TL;DR: If what is going on with SF rents is wrong, then our whole society is wrong, and you can't fix SF without fixing everything else, too.
San Francisco is a poorly run city, but that's the business of San Franciscans. There will always be poorly run cities (and other organizations, public or private) in the world. You can't "fix" that.A far better solution is to let cities and states make local choices and force them to live with the consequences of their choices. That way, San Francisco can fail, Fremont can prosper, and people can vote with their feet. If you try to "fix our whole society", you just risk such problems become national and taking away any ability of people to get away from bad government.
What annoys me is the massive state and federal subsidies that flow into San Francisco, to help the poverty and social problems that its misguided policies create, to help it cope with its dysfunctional transportation issues, and to subsidize both its corporations and residents merely for living there. Stop pouring money into SF from the outside, SF prices will drop, and some degree of sanity will be restored.
I think if I came to where you and your family lived, knocked on the door and said to be out in 30 or 60 days and you couldn't afford to stay in the area near family, near friends, near schools your kids went to, near jobs that supported your family. I don't think you would just shrug and say well no one has a "right" to live anywhere.
I certainly have moved away from places I liked and where my friends lived because the area got too expensive and I couldn't afford it anymore. It's basic, responsible financial decision making. I have no tolerance for people who whine and complain about it.
On the other hand, the right to life is a fundamental, human right - and that implies that everybody has a right to live somewhere, which contradicts your statement, I think.
The "right to life" only means that other people can't kill you without cause. It doesn't mean that other people have to provide you with an apartment, let alone an apartment in one of the most expensive and desirable cities in the US.
The current hardware brute force method requires physical acquisition of the actual device. What the FBI is asking for would not.
The FBI is simply asking for a signed, phone-specific firmware update to remove the number of unlock attempts. That update probably can't be sent over the air, but even if it could, it wouldn't matter since it only applies to a phone that the FBI already physically possesses.
What I can't figure out about people like you is whether you don't realize how stupid the stuff you say is, or whether you are deliberately making up bullshit and hope nobody notices.
It's entirely plausible to me that Apple built something the FBI can't get into using their existing tools and techniques
It's plausible, but Snowden is probably right. The iPhone 5C uses its main processor to implement lockout and erase, and that processor is subject to hardware attacks; that is, the FBI can tie into the device's hardware bus, modify RAM on the fly, disassemble programs, etc. To be actually secure, security needs to be implemented in secure hardware. The iPhone 5C has some secure hardware, but it isn't used in a way that would protect against the kind of attack the FBI is proposing. I think Apple has already announced that their future iPhones will use secure hardware in a better way, so that both the FBI and even Apple themselves can't break into it.
And I wouldn't blame Apple for the iPhone 5C not being very secure; the iPhone 5C is an old design, and at the time, the kind of bullet proof cryptography we demand now just wasn't as important yet.
I happen to agree with Snowden. And one you recognize that the FBI is lying about being unable to break into the phone, and Tim Cook is lying about the phones being secure the way they are, you end up wondering what their actual motivations are. Might it be that Tim Cook doesn't like his company's products to get a reputation for being not secure, while the FBI likes people using insecure and breakable phones?
(Note that Microsoft has already been forced to give its source code to the Russian security services, and it seems likely that Apple has succumbed to similar pressures.)
We weren't, at any point, discussing if French taxes are justified.
That is exactly what we are discussing:
in this case silicon valley has been a leech on many of the world's societies. Perhaps silicon valley should actually try paying what it legitimately owes instead of trying to use tax havens to leech off society.
Ultimately, though, the question at hand, relevant to the subject matter, is if Google is entitled to exempt itself from tax laws that apply to other companies.
You're getting it backwards: other companies with the same relationships to each other as Google's subsidiaries do not have to pay these taxes. The French government going after Google is politically motivated. Furthermore, it's penny wise and pound foolish, because this kind of arbitrary government sends companies packing (France already isn't a very desirable place for international corporations to begin with due to the language and the culture).
C, C++, and Java compilers also have replaced many developers! Imagine how many more developers there would be if everybody programmed everything in assembly language! And don't get me started on text editors, IDEs, garbage collection and debuggers, pure job killing machines! The computer industry has been devastated and there are hardly any programmers left anymore because of all that automation and AI!
Saying that they must obey French tax laws is a tautology. Obviously, as a practical matter, they have to follow the laws of the country they are doing business in.
What we are talking about is whether French taxes are justified. Your argument was that Google receives infrastructure in France that it needs to do business, I'm saying that is bullshit. The only infrastructure Google is using in France for its business is infrastructure that France already taxes other people to provide or that are paid for privately: roads for employees, Internet access for its employees and customers.
If you want to make an argument that taxing Google beyond that is reasonable, you have to explain what that money is supposed to be for. Right now, France is just behaving like highway robbers: they try to take money because they can.
But at the same time, your stupid, one-sided, totally superficial condemnation is simply wrong.
Let's recall how this started: I stated the simple, liberal concept and preference that government should not maintain sex offender registries while private citizens and groups should not have their free speech rights curtailed. Obviously, that's my preference for the US. I really don't care what European or Asian nations do.
You disagreed, and your response consisted of a stereotypical barrage of anti-American bigotry and tu quoques, plus numerous amusing attempts to establish your authority by referring to your "thousand year history", your dead grandfather, and your (supposedly) superior education.
Too bad this is online, in person you wouldn't speak like that, or at least you wouldn't reach the end of the sentence.
A threat of violence in response to a political statement? How German of you. What other political movement was notorious for that? Oh, right...
in order to win an argument with me
We haven't been having an argument (what about?). I simply see you as an amusing outgrowth of European political culture and the fools that comprise it, and a good reminder of why I left.
Space craft certainly should use non renewable energy, namely deuterium, uranium, and thorium. We're not ever going to get much of a space program with solar cells.
I.e., I implied that we must use fission and/or fusion, not that we don't need reaction mass. In fact, many designs for such rockets use the fission/fusion products directly as reaction mass (preferably outside the atmosphere).
Now:
which is plain wrong as we already have "realistic options" that run on technology you neglect.
You're missing the point here. When I said "we're not ever going to get much of a space program with solar cells", that implies that I acknowledge that we are using solar cells (and ion propulsion). My point is that they don't amount to "much of a space program": we launch tiny, slow interplanetary spacecraft every few years, and if we're lucky, they send back a bit of data. The use of solar cells and avoidance of nuclear fuels has been a major impediment to unmanned exploration of the solar system. In addition, solar cells are completely unusable for manned voyages. If we ever want to have a real space program, as opposed to the joke we have right now, we need to develop and implement nuclear propulsion and use nuclear power to power our robots.
Right. The concept of liberty was invented in Greece (which is in Europe), further developed in the Roman Empire (which was in Europe), extensively developed by philosophers Hobbes (England), Locke (England) and Rousseau (France), Montesquieu (France), and Mill (England) - all of which you may have noticed, are in Europe. It was brought to America by european colonists, not invented there.
Yes, and the concepts of fascism, socialism, communism, aristocracy, and theocracy were also developed in Europe. People who actually wanted to experience liberty largely emigrated from Europe, because there is a big difference between talking about liberty and realizing it. Europe has been such a fertile ground for theorizing about utopias because the reality of political and social life in Europe has generally been bleak.
Barf. What? Sorry, I just spit out my breakfast. Hitler hated capitalism??? His biggest allies were the great industrialists of the time. He hated communism
No, it's not debatable that Hitler's political and economic program was both anti-capitalist and anti-communist. You are right that major industrialists and big corporations were in bed with the Nazi regime, but that didn't make them capitalists. In Nazi Germany, individuals and corporations became wealthy and powerful not through participation in free markets, but through cooperating with the government. (Of course, that's a principle that modern Germany still practices extensively.)
Yeah, I understand how difficult it must be for you to be around people with some education. My pity was misplaced. My grandfather, on the other hand, was hanged by the Nazis for his participation in a resistance group. Say that to my face, in person, and I'll punch some sense into your stupid brain.
And who would that grandfather be? Franz Vogt? The time, name, and geography fit, but he committed suicide. In addition, he was a socialist, i.e., someone who also favored totalitarianism, just a slightly different kind from the fascists.
In any case, you keep proving my point by implying superior knowledge and morality based on your blood, history, and culture, like generations of German nationalists before you.
It's like Apple, the FBI, and Congress are vying for the title of "most harmful to personal privacy and security in 2016". I guess the year is still young; maybe others will still get into the game.
Most of our genes don't do much of anything most of the time. But that's true of many things in our environment. Car analogy? I can sabotage your headlights, your seat belts, your rear seats, your locks, your airbags, your dome lights, your climate control, your emission filters and catalytic converter and... you might not even notice until months later. That doesn't mean that those items don't have any function.
In fact, large numbers of genes probably exist only to be used when you are sick or environmentally stressed. Many other genes give you redundant functionality, or functionality that individually only increases your performance on some task a little bit. Many genes have significant effects only in the brain, where it is very hard to find differences.
Don't get me wrong: the information that some gene can be deleted without being lethal is useful information. But it doesn't mean that you "don't need them".
We've tried small government, big government, democracy, tyranny, aristocracy, monarchy (with one, two and more kings), feudalism, centralism, socialism, capitalism, state control and private control and mob rule - name any political fancy of anyone and you will find it in a history book and you can read up on the results..
Ah, so you are taking Europe's sorry history of totalitarian regimes, political oppression, and genocides as evidence of European political wisdom? What it actually tells you is much more straightforward: European cultures are fundamentally hostile to liberty, Europeans are slow learners, and they keep repeating the same mistakes over and over again.
It's true. You are. No country ever in the history of the world has allowed its elite to plunder it so completely, to transfer so much of its wealth to so few.
That was probably Hitler's main grievance: he hated capitalism, investing ("profiteering"), "unearned" income, America, bankers, and merchants, and believed that wealth should be redistributed to those hardworking Germans who deserved it. See, there's obviously a little Nazi in you struggling to get out. Just be honest and embrace him.
You americans think you are so smart.
This American is actually an American by choice, leaving Europe to get away from people like you. And I know how ignorant and indoctrinated you are, because I used to be like that myself.
That's why Apple-style security, that is, security they can break but refuse to, is the wrong approach. When French or Chinese or Russian governments come calling, they will have no alternative to compliance.
A computer system or phone is only secure if it is secure against adversaries with full access to source code and code signing keys.
A nuclear reactor running on deuterium: does not exist.
I'm sorry, I thought any halfway educated person would know that deuterium is not used to power nuclear reactors but fusion reactors.
Exactly. And that is why we are using solar panels and plasma drives or ion drives. (Facepalm)
As I was saying: the only realistic options for manned and most robotic missions are chemical, fission, fusion, or antimatter. That sentence doesn't say anything about whether the necessary reactors already exist, nor does it deny the existence of other technologies. But I shouldn't be so harsh on you: English is a difficult language and you obviously are struggling with it.
You should know that. Neither fission nor fusion drives do exist... nor will ever.
Well, anything is possible. Maybe Germanic hordes will destroy civilization again or another German Reich or communist superstate will finally manage to oppress science globally. But much as you may desire such outcomes, I don't think they are very likely.
Silly commoner. Laws are for you, not the rich and powerful.
This is government overreach by government bureaucrats, not overreach by "the rich and powerful". This is exactly the kind of abuse of power that progressive government brings you. Do you feel the Bern yet?
Perhaps some kind of a trade school that specializes in her talents would have been a better option -- but the career she is shooting for demands a college degree, so she perseveres.
And that's a good thing. There are many ways of succeeding at math and compensating for learning difficulties, and perseverance is one of them.
It's not really clear what Hacker wants. High schools generally don't require algebra 2 or calculus AFAIK. You can go through high school without them, and then take some blue collar job or go to vocational school. Colleges, too, decide what their admission requirements are. Many colleges tend to prefer students with algebra and calculus, but that's usually not a strict requirement, and in any case, it's a decision of individual schools, not a "mandate".
In any case, by definition, competitive colleges have "barriers" to entry, and requiring all their students to know basic math and science (and that's what algebra and calculus are) is a reasonable barrier for them to have. If anything, colleges should be requiring more science and math literacy, not less.
Dana Goldstein writes at Slate that political scientist Andrew Hacker proposes replacing algebra II and calculus in the high school and college with a practical course in statistics for citizenship.
You can't understand statistics meaningfully without algebra and calculus.
What Andrew Hacker seems to be saying is that students should be taught the kind of pseudo-science that passes for "statistics" among social scientists. Perhaps they should be, but that takes a few weeks, not an entire high school curriculum.
One major reason for that is -- you guessed it -- the strong native security
If Apple can reset the pin count on their phones with a software update, the "native security" isn't so strong. And what that really means is that the FBI's data is owned by Apple, hardly a good situation.
Slashdot Mirror
San Francisco is a poorly run city, but that's the business of San Franciscans. There will always be poorly run cities (and other organizations, public or private) in the world. You can't "fix" that.A far better solution is to let cities and states make local choices and force them to live with the consequences of their choices. That way, San Francisco can fail, Fremont can prosper, and people can vote with their feet. If you try to "fix our whole society", you just risk such problems become national and taking away any ability of people to get away from bad government.
What annoys me is the massive state and federal subsidies that flow into San Francisco, to help the poverty and social problems that its misguided policies create, to help it cope with its dysfunctional transportation issues, and to subsidize both its corporations and residents merely for living there. Stop pouring money into SF from the outside, SF prices will drop, and some degree of sanity will be restored.
So because you want to be a C-level executive, other people should subsidize your housing. Got it.
I certainly have moved away from places I liked and where my friends lived because the area got too expensive and I couldn't afford it anymore. It's basic, responsible financial decision making. I have no tolerance for people who whine and complain about it.
The "right to life" only means that other people can't kill you without cause. It doesn't mean that other people have to provide you with an apartment, let alone an apartment in one of the most expensive and desirable cities in the US.
The FBI is simply asking for a signed, phone-specific firmware update to remove the number of unlock attempts. That update probably can't be sent over the air, but even if it could, it wouldn't matter since it only applies to a phone that the FBI already physically possesses.
What I can't figure out about people like you is whether you don't realize how stupid the stuff you say is, or whether you are deliberately making up bullshit and hope nobody notices.
It's plausible, but Snowden is probably right. The iPhone 5C uses its main processor to implement lockout and erase, and that processor is subject to hardware attacks; that is, the FBI can tie into the device's hardware bus, modify RAM on the fly, disassemble programs, etc. To be actually secure, security needs to be implemented in secure hardware. The iPhone 5C has some secure hardware, but it isn't used in a way that would protect against the kind of attack the FBI is proposing. I think Apple has already announced that their future iPhones will use secure hardware in a better way, so that both the FBI and even Apple themselves can't break into it.
And I wouldn't blame Apple for the iPhone 5C not being very secure; the iPhone 5C is an old design, and at the time, the kind of bullet proof cryptography we demand now just wasn't as important yet.
(Note that Microsoft has already been forced to give its source code to the Russian security services, and it seems likely that Apple has succumbed to similar pressures.)
That is exactly what we are discussing:
You're getting it backwards: other companies with the same relationships to each other as Google's subsidiaries do not have to pay these taxes. The French government going after Google is politically motivated. Furthermore, it's penny wise and pound foolish, because this kind of arbitrary government sends companies packing (France already isn't a very desirable place for international corporations to begin with due to the language and the culture).
C, C++, and Java compilers also have replaced many developers! Imagine how many more developers there would be if everybody programmed everything in assembly language! And don't get me started on text editors, IDEs, garbage collection and debuggers, pure job killing machines! The computer industry has been devastated and there are hardly any programmers left anymore because of all that automation and AI!
What we are talking about is whether French taxes are justified. Your argument was that Google receives infrastructure in France that it needs to do business, I'm saying that is bullshit. The only infrastructure Google is using in France for its business is infrastructure that France already taxes other people to provide or that are paid for privately: roads for employees, Internet access for its employees and customers.
If you want to make an argument that taxing Google beyond that is reasonable, you have to explain what that money is supposed to be for. Right now, France is just behaving like highway robbers: they try to take money because they can.
Let's recall how this started: I stated the simple, liberal concept and preference that government should not maintain sex offender registries while private citizens and groups should not have their free speech rights curtailed. Obviously, that's my preference for the US. I really don't care what European or Asian nations do.
You disagreed, and your response consisted of a stereotypical barrage of anti-American bigotry and tu quoques, plus numerous amusing attempts to establish your authority by referring to your "thousand year history", your dead grandfather, and your (supposedly) superior education.
A threat of violence in response to a political statement? How German of you. What other political movement was notorious for that? Oh, right...
We haven't been having an argument (what about?). I simply see you as an amusing outgrowth of European political culture and the fools that comprise it, and a good reminder of why I left.
I.e., I implied that we must use fission and/or fusion, not that we don't need reaction mass. In fact, many designs for such rockets use the fission/fusion products directly as reaction mass (preferably outside the atmosphere).
Now:
You're missing the point here. When I said "we're not ever going to get much of a space program with solar cells", that implies that I acknowledge that we are using solar cells (and ion propulsion). My point is that they don't amount to "much of a space program": we launch tiny, slow interplanetary spacecraft every few years, and if we're lucky, they send back a bit of data. The use of solar cells and avoidance of nuclear fuels has been a major impediment to unmanned exploration of the solar system. In addition, solar cells are completely unusable for manned voyages. If we ever want to have a real space program, as opposed to the joke we have right now, we need to develop and implement nuclear propulsion and use nuclear power to power our robots.
Yes, and the concepts of fascism, socialism, communism, aristocracy, and theocracy were also developed in Europe. People who actually wanted to experience liberty largely emigrated from Europe, because there is a big difference between talking about liberty and realizing it. Europe has been such a fertile ground for theorizing about utopias because the reality of political and social life in Europe has generally been bleak.
No, it's not debatable that Hitler's political and economic program was both anti-capitalist and anti-communist. You are right that major industrialists and big corporations were in bed with the Nazi regime, but that didn't make them capitalists. In Nazi Germany, individuals and corporations became wealthy and powerful not through participation in free markets, but through cooperating with the government. (Of course, that's a principle that modern Germany still practices extensively.)
And who would that grandfather be? Franz Vogt? The time, name, and geography fit, but he committed suicide. In addition, he was a socialist, i.e., someone who also favored totalitarianism, just a slightly different kind from the fascists.
In any case, you keep proving my point by implying superior knowledge and morality based on your blood, history, and culture, like generations of German nationalists before you.
It's like Apple, the FBI, and Congress are vying for the title of "most harmful to personal privacy and security in 2016". I guess the year is still young; maybe others will still get into the game.
In fact, large numbers of genes probably exist only to be used when you are sick or environmentally stressed. Many other genes give you redundant functionality, or functionality that individually only increases your performance on some task a little bit. Many genes have significant effects only in the brain, where it is very hard to find differences.
Don't get me wrong: the information that some gene can be deleted without being lethal is useful information. But it doesn't mean that you "don't need them".
Ah, so you are taking Europe's sorry history of totalitarian regimes, political oppression, and genocides as evidence of European political wisdom? What it actually tells you is much more straightforward: European cultures are fundamentally hostile to liberty, Europeans are slow learners, and they keep repeating the same mistakes over and over again.
That was probably Hitler's main grievance: he hated capitalism, investing ("profiteering"), "unearned" income, America, bankers, and merchants, and believed that wealth should be redistributed to those hardworking Germans who deserved it. See, there's obviously a little Nazi in you struggling to get out. Just be honest and embrace him.
This American is actually an American by choice, leaving Europe to get away from people like you. And I know how ignorant and indoctrinated you are, because I used to be like that myself.
A computer system or phone is only secure if it is secure against adversaries with full access to source code and code signing keys.
I'm sorry, I thought any halfway educated person would know that deuterium is not used to power nuclear reactors but fusion reactors.
As I was saying: the only realistic options for manned and most robotic missions are chemical, fission, fusion, or antimatter. That sentence doesn't say anything about whether the necessary reactors already exist, nor does it deny the existence of other technologies. But I shouldn't be so harsh on you: English is a difficult language and you obviously are struggling with it.
Well, anything is possible. Maybe Germanic hordes will destroy civilization again or another German Reich or communist superstate will finally manage to oppress science globally. But much as you may desire such outcomes, I don't think they are very likely.
This is government overreach by government bureaucrats, not overreach by "the rich and powerful". This is exactly the kind of abuse of power that progressive government brings you. Do you feel the Bern yet?
Because they are public employees.
And that's a good thing. There are many ways of succeeding at math and compensating for learning difficulties, and perseverance is one of them.
In any case, by definition, competitive colleges have "barriers" to entry, and requiring all their students to know basic math and science (and that's what algebra and calculus are) is a reasonable barrier for them to have. If anything, colleges should be requiring more science and math literacy, not less.
You can't understand statistics meaningfully without algebra and calculus.
What Andrew Hacker seems to be saying is that students should be taught the kind of pseudo-science that passes for "statistics" among social scientists. Perhaps they should be, but that takes a few weeks, not an entire high school curriculum.
If Apple can reset the pin count on their phones with a software update, the "native security" isn't so strong. And what that really means is that the FBI's data is owned by Apple, hardly a good situation.
Like many Americans, both my work and my home are protected by armed private police forces. I like it that way, thank you very much.
Attempting to reason with you is pointless, hence I simply limit myself to expressing my disapproval and dislike of you.