If I want a quick but useful meal when I get home after a very long day, I can pick up a ready meal from the store and throw it in the microwave or I can stop by a burger joint and get some fast food. This requires negligible effort and makes me not hungry any more.
Alternatively, I can pick up some meat and vegetables and a tin of sauce from the store or the market and cook something myself following a recipe in a book. This requires more work from me, but it probably tastes better and/or costs less and/or has nutritional benefits over the ready meal.
If I want a superb dinner, I will go to a good restaurant and let their chefs make dinner for me. They are going to make everything fresh from their own choices of raw ingredients and to their own recipes, but they will do a much better job than me, producing a meal where everything goes together perfectly, the nutrition is balanced, and the presentation is excellent. Of course, I'll have to wait while they prepare and cook the meal, and I'll have to pay more for it.
If you want a self-hosted blog site in half an hour, nothing will be faster than installing ready-made blogging software like WP and configuring it for a few minutes.
If you have more demanding requirements but you're still basically talking about a form-based front-end for a CRUD app, you can probably get that done quickest by developing with heavy frameworks like React or Angular.
If you want to build something larger and more specialised, where you need greater levels of control and flexibility, you'll probably be better off putting together a team with the skills to build anything you need entirely bespoke. They can still use existing tools if and when they're actually useful -- going this route does not mean you build every last detail from scratch -- but crucially, they'll have no problem creating something new if that gets better results and they won't have any clutter getting in their way when they do so.
Obviously the price, timescales and quality of results all increase sharply from each of these levels to the next. You need to decide how important that fine tuning really is for any given project, and look at your budget and timescales, and then build the best thing you can within your constraints.
Net neutrality is about forcing inaction: an ISP is already providing service to a customer, but is not allowed to actively discriminate by not providing the same level of service under various conditions.
What Chen seems to be proposing here is a requirement for action on the part of every app developer in the world, requiring them by law to spend their resources producing additional software regardless of any desire or commercial viability.
I think we can safely predict how this one ends. It's amazing his PR people didn't stop him before it started, though, because IMHO it just reinforces the perception that BlackBerry is desperate and struggling to stay in business by any means it can find.
Agreed, though I might say it's presenting them with not merely a choice but an active encouragement to switch.
I don't see anything inherently wrong with a subscription-based model, as long as it's genuinely got something in it for the subscriber. Various big name sites now offer vast libraries of music or movies on a subscription basis, for example, and for people who enjoy a lot of variety maybe it's convenient and/or cheaper than buying permanent copies of everything.
The trouble is when you try to replace a permanent purchase with a rental model without offering some significant value in return for the ongoing charges. That's just a one-sided rip-off. Some big software firms are dangerously close to that IMHO. They try to wriggle by arguing about how expensive it would have been anyway if you'd bought the Complete Super Deluxe Edition and then every upgrade for it at the old prices, and conveniently overlook the realities that lots of their customers neither bought nor needed the all-in top-level suite before, and that a lot of their customers also didn't buy every upgrade as soon as it came out.
Which is the reason that software companies want to sell subscriptions. It's hard to employ an army of highly paid developers if you don't know whether you have any future revenue.
So maybe you should keep improving your software in ways that are actually worth more to your users. If you don't have a solid plan for doing that but you've got the point of employing an army of highly paid developers, you're doing it wrong and need new leadership.
There are literally dozens of changes that Adobe could have made to the major CS apps we use where any one of them would have justified a three-figure upgrade fee for everyone in my company who uses that app. I'm not even talking about huge changes that would have been expensive new developments; even some relatively small UI improvements to remove time-wasting frustrations might have made buying the upgrade an instant yes as a business decision.
They didn't do any of those things in several years before CC, and as far as I've seen they haven't since then either, so we wouldn't have upgraded so far. On the other hand, we would never rent essential software from anyone unless it was literally the only viable strategy to continue the related business activities at all, which in reality it never is. So in effect, Adobe have gone from a position where even one of many modest improvements would probably have earned a small business worth of upgrade fees from us sooner or later to a position where there is basically zero chance of ever getting more money from us.
You can play that game for roughly as long as the extra money you're making from other people makes up for the losses. However, as certain other big software companies have been learning in recent years, taking your user base for granted it rarely a viable long-term strategy in this industry. Sooner or later, significant people at your big customers start doing the sums, figure out you're charging them more in long-term pricing, and take steps to change that one way or another but invariably at your expense.
Technically, you already are renting most non-free software. The duration may be lifetime and only 1 payment, but you don't own the software outright.
In that we have copyright and what you're really buying is one copy and the right to use it? Sure.
In that you are further restricted in what you can do with that copy? Not so much, particularly since quite a few court decisions in recent years and multiple jurisdictions that have sided with the purchaser on their subsequent control of their copy even against major software companies fighting significant test cases.
Still doing professional work with CS5. Still waiting to find a paying customer where this causes a problem. Still waiting for a killer feature in any more recent Creative Cloud release that makes us regret not paying Adobe more money.
I doubt it. There wasn't a massive revolt when Adobe went to subscription. Or Microsoft Office.
True. It does take time for people who are annoyed by such a move to respond to it and for the market to create alternatives, particularly if you're talking about an incumbent industry giant with a diverse user base like Creative Suite or MS Office. There is always some resistance immediately, but given that these subscription services quickly become more expensive for significant parts of the previous user base, it may still be more commercially beneficial to take advantage of those users and force the move to software rental as Adobe did (though Microsoft haven't so far).
That said, in both of those cases, it's quite clear that the market is creating alternatives, and that significant numbers of users are starting to defect (or simply didn't get on the subscription upgrade treadmill and are waiting for better options). For example, people doing Web work on Apple machines now have several promising graphics applications that are getting much more favourable reviews than anything from Creative Suite has for a long time, for a one-off permanent purchase costing the equivalent to just a few months of Creative Cloud subscription. The days of asking what's out there to draw UI elements or illustrations for an article, laughing amiably with the FOSS evangelist who suggests the GIMP and Inkscape, and then coughing up a thousand bucks for Photoshop/Illustrator/Fireworks are gone, and they aren't coming back.
As long as they don't completely mess it up, they will be ok.
I'm not so sure. I doubt anyone is going to come along with a single killer app in either case, but huge all-things-to-all-people suites feel a lot like yesterday's software to me, and I find it quite plausible that both Adobe and Microsoft will steadily lose market share to a hundred small but highly specialised competitors. The moment we reach the point -- and possibly we already have in some contexts -- that using Real Office Document Formats or Real Photoshop Files is no longer a killer compatibility requirement, a significant driver that keeps people on MS/Adobe has already been lost.
And just to get back on topic... I don't really see why all of the above arguments wouldn't apply to Windows as well if Microsoft do pursue some sort of rental licensing scheme where your system locks up the day you stop paying. They already lost phones and a large chunk of the server/back office market. Losing desktops as well would surely be the end of Microsoft as any kind of serious force in the IT industry, because I don't think they can afford another Vista/8 fiasco so soon. With mobile apps, web apps, native OS X apps, and all the things you can do with Linux these days, there are plenty of other ways the market could realistically move before Windows 11 arrived, and again once Microsoft has lost the critical mass of effectively Windows-only software that advantage is probably never coming back again no matter what they do.
As I've said before, if it were me I'd push hard the other way: promote Windows as the one platform where stability and true long-term support were absolutely trustworthy, so if you buy Windows or develop software to run on it you know it's still going to work five or more years later. Then sell the OS with a clearly stated support programme where you get security and compatibility fixes free as the ecosystem evolves for a certain reasonable period (maybe 2-3 years) and then you have the option to keep them going for a modest fee after that, but without ever going full rental and putting customers in a potential pay-or-it-stops position. I don't see this happening under the current management, unfortunately, as they put in place a CEO whose entire background pulls in the other direction.
The problem is that we don't vote nationally for cabinet posts.
That is certainly part of the problem, yes. In fact, by my count, we are currently at least three level removed from choosing the ministers who nevertheless wield executive power within the government: at the last general election we elected our local MPs directly, but their parties then engaged in horse-trading based on share of parliamentary seats (not popular vote) to decide who would form the government, the winning party leaders became PM and DPM, and they are the ones who in practice allocate ministerial positions.
I face a related dilemma at the next general election: our local MP is one of the few who does seem to understand technology issues like the net neutrality we're discussing, as well as small businesses and other things that matter to professional geeks, and who does actually act on relevant issues in parliament to the extent that he can. Unfortunately, he's a Lib Dem, so a vote for him is also a vote for Clegg, Cable, and other people I have little respect for after their abysmal performance as part of the current coalition administration. On the other hand, it's not a vote for the leaders of any of the other parties likely to have a candidate in my constituency at the next general election, all of whom have actually managed to disappoint me even more so far this year.
Who do I vote for if I just want a competent, technologically aware, politically moderate government?:-)
Then you have completely reasonable and decent people like Claire Perry trying to push nanny filters because she is too scared to tell her kids about the birds and the bees.
Don't worry, now she's moved on from promoting on-line censorship to being a junior transport minister who tells rail commuters they're paying fair fares for comfortable commutes (while herself mostly driving into London to work and getting there by train just twice in the previous year).
I will never understand how someone so apparently disconnected from the reality that normal people face can actually manage to get elected, but whatever the reason, it seems a sad indictment of our "representative" democracy.
Also, maybe it's time for the Montgomery County Maryland finest to turn in their badges, radios, and guns, then go have their PTSD flash backs somewhere else.
If the local police feel that the world is such a dangerous place, perhaps they would be better employed fixing that, rather than interfering with young kids going out to play.
Entirely plausible six-year-old perspective: "Mummy, why did the police take us away after we went to play in the park today? I thought only bad people got arrested by the police. Did I do something wrong?"
In the interests of discussing facts rather than emotional reactions, does anyone know:
(a) whether the CPS worker was actually authorised to act in that way (i.e., following official procedures and lawfully permitted)
(b) what legal weight the parents signing such an agreement in that situation would have had, and
(c) whether the CPS worker, or someone they immediately contacted, would have had the legal authority to immediately remove the children forcibly in that situation if the parents had refused to sign?
Indeed. Apparently these children will be learning very young about the risks of allowing anyone to have special powers over someone else under the law and the importance of restricting those powers to people competent to wield them.
Why do you think all the browsers will be able to implement sandboxed APIs for these kinds of functionality successfully, when no major plug-in in history has been able to do so?
If there were a browser that was written using truly robust coding practices, the kind of thing you'd use if you really were writing safety-critical software, then maybe I'd buy that. But they aren't. Like most commercial software, browsers prioritise speed of development and to some extent run-time performance over quality. And they are large applications, with complicated code bases, written in languages like C++. I see no reason to believe that they won't be subject to the same kinds of attacks, sometimes successfully, as everyone else developing software that way.
The risk of the "potential danger" of someone cracking into Chrome's update mechanism and pushing out a rogue update, is exponentially over-weighed by forcing client endpoints to always have the latest security patches
Chrome is the most used browser by some way among private individuals. If anyone cracked its auto-update mechanism, every one of those users could be subject to having their private data uploaded without even knowing it, resulting in the usual problems like fraud and identity theft, and/or encrypted and held for ransom, or just deleted.
The actual cost would depend on how fast Google identified the problem and recovered. Obviously if they found it within a few minutes and shut down the system that would reduce the damage considerably from what it could be. Still, keep in mind that recovering from any breach in this particular software would surely mean at least a major and ongoing PR campaign, as anyone who cracked the auto-update mechanism would disable such channels the moment their malware was installed. It seems possible that the resultant damage not just to the economy from direct fraud but to individual quality of life, consumer confidence, and so on could take a long time to recover, not to mention severely damaging or even bringing down Google as a business.
And all because they didn't want users to get a simple message saying an update was available and inviting them to download it with the usual security precautions, as Firefox or IE would?
It is far, far, far better for the security of the web as a whole to ensure browsers always have the latest security updates.
Of course having timely security updates is better, but as Firefox and IE demonstrate, you don't need to play games that circumvent basic security practices to achieve this.
Finally, Chrome *DOES* provide a way for administrators to lock down to specific Chrome versions, so your post doesn't even have a leg to stand on.
I wasn't advocating not updating, only not updating without any confirmation and bypassing normal security checks, so this is a straw man.
Moreover, if I asked 100 randomly chosen Chrome users how to do this, I imagine fewer than 10 of them would even realise it was possible, so it's not even a good straw man...
There were explicit prompts for permission before accessing those peripherals with a default answer of "no", which is hardly spying.
In any case, how would you have suggested that someone implement a videoconferencing tool five years ago, without using any of these plug-ins you hate so much because you claim they don't do anything useful and just create security problems?
There are literally billions of people on the Internet. The fact that you don't find Flash or Java applets useful for anything -- given your own personal lifestyle, interests, location, businesses and governments you deal with, other technologies available, and so on -- does not mean that no-one else in the world does. Although the number of users is steadily trending downwards and alternative/replacement technologies are getting more capable, as a matter of fact there are still millions and millions of people using these plug-ins today and no-one offering them a better option for some of the things they need to do.
Do you realise that many of the criticisms you're directing toward Flash -- about rapid updates, numerous security fixes including some that were found by others, auto-updating, and so on -- could also be directly aimed at Chrome?
Chrome is an application that actively circumvents the main Windows security model so that it can update executable code on the user's machine without the administrative privileges usually required to install and modify applications. The day someone breaks into Google's update mechanism for even a short time, whether technically or from within the organisation, the damage will be astronomical.
We could discuss related issues with Microsoft's recommended security models and how much of that update mechanism is actually suggested by Microsoft itself rather than Google, but the facts of what Chrome is doing and the potential danger associated with it are still the same regardless of whose idea it was.
Exactly. It's all very well hating on Flash for whatever reason, but until the newer technologies can do the same jobs, and do them at least as well as the older technologies they are replacing, this is an apples to oranges comparison.
Why does anyone think the browsers themselves don't have similar security problems, and won't have more when they offer the same kinds of functionality as the insecure plug-ins we've used in the past?
The US is anomalous in terms of its murder and violent crime rates, of course. There are other nations where the general population is also allowed or even required to have firearms that do not suffer the same level with violence, suggesting that the problem may be one of culture rather than tools.
Still, the statistical question is a fair one. Given that routine carrying of firearms by the general population would almost inevitably lead to some level of extra deaths, if only through accidents, and given that the number of people actually hurt or killed in terrorist-style attacks is tiny, it may still be the case that statistically it is a bad bet to routinely arm the general population of the UK as a response to that particular threat. I don't know what the actual numbers would be, but it's a fair question to ask.
(I am not offering any view on the merits or otherwise of arming the general population for any other reasons here. I'm talking specifically about whether generally arming everyone would be a good thing in response to this kind of attack.)
This may be true. Personally, I think the vast majority of people working for these organisations probably are just normal people trying to do an important job under difficult conditions.
However, I don't think you've undermined Xest's point: if a perpetrator of a violent act was already well known to the security services for both their views and their violent disposition, but for whatever reason the perpetrator had not been effectively monitored or contained despite that knowledge, why would we rationally expect that providing any further information would necessarily improve the situation?
That's why they fit into the definition of "terrorists": using terror to further their political agenda. It doesn't matter that the instruments of terror are other idiots.
You're being kind. The governments and media in much of the West have for some time been doing far more to scare the people through their own direct actions than any actual violence by radical groups has achieved.
I caught part of a review of today's papers on the BBC News last night. The comments by the two guest reviewers actually made me nauseous. One claimed to be concerned about the implications about extending surveillance powers further and that we should have some sort of debate, yet clearly thought we should just hand over whatever it takes to keep us safe. The other was just saying he didn't care who read his e-mails, didn't feel that being spied on limited his freedom of expression, and MI5 were welcome to spy on him, with no apparent consideration for the implications of that policy for anyone else who might not share his views. The host actually quipped -- in possibly the only balancing comment in the entire segment -- that the guest sounded like he was making the old argument about having nothing to fear if you have nothing to hide, and the guest just laughed and said he didn't think so.
So it looks like there was at least one thing Lucas got right with episodes I-III: liberty really does die with thunderous applause.
Is the point that the two-faced bastard had to work harder to infringe?
Yes, that's exactly the point. Some people believe, erroneously, that putting material on a public web site voids the copyright. However, in order for the web to work, clearly there must be some form of implicit licence when you put material on a public site or no-one would be allowed to lawfully download it so they can view it. That argument does not hold for content that is hidden behind some sort of registration scheme or paywall, where typically there would be explicit terms for accessing the material that you must actively accept.
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Your food analogy works quite well, I think.
If I want a quick but useful meal when I get home after a very long day, I can pick up a ready meal from the store and throw it in the microwave or I can stop by a burger joint and get some fast food. This requires negligible effort and makes me not hungry any more.
Alternatively, I can pick up some meat and vegetables and a tin of sauce from the store or the market and cook something myself following a recipe in a book. This requires more work from me, but it probably tastes better and/or costs less and/or has nutritional benefits over the ready meal.
If I want a superb dinner, I will go to a good restaurant and let their chefs make dinner for me. They are going to make everything fresh from their own choices of raw ingredients and to their own recipes, but they will do a much better job than me, producing a meal where everything goes together perfectly, the nutrition is balanced, and the presentation is excellent. Of course, I'll have to wait while they prepare and cook the meal, and I'll have to pay more for it.
If you want a self-hosted blog site in half an hour, nothing will be faster than installing ready-made blogging software like WP and configuring it for a few minutes.
If you have more demanding requirements but you're still basically talking about a form-based front-end for a CRUD app, you can probably get that done quickest by developing with heavy frameworks like React or Angular.
If you want to build something larger and more specialised, where you need greater levels of control and flexibility, you'll probably be better off putting together a team with the skills to build anything you need entirely bespoke. They can still use existing tools if and when they're actually useful -- going this route does not mean you build every last detail from scratch -- but crucially, they'll have no problem creating something new if that gets better results and they won't have any clutter getting in their way when they do so.
Obviously the price, timescales and quality of results all increase sharply from each of these levels to the next. You need to decide how important that fine tuning really is for any given project, and look at your budget and timescales, and then build the best thing you can within your constraints.
This just seems bizarre.
Net neutrality is about forcing inaction: an ISP is already providing service to a customer, but is not allowed to actively discriminate by not providing the same level of service under various conditions.
What Chen seems to be proposing here is a requirement for action on the part of every app developer in the world, requiring them by law to spend their resources producing additional software regardless of any desire or commercial viability.
I think we can safely predict how this one ends. It's amazing his PR people didn't stop him before it started, though, because IMHO it just reinforces the perception that BlackBerry is desperate and struggling to stay in business by any means it can find.
Agreed, though I might say it's presenting them with not merely a choice but an active encouragement to switch.
I don't see anything inherently wrong with a subscription-based model, as long as it's genuinely got something in it for the subscriber. Various big name sites now offer vast libraries of music or movies on a subscription basis, for example, and for people who enjoy a lot of variety maybe it's convenient and/or cheaper than buying permanent copies of everything.
The trouble is when you try to replace a permanent purchase with a rental model without offering some significant value in return for the ongoing charges. That's just a one-sided rip-off. Some big software firms are dangerously close to that IMHO. They try to wriggle by arguing about how expensive it would have been anyway if you'd bought the Complete Super Deluxe Edition and then every upgrade for it at the old prices, and conveniently overlook the realities that lots of their customers neither bought nor needed the all-in top-level suite before, and that a lot of their customers also didn't buy every upgrade as soon as it came out.
Which is the reason that software companies want to sell subscriptions. It's hard to employ an army of highly paid developers if you don't know whether you have any future revenue.
So maybe you should keep improving your software in ways that are actually worth more to your users. If you don't have a solid plan for doing that but you've got the point of employing an army of highly paid developers, you're doing it wrong and need new leadership.
There are literally dozens of changes that Adobe could have made to the major CS apps we use where any one of them would have justified a three-figure upgrade fee for everyone in my company who uses that app. I'm not even talking about huge changes that would have been expensive new developments; even some relatively small UI improvements to remove time-wasting frustrations might have made buying the upgrade an instant yes as a business decision.
They didn't do any of those things in several years before CC, and as far as I've seen they haven't since then either, so we wouldn't have upgraded so far. On the other hand, we would never rent essential software from anyone unless it was literally the only viable strategy to continue the related business activities at all, which in reality it never is. So in effect, Adobe have gone from a position where even one of many modest improvements would probably have earned a small business worth of upgrade fees from us sooner or later to a position where there is basically zero chance of ever getting more money from us.
You can play that game for roughly as long as the extra money you're making from other people makes up for the losses. However, as certain other big software companies have been learning in recent years, taking your user base for granted it rarely a viable long-term strategy in this industry. Sooner or later, significant people at your big customers start doing the sums, figure out you're charging them more in long-term pricing, and take steps to change that one way or another but invariably at your expense.
What is there?
The first example that comes to mind is Sketch, which has become popular remarkably quickly in the various web development circles I'm familiar with.
Technically, you already are renting most non-free software. The duration may be lifetime and only 1 payment, but you don't own the software outright.
In that we have copyright and what you're really buying is one copy and the right to use it? Sure.
In that you are further restricted in what you can do with that copy? Not so much, particularly since quite a few court decisions in recent years and multiple jurisdictions that have sided with the purchaser on their subsequent control of their copy even against major software companies fighting significant test cases.
Still doing professional work with CS5. Still waiting to find a paying customer where this causes a problem. Still waiting for a killer feature in any more recent Creative Cloud release that makes us regret not paying Adobe more money.
I doubt it. There wasn't a massive revolt when Adobe went to subscription. Or Microsoft Office.
True. It does take time for people who are annoyed by such a move to respond to it and for the market to create alternatives, particularly if you're talking about an incumbent industry giant with a diverse user base like Creative Suite or MS Office. There is always some resistance immediately, but given that these subscription services quickly become more expensive for significant parts of the previous user base, it may still be more commercially beneficial to take advantage of those users and force the move to software rental as Adobe did (though Microsoft haven't so far).
That said, in both of those cases, it's quite clear that the market is creating alternatives, and that significant numbers of users are starting to defect (or simply didn't get on the subscription upgrade treadmill and are waiting for better options). For example, people doing Web work on Apple machines now have several promising graphics applications that are getting much more favourable reviews than anything from Creative Suite has for a long time, for a one-off permanent purchase costing the equivalent to just a few months of Creative Cloud subscription. The days of asking what's out there to draw UI elements or illustrations for an article, laughing amiably with the FOSS evangelist who suggests the GIMP and Inkscape, and then coughing up a thousand bucks for Photoshop/Illustrator/Fireworks are gone, and they aren't coming back.
As long as they don't completely mess it up, they will be ok.
I'm not so sure. I doubt anyone is going to come along with a single killer app in either case, but huge all-things-to-all-people suites feel a lot like yesterday's software to me, and I find it quite plausible that both Adobe and Microsoft will steadily lose market share to a hundred small but highly specialised competitors. The moment we reach the point -- and possibly we already have in some contexts -- that using Real Office Document Formats or Real Photoshop Files is no longer a killer compatibility requirement, a significant driver that keeps people on MS/Adobe has already been lost.
And just to get back on topic... I don't really see why all of the above arguments wouldn't apply to Windows as well if Microsoft do pursue some sort of rental licensing scheme where your system locks up the day you stop paying. They already lost phones and a large chunk of the server/back office market. Losing desktops as well would surely be the end of Microsoft as any kind of serious force in the IT industry, because I don't think they can afford another Vista/8 fiasco so soon. With mobile apps, web apps, native OS X apps, and all the things you can do with Linux these days, there are plenty of other ways the market could realistically move before Windows 11 arrived, and again once Microsoft has lost the critical mass of effectively Windows-only software that advantage is probably never coming back again no matter what they do.
As I've said before, if it were me I'd push hard the other way: promote Windows as the one platform where stability and true long-term support were absolutely trustworthy, so if you buy Windows or develop software to run on it you know it's still going to work five or more years later. Then sell the OS with a clearly stated support programme where you get security and compatibility fixes free as the ecosystem evolves for a certain reasonable period (maybe 2-3 years) and then you have the option to keep them going for a modest fee after that, but without ever going full rental and putting customers in a potential pay-or-it-stops position. I don't see this happening under the current management, unfortunately, as they put in place a CEO whose entire background pulls in the other direction.
The problem is that we don't vote nationally for cabinet posts.
That is certainly part of the problem, yes. In fact, by my count, we are currently at least three level removed from choosing the ministers who nevertheless wield executive power within the government: at the last general election we elected our local MPs directly, but their parties then engaged in horse-trading based on share of parliamentary seats (not popular vote) to decide who would form the government, the winning party leaders became PM and DPM, and they are the ones who in practice allocate ministerial positions.
I face a related dilemma at the next general election: our local MP is one of the few who does seem to understand technology issues like the net neutrality we're discussing, as well as small businesses and other things that matter to professional geeks, and who does actually act on relevant issues in parliament to the extent that he can. Unfortunately, he's a Lib Dem, so a vote for him is also a vote for Clegg, Cable, and other people I have little respect for after their abysmal performance as part of the current coalition administration. On the other hand, it's not a vote for the leaders of any of the other parties likely to have a candidate in my constituency at the next general election, all of whom have actually managed to disappoint me even more so far this year.
Who do I vote for if I just want a competent, technologically aware, politically moderate government? :-)
Then you have completely reasonable and decent people like Claire Perry trying to push nanny filters because she is too scared to tell her kids about the birds and the bees.
Don't worry, now she's moved on from promoting on-line censorship to being a junior transport minister who tells rail commuters they're paying fair fares for comfortable commutes (while herself mostly driving into London to work and getting there by train just twice in the previous year).
I will never understand how someone so apparently disconnected from the reality that normal people face can actually manage to get elected, but whatever the reason, it seems a sad indictment of our "representative" democracy.
Also, maybe it's time for the Montgomery County Maryland finest to turn in their badges, radios, and guns, then go have their PTSD flash backs somewhere else.
If the local police feel that the world is such a dangerous place, perhaps they would be better employed fixing that, rather than interfering with young kids going out to play.
Entirely plausible six-year-old perspective: "Mummy, why did the police take us away after we went to play in the park today? I thought only bad people got arrested by the police. Did I do something wrong?"
In the interests of discussing facts rather than emotional reactions, does anyone know:
(a) whether the CPS worker was actually authorised to act in that way (i.e., following official procedures and lawfully permitted)
(b) what legal weight the parents signing such an agreement in that situation would have had, and
(c) whether the CPS worker, or someone they immediately contacted, would have had the legal authority to immediately remove the children forcibly in that situation if the parents had refused to sign?
Indeed. Apparently these children will be learning very young about the risks of allowing anyone to have special powers over someone else under the law and the importance of restricting those powers to people competent to wield them.
Chrome is using the wrong parts of that model for what it does.
I agree that giving it the ability to opt out is an error from a system security point of view, but not opting in anyway is on Google.
Why do you think all the browsers will be able to implement sandboxed APIs for these kinds of functionality successfully, when no major plug-in in history has been able to do so?
If there were a browser that was written using truly robust coding practices, the kind of thing you'd use if you really were writing safety-critical software, then maybe I'd buy that. But they aren't. Like most commercial software, browsers prioritise speed of development and to some extent run-time performance over quality. And they are large applications, with complicated code bases, written in languages like C++. I see no reason to believe that they won't be subject to the same kinds of attacks, sometimes successfully, as everyone else developing software that way.
The risk of the "potential danger" of someone cracking into Chrome's update mechanism and pushing out a rogue update, is exponentially over-weighed by forcing client endpoints to always have the latest security patches
Chrome is the most used browser by some way among private individuals. If anyone cracked its auto-update mechanism, every one of those users could be subject to having their private data uploaded without even knowing it, resulting in the usual problems like fraud and identity theft, and/or encrypted and held for ransom, or just deleted.
The actual cost would depend on how fast Google identified the problem and recovered. Obviously if they found it within a few minutes and shut down the system that would reduce the damage considerably from what it could be. Still, keep in mind that recovering from any breach in this particular software would surely mean at least a major and ongoing PR campaign, as anyone who cracked the auto-update mechanism would disable such channels the moment their malware was installed. It seems possible that the resultant damage not just to the economy from direct fraud but to individual quality of life, consumer confidence, and so on could take a long time to recover, not to mention severely damaging or even bringing down Google as a business.
And all because they didn't want users to get a simple message saying an update was available and inviting them to download it with the usual security precautions, as Firefox or IE would?
It is far, far, far better for the security of the web as a whole to ensure browsers always have the latest security updates.
Of course having timely security updates is better, but as Firefox and IE demonstrate, you don't need to play games that circumvent basic security practices to achieve this.
Finally, Chrome *DOES* provide a way for administrators to lock down to specific Chrome versions, so your post doesn't even have a leg to stand on.
I wasn't advocating not updating, only not updating without any confirmation and bypassing normal security checks, so this is a straw man.
Moreover, if I asked 100 randomly chosen Chrome users how to do this, I imagine fewer than 10 of them would even realise it was possible, so it's not even a good straw man...
The ability to spy on your microphone and camera?
There were explicit prompts for permission before accessing those peripherals with a default answer of "no", which is hardly spying.
In any case, how would you have suggested that someone implement a videoconferencing tool five years ago, without using any of these plug-ins you hate so much because you claim they don't do anything useful and just create security problems?
There are literally billions of people on the Internet. The fact that you don't find Flash or Java applets useful for anything -- given your own personal lifestyle, interests, location, businesses and governments you deal with, other technologies available, and so on -- does not mean that no-one else in the world does. Although the number of users is steadily trending downwards and alternative/replacement technologies are getting more capable, as a matter of fact there are still millions and millions of people using these plug-ins today and no-one offering them a better option for some of the things they need to do.
Do you realise that many of the criticisms you're directing toward Flash -- about rapid updates, numerous security fixes including some that were found by others, auto-updating, and so on -- could also be directly aimed at Chrome?
Chrome is an application that actively circumvents the main Windows security model so that it can update executable code on the user's machine without the administrative privileges usually required to install and modify applications. The day someone breaks into Google's update mechanism for even a short time, whether technically or from within the organisation, the damage will be astronomical.
We could discuss related issues with Microsoft's recommended security models and how much of that update mechanism is actually suggested by Microsoft itself rather than Google, but the facts of what Chrome is doing and the potential danger associated with it are still the same regardless of whose idea it was.
Exactly. It's all very well hating on Flash for whatever reason, but until the newer technologies can do the same jobs, and do them at least as well as the older technologies they are replacing, this is an apples to oranges comparison.
Why does anyone think the browsers themselves don't have similar security problems, and won't have more when they offer the same kinds of functionality as the insecure plug-ins we've used in the past?
The US is anomalous in terms of its murder and violent crime rates, of course. There are other nations where the general population is also allowed or even required to have firearms that do not suffer the same level with violence, suggesting that the problem may be one of culture rather than tools.
Still, the statistical question is a fair one. Given that routine carrying of firearms by the general population would almost inevitably lead to some level of extra deaths, if only through accidents, and given that the number of people actually hurt or killed in terrorist-style attacks is tiny, it may still be the case that statistically it is a bad bet to routinely arm the general population of the UK as a response to that particular threat. I don't know what the actual numbers would be, but it's a fair question to ask.
(I am not offering any view on the merits or otherwise of arming the general population for any other reasons here. I'm talking specifically about whether generally arming everyone would be a good thing in response to this kind of attack.)
This may be true. Personally, I think the vast majority of people working for these organisations probably are just normal people trying to do an important job under difficult conditions.
However, I don't think you've undermined Xest's point: if a perpetrator of a violent act was already well known to the security services for both their views and their violent disposition, but for whatever reason the perpetrator had not been effectively monitored or contained despite that knowledge, why would we rationally expect that providing any further information would necessarily improve the situation?
That's why they fit into the definition of "terrorists": using terror to further their political agenda. It doesn't matter that the instruments of terror are other idiots.
You're being kind. The governments and media in much of the West have for some time been doing far more to scare the people through their own direct actions than any actual violence by radical groups has achieved.
I caught part of a review of today's papers on the BBC News last night. The comments by the two guest reviewers actually made me nauseous. One claimed to be concerned about the implications about extending surveillance powers further and that we should have some sort of debate, yet clearly thought we should just hand over whatever it takes to keep us safe. The other was just saying he didn't care who read his e-mails, didn't feel that being spied on limited his freedom of expression, and MI5 were welcome to spy on him, with no apparent consideration for the implications of that policy for anyone else who might not share his views. The host actually quipped -- in possibly the only balancing comment in the entire segment -- that the guest sounded like he was making the old argument about having nothing to fear if you have nothing to hide, and the guest just laughed and said he didn't think so.
So it looks like there was at least one thing Lucas got right with episodes I-III: liberty really does die with thunderous applause.
Is the point that the two-faced bastard had to work harder to infringe?
Yes, that's exactly the point. Some people believe, erroneously, that putting material on a public web site voids the copyright. However, in order for the web to work, clearly there must be some form of implicit licence when you put material on a public site or no-one would be allowed to lawfully download it so they can view it. That argument does not hold for content that is hidden behind some sort of registration scheme or paywall, where typically there would be explicit terms for accessing the material that you must actively accept.