intended that this would happen. They just either convinced us to the contrary, or picked the most naive spokesperson they could find who loudly said "Oh, they'd never do that".
By the time people clue in, it's too late.
You can't seriously expect that when you give governments access to surveillance and information about the citizenry that they won't turn around and is it for exactly what they claimed they wouldn't.
You can't say "we're going to monitor everybody, but only use it for terrorism" and not be lying, or too naive to think it through. Anybody who didn't think this would happen was fooling themselves.
This is why people go around citing the notion that "Those who desire to give up freedom in order to gain security will not
have, nor do they deserve, either one".
Already happening, already too late, complete and utter surprise? Not so much.
A surveillance society takes an exceedingly short period of time to decide that the initial justifications for these things has so many other handy uses. Governments are completely interested in monitoring and recording everything so that eventually when they need something against you, they have it on file. Even the governments who pretend to be protecting "freedom" and the like.
There's a reason why all of this stuff has been rich fodder for sci-fi for decades ... because you can see it coming, and pretty much anticipate the results.
Terrorism was the stated reason, but they're not going to miss out on using a treasure trove of such information. Give it time, and there won't be a single free society on the planet ... least of all, the Western democracies who still pretend to be.
I may sound like my tin-foil hat is cutting off the blood supply, but it's hard not to see all of the dystopian stuff unfolding before us. Stuff that has happened in my life time was a work of fiction 50 years ago.
Maybe, but never publicly.
If you don't keep up the illusion that "consumers" means the end users who buy the console and the games, the rubes might actually take notice and get annoyed with you.
You can't let them know that they're just sheep and a revenue stream and that anything they want is irrelevant. They are the source of cash, after all.