Actually, if he [MachineShedFred] actually meant what he wrote, then we wouldn't have any politicians left. I'm not saying that's a bad thing. I'm saying he must be woefully ignorant of how modern politics works, rationalizing what he wants to believe without regards to the actual evidence, or a partisan liar, possibly of the paid sort.
Recently learned that the Chinese Commies actually pay trolls to disrupt political discussions within Chinese websites. The going rate is about 50 cents per post, so the dissidents call the paid trolls the "50-cent party". Today's so-called GOP has never met a bad idea they didn't want to copy, near as I can tell. (However I also read a report accusing a HIllary PAC of doing the same thing--but it might have been reported by a paid troll.)
Clearly they don't have enough evidence to convict him. So at this stage he hasn't been found guilty of the main crime. However he is refusing to co-operate with a court, but it seems crazy that that could mean he dies in prison.
Don't need to go as far as fundamental human right. At least not if the Bill of Rights hadn't been perverted to death. Free speech zones? Individual guns and to heck with the well regulated militias. Unreasonable search when they lack sufficient reason to convict him without it plus the requirement he incriminate himself if he actually did something? Sitting there indefinitely is certainly speedy trial, and it also seems like cruel and unusual punishment before conviction of the alleged crime.
Oh well, at least a couple of the Bill of Rights Amendments got skipped or have become irrelevant. No one is quartering troops in private homes these days, eh?
Then again, if he is a child pornographer, it is pretty hard to muster much sympathy. The least bad case is that he's seriously sick in the head, and that still wouldn't reduce the seriousness if he was directly involved in harming any children.
Chris Christie has already sold his soul to Trump for a shot at the VP spot.
Considered as an election tactic, that would seem unwise, even by the Donald's extremely fuzzy values of wisdom. I think their supporters are almost the same set, whereas the usual ideal is to broaden your appeal with a V-P pick from another region of the country or with significantly different characteristics. Actually, I think Christie's supporters are a small subset of Trump's (but mostly I can't imagine who would support or vote for Christie (or Trump), even notwithstanding the evidence that someone must have for him to be governor).
Trying to link it back to the original topic of the article, it would make more sense for Cruz (or Trump) to pick someone who has a different H1B position than his own. The problem with Cruz is figuring out what that position actually is since it is quite probably unrelated to whatever he is saying (whereas Trump has been on every side of every issue).
Actually, at this point I'm hoping the Donald gets the nomination, but no one will agree to be his V-P. That would be a hilarious end for the party that claims to be the legacy of Abe Lincoln's Republican Party and the GOP of Ike and Teddy. Just a sad brand hijack.
Cruz is one of those people who will say/do whatever it takes to get elected. Tea partier? Sure, why not. Establishment pet? He will obey for votes. H1-B visas? What difference does it make, as long as it gets him votes? He'll flip-flop on anything you pay him to do, and then bore you to death with a long, legalistic, and incorrect explanation of why he is not actually flip-flopping.
You're confusing Trump with Cruz. Trump is that way, but Cruz has an entire worldview of insanity, and it's cast in concrete. Don't let his debating skills as a lawyer fool you. Yes, he can speak on either side of any issue, but when he gets to pick the side he wants, the country is in big trouble. The only risk with the Donald is that he picks a V-P like the big dick Cheney.
The party bosses hate Cruz just slightly less than Trump. They'll try to find a way to nominate !Jeb but failing that it'll be Rubio or Kasich. It should be an interesting election. They say Hillary will get the women's vote and I suspect that is true but I don't know that many men that feel good about her. I guess I'll end up voting for whoever runs against her. I just hope it's not !Jeb.
I don't like Hillary that much, but I have to respect her for her taste in enemies. Mindless and irrational, usually sexist.
Congratulations. You're 3 out of 3!
Anyway, my #1 beef with Hillary is her personal identity. All of us have many of them, but I think her top one is probably "corporate lawyer" and certainly not "idealist". It's Bill Clinton who is first and foremost a "politician". Probably Obama, too.
None of which is related to the original H1B topic, unless you [amiga3D] are one of the folk who think President Obama needs one. (Also, I don't think Trump believed the birther nonsense any more than he believes most of the crazy stuff he says. His #1 identity is "salesman" or "con man" and he is just telling the 'customers' (the so-called Republicans voting in the primaries) what they want to hear.)
Yeah, but only out of cowardice. They're each terrified their own email might be abused. Sometimes bad motives like fear can produce good results, eh?
However, if you wait until the public isn't looking (which will take about 7 minutes given the current conditions) they'll add the rider in the fine print that the legal protections only applies to their OWN email (and perhaps the email of their campaign donors and future employers).
Still government of the corporations, by the lawyers, for the richest 0.1%.
Same as it ever was, and remember not to eat the yellow snow.
Yeah, that thing with bumping the volume on the ads is especially annoying and especially abused by a couple of scam companies that use loud sirens or screeches to insure they have my attention. And hatred.
What I can't understand is the financial model driving their insane rudeness. I am not aware of ANY ad on YouTube that represented ANY product or service that I would ever consider buying--and if I did remember their ad, it would insure I would try much harder NOT to buy it even if I thought I had a use for it. Whatever it is.
There must be some aliens among us who respond to the ads?
Anyway, the real problem is that YouTube itself is a criminal enterprise. Every week for the last few years I do an obvious search to see scam results. There are two to five legitimate results buried in several pages of scam results. How is it benefiting YouTube or the google to assist the scammers in pwning YOUR computer? I still can't figure it, but it obviously isn't going away any time soon. (There are several obvious countermeasures, but YouTube only took one baby step in the last few years.)
All the stats I've seen said that is not true. New hire profiles are strongly skewed toward younger people, and the skew is not noticeably less at "top tier" companies. Can you provide one link to the contrary?
Not even saying that I blame them. Both universities and students know what side of the bread the butter is on. These days it's the Python side, not the Fortran side.
Well, I don't mind that I might have stimulated the historical branch of the thread, though my take is again philosophical. I think that acquiring companies for their IP is fundamentally wrong and mostly prevents innovation. However, I'm too tired and short on time right now to treat the topic as deeply as it deserves.
In contrast, I somewhat do mind that the slashdot system moderation continues to reek like the big dog's m0e. (Technical usage from the same period as my Apple II programming.)
I was referring to user (AKA victim) perception of "Quick", not the technical or even etymological history of the usage.
Perhaps the real problem between us is also philosophical. I am NOT an Apple fanbois, even though one of my first professional programming projects was for Apple II. It would be hard for me to decide which corporate philosophy is most detestable. They all stink so badly. My primary "beef" with Apple relates to my sig insofar as I think Apple deliberately decided to withhold much of the data needed for meaningful choice.
Actually, I think there is an underlying philosophic problem there. Content below appearance, and from that perspective I sort of want to give Adobe more credit for at least picking a name for mindless flash that captures its essence. In contrast, Apple's "Quick" could be considered better as a distraction, a misdirection of interest, so to speak. Still evil, but I hate Adobe more precisely because they were more successful in imposing their threats and risks on most of the market, if not the actual universe.
Been following this Watson stuff for quite a while, and I still can't say which. Probably not magic, however. Even watched people "playing" with the Japanese Pepper robot in Softbank, and can't figure out if there is anything there. The users may not be sufficiently easily amused?
I hate to be rude about it it. If I were a diplomat rather than a techie, I would reword that to say the financial models are stupid. Microsoft has proven that it is NOT the quality of the software that determines software dominance, but the characteristics of the business model. LOTS of details available upon (polite) request, but I want to keep this short, so let me switch my focus to a possible solution. If you have a better idea, let's see it, but the bottom line is that NONE of the existing financial models for Linux has worked well in comparison to the competing models.
We should have charity brokerages that allow us to pool our small donations to create and SUPPORT better (Linus-based) software (including the OS itself). New features and ongoing costs would be broken down on a project basis, and each project would only commit when enough donors agree the project is good enough to support. The brokerage will hold the money until each project is funded, but will earn a commission for the funded project by making sure the project proposals are complete. That includes making sure critical things like testing and success criteria are not forgotten, and in additional the brokerage would be responsible for reporting on the project's relative success to the donors. The "end result" would be to let your name appear on the donor tab of the documentation for that feature (or for its ongoing cost project), not personal profit--but we would ALL benefit from better software (and without such monsters as Microsoft).
One of my many problems with Microsoft is the guilty-until-proven-innocent security model. Actually, they seem to have softened their position somewhat in recent years, but the perception remains, and whenever anything goes wrong with anything associated with Microsoft, one of the hardest possibilities to rule out is that I haven't done anything they perceive as a EULA violation.
Just a coincidence, but I ran into this last week. My employer recently announced we could upgrade to Office 2016. I wasn't brave enough to go first, but I was probably second in my section. Seemed to work okay for a couple of weeks, but then it died hard. Completely unusable. Lots of error codes leading to circular links on "support" webpages, but no discernible hint that the actual problem was a software conflict. I had to wildly guess that on the third day, but along the way there was at least one period where the software seemed to have lost its validation marbles. Some kind of ping pong between our corporate identity validation and Microsoft's? Not sure, but after I had solved the problem and thought everything was okay, I still received email with a new temporary account and password, apparently triggered during the period when the software thought it was invalid. (The attempt at recovery of the validation status must mean Microsoft now regards us as more of a major customer than a serious competitor? I think I'm sad.)
Anyway, mostly goes to prove my point that quality of the software is much less important than the cunning of the economic model. If Linux ever came up with a good one, Microsoft would be crushed. (Then again, maybe it's too late? Vista was SUCH a great opportunity...)
So does this mean Safari will start honoring browser-level language preferences? Honest, I'm trying to do things the Apple way and enjoy the so-called Tao, but the latest nuisance of language preferences is really annoying me. Just because I live in a country doesn't mean that the local language is my first preference.
The FBI might bother to lie about it if they realized they can achieve their real objective in a very practical way and without the legal bother. The FBI would prefer to simply outlaw encryption, but that is actually impossible, since you can never make ideas go away. In contrast, you may be able to FOOL people into believing that encryption doesn't exist, and in particular that Apple does not have it.
Two more bases for the FBI lying about it. (1) They decided it would be sufficient if they just scare potential terrorists away from using iPhones. (2) They closed the loop from the other side and don't want to admit it. Since they had all the metadata, perhaps they have found and dumped every data source this phone was in contact with. (Again, not a capability they would want to disclose.)
Prediction: Whatever the reality, the FBI will never reveal any useful information that could have come only from this iPhone.
There is no doubt the government could get at the info it needs without Apple. The problem is that it would cost a lot of money and time. It's much better for them if they can strong arm Apple into being their bitch.
Perhaps a better way to make my point, but not limited to Apple, while I would limit it to certain authoritarian individuals within the government. I think most of the individuals working for the government are like most other people, basically nice enough, and there are even some principled folks among them who understand our Constitutional rights, their implications, and even want to defend them. I suspect most of the problem lies with leftovers of the big dick Cheney, who deliberately and quite diabolically tried to stack the civil service career hiring process in favor of insane ideologues like himself.
The security of the source code (and the signing keys) is important, and that is much of the reason that I am uncertain whether the FBI could do the job themselves. Nevertheless, I don't think the active cooperation of Apple is nearly as important as having sufficiently competent people working on the problem, and I don't think Apple has any monopoly there. However, the FBI does apparently have sufficient acumen to have identified an approach that will work, according to Apple's own statements.
(Based on what little I know of the situation, the approach the FBI has suggested actually indicates several other brute-force possibilities that might be feasible at a government level with sufficient resources... Kind of depends if the Chinese ever implemented and mandated the distributed cracking chip, eh?)
As regards the NSA, the situation is different because I think their personnel are at the top of the field. Perhaps I even hope so, insofar as their work is important for the nation's security? However, that includes considering it likely they may well have obtained the source code or could reverse engineer the system without the source. The most important thing when considering the NSA's potential is that a feasible attack is known.
Now before you mistake me for some kind of security expert, let me beg to differ. I am absolutely confident that I would be a sitting duck, and my only plausible defense is to know nothing of value. Let me assure you that if I had any seriously valuable information, I would get rid of it as quickly and as irreversibly as possible.
By the way, as regards the earlier comment, I am NOT attempting to "support Apple" in this situation. My view is that it is quite likely that Apple is being played for a fool here, as are we all. For what extremely little it is worth, I greatly value my privacy, except for the little problem that I can't afford to have any.
If the situation is as described in a recent statement attributed to Tim Cook, then this is a completely fake issue. In summary, that quote said it would only take a few man-months to produce the software that the FBI wants. If so, then it is barely conceivable the FBI lacks the resources to have created it already, and it is dead certain that the NSA (and foreign counterparts) already have it.
So why the charade? Evidently to make suckers (AKA you and me) think that there is still some privacy out here where the peasants live.
Also, perhaps because they've decided it's politically expedient to make Apple look bad with this juicy and loaded situation.
Don't look at me. I'm getting so ultra-paranoid that I think Snowden was a sincere patsy who revealed exactly what the NSA wanted us to know and Michael Hastings car was hacked, too. If I still had a vote, I might be approaching the level of craziness required to vote for Trump and "government of the Donald, by the Donald, for the Donald" just on grounds of simplicity.
I don't know if I'd go that far. The Democratic Party has never had much of a cohesive ideology. It sort of grew over time and incorporated bits of this and that, including many unlikely or implausible coalitions. Actually, many of the organizational features we now regard as standard parts of political parties in America were innovations introduced by Abraham Lincoln as he organized the Republican Party--and even with those innovations his party never could have captured the White House without a massive schism in the Democratic Party over the issue of slavery. On that basis, I 'd say Hillary and Bernie are both well within the historical "norms" of their party. Hard to call anyone a DINO when the label has so little meaning, eh?
However, on the topic of this article, my main focus was actually the intended joke of "government of the Donald, by the Donald, for the Donald", and the entry point of censorship, even of the Donald, is what bothered me about the situation. Better to let the jackass bray as loudly as possible. If he doesn't destroy his own reputation and candidacy, then maybe we have to pray that the Donald is faking. "I want to be president" certainly wouldn't be Trump's first lie.
Now about that moderation... Still offensive. I wouldn't mind being marked "provocative" or even "thought provoking", but slashdot lacks such sophistication... I'm horrified to feel sort of compelled to say something nice about Facebook's new moderation system. Still awful, but at least it's improving and it may already be better than slashdot's moderation system... The idea of a general positive dimension with optional focusing on more narrow dimensions is a half-decent implementation of what I recommended for slashdot about 10 years ago. (Not claiming credit. It's intuitively obvious to the most casual observer, and I'm quite sure there have been plenty of such observers with similar suggestions over the years...)
(Now what was that "open proxy" thing about? Slashdot doesn't need more breakage...)
Actually, I'm reminded of a recent incident in which I believe I was censored by Bernie's fanatics for saying that Hillary wasn't such a bad option compared to Trump and his associates.
However, I think I've finally figured out the source of the fundamental conflict between the so-called GOP and Trump:
The so-called Republicans believe in "government of the corporations, by the lawyers, for the richest 0.1%."
Trump rejects that and stands for "government of the Donald, by the Donald, for the Donald."
Slashdot Mirror
Actually, if he [MachineShedFred] actually meant what he wrote, then we wouldn't have any politicians left. I'm not saying that's a bad thing. I'm saying he must be woefully ignorant of how modern politics works, rationalizing what he wants to believe without regards to the actual evidence, or a partisan liar, possibly of the paid sort.
Recently learned that the Chinese Commies actually pay trolls to disrupt political discussions within Chinese websites. The going rate is about 50 cents per post, so the dissidents call the paid trolls the "50-cent party". Today's so-called GOP has never met a bad idea they didn't want to copy, near as I can tell. (However I also read a report accusing a HIllary PAC of doing the same thing--but it might have been reported by a paid troll.)
Fair and reasonable punishment?
Clearly they don't have enough evidence to convict him. So at this stage he hasn't been found guilty of the main crime. However he is refusing to co-operate with a court, but it seems crazy that that could mean he dies in prison.
Don't need to go as far as fundamental human right. At least not if the Bill of Rights hadn't been perverted to death. Free speech zones? Individual guns and to heck with the well regulated militias. Unreasonable search when they lack sufficient reason to convict him without it plus the requirement he incriminate himself if he actually did something? Sitting there indefinitely is certainly speedy trial, and it also seems like cruel and unusual punishment before conviction of the alleged crime.
Oh well, at least a couple of the Bill of Rights Amendments got skipped or have become irrelevant. No one is quartering troops in private homes these days, eh?
Then again, if he is a child pornographer, it is pretty hard to muster much sympathy. The least bad case is that he's seriously sick in the head, and that still wouldn't reduce the seriousness if he was directly involved in harming any children.
Chris Christie has already sold his soul to Trump for a shot at the VP spot.
Considered as an election tactic, that would seem unwise, even by the Donald's extremely fuzzy values of wisdom. I think their supporters are almost the same set, whereas the usual ideal is to broaden your appeal with a V-P pick from another region of the country or with significantly different characteristics. Actually, I think Christie's supporters are a small subset of Trump's (but mostly I can't imagine who would support or vote for Christie (or Trump), even notwithstanding the evidence that someone must have for him to be governor).
Trying to link it back to the original topic of the article, it would make more sense for Cruz (or Trump) to pick someone who has a different H1B position than his own. The problem with Cruz is figuring out what that position actually is since it is quite probably unrelated to whatever he is saying (whereas Trump has been on every side of every issue).
Actually, at this point I'm hoping the Donald gets the nomination, but no one will agree to be his V-P. That would be a hilarious end for the party that claims to be the legacy of Abe Lincoln's Republican Party and the GOP of Ike and Teddy. Just a sad brand hijack.
Cruz is one of those people who will say/do whatever it takes to get elected. Tea partier? Sure, why not. Establishment pet? He will obey for votes. H1-B visas? What difference does it make, as long as it gets him votes? He'll flip-flop on anything you pay him to do, and then bore you to death with a long, legalistic, and incorrect explanation of why he is not actually flip-flopping.
You're confusing Trump with Cruz. Trump is that way, but Cruz has an entire worldview of insanity, and it's cast in concrete. Don't let his debating skills as a lawyer fool you. Yes, he can speak on either side of any issue, but when he gets to pick the side he wants, the country is in big trouble. The only risk with the Donald is that he picks a V-P like the big dick Cheney.
The party bosses hate Cruz just slightly less than Trump. They'll try to find a way to nominate !Jeb but failing that it'll be Rubio or Kasich. It should be an interesting election. They say Hillary will get the women's vote and I suspect that is true but I don't know that many men that feel good about her. I guess I'll end up voting for whoever runs against her. I just hope it's not !Jeb.
I don't like Hillary that much, but I have to respect her for her taste in enemies. Mindless and irrational, usually sexist.
Congratulations. You're 3 out of 3!
Anyway, my #1 beef with Hillary is her personal identity. All of us have many of them, but I think her top one is probably "corporate lawyer" and certainly not "idealist". It's Bill Clinton who is first and foremost a "politician". Probably Obama, too.
None of which is related to the original H1B topic, unless you [amiga3D] are one of the folk who think President Obama needs one. (Also, I don't think Trump believed the birther nonsense any more than he believes most of the crazy stuff he says. His #1 identity is "salesman" or "con man" and he is just telling the 'customers' (the so-called Republicans voting in the primaries) what they want to hear.)
Fiorina as V-P? Does Cruz think the presidential election is an UNpopularity contest?
Even by Texas standards of insanity, his desperation is hilarious.
Born in Texas, but now I'm an ex-Texan of the no-vote-for-you party and I donated my poll tax to Bernie Sanders.
Why the AC for such an interesting comment?
Is your AC mind really so weak?
What? Congress did a possibly good thing?
Yeah, but only out of cowardice. They're each terrified their own email might be abused. Sometimes bad motives like fear can produce good results, eh?
However, if you wait until the public isn't looking (which will take about 7 minutes given the current conditions) they'll add the rider in the fine print that the legal protections only applies to their OWN email (and perhaps the email of their campaign donors and future employers).
Still government of the corporations, by the lawyers, for the richest 0.1%.
Same as it ever was, and remember not to eat the yellow snow.
Yeah, that thing with bumping the volume on the ads is especially annoying and especially abused by a couple of scam companies that use loud sirens or screeches to insure they have my attention. And hatred.
What I can't understand is the financial model driving their insane rudeness. I am not aware of ANY ad on YouTube that represented ANY product or service that I would ever consider buying--and if I did remember their ad, it would insure I would try much harder NOT to buy it even if I thought I had a use for it. Whatever it is.
There must be some aliens among us who respond to the ads?
Anyway, the real problem is that YouTube itself is a criminal enterprise. Every week for the last few years I do an obvious search to see scam results. There are two to five legitimate results buried in several pages of scam results. How is it benefiting YouTube or the google to assist the scammers in pwning YOUR computer? I still can't figure it, but it obviously isn't going away any time soon. (There are several obvious countermeasures, but YouTube only took one baby step in the last few years.)
All the stats I've seen said that is not true. New hire profiles are strongly skewed toward younger people, and the skew is not noticeably less at "top tier" companies. Can you provide one link to the contrary?
Not even saying that I blame them. Both universities and students know what side of the bread the butter is on. These days it's the Python side, not the Fortran side.
Me thinks I smell a troll.
Well, I don't mind that I might have stimulated the historical branch of the thread, though my take is again philosophical. I think that acquiring companies for their IP is fundamentally wrong and mostly prevents innovation. However, I'm too tired and short on time right now to treat the topic as deeply as it deserves.
In contrast, I somewhat do mind that the slashdot system moderation continues to reek like the big dog's m0e. (Technical usage from the same period as my Apple II programming.)
I was referring to user (AKA victim) perception of "Quick", not the technical or even etymological history of the usage.
Perhaps the real problem between us is also philosophical. I am NOT an Apple fanbois, even though one of my first professional programming projects was for Apple II. It would be hard for me to decide which corporate philosophy is most detestable. They all stink so badly. My primary "beef" with Apple relates to my sig insofar as I think Apple deliberately decided to withhold much of the data needed for meaningful choice.
What's next, Flash?
Oh please, pretty please with sugar on top.
Actually, I think there is an underlying philosophic problem there. Content below appearance, and from that perspective I sort of want to give Adobe more credit for at least picking a name for mindless flash that captures its essence. In contrast, Apple's "Quick" could be considered better as a distraction, a misdirection of interest, so to speak. Still evil, but I hate Adobe more precisely because they were more successful in imposing their threats and risks on most of the market, if not the actual universe.
Been following this Watson stuff for quite a while, and I still can't say which. Probably not magic, however. Even watched people "playing" with the Japanese Pepper robot in Softbank, and can't figure out if there is anything there. The users may not be sufficiently easily amused?
"It's the financial models, stupid."
I hate to be rude about it it. If I were a diplomat rather than a techie, I would reword that to say the financial models are stupid. Microsoft has proven that it is NOT the quality of the software that determines software dominance, but the characteristics of the business model. LOTS of details available upon (polite) request, but I want to keep this short, so let me switch my focus to a possible solution. If you have a better idea, let's see it, but the bottom line is that NONE of the existing financial models for Linux has worked well in comparison to the competing models.
We should have charity brokerages that allow us to pool our small donations to create and SUPPORT better (Linus-based) software (including the OS itself). New features and ongoing costs would be broken down on a project basis, and each project would only commit when enough donors agree the project is good enough to support. The brokerage will hold the money until each project is funded, but will earn a commission for the funded project by making sure the project proposals are complete. That includes making sure critical things like testing and success criteria are not forgotten, and in additional the brokerage would be responsible for reporting on the project's relative success to the donors. The "end result" would be to let your name appear on the donor tab of the documentation for that feature (or for its ongoing cost project), not personal profit--but we would ALL benefit from better software (and without such monsters as Microsoft).
One of my many problems with Microsoft is the guilty-until-proven-innocent security model. Actually, they seem to have softened their position somewhat in recent years, but the perception remains, and whenever anything goes wrong with anything associated with Microsoft, one of the hardest possibilities to rule out is that I haven't done anything they perceive as a EULA violation.
Just a coincidence, but I ran into this last week. My employer recently announced we could upgrade to Office 2016. I wasn't brave enough to go first, but I was probably second in my section. Seemed to work okay for a couple of weeks, but then it died hard. Completely unusable. Lots of error codes leading to circular links on "support" webpages, but no discernible hint that the actual problem was a software conflict. I had to wildly guess that on the third day, but along the way there was at least one period where the software seemed to have lost its validation marbles. Some kind of ping pong between our corporate identity validation and Microsoft's? Not sure, but after I had solved the problem and thought everything was okay, I still received email with a new temporary account and password, apparently triggered during the period when the software thought it was invalid. (The attempt at recovery of the validation status must mean Microsoft now regards us as more of a major customer than a serious competitor? I think I'm sad.)
Anyway, mostly goes to prove my point that quality of the software is much less important than the cunning of the economic model. If Linux ever came up with a good one, Microsoft would be crushed. (Then again, maybe it's too late? Vista was SUCH a great opportunity...)
So does this mean Safari will start honoring browser-level language preferences?
Honest, I'm trying to do things the Apple way and enjoy the so-called Tao, but the latest nuisance of language preferences is really annoying me. Just because I live in a country doesn't mean that the local language is my first preference.
Where was the prior reference? Anyway...
The FBI might bother to lie about it if they realized they can achieve their real objective in a very practical way and without the legal bother. The FBI would prefer to simply outlaw encryption, but that is actually impossible, since you can never make ideas go away. In contrast, you may be able to FOOL people into believing that encryption doesn't exist, and in particular that Apple does not have it.
Two more bases for the FBI lying about it. (1) They decided it would be sufficient if they just scare potential terrorists away from using iPhones. (2) They closed the loop from the other side and don't want to admit it. Since they had all the metadata, perhaps they have found and dumped every data source this phone was in contact with. (Again, not a capability they would want to disclose.)
Prediction: Whatever the reality, the FBI will never reveal any useful information that could have come only from this iPhone.
There is no doubt the government could get at the info it needs without Apple. The problem is that it would cost a lot of money and time. It's much better for them if they can strong arm Apple into being their bitch.
Perhaps a better way to make my point, but not limited to Apple, while I would limit it to certain authoritarian individuals within the government. I think most of the individuals working for the government are like most other people, basically nice enough, and there are even some principled folks among them who understand our Constitutional rights, their implications, and even want to defend them. I suspect most of the problem lies with leftovers of the big dick Cheney, who deliberately and quite diabolically tried to stack the civil service career hiring process in favor of insane ideologues like himself.
The security of the source code (and the signing keys) is important, and that is much of the reason that I am uncertain whether the FBI could do the job themselves. Nevertheless, I don't think the active cooperation of Apple is nearly as important as having sufficiently competent people working on the problem, and I don't think Apple has any monopoly there. However, the FBI does apparently have sufficient acumen to have identified an approach that will work, according to Apple's own statements.
(Based on what little I know of the situation, the approach the FBI has suggested actually indicates several other brute-force possibilities that might be feasible at a government level with sufficient resources... Kind of depends if the Chinese ever implemented and mandated the distributed cracking chip, eh?)
As regards the NSA, the situation is different because I think their personnel are at the top of the field. Perhaps I even hope so, insofar as their work is important for the nation's security? However, that includes considering it likely they may well have obtained the source code or could reverse engineer the system without the source. The most important thing when considering the NSA's potential is that a feasible attack is known.
Now before you mistake me for some kind of security expert, let me beg to differ. I am absolutely confident that I would be a sitting duck, and my only plausible defense is to know nothing of value. Let me assure you that if I had any seriously valuable information, I would get rid of it as quickly and as irreversibly as possible.
By the way, as regards the earlier comment, I am NOT attempting to "support Apple" in this situation. My view is that it is quite likely that Apple is being played for a fool here, as are we all. For what extremely little it is worth, I greatly value my privacy, except for the little problem that I can't afford to have any.
If the situation is as described in a recent statement attributed to Tim Cook, then this is a completely fake issue. In summary, that quote said it would only take a few man-months to produce the software that the FBI wants. If so, then it is barely conceivable the FBI lacks the resources to have created it already, and it is dead certain that the NSA (and foreign counterparts) already have it.
So why the charade? Evidently to make suckers (AKA you and me) think that there is still some privacy out here where the peasants live.
Also, perhaps because they've decided it's politically expedient to make Apple look bad with this juicy and loaded situation.
Don't look at me. I'm getting so ultra-paranoid that I think Snowden was a sincere patsy who revealed exactly what the NSA wanted us to know and Michael Hastings car was hacked, too. If I still had a vote, I might be approaching the level of craziness required to vote for Trump and "government of the Donald, by the Donald, for the Donald" just on grounds of simplicity.
I don't know if I'd go that far. The Democratic Party has never had much of a cohesive ideology. It sort of grew over time and incorporated bits of this and that, including many unlikely or implausible coalitions. Actually, many of the organizational features we now regard as standard parts of political parties in America were innovations introduced by Abraham Lincoln as he organized the Republican Party--and even with those innovations his party never could have captured the White House without a massive schism in the Democratic Party over the issue of slavery. On that basis, I 'd say Hillary and Bernie are both well within the historical "norms" of their party. Hard to call anyone a DINO when the label has so little meaning, eh?
However, on the topic of this article, my main focus was actually the intended joke of "government of the Donald, by the Donald, for the Donald", and the entry point of censorship, even of the Donald, is what bothered me about the situation. Better to let the jackass bray as loudly as possible. If he doesn't destroy his own reputation and candidacy, then maybe we have to pray that the Donald is faking. "I want to be president" certainly wouldn't be Trump's first lie.
Now about that moderation... Still offensive. I wouldn't mind being marked "provocative" or even "thought provoking", but slashdot lacks such sophistication... I'm horrified to feel sort of compelled to say something nice about Facebook's new moderation system. Still awful, but at least it's improving and it may already be better than slashdot's moderation system... The idea of a general positive dimension with optional focusing on more narrow dimensions is a half-decent implementation of what I recommended for slashdot about 10 years ago. (Not claiming credit. It's intuitively obvious to the most casual observer, and I'm quite sure there have been plenty of such observers with similar suggestions over the years...)
(Now what was that "open proxy" thing about? Slashdot doesn't need more breakage...)
Actually, I'm reminded of a recent incident in which I believe I was censored by Bernie's fanatics for saying that Hillary wasn't such a bad option compared to Trump and his associates.
However, I think I've finally figured out the source of the fundamental conflict between the so-called GOP and Trump:
The so-called Republicans believe in "government of the corporations, by the lawyers, for the richest 0.1%."
Trump rejects that and stands for "government of the Donald, by the Donald, for the Donald."