Against script kiddies and malicious service providers, absolutely nothing.
Against malicious state-level actors, well...you want to be really really really really really sure your VPN is rock solid with sufficient encryption, and the implementation you are using (at both end points) is rock solid, and the OS you are using to create and utilise the VPN is rock solid with no remote exploits of any kind, and your OS doesn't expose too much on the network between connecting and establishing the VPN (much easier to ensure under Linux than Windows)...under these conditions it's probably unwise to connect to an unknown network operated by malicious state-level actors.
Of course, but that experience creates a negative association with dongles that will become a factor when choosing a laptop/computer.
This whole thread has been a fun rant about what people think is important. It was basically a pub chat, and I envy those posting who enjoyed a cold beer while doing so. However, whatever is written here won't really impact any of us very much when we choose our next computer, for all the reasons you made in your post(s), and all the reasons I made in mine.
All those features you dismiss are what professional people are actually using to do *real work*.
In the world of sales/management/engineering/education/research you often have to go to other places in the world to talk to other professional people. You often need to show them things and share ideas, as well as swap files.
All of these tasks are infinitely easier if you have standard ports to connect to networks, standard ports to connect to a projector/second monitor, standard ports to connect to peripherals, as well as a standard port to connect to removable storage.
Dongles and adapters get in the way. The number of meetings I have been in that were significantly impacted, if not outright cancelled, because someone didn't have the right adapter or connector is ridiculous.
Rather than get rid of standard ports we should have more of them. Standard power for laptops would be a huge step forward. Pick a suitable voltage (19V seems pretty standard) and either print the wattage in big numbers on the brick and on the device. Users will learn that the number on the brick has to be bigger or equal to the number on the device. There should be no penalty for doing it wrong, just no charging/power. If using watts directly is "too hard" for the user then use something similar to the SD "class" system and agree on fixed power ratings. This doesn't prohibit a manufacturer making a special power brick: "wow, have you seen the Apple 60W/Class3 power supplies? They're tiny!". But it does ensure that when the OEM supply breaks you can replace it with whatever you like.
""just use the machine the way it is" and won't be impacted by any of this."
Sure, you're right, but forgetting that the MBP is for professionals that actually do work with their computer.
As many others have already posted here, if the MBP offers no "professional" features then why bother? Other Linux/Windows laptops do actually provide those features and are a better choice for professional work. That is all.
"Firewire? hardly any non-Mac people used that, and most of the PCs that did used the stupid Sony iLink connector with no power so they could connect to cameras, and cameras don't use it anymore"
Firewire is still very prevailant in the machine vision field. Of course USB3 is faster and being used on all new systems, but depending on the application, don't be surprised to find Firewire cameras* still around 5 to 10 years from now.
*real cameras that stream the images directly to the PC, not the "cameras" referred to by the parent poster, which means "camcorders" and was used to download the video from the on board tape/sd card, sometimes in realtime, in other cases not.
"Half a dozen adapters would still fit in a standard sandwich-sized plastic baggie;"
Which get lost, lent to friends/colleagues who are missing theirs or left in the projector/network cable when you're rushing to get that taxi back to the airport.
Professionals, those people who actually do work on their computers, don't like dongles.
And what did the US do during those five years? Read about the Marshal Plan some time. It ensured the US could maintain and continue to project its power by "buying" (the scare quotes are there for a reason) interests in foreign countries ravaged by the war. This was a much smarter way to secure its control and "domination" than outright military conquest. These days most of the world is sick and tired of this legacy and just wants to US to fuck off and leave everyone alone.
The other article here today about the UK national being extradited to the US for a crime that is not a crime in the UK is one such example. Frankly it's disgusting behaviour, similar to Kim Dotcom's arrest (like or hate the guy, the US had no legal basis for what it did) and I don't understand why the governments of sovereign nations put up with it. My only thought is that everyone is getting shafted by signing these "trade deals" that come with legal strings attached, or, everyone is just stupid.
"(a) we (the electorate) have busily shaped the societal and legal environment in which Wall Street could become what it is now."
No we haven't. The vast majority of the population has been too busy working 2-3 jobs to make ends meet. The concentration of wealth created by Wall St has become self fulfilling, since that wealth makes it possible for banking interests to influence politics directly through lobbying, or bribery. The democratic process is significantly distorted and representation is no longer proportional.
Nearly all prostitutes are victims of the environment they find themselves in: either straight up human trafficking, abusive "handlers"/pimps, debt, or drug dependency.
By legalizing prostitution the women (and some men) involved are able to receive the entire support of the law, and the abusive nature of the trade can be reduced or eliminated.
Even though a lot of jurisdictions with illegal prostitution attempt to prosecute the customer rather than the prostitute, this doesn't solve the underlying systemic issues that arise from making it illegal.
Look into the total outcomes from countries with legal prostitution. In all cases everyone is a winner.
I knew a lot of wait staff in Vancouver, BC, about five years ago and all of them were pulling in +$70k per year, and that was with an extended 1 or 2 month vacation over the summer (the only decent time to be anywhere near Vancouver).
*ANY* kind of gratuity that is added to the bill automatically, and paid to the employee by the company, is (IMO) by definition NOT a gratuity. It's just the price and should be part of the cost, and it should be paid to the staff member as part of their wage. Slicing and dicing it any other way is just bullshit.
Here in the UK we pay staff a solid wage and dining prices (for example) are much higher than in the US. When I go to a restaurant I do not generally tip but when I'm really impressed (which is the whole fucking point of tipping) I do throw in some extras. However, when I receive a bill that contains the gratuity added automatically I specifically remove it and tell the manager why I've removed it and that I won't be returning to the restaurant because it's a *scummy thing to do*. Yes, I'm fun at parties...
The problem is that most skilled crackers working against Linux systems will be writing their own custom code which is significantly more difficult for AV software to detect. In addition, the nature of the threat has to be considered. How can AV tell the difference between software that read/writes user files and opens network connections? Malware uploading user data appears just like a web browser during normal use. Heck, such a program could call itself FireFoxHelper and only run while Firefox is running...
I'm sorry, but regular votes in the UK are not secret.
At the polling station the staff member takes a ballot sheet from the pile, all of which are printed with a serial number. They write the serial number down on the electoral roll against your name, and then hand it to you so you may cast your vote.
From the Wikipedia article here on voting in the UK: "The use of numbered ballots makes it possible, given access to the relevant documents, to identify who has voted for whom."
Don't be too hard on yourself, every UK citizen I've discussed this with (a few dozen in the past couple of years) was unaware that the UK ballot was not secret. Blame your education system, then blame the government, then blame your fellow citizens for tolerating such a system.
Go try the UK. They do not have a secret ballot. I feel disgusted every time I watch the official the ballot slip number against my name in the electoral roll.
When I raise this with my English colleagues they tell me I'm an "idiot" and that it "isn't a problem" and that the vote is still "effectively secret". It's like everyone is living in the past. Sure, 20-30 years ago it would be a major undertaking to go through all the ballot slips and check them against the roll. Now, with computer vision, document feeding scanners, and OCR, a small team of people could digitize the entire ballot in a few days, and then it's a simple software problem to line everything up.
Everyone claims this "feature" prevents voting fraud. If that is in any way the case, then the government has to actually keep the ballots and to organise them in some way. Otherwise, how else could I go to the government and query my ballot. Which, BTW, I can't actually do in practice because while the claim is that the system is to prevent voting fraud, it doesn't actually empower any citizen/subject to query the ballot. Certainly I'm not aware of any way to do this, comments are welcome.
It's such a massive failing of the democratic process and no one in the UK seems to care. It makes me sad.
But there are heaps of posts in this thread about signatures and forging them, etc, that are entirely focused on the objective of casting fake votes. Fine, I understand that.
But it is equally as effective to discard votes from those you know will vote against you. Since the official is comparing all of your personal data from the envelope to the computer records, they know exactly who you are, and if you come from the wrong neighborhood, then the official can discard your vote. And it's not even that suspicious since there is an official channel to do so: "oh, the signature doesn't look right".
The fraud in the UK is that the ballot is not secret. How this influences voters is difficult to ascertain, but it makes me wary to vote against the government when on principle, following an election they could round up all the voters who did not support them.
The UK is hardly a democracy, yet the locals voted for Brexit to champion democracy? Ridiculous.
You're completely overlooking the failure of that system: the votes can be legitimately discarded if the official "doesn't like" the signature. This means that votes can be lost from the system. All the official has to do is check the post mark to see where the vote is coming from, and if it's a neighborhood that votes a certain way, they can discard it.
Slashdot Mirror
Sorry, I was being a dick and thought it would be funny.
FTFY: "There are *MILLIONS* of american men who do just that as often as they can"
Against script kiddies and malicious service providers, absolutely nothing.
Against malicious state-level actors, well...you want to be really really really really really sure your VPN is rock solid with sufficient encryption, and the implementation you are using (at both end points) is rock solid, and the OS you are using to create and utilise the VPN is rock solid with no remote exploits of any kind, and your OS doesn't expose too much on the network between connecting and establishing the VPN (much easier to ensure under Linux than Windows)...under these conditions it's probably unwise to connect to an unknown network operated by malicious state-level actors.
Mate, you're not a professional, you're a code monkey :)
Of course, but that experience creates a negative association with dongles that will become a factor when choosing a laptop/computer.
This whole thread has been a fun rant about what people think is important. It was basically a pub chat, and I envy those posting who enjoyed a cold beer while doing so. However, whatever is written here won't really impact any of us very much when we choose our next computer, for all the reasons you made in your post(s), and all the reasons I made in mine.
All those features you dismiss are what professional people are actually using to do *real work*.
In the world of sales/management/engineering/education/research you often have to go to other places in the world to talk to other professional people. You often need to show them things and share ideas, as well as swap files.
All of these tasks are infinitely easier if you have standard ports to connect to networks, standard ports to connect to a projector/second monitor, standard ports to connect to peripherals, as well as a standard port to connect to removable storage.
Dongles and adapters get in the way. The number of meetings I have been in that were significantly impacted, if not outright cancelled, because someone didn't have the right adapter or connector is ridiculous.
Rather than get rid of standard ports we should have more of them. Standard power for laptops would be a huge step forward. Pick a suitable voltage (19V seems pretty standard) and either print the wattage in big numbers on the brick and on the device. Users will learn that the number on the brick has to be bigger or equal to the number on the device. There should be no penalty for doing it wrong, just no charging/power. If using watts directly is "too hard" for the user then use something similar to the SD "class" system and agree on fixed power ratings. This doesn't prohibit a manufacturer making a special power brick: "wow, have you seen the Apple 60W/Class3 power supplies? They're tiny!". But it does ensure that when the OEM supply breaks you can replace it with whatever you like.
How much better would such a world be?
""just use the machine the way it is" and won't be impacted by any of this."
Sure, you're right, but forgetting that the MBP is for professionals that actually do work with their computer.
As many others have already posted here, if the MBP offers no "professional" features then why bother? Other Linux/Windows laptops do actually provide those features and are a better choice for professional work. That is all.
"Firewire? hardly any non-Mac people used that, and most of the PCs that did used the stupid Sony iLink connector with no power so they could connect to cameras, and cameras don't use it anymore"
Firewire is still very prevailant in the machine vision field. Of course USB3 is faster and being used on all new systems, but depending on the application, don't be surprised to find Firewire cameras* still around 5 to 10 years from now.
*real cameras that stream the images directly to the PC, not the "cameras" referred to by the parent poster, which means "camcorders" and was used to download the video from the on board tape/sd card, sometimes in realtime, in other cases not.
Floppies were small, slow, and unreliable.
USB memory sticks are large, fast, useful, and as the parent poster stated, ubiquitous.
This is a stupid move.
"Half a dozen adapters would still fit in a standard sandwich-sized plastic baggie;"
Which get lost, lent to friends/colleagues who are missing theirs or left in the projector/network cable when you're rushing to get that taxi back to the airport.
Professionals, those people who actually do work on their computers, don't like dongles.
"Apple does not permit them to be used as mass storage devices."
Which is just ridiculous.
And what did the US do during those five years? Read about the Marshal Plan some time. It ensured the US could maintain and continue to project its power by "buying" (the scare quotes are there for a reason) interests in foreign countries ravaged by the war. This was a much smarter way to secure its control and "domination" than outright military conquest. These days most of the world is sick and tired of this legacy and just wants to US to fuck off and leave everyone alone.
The other article here today about the UK national being extradited to the US for a crime that is not a crime in the UK is one such example. Frankly it's disgusting behaviour, similar to Kim Dotcom's arrest (like or hate the guy, the US had no legal basis for what it did) and I don't understand why the governments of sovereign nations put up with it. My only thought is that everyone is getting shafted by signing these "trade deals" that come with legal strings attached, or, everyone is just stupid.
"(a) we (the electorate) have busily shaped the societal and legal environment in which Wall Street could become what it is now."
No we haven't. The vast majority of the population has been too busy working 2-3 jobs to make ends meet. The concentration of wealth created by Wall St has become self fulfilling, since that wealth makes it possible for banking interests to influence politics directly through lobbying, or bribery. The democratic process is significantly distorted and representation is no longer proportional.
This is part of the problem.
Ideas like those here are part of the solution.
Nearly all prostitutes are victims of the environment they find themselves in: either straight up human trafficking, abusive "handlers"/pimps, debt, or drug dependency.
By legalizing prostitution the women (and some men) involved are able to receive the entire support of the law, and the abusive nature of the trade can be reduced or eliminated.
Even though a lot of jurisdictions with illegal prostitution attempt to prosecute the customer rather than the prostitute, this doesn't solve the underlying systemic issues that arise from making it illegal.
Look into the total outcomes from countries with legal prostitution. In all cases everyone is a winner.
I knew a lot of wait staff in Vancouver, BC, about five years ago and all of them were pulling in +$70k per year, and that was with an extended 1 or 2 month vacation over the summer (the only decent time to be anywhere near Vancouver).
*ANY* kind of gratuity that is added to the bill automatically, and paid to the employee by the company, is (IMO) by definition NOT a gratuity. It's just the price and should be part of the cost, and it should be paid to the staff member as part of their wage. Slicing and dicing it any other way is just bullshit.
Here in the UK we pay staff a solid wage and dining prices (for example) are much higher than in the US. When I go to a restaurant I do not generally tip but when I'm really impressed (which is the whole fucking point of tipping) I do throw in some extras. However, when I receive a bill that contains the gratuity added automatically I specifically remove it and tell the manager why I've removed it and that I won't be returning to the restaurant because it's a *scummy thing to do*. Yes, I'm fun at parties...
And all prostitutes "love sex" and just need to pay the bills to put themselves through med/law school.
The problem is that most skilled crackers working against Linux systems will be writing their own custom code which is significantly more difficult for AV software to detect. In addition, the nature of the threat has to be considered. How can AV tell the difference between software that read/writes user files and opens network connections? Malware uploading user data appears just like a web browser during normal use. Heck, such a program could call itself FireFoxHelper and only run while Firefox is running...
Damn. Security is hard.
Um, in English, can you identify a region or accent that pronounces "thought" as anything other than "thawt" / "thort"* ??
*Sorry, I don't know the phonetics alphabet, which would be here appropriate here.
I'm sorry, but regular votes in the UK are not secret.
At the polling station the staff member takes a ballot sheet from the pile, all of which are printed with a serial number. They write the serial number down on the electoral roll against your name, and then hand it to you so you may cast your vote.
From the Wikipedia article here on voting in the UK: "The use of numbered ballots makes it possible, given access to the relevant documents, to identify who has voted for whom."
Don't be too hard on yourself, every UK citizen I've discussed this with (a few dozen in the past couple of years) was unaware that the UK ballot was not secret. Blame your education system, then blame the government, then blame your fellow citizens for tolerating such a system.
Go try the UK. They do not have a secret ballot. I feel disgusted every time I watch the official the ballot slip number against my name in the electoral roll.
When I raise this with my English colleagues they tell me I'm an "idiot" and that it "isn't a problem" and that the vote is still "effectively secret". It's like everyone is living in the past. Sure, 20-30 years ago it would be a major undertaking to go through all the ballot slips and check them against the roll. Now, with computer vision, document feeding scanners, and OCR, a small team of people could digitize the entire ballot in a few days, and then it's a simple software problem to line everything up.
Everyone claims this "feature" prevents voting fraud. If that is in any way the case, then the government has to actually keep the ballots and to organise them in some way. Otherwise, how else could I go to the government and query my ballot. Which, BTW, I can't actually do in practice because while the claim is that the system is to prevent voting fraud, it doesn't actually empower any citizen/subject to query the ballot. Certainly I'm not aware of any way to do this, comments are welcome.
It's such a massive failing of the democratic process and no one in the UK seems to care. It makes me sad.
I'm supporting your post, in case it isn't clear.
But there are heaps of posts in this thread about signatures and forging them, etc, that are entirely focused on the objective of casting fake votes. Fine, I understand that.
But it is equally as effective to discard votes from those you know will vote against you. Since the official is comparing all of your personal data from the envelope to the computer records, they know exactly who you are, and if you come from the wrong neighborhood, then the official can discard your vote. And it's not even that suspicious since there is an official channel to do so: "oh, the signature doesn't look right".
The fraud in the UK is that the ballot is not secret. How this influences voters is difficult to ascertain, but it makes me wary to vote against the government when on principle, following an election they could round up all the voters who did not support them.
The UK is hardly a democracy, yet the locals voted for Brexit to champion democracy? Ridiculous.
But sometimes just "losing" the ballots is as effective as casting new votes.
You're completely overlooking the failure of that system: the votes can be legitimately discarded if the official "doesn't like" the signature. This means that votes can be lost from the system. All the official has to do is check the post mark to see where the vote is coming from, and if it's a neighborhood that votes a certain way, they can discard it.