I have over hundreds of hours under my belt in court cases, pro se, civil and criminal. I always win. That should tell you two things - (1) most experienced lawyers are crap, (2) maybe you should look at it as you would if you were google.
No, it tells me only one thing; you spend a fair amount of time on legal issues. It doesn't say anything about the issues you were involved with or the quality of lawyers you encountered. And it certainly doesn't attest to any insight as to what the privacy policy language means. Even more on point, nothing so far has shown that:
Google has said that they don't need a subpoena, just a belief that the cops *could* get a subpoena, and they'll roll over on you.
You haven't produced anything that shows Google making these claims. The best you've produced is a legal document and your own personal interpretation of that document.
Of the variations, some note a warrant as an example of an enforceable government request.
... only some. The ones that don't - they leave the door open to a much wider interpretation by choice.
Or maybe it's simply not required. The phrase "enforceable government request" may very well mean a warrant or any equivalent legal mechanism. In which case, your concern (or at least this point) is moot.
A couple somewhat related things to consider...
Google has shown some backbone in these matters where others rolled over. And while the big news of Google's CEO dismissing privacy concerns with a reference to doing things you shouldn't be doing, the bigger issue that got missed was this:
"If you really need that kind of privacy, the reality is that search engines - including Google - do retain this information for some time and it's important, for example, that we are all subject in the United States to the Patriot Act and it is possible that all that information could be made available to the authorities."
Under the PATRIOT Act, Google can't acknowledge orders to reveal information made under the auspices of that act. But what they have done is tell everyone that it IS going on. Don't get me wrong - I thought the quote about having something to hide was idiotic and infuriating. But I find the bigger news was the warning that so many seemed happy to ignore.
And that alone has be concerned not only about Google, but all "cloud computing" environments that could become one-stop shops for overzealous officials from Government and private interests.
... but that's what a strict reading (and what a lawyer would say) says - that if it's possible for the request to be enforced (such as by the cops saying "we can get a warrant if we have to"), that's all that's needed.
That sounds more like your own interpretation of a strict reading than what a lawyer would say. Let me know if you're a lawyer. Or can reference one that has given Google's privacy policy that sort of reading. To me, the language sounds very much like legal terms. And while legal language is often based in it's native language (English in this case), it often uses terms that have very distinct meanings that aren't always apparent to the layman. I'm not a lawyer, of course, but to me it sounds like an "enforceable government request" is something along the lines of a warrant or court order. After all, how do you know a request is enforceable until you have the documentation? By your logic, an order for a half-caff latte by a Fed agent is enforceable government request.
Remember, this was written by Google's lawyers to protect Google from YOU; it will always be interpreted in Google's favour, not yours.
Here's a better privacy policy with respect to sharing data. It's simple and straightforward, and says quite clearly - how hard is it for Google to say "get a search warrant"? Google stopped the "don't be evil" mantra long ago.
Google's privacy policy certainly looks like it's been drafted by a lawyer or two. Yours looks like it's been drafted by an activist. That's not to say yours isn't effective or suitable. But I'm not entirely sure if it's better.
An interesting note is that I Googled around looking for references to the term "enforceable government request." I found a couple pieces talking about Google and privacy. And I found page upon page of privacy policies that use either exactly the same language or slight variations of it. Of the variations, some note a warrant as an example of an enforceable government request.
Fair enough. However, I believe you're reading that in the worse possible light. My interpretation is that they will reveal information when they believe they have to. If it comes out later that the request was bogus, they're not liable.
I agree that this puts a lot of faith in the officers of Google to require proof of an enforceable request. Like you noted, "good faith" has a lot of wiggle room. I'd be much happier if "subpoena" and "court order" was listed specifically in the policy. However, it also strikes me as being a very liberal interpretation to claim that Google feels that the mere possibility of a subpoena is justification.
It is much more rare that I see stories about the actual pornographers being caught and while the viewers are certainly depraved (and you can argue that by consuming the child porn, they encourage those who make it), aren't the pornographers the ones we would rather catch? It wouldn't surprise me if the amount of children actually being forced into child porn is VERY small since the already existing library of images probably contains enough to keep the perverts trading for a long time.
You'd think the entire pornography industry would just fold up. After all, there's enough existing images out there that there's just no need to produce more. Yet... oddly enough... the cameras roll on. Go figure.
And you'd think that when they bust big child porn rings, they'd make a big deal about it. While individuals caught with child pornography tend to be ranked as local news. You know - if they were really after the pornographers and not just the individual consumers.
People joke about OTP and say it's infeasible, but seriously: how inconvenient is it to carry around a few gigabytes of pad? It was infeasible 20 years ago but today it sure doesn't sound very burdensome or expensive. The thing is, it's historically so infeasible, that most of today's software doesn't bother to support it. And yet, if our software could use it, I bet plenty of people really would be carrying around randomized flash cards, just for that purpose.
The minor advantage over one or the other is moot.. because unless you've got something of actual importance (in which case it shouldn't be on your home computer) no one is going to go through the bother of trying to break in either way.
Your value as a victim is often directly proportional to the ease with which you are attacked. Even assumed difficult attacks become easy if they can be automated.
Huh? So you're saying somehow screen keeps listening on a port and lets evil hackers connect to it, exploit it, and continue using your screen session?
Can you really be sure it's not just some other vulnerability that is letting someone in?
One of the high-profile compromises Slashdot covered in the past involved screen. Screen itself wasn't attacked. But it did provide numerous sessions (including SSH tunnels) that provided access to internal systems through an otherwise pretty hard perimeter.
Screen rocks; I use it all the time. But one really needs to keep in mind the issues involved in using it. Using it to keep open active SSH sessions would be a practical example of one of those issues.
I never meant to imply that they were. It's an admittedly artificial domain we use to provide shared awarenss and force synchronization. It's a domain our adversaries use for the same purpose. If they impact our ability to use it, it impacts our operational effectiveness just as much as not having air supremacy affects ground forces or having sea supremacy impacts our ability to allow the sea lines of communication to remain open.
You may not mean to imply that they are, but all your examples certainly do. The whole Cyber Warfare language revolves around the concept that networks are akin to physical domains. I find that absurd. And it's especially frustrating to see, time and again, physical security concepts being applied to a non-physical domain while real issues go misunderstood / unidentified.
I agree that my characterization of information warfare as espionage is somewhat narrow. But I believe it better characterizes the environment and issues than calling it a battlefield. And it certainly is a more accurate term than "cyber warfare."
That aside, I think you're overreacting somewhat. Most in the military see the network as another domain in which to operate (much like the air or sea). The purpose of gaining air or sea supremacy is to ensure that you can effectively use that domain while denying your adversary the use of it. The big difference though is that while it's not really normal to have to contest regions of air or space, the normal state of affairs is that the "cyber" domain is very much being contested on a daily basis. These organizations are intended to provide the expertise and equipment / software needed to effectively operate in this contested domain.
The problem is that information systems are not physical environments. In the physical realm, we have to deal with the laws of physics. The only thing we can do about that is gain a better understanding of them (providing technology and capabilities that weren't possible previously). But in the end, we don't get to re-write the laws of physics. You can make it hard to physically occupy a given space but ultimately there's nothing that makes it impossible to occupy a given space. With information systems, we write the rules. Don't like how a protocol works? Update it or use a different one. Voila. The rules have changed.
Information warfare is espionage. It is not a battleground. We need to make sure we're applying the right concepts to this environment. And we need to ensure that military involvement is appropriate. We do not need a military force to "fight" a "cyber war." But we may need a military force to disable / destroy / capture equipment related to an information warfare operation.
The arbitrary rules are in places because most people can't handle the freedom on a complex computing device. They download Kazaa and end up with all kinds of stuff soap won't wash off.
That certainly explains why there's no Google Voice app on the iPhone. Because Google is just like Kazaa.
Jailbreaking is trivial because Apple didn't try to lock the device from hackers - only lock it to the point were your grandma and your 13-year-old can't break it surfing the net.
It's not a question of difficulty. The question is whether you're allowed to do it. It shouldn't even be a wink-wink-nudge-nudge kind of thing.
Out of the box, the iPhone is better on the whole than any other phone I've used. It lacks tethering, though, and that's the reason I jailbroke it. If my choice was between the iPhone w/o tethering and another smartphone (say, a Droid or Nexus One), I'd still go with the iPhone.
That said, I'm following Android closely, and liking what I see.
Android is very interesting. I liked what I saw in the iPhone when I first looked at one. But not enough to buy one. I ended up (awhile later) getting a Droid and have no interest in the iPhone beyond it being a cornerstone of Apple's strategy. So with that bias stated...
What gets me about these conversations is that it isn't about how polished a product is. It's about freedom and the right to do things with your property. We've come a long way since the 80s where devices existed in proprietary little bubbles. Yet Apple always seems to want to try and turn back that clock. Yeah, sure - the handcuffs are really slick. But that doesn't negate what they're doing.
Having said that - I suppose it IS about polish for some folks. I just don't assign it the same value as others.
As for the nerdy meat of your comment -- sometimes, I would prefer to have simple and limiting to complex and free. I don't *need* to have complete and total control over my phone, my music player, or a simple internet device. These are items that just need to work out of the box, be aesthetically pleasing, and do the job they are intended to do. That doesn't mean that I'm anti-Free Software, but that I don't want to use it for everything that I do.
The vast majority of cool things I've ever done with a device was possible because other people did have that control and were able to figure out cool things that either was never thought of or even approved by the manufacturer. Having complete control gave me the option of piecing together other cool ideas to do cool things of my own. Then there are times I was completely happy with something as it was out of the box. But having the option is freedom even if I never choose to exercise it.
I run ArchLinux on my primary PC, and love it. I alternate between KDE 4 and ScrotWM as window managers, depending on my mood and task. I also love my iPhone, which does 95%+ of what I want out-of-the-box. For that other 5%, jailbreaking is trivial and allows complete control.
Wait a minute. Why do you have to "jailbreak" a phone? Why shouldn't you be able to make it do things because it's yours - not because you've circumvented arbitrary rules? And having said that - didn't you already say there's no reason to do this sort of thing? Works out of the box, right?
I have to agree with part of the GP's statement: this probably won't take away from the eReader market. What it might do, though, is provide a good alternative for people, like yourself, who do prefer LCD displays. That's a good thing, as it gives that segment a way to keep many books/magazines/etc. with them in a format and on a viewing device they enjoy.
Or even possibly expand the eReader market. There's still a lot of folks convinced that reading is for paper medium. If they end up with one of these iPads in their hands for other purposes, they might find themselves toying with reading electronic media and liking it. And then they might even go so far as look at a purpose-oriented eReader (whether they'll pick one up over their iPad is a subject for a different flame war / jihad / personal anecdote fodder).
No Managers? What about the management decision that led to the first shuttle blowing up? The management chose to ignore the enginer's warning about the o-rings. See Space Shuttle Challenger disater (Wikipedia) for details
I think you've both pointed to a major issue; the aerospace culture. NASA is more than just it's civil servants. NASA contractors play a very important role. Those contractors are the very industry that would likely be pushing commercial space enterprises. If you look at the time line of the Challenger incident, you'll note contractor management had a major role in the overall failure of Challenger's booster rockets. In the end, there is very little difference between the management with different colored badges. But there are fundamental flaws in the aerospace culture - at least, that which surrounds space flight / NASA. The CAIB Report touched on this and introduced the concept of changing that culture. And I believe NASA has tried in it's own way. But the culture requires a massive shift that requires way too a radical change for the old guarde of NASA and it's supporting industry.
It has been noted that NASA began to lose it's footing when the guys with the slide rules lost control of the organization to the bean counters. Rocket Park out front of JSC is a stark monument of this change - the primary attraction being a Saturn V vehicle consisting of parts from several Apollo missions that never flew.
Just like airplanes are always falling from the sky because they are owned by private, cost sensitive companies...
Just because its private sector doesn't mean it won't be safer than the atrociously bad safety record of NASA-run manned space flight (which is about a one-in-fifty chance of killing everyone onboard).
You'd think rocket science was difficult or something. Maybe even less forgiving than aeronautics.
Android's fine for geeks who don't like fuild usability, but it'll take another generation or two for Android to catch up.
There's this running joke that geeks hate ease of use; that it's an anathema to the technical-minded ego or eliminates the gate that kept the non-technical riff-raff out of the technician's playground / club. However, I can't think of too many geeks that really do hate ease of use per se. There's aggravation when ease of use features eliminate control or otherwise get in the way of doing something. But in itself, a slick design is usually appreciated. I would challenge you to find someone who's looked at an iPhone and complained that it's too easy to use or the interface is too fluid.
What I do see is a differing weight scale assigned to the importance of the interface. I, myself, don't care if the iPhone is more fluid or not. I find the Android environment to be slick in it's own right. If it's not as fluid as the iPhone, then so be it (I've never sat down with the devices side-by-side so I don't have an opinion on the accuracy of this claim). I don't find that as important as some of the other things you find in the Android environment. And so my personal weight scale puts Android devices in general far above the iPhone. YMMV.
On a somewhat related note - usability has often been introduced as some holy grail of market domination. But it isn't. Apple fans always grated at Wintel domination despite their choice's superior interface (and having never owned a Mac, I was surprised to find something to these claims when I was forced to fix the darned things years ago). Wintel owned a market despite the supposedly glaring inferiority. Ironically, you now have Windows fans claiming domination on the same point. The two interesting things here is that the geeks that would launch impassioned tirades about operating systems would include usability in their arguments despite the contrary stereotype and that actual market history demonstrates that there are plenty of other factors involved.
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I have over hundreds of hours under my belt in court cases, pro se, civil and criminal. I always win. That should tell you two things - (1) most experienced lawyers are crap, (2) maybe you should look at it as you would if you were google.
No, it tells me only one thing; you spend a fair amount of time on legal issues. It doesn't say anything about the issues you were involved with or the quality of lawyers you encountered. And it certainly doesn't attest to any insight as to what the privacy policy language means. Even more on point, nothing so far has shown that:
Google has said that they don't need a subpoena, just a belief that the cops *could* get a subpoena, and they'll roll over on you.
You haven't produced anything that shows Google making these claims. The best you've produced is a legal document and your own personal interpretation of that document.
Or maybe it's simply not required. The phrase "enforceable government request" may very well mean a warrant or any equivalent legal mechanism. In which case, your concern (or at least this point) is moot.
A couple somewhat related things to consider...
Google has shown some backbone in these matters where others rolled over. And while the big news of Google's CEO dismissing privacy concerns with a reference to doing things you shouldn't be doing, the bigger issue that got missed was this:
"If you really need that kind of privacy, the reality is that search engines - including Google - do retain this information for some time and it's important, for example, that we are all subject in the United States to the Patriot Act and it is possible that all that information could be made available to the authorities."
Under the PATRIOT Act, Google can't acknowledge orders to reveal information made under the auspices of that act. But what they have done is tell everyone that it IS going on. Don't get me wrong - I thought the quote about having something to hide was idiotic and infuriating. But I find the bigger news was the warning that so many seemed happy to ignore.
And that alone has be concerned not only about Google, but all "cloud computing" environments that could become one-stop shops for overzealous officials from Government and private interests.
That sounds more like your own interpretation of a strict reading than what a lawyer would say. Let me know if you're a lawyer. Or can reference one that has given Google's privacy policy that sort of reading. To me, the language sounds very much like legal terms. And while legal language is often based in it's native language (English in this case), it often uses terms that have very distinct meanings that aren't always apparent to the layman. I'm not a lawyer, of course, but to me it sounds like an "enforceable government request" is something along the lines of a warrant or court order. After all, how do you know a request is enforceable until you have the documentation? By your logic, an order for a half-caff latte by a Fed agent is enforceable government request.
Remember, this was written by Google's lawyers to protect Google from YOU; it will always be interpreted in Google's favour, not yours.
Here's a better privacy policy with respect to sharing data. It's simple and straightforward, and says quite clearly - how hard is it for Google to say "get a search warrant"? Google stopped the "don't be evil" mantra long ago.
Google's privacy policy certainly looks like it's been drafted by a lawyer or two. Yours looks like it's been drafted by an activist. That's not to say yours isn't effective or suitable. But I'm not entirely sure if it's better.
An interesting note is that I Googled around looking for references to the term "enforceable government request." I found a couple pieces talking about Google and privacy. And I found page upon page of privacy policies that use either exactly the same language or slight variations of it. Of the variations, some note a warrant as an example of an enforceable government request.
Fair enough. However, I believe you're reading that in the worse possible light. My interpretation is that they will reveal information when they believe they have to. If it comes out later that the request was bogus, they're not liable.
I agree that this puts a lot of faith in the officers of Google to require proof of an enforceable request. Like you noted, "good faith" has a lot of wiggle room. I'd be much happier if "subpoena" and "court order" was listed specifically in the policy. However, it also strikes me as being a very liberal interpretation to claim that Google feels that the mere possibility of a subpoena is justification.
It is much more rare that I see stories about the actual pornographers being caught and while the viewers are certainly depraved (and you can argue that by consuming the child porn, they encourage those who make it), aren't the pornographers the ones we would rather catch? It wouldn't surprise me if the amount of children actually being forced into child porn is VERY small since the already existing library of images probably contains enough to keep the perverts trading for a long time.
You'd think the entire pornography industry would just fold up. After all, there's enough existing images out there that there's just no need to produce more. Yet... oddly enough... the cameras roll on. Go figure.
And you'd think that when they bust big child porn rings, they'd make a big deal about it. While individuals caught with child pornography tend to be ranked as local news. You know - if they were really after the pornographers and not just the individual consumers.
Wrong about google. Google has said that they don't need a subpoena, just a belief that the cops *could* get a subpoena, and they'll roll over on you.
Reference please.
That's the same encryption I use on my luggage!
People joke about OTP and say it's infeasible, but seriously: how inconvenient is it to carry around a few gigabytes of pad? It was infeasible 20 years ago but today it sure doesn't sound very burdensome or expensive. The thing is, it's historically so infeasible, that most of today's software doesn't bother to support it. And yet, if our software could use it, I bet plenty of people really would be carrying around randomized flash cards, just for that purpose.
Or carry a token.
The minor advantage over one or the other is moot.. because unless you've got something of actual importance (in which case it shouldn't be on your home computer) no one is going to go through the bother of trying to break in either way.
Your value as a victim is often directly proportional to the ease with which you are attacked. Even assumed difficult attacks become easy if they can be automated.
You're supposed to paint it blue first. Doesn't anyone RTFM?
Huh? So you're saying somehow screen keeps listening on a port and lets evil hackers connect to it, exploit it, and continue using your screen session?
Can you really be sure it's not just some other vulnerability that is letting someone in?
One of the high-profile compromises Slashdot covered in the past involved screen. Screen itself wasn't attacked. But it did provide numerous sessions (including SSH tunnels) that provided access to internal systems through an otherwise pretty hard perimeter.
Screen rocks; I use it all the time. But one really needs to keep in mind the issues involved in using it. Using it to keep open active SSH sessions would be a practical example of one of those issues.
Because you need the hardware that can support that kind of gesture? And that's something new?
Maybe they're using Palm as a decoy. "C'mon Google. Dive on in. The water's fine...!" "Can we shoot them now?" "Wait for it. Waaaaait for it..."
So they can just get away with it, right?
This was not a military attack; it was espionage. These types of things have been going on for decades without direct, public reprisals.
P.S.: I would call in sick Monday if I were you.
Bah. It's always good to call in sick on a Monday. You'll need something better than that.
Why troll at all?
See the little "*" by his name? He's a subscriber and bestowed upon such a brotherhood is the gift of future sight.
I never meant to imply that they were. It's an admittedly artificial domain we use to provide shared awarenss and force synchronization. It's a domain our adversaries use for the same purpose. If they impact our ability to use it, it impacts our operational effectiveness just as much as not having air supremacy affects ground forces or having sea supremacy impacts our ability to allow the sea lines of communication to remain open.
You may not mean to imply that they are, but all your examples certainly do. The whole Cyber Warfare language revolves around the concept that networks are akin to physical domains. I find that absurd. And it's especially frustrating to see, time and again, physical security concepts being applied to a non-physical domain while real issues go misunderstood / unidentified.
I agree that my characterization of information warfare as espionage is somewhat narrow. But I believe it better characterizes the environment and issues than calling it a battlefield. And it certainly is a more accurate term than "cyber warfare."
That aside, I think you're overreacting somewhat. Most in the military see the network as another domain in which to operate (much like the air or sea). The purpose of gaining air or sea supremacy is to ensure that you can effectively use that domain while denying your adversary the use of it. The big difference though is that while it's not really normal to have to contest regions of air or space, the normal state of affairs is that the "cyber" domain is very much being contested on a daily basis. These organizations are intended to provide the expertise and equipment / software needed to effectively operate in this contested domain.
The problem is that information systems are not physical environments. In the physical realm, we have to deal with the laws of physics. The only thing we can do about that is gain a better understanding of them (providing technology and capabilities that weren't possible previously). But in the end, we don't get to re-write the laws of physics. You can make it hard to physically occupy a given space but ultimately there's nothing that makes it impossible to occupy a given space. With information systems, we write the rules. Don't like how a protocol works? Update it or use a different one. Voila. The rules have changed.
Information warfare is espionage. It is not a battleground. We need to make sure we're applying the right concepts to this environment. And we need to ensure that military involvement is appropriate. We do not need a military force to "fight" a "cyber war." But we may need a military force to disable / destroy / capture equipment related to an information warfare operation.
The arbitrary rules are in places because most people can't handle the freedom on a complex computing device. They download Kazaa and end up with all kinds of stuff soap won't wash off.
That certainly explains why there's no Google Voice app on the iPhone. Because Google is just like Kazaa.
Jailbreaking is trivial because Apple didn't try to lock the device from hackers - only lock it to the point were your grandma and your 13-year-old can't break it surfing the net.
It's not a question of difficulty. The question is whether you're allowed to do it. It shouldn't even be a wink-wink-nudge-nudge kind of thing.
Out of the box, the iPhone is better on the whole than any other phone I've used. It lacks tethering, though, and that's the reason I jailbroke it. If my choice was between the iPhone w/o tethering and another smartphone (say, a Droid or Nexus One), I'd still go with the iPhone.
That said, I'm following Android closely, and liking what I see.
Android is very interesting. I liked what I saw in the iPhone when I first looked at one. But not enough to buy one. I ended up (awhile later) getting a Droid and have no interest in the iPhone beyond it being a cornerstone of Apple's strategy. So with that bias stated...
What gets me about these conversations is that it isn't about how polished a product is. It's about freedom and the right to do things with your property. We've come a long way since the 80s where devices existed in proprietary little bubbles. Yet Apple always seems to want to try and turn back that clock. Yeah, sure - the handcuffs are really slick. But that doesn't negate what they're doing.
Having said that - I suppose it IS about polish for some folks. I just don't assign it the same value as others.
As for the nerdy meat of your comment -- sometimes, I would prefer to have simple and limiting to complex and free. I don't *need* to have complete and total control over my phone, my music player, or a simple internet device. These are items that just need to work out of the box, be aesthetically pleasing, and do the job they are intended to do. That doesn't mean that I'm anti-Free Software, but that I don't want to use it for everything that I do.
The vast majority of cool things I've ever done with a device was possible because other people did have that control and were able to figure out cool things that either was never thought of or even approved by the manufacturer. Having complete control gave me the option of piecing together other cool ideas to do cool things of my own. Then there are times I was completely happy with something as it was out of the box. But having the option is freedom even if I never choose to exercise it.
I run ArchLinux on my primary PC, and love it. I alternate between KDE 4 and ScrotWM as window managers, depending on my mood and task. I also love my iPhone, which does 95%+ of what I want out-of-the-box. For that other 5%, jailbreaking is trivial and allows complete control.
Wait a minute. Why do you have to "jailbreak" a phone? Why shouldn't you be able to make it do things because it's yours - not because you've circumvented arbitrary rules? And having said that - didn't you already say there's no reason to do this sort of thing? Works out of the box, right?
I have to agree with part of the GP's statement: this probably won't take away from the eReader market. What it might do, though, is provide a good alternative for people, like yourself, who do prefer LCD displays. That's a good thing, as it gives that segment a way to keep many books/magazines/etc. with them in a format and on a viewing device they enjoy.
Or even possibly expand the eReader market. There's still a lot of folks convinced that reading is for paper medium. If they end up with one of these iPads in their hands for other purposes, they might find themselves toying with reading electronic media and liking it. And then they might even go so far as look at a purpose-oriented eReader (whether they'll pick one up over their iPad is a subject for a different flame war / jihad / personal anecdote fodder).
No Managers? What about the management decision that led to the first shuttle blowing up? The management chose to ignore the enginer's warning about the o-rings. See Space Shuttle Challenger disater (Wikipedia) for details
I think you've both pointed to a major issue; the aerospace culture. NASA is more than just it's civil servants. NASA contractors play a very important role. Those contractors are the very industry that would likely be pushing commercial space enterprises. If you look at the time line of the Challenger incident, you'll note contractor management had a major role in the overall failure of Challenger's booster rockets. In the end, there is very little difference between the management with different colored badges. But there are fundamental flaws in the aerospace culture - at least, that which surrounds space flight / NASA. The CAIB Report touched on this and introduced the concept of changing that culture. And I believe NASA has tried in it's own way. But the culture requires a massive shift that requires way too a radical change for the old guarde of NASA and it's supporting industry.
It has been noted that NASA began to lose it's footing when the guys with the slide rules lost control of the organization to the bean counters. Rocket Park out front of JSC is a stark monument of this change - the primary attraction being a Saturn V vehicle consisting of parts from several Apollo missions that never flew.
Just like airplanes are always falling from the sky because they are owned by private, cost sensitive companies...
Just because its private sector doesn't mean it won't be safer than the atrociously bad safety record of NASA-run manned space flight (which is about a one-in-fifty chance of killing everyone onboard).
You'd think rocket science was difficult or something. Maybe even less forgiving than aeronautics.
Can someone give me one good reason to have a plugin for PDF files? Paedophiles?
Adobe had this dream of the World Wide Web consisting of PDFs for as far as the browser to see.
Android's fine for geeks who don't like fuild usability, but it'll take another generation or two for Android to catch up.
There's this running joke that geeks hate ease of use; that it's an anathema to the technical-minded ego or eliminates the gate that kept the non-technical riff-raff out of the technician's playground / club. However, I can't think of too many geeks that really do hate ease of use per se. There's aggravation when ease of use features eliminate control or otherwise get in the way of doing something. But in itself, a slick design is usually appreciated. I would challenge you to find someone who's looked at an iPhone and complained that it's too easy to use or the interface is too fluid.
What I do see is a differing weight scale assigned to the importance of the interface. I, myself, don't care if the iPhone is more fluid or not. I find the Android environment to be slick in it's own right. If it's not as fluid as the iPhone, then so be it (I've never sat down with the devices side-by-side so I don't have an opinion on the accuracy of this claim). I don't find that as important as some of the other things you find in the Android environment. And so my personal weight scale puts Android devices in general far above the iPhone. YMMV.
On a somewhat related note - usability has often been introduced as some holy grail of market domination. But it isn't. Apple fans always grated at Wintel domination despite their choice's superior interface (and having never owned a Mac, I was surprised to find something to these claims when I was forced to fix the darned things years ago). Wintel owned a market despite the supposedly glaring inferiority. Ironically, you now have Windows fans claiming domination on the same point. The two interesting things here is that the geeks that would launch impassioned tirades about operating systems would include usability in their arguments despite the contrary stereotype and that actual market history demonstrates that there are plenty of other factors involved.