I did consider what Apple did and found their behavior unacceptable and their explanations inadequate. Apple could have done a better thing by getting that update to indicate by on-screen notifications that a data security danger may exist on this particular user's phone and recommend that certain features be disabled or the phone be fixed. Or even disable the fingerprint readers entirely to avoid the danger. Apple could have passed along the general nature of the risk in layman's terms. That sort of notification to the user is reasonable and would have allowed the user to make appropriate decisions.
Yes, you are absolutely right that users screw things up royally. They click on sketchy links, download attachments from mystery emails. They wonder why a desktop that isn't plugged in won't start. I have read pretty much all of it. But, don't you think that better informed users might make better decisions?
Apple didn't even try to send out notifications to better inform their users that the phones in question were compromised.
I don't want to start a flame war. I just think that bricking a lot of phones to protect against a real but statistically very small threat was to trade the certainty of injury to a large group against the slight possibility of large cost and major inconvenience to a much much smaller group. There must have been a person or two who's phones were actually compromised? But to brick how many more people's phone with no warning, when many of them they may have had a very serious need for the phones. The kindest way I can describe it is to say it seems wildly disproportionate to me, something of swatting fleas with sledgehammers.
Not a misrepresentation at all. Apple could have chosen to have the update identify the possible (but wildly unlikely) hazards from the indie repair jobs in question. Instead, Apple bricked people's phones. Yes, that does increase the security of data on those phones but, in most people's day to day universe, the likelihood of someone needing the phone and finding it suddenly bricked is every high. Maybe a phone is just a toy to you, but a phone is a lifeline to me. when I need it, I need it.
So, Apple deciding to brick a bunch of phones balanced a slight (but real) risk of grave danger to data against a near certainty of huge inconvenience or worse to probably almost all of the people affected. Whenever I hear the argument that Apple was protecting their customers I throw up in my throat one more time. Apple damaged their customers for no good reason. (Well, actually, there is a reason - protect the Apple repair profits regardless of damage to customers) They claim a security reason, but it makes no sense to me when a less damaging but very appropriate alternative was available - telling people about the potential issues and trusting customers to assess their own risk.
I no longer subscribe to the idea of "padding" passwords, such as "Bob...27". Long, and if the cracker tries one by one characters, very secure, but if the cracker uses common words, phrases, and sequences, and a very fast machine, such passwords would be quite vulnerable, and little better, or sometimes worse than the difficult to remember strings they replaced.
I assume a sophisticated cracker would now try out words like "bob", "Bob", "BOB", very early in a search. Also common non-word strings like repeated periods, commas, other punctuation marks, "12345", combinations thereof, and so on. Were I a bad actor, I would seek such low hanging fruit.
I have recently read in these pages an intriguing suggestion that uncommon symbols like £ ¥ and so on would substantially widen the search space and deter all but the most determined and well armed attacker. Unfortunately, I do not believe very many sites allow robust character sets for passwords. Nonetheless, I shall try to include them and see if I can harden passwords further.
It looks likely that quantum machines will be here sooner rather than later, so I am beginning to employ suitable passwords for defense from very rapid attack.
I'd love to be shown I'm wrong, but i believe brute force crackers try nonsense sequences of normal words as well as the various symbols, so that even such a long concatenation may not be as secure as it looks. The only thing I trust now is horrible messes like:
^i`2R4[v3,U)o0O7#d2=E8~h3.j6:A8*m1\K
Not a lot of fun to use.
OS2 had some sore of demo version that would run easily. Maybe a live disc? Anyway, I could experience some of what it was supposed to do and I was enthralled. I had a feeling I was looking into the future. Multiple desktops... Holy moly. I was in love.
Driver support meant I couldn't use it. Probably just as well because the install was "touchy", and I had no tech skills at all. I went with NT for better support. And NT was pretty cool too, but...
I never forgot that feeling of looking into some sort of future. I had no idea at the time that the future was 'Nixes, and now I get to take stuff like multiple desktops for granted. But OS2 feels like that girlfriend I almost got way back when. It's a nostalgia thing. And darn it, when Arca Noa comes out with a new version, I'm planning on setting up and running an extra computer as a dedicated OS2 box for an occasional nostalgia binge.
I've noticed that too. But it doesn't make your excellent idea any less excellent. It just makes such sites look less safe compared to what they could be.
I was wondering when someone would start to look for facts rather than making up and then beating a fake and simplistic bad-guy. I have no use at all for patent trolling and believe the law is badly overdue for major reform, but that doesn't change the fact that Myhrvold has a ridiculously long list of real accomplishments. My impression is that whatever he does, he does at a world class level. Of all the people who practice patent harvesting, he is the single one I would seriously want to have a conversation with. I am fascinated with those people who accomplish greatly in diverse enterprises.
At the cost of a macbook, I buy multiple other computers that make me happy. I guess Apple make good hardware, but, at the cost I won't even look at it.
And all this is why I'm averse to allowing any application to maintain a "helpful" data-base of my images or to obtain any control of my file system. I go with all manual backups to multiple physical locations under my control. No backup to the cloud. Especially no automated backups with syncing. There are too many stories out there of syncs that go the wrong way and delete everything local to match an erroneously empty directory in the cloud.
As far as Apple goes, and I'm very far from a fan, I'd guess, but not bet, that they are making a good faith effort to sort this one out. But as others have noted, complexity is a bitch, and it will bite you. They have a lot to lose on this one after the bad press from their phone bricking incidents.
I strongly suggested my girlfriend get rid of all connections to the Apple itunes and i-this and i-that systems on her computer to avoid this kind of disaster. This was after a related kind of screwup where a different automated convenience system kept making duplicates of her photos on her computer. Different supplier whos name I cannot recall. We got rid of that and cleaned up the mess. It was hours of stupid numbing work getting rid of sometimes dozens of needless dupes. I suspect she may have enabled some setting or oked something wrong, but the result was a lot of work for me. I have become very careful of "helpful" automation.
And as you entertain yourself with the image of dying for some cause, consider that the person you're most likely to take with you will be a spouse or your kid because they may get sick unnecessarily. But then again, maybe you can wreak havoc outside your family, when your un-vaccinated kid puts other kids in danger, because your kid will bring illness to some other kid at school who cannot be vaccinated for medical reasons.
BMI is at best a very rough indicator. Sounds like you are working hard - and successfully - to have real health, a strong body. Congratulations to you!
For goodness sake. It's government and of course will be absurd. But knowing that they are currently requiring a particular format etc for commentary, no matter how idiotic, you should use that format if you want your (and my) opinion to get recognized. This is the kind of stubbornness that makes certain that advocates for open software etc. will not get a hearing. I'm a fan of free and open software so I want this sort of issue aired.
I'm kind of surprised more photographers have not spoken up here. The assertion, "That seems like plenty for one afternoon of work" misses the point and the facts in so many ways. First, it is standard practice to retain copyright and sell off license to publish an enumerated amount of times to a specified distribution for a specific length of time. The photographer retains ownership and copyright. There is a good logic here. For big jobs with wide, high profile distribution, only the best and most skilled photographers and graphics would be wanted. They earn and deserve more than the neighborhood snapshooter.
As to "one afternoon of work"... as if a really good photographer only devotes that amount of time for a job...
What led to the 2008 collapse wasn't the kinds of ratios you speak of.
It was a long chain of bad decisions in a number of places:
Banks and brokerages who went wild buying and selling derivatives, the risk of which they did not waste time understanding.
Banks, brokerages and others who offered up loans to people who had not a chance of paying back.
People who couldn't rub two nickles together who signed for said loans.
Real estate appraisals that were wildly overstated. Said high valuations made the loans appear reasonable if one wasn't really
looking too closely.
Banks and brokerages who bundled bad loans together in great masses and proclaimed that a lot of bad loans were safer than a few.
Insurance companies like AIG who massively underpriced mortgage default insurance to sell a lot quickly and who paid too little attention to the risks they were taking on.
Government regulators who turned a blind eye to a rising and pervasive level of entangled risk that threatened to take down the whole system.
Wall streeters who dove way too deep for quick profit and ignored and lied about risk.
The ratios you note should always be watched closely, but they were not the culprits in 2008.
The desire for a quick buck regardless of risk undermined the market.
The deeply entangled ownership of derivatives among too few, and too large, mega firms made any negative market "event" for one of those firms capable of taking them all down.
"For people like my mother, Apple computers are indeed better."
Maybe. Maybe not.
Someone is going to have to support Mom's computer. If it's a Mac, that person will have to be one level more savvy to get around Apple's user protective stuff. i.e. I won't be able to keep Mom's machine working because all the extra junk is one step beyond my knowledge. I'm not a developer - just a user who has figured out that the non-proprietary OSs are the sweet spot for user maintenance. Add proprietary and easy maintenance goes south.
Slashdot Mirror
Yes, you are absolutely right that users screw things up royally. They click on sketchy links, download attachments from mystery emails. They wonder why a desktop that isn't plugged in won't start. I have read pretty much all of it. But, don't you think that better informed users might make better decisions?
Apple didn't even try to send out notifications to better inform their users that the phones in question were compromised.
I don't want to start a flame war. I just think that bricking a lot of phones to protect against a real but statistically very small threat was to trade the certainty of injury to a large group against the slight possibility of large cost and major inconvenience to a much much smaller group. There must have been a person or two who's phones were actually compromised? But to brick how many more people's phone with no warning, when many of them they may have had a very serious need for the phones. The kindest way I can describe it is to say it seems wildly disproportionate to me, something of swatting fleas with sledgehammers.
So, Apple deciding to brick a bunch of phones balanced a slight (but real) risk of grave danger to data against a near certainty of huge inconvenience or worse to probably almost all of the people affected. Whenever I hear the argument that Apple was protecting their customers I throw up in my throat one more time. Apple damaged their customers for no good reason. (Well, actually, there is a reason - protect the Apple repair profits regardless of damage to customers) They claim a security reason, but it makes no sense to me when a less damaging but very appropriate alternative was available - telling people about the potential issues and trusting customers to assess their own risk.
They push too hard too often. They have made themselves the last service I will try if I need a ride.
I no longer subscribe to the idea of "padding" passwords, such as "Bob...27". Long, and if the cracker tries one by one characters, very secure, but if the cracker uses common words, phrases, and sequences, and a very fast machine, such passwords would be quite vulnerable, and little better, or sometimes worse than the difficult to remember strings they replaced.
I assume a sophisticated cracker would now try out words like "bob", "Bob", "BOB", very early in a search. Also common non-word strings like repeated periods, commas, other punctuation marks, "12345", combinations thereof, and so on. Were I a bad actor, I would seek such low hanging fruit.
I have recently read in these pages an intriguing suggestion that uncommon symbols like £ ¥ and so on would substantially widen the search space and deter all but the most determined and well armed attacker. Unfortunately, I do not believe very many sites allow robust character sets for passwords. Nonetheless, I shall try to include them and see if I can harden passwords further.
It looks likely that quantum machines will be here sooner rather than later, so I am beginning to employ suitable passwords for defense from very rapid attack.
I'd love to be shown I'm wrong, but i believe brute force crackers try nonsense sequences of normal words as well as the various symbols, so that even such a long concatenation may not be as secure as it looks. The only thing I trust now is horrible messes like: ^i`2R4[v3,U)o0O7#d2=E8~h3.j6:A8*m1\K Not a lot of fun to use.
Driver support meant I couldn't use it. Probably just as well because the install was "touchy", and I had no tech skills at all. I went with NT for better support. And NT was pretty cool too, but...
I never forgot that feeling of looking into some sort of future. I had no idea at the time that the future was 'Nixes, and now I get to take stuff like multiple desktops for granted. But OS2 feels like that girlfriend I almost got way back when. It's a nostalgia thing. And darn it, when Arca Noa comes out with a new version, I'm planning on setting up and running an extra computer as a dedicated OS2 box for an occasional nostalgia binge.
I've noticed that too. But it doesn't make your excellent idea any less excellent. It just makes such sites look less safe compared to what they could be.
I'd be fine if people just abused the patent office, but trolling penalizes valuable activities in the private sector.
Damn good thinking!!! I like that. Characters outside normal scope. I didn't know they would work.
Take a look at Myhrvold's history before you go out on that limb.
See above.
I was wondering when someone would start to look for facts rather than making up and then beating a fake and simplistic bad-guy. I have no use at all for patent trolling and believe the law is badly overdue for major reform, but that doesn't change the fact that Myhrvold has a ridiculously long list of real accomplishments. My impression is that whatever he does, he does at a world class level. Of all the people who practice patent harvesting, he is the single one I would seriously want to have a conversation with. I am fascinated with those people who accomplish greatly in diverse enterprises.
More seriously, I've decided elderly is a state of mind. Someone else's mind.
That leaves me wondering what it is you do with / to laptops? Not critical. Just really wondering.
I'm 64. 65 is elderly.
You missed a relevant criterion: cost.
Should say "(size/screen/weight/cost/etc.)"
At the cost of a macbook, I buy multiple other computers that make me happy. I guess Apple make good hardware, but, at the cost I won't even look at it.
And all this is why I'm averse to allowing any application to maintain a "helpful" data-base of my images or to obtain any control of my file system. I go with all manual backups to multiple physical locations under my control. No backup to the cloud. Especially no automated backups with syncing. There are too many stories out there of syncs that go the wrong way and delete everything local to match an erroneously empty directory in the cloud. As far as Apple goes, and I'm very far from a fan, I'd guess, but not bet, that they are making a good faith effort to sort this one out. But as others have noted, complexity is a bitch, and it will bite you. They have a lot to lose on this one after the bad press from their phone bricking incidents. I strongly suggested my girlfriend get rid of all connections to the Apple itunes and i-this and i-that systems on her computer to avoid this kind of disaster. This was after a related kind of screwup where a different automated convenience system kept making duplicates of her photos on her computer. Different supplier whos name I cannot recall. We got rid of that and cleaned up the mess. It was hours of stupid numbing work getting rid of sometimes dozens of needless dupes. I suspect she may have enabled some setting or oked something wrong, but the result was a lot of work for me. I have become very careful of "helpful" automation.
And as you entertain yourself with the image of dying for some cause, consider that the person you're most likely to take with you will be a spouse or your kid because they may get sick unnecessarily. But then again, maybe you can wreak havoc outside your family, when your un-vaccinated kid puts other kids in danger, because your kid will bring illness to some other kid at school who cannot be vaccinated for medical reasons.
BMI is at best a very rough indicator. Sounds like you are working hard - and successfully - to have real health, a strong body. Congratulations to you!
Last time I flew I was scribbling down linear algebra problems and trying to solve them.
But effectively.
It would be real news were there be no stolen data in the hands of russian hackers.
I'm kind of surprised more photographers have not spoken up here. The assertion, "That seems like plenty for one afternoon of work" misses the point and the facts in so many ways. First, it is standard practice to retain copyright and sell off license to publish an enumerated amount of times to a specified distribution for a specific length of time. The photographer retains ownership and copyright. There is a good logic here. For big jobs with wide, high profile distribution, only the best and most skilled photographers and graphics would be wanted. They earn and deserve more than the neighborhood snapshooter. As to "one afternoon of work" ... as if a really good photographer only devotes that amount of time for a job...
It was a long chain of bad decisions in a number of places:
Banks and brokerages who went wild buying and selling derivatives, the risk of which they did not waste time understanding.
Banks, brokerages and others who offered up loans to people who had not a chance of paying back.
People who couldn't rub two nickles together who signed for said loans.
Real estate appraisals that were wildly overstated. Said high valuations made the loans appear reasonable if one wasn't really looking too closely.
Banks and brokerages who bundled bad loans together in great masses and proclaimed that a lot of bad loans were safer than a few.
Insurance companies like AIG who massively underpriced mortgage default insurance to sell a lot quickly and who paid too little attention to the risks they were taking on.
Government regulators who turned a blind eye to a rising and pervasive level of entangled risk that threatened to take down the whole system.
Wall streeters who dove way too deep for quick profit and ignored and lied about risk.
The ratios you note should always be watched closely, but they were not the culprits in 2008.
The desire for a quick buck regardless of risk undermined the market.
The deeply entangled ownership of derivatives among too few, and too large, mega firms made any negative market "event" for one of those firms capable of taking them all down.
Maybe. Maybe not.
Someone is going to have to support Mom's computer. If it's a Mac, that person will have to be one level more savvy to get around Apple's user protective stuff. i.e. I won't be able to keep Mom's machine working because all the extra junk is one step beyond my knowledge. I'm not a developer - just a user who has figured out that the non-proprietary OSs are the sweet spot for user maintenance. Add proprietary and easy maintenance goes south.