The in-development Neo900 phone is being built specifically to ensure the modem has no access to the main processor. The modem will NOT be able to read anything from/write anything to the RAM or ROM attached to the TI OMAP main CPU. It will NOT be able to access peripherals connected to the main CPU (including the screen, speakers, microphone and cameras).
On the GTA04 (the device that the Neo900 is based on) all communication between the main CPU and the modem module happens via an internal USB port (with the omap and internal USB chip acting as the USB host and the modem acting as the USB guest). There is also a modem audio interface connected to the McBSP port of the OMAP chip that handles call audio (but its an audio interface and cant be used for anything else).
So not all phones give the baseband control over the main CPU.
+1 to this idea, combine GPS, alarm and other sensors to permanently erase all the encryption keys (and in a way such that you can have an expert witness demonstrate in court that the keys are gone and will never be recovered). If the bad guys open the case (to pull the hard disks for imaging) without disabling the chassis alarm, keys get wiped. If they move the PC without disabling the GPS alarm, keys get wiped. If they enter the house without disabling the house alarm, keys get wiped. Turn on the PC and enter the wrong boot password too many times, keys get wiped. (and this would also prevent accessing the BIOS setup to change the boot settings so it can boot from removable media or USB drives) Enter the wrong password on the OS lock-screen too many times, keys get wiped. (meaning that if the PC is on when the bad guys show up, all you have to do is press the key combination to lock the system and they cant get in)
Someone ought to take a leaf from Cryptonomicon and find a country somewhere that is willing to say "screw you" if the US or its allies come knocking on the door, has a stable political system (whether that be democratically elected or not) and is willing to host a big data center to hold all the crap the US would rather not be hosted (WikiLeaks etc) and all the crap the US wants to get its hands on.
Google (or Samsung or any Android OEM) will never make or ship an app that can send all audio or video from the phone to another device because app developers who make apps where they dont want that to happen (or where the providers of the content for that app dont want it to happen) would kick up a major stink.
Just state in the merger contract that any tax liabilities owed by Nokia are the responsibility of Nokia and do not follow the Indian factory to Microsoft. Its Nokia that owe any taxes and the sale of the Indian factory to Microsoft shouldn't mean that somehow the taxes owed go with it.
Here in Australia I can transfer money not only to my bank but to any other bank in Australia (via my online banking) and I dont pay a cent. I can also pay bills (those that dont come out automatically via direct debit) online and I dont pay a cent.
The fancy scanners are at airports but places like courthouses, schools, nightclubs, government buildings, jails, prisons and such still have the old style metal detectors. Heck, there are probably still airports out there that dont have body scanners.
As we have seen when other companies with big portfolios have collapsed or sold off their patents, usually its well established companies that pick them up. Look at what happened to the Nortel Networks patents (that were bought by Microsoft and others)
Its no different to how they store weapons grade material in the military, one assumes that the question of how to store nuclear weapons and weapons grade material is a solved one.
Nuclear power is by no means "perfected", there are reactors using fuels other than uranium, molten salt reactors, pebble bed reactors and all kinds of other reactors that have thus far either existed only as tiny demonstration plants (and, if they are any good, need to be improved so they can be used at full scale for electricity generation) or as plans in a lab somewhere (in which case they need to be tried out as experiments to see if they work)
Not to mention designs like breeder reactors and fuel reprocessing that would be a great way to get rid of a lot of that nuclear waste sitting around the place waiting for the politicians to agree on a location for long term storage. And you can overcome the irrational fear about "nuclear weapons proliferation" that comes with reprocessing by making sure the reactors, storage sites and reprocessing facilities have enough guys with really big guns to stop anyone stealing the waste. (or you can modify things so that weapons-grade material is never generated in the first place)
There is no reason to keep building the same reactor designs that were being built in the 70s when there are newer safer better designs out there.
I suspect many doctors are reluctant to proscribe diet pills because then people will think "if I take these pills, I can keep eating all the junk I want/not exercising and yet still loose weight" which is not true.
Some phones (Samsung for example) definatly support exFAT. And thanks to the kernel source from Samsung, anyone who needs exFAT support can get it too (assuming your use of it isn't the sort of use that is likely to get Microsoft interested in suing you for patent violations that is)
The actual spying isn't the biggest issue I have with the NSA (and GCHQ and ASIO and the others), the biggest issue is the way that these agencies are doing things that deliberately weaken computer security in the name of making it easier to spy on people. Things like backdoors in who knows what software. Or pressuring software vendors under the table not to fix things that the NSA is using to spy. Or their various proposals for "key escrow" over the years. Or the potential compromise of security related algorithms and protocols (dual-ec-drbg for example is suspect and going back there were questions when the key-length of DES was made shorter by the NSA)
And lets not forget the cryptographic export controls (which still exist and can still be an impediment even if they have been wound back a bit) and what the government did to Zimmerman over PGP.
I hope Microsoft does NOT give in to the demands of China for extending XP support, that OS (and the ancient broken version of IE it shipped with) need to die and ending security updates for it will be a good way to help do that.
Assuming the website really violates COPPA, Google "COPPA violations" and grab some links to articles showing where the FTC sued over such violations and got big settlements. Then email those links to the boss (keeping copies of all this as others have suggested) and say something like "these guys got sued by the FTC and had to pay some big $, do you want to see our company get sued?"
If the boss takes an "I dont care" attitude or ignores the emails, go to the legal department or compliance officers with the same thing and say "I pushed this to my superiors and they chose to ignore it, I dont want to see our company held liable by the FTC, what should I do about it?"
If that doesn't work, consider packing up and leaving. Any company where the legal department doesn't care that the company is violating such a law and is one tip-off away from an FTC investigation (which could be a PR nightmare especially for a site that targets kids specifically) isn't a good company to work for.
ok, so to prevent manufacturers from competing with dealers, you pass a law that says that if a manufacturer has a 3rd party dealer anywhere in the US, they can't open a manufacturer-owned dealer. But if they have no dealers anywhere (and more to the point, if they have never had one) then they should be free to do what Telsa has done.
But are they going to replace the aging copper with fiber or are they going to do nothing and tell people to talk to the cable company (if they can get it in their area) or go wireless?
Biometric devices aren't particularly secure plus if they are compromised somehow you cant change your fingerprints or iris pattern or voice print or palm veins or DNA in the way that you can change a password or a security card. Oh and using a device secured by biometrics rather than a good strong password can reduce your legal protections if the cops want to get at whatever it protects
Or all the ads I have seen asking for x years experience in.NET or C# or technologies related to that (or to specific versions such as ".NET 4.0") when the tech hasn't even been out for x years yet.
What microsoft SHOULD have done is what Google and Apple did and basically made "Windows Tablet" based on the Windows Phone OS. So they would have had x86 machines running Windows 8 with a normal desktop OS (possibly with a few enhancements to make it run better on x86 tablets) then ARM devices (phone and tablet) running the Windows Phone codebase and supporting the Windows Phone interface and apps.
As a geek, a software developer and a security guy with a library of Schneier books on his bookshelf, I personally think that a list of "Technologies now considered "safe" for foreign spies, terrorists, and criminals to use - but have actually been hacked" is EXACTLY the sort of thing someone like Snowden should be leaking.
Deliberately making widely-used things less secure in order to catch bad guys (including withholding exploit information that could be used to make things more secure) is NOT something the good guys should be engaging in. (and yes I still consider the US, UK and Australia as "good guys")
Slashdot Mirror
The in-development Neo900 phone is being built specifically to ensure the modem has no access to the main processor.
The modem will NOT be able to read anything from/write anything to the RAM or ROM attached to the TI OMAP main CPU. It will NOT be able to access peripherals connected to the main CPU (including the screen, speakers, microphone and cameras).
On the GTA04 (the device that the Neo900 is based on) all communication between the main CPU and the modem module happens via an internal USB port (with the omap and internal USB chip acting as the USB host and the modem acting as the USB guest). There is also a modem audio interface connected to the McBSP port of the OMAP chip that handles call audio (but its an audio interface and cant be used for anything else).
So not all phones give the baseband control over the main CPU.
+1 to this idea, combine GPS, alarm and other sensors to permanently erase all the encryption keys (and in a way such that you can have an expert witness demonstrate in court that the keys are gone and will never be recovered).
If the bad guys open the case (to pull the hard disks for imaging) without disabling the chassis alarm, keys get wiped. If they move the PC without disabling the GPS alarm, keys get wiped. If they enter the house without disabling the house alarm, keys get wiped.
Turn on the PC and enter the wrong boot password too many times, keys get wiped. (and this would also prevent accessing the BIOS setup to change the boot settings so it can boot from removable media or USB drives)
Enter the wrong password on the OS lock-screen too many times, keys get wiped. (meaning that if the PC is on when the bad guys show up, all you have to do is press the key combination to lock the system and they cant get in)
Someone ought to take a leaf from Cryptonomicon and find a country somewhere that is willing to say "screw you" if the US or its allies come knocking on the door, has a stable political system (whether that be democratically elected or not) and is willing to host a big data center to hold all the crap the US would rather not be hosted (WikiLeaks etc) and all the crap the US wants to get its hands on.
This is exactly why the patent system needs to change to make it impossible to amend patents after they have been filed.
Google (or Samsung or any Android OEM) will never make or ship an app that can send all audio or video from the phone to another device because app developers who make apps where they dont want that to happen (or where the providers of the content for that app dont want it to happen) would kick up a major stink.
Just state in the merger contract that any tax liabilities owed by Nokia are the responsibility of Nokia and do not follow the Indian factory to Microsoft.
Its Nokia that owe any taxes and the sale of the Indian factory to Microsoft shouldn't mean that somehow the taxes owed go with it.
Here in Australia I can transfer money not only to my bank but to any other bank in Australia (via my online banking) and I dont pay a cent.
I can also pay bills (those that dont come out automatically via direct debit) online and I dont pay a cent.
The fancy scanners are at airports but places like courthouses, schools, nightclubs, government buildings, jails, prisons and such still have the old style metal detectors.
Heck, there are probably still airports out there that dont have body scanners.
As we have seen when other companies with big portfolios have collapsed or sold off their patents, usually its well established companies that pick them up. Look at what happened to the Nortel Networks patents (that were bought by Microsoft and others)
My mum bought iPads for both of her parents last xmas and they both picked it up easily enough once the initial setup was done.
Its no different to how they store weapons grade material in the military, one assumes that the question of how to store nuclear weapons and weapons grade material is a solved one.
Nuclear power is by no means "perfected", there are reactors using fuels other than uranium, molten salt reactors, pebble bed reactors and all kinds of other reactors that have thus far either existed only as tiny demonstration plants (and, if they are any good, need to be improved so they can be used at full scale for electricity generation) or as plans in a lab somewhere (in which case they need to be tried out as experiments to see if they work)
Not to mention designs like breeder reactors and fuel reprocessing that would be a great way to get rid of a lot of that nuclear waste sitting around the place waiting for the politicians to agree on a location for long term storage. And you can overcome the irrational fear about "nuclear weapons proliferation" that comes with reprocessing by making sure the reactors, storage sites and reprocessing facilities have enough guys with really big guns to stop anyone stealing the waste. (or you can modify things so that weapons-grade material is never generated in the first place)
There is no reason to keep building the same reactor designs that were being built in the 70s when there are newer safer better designs out there.
I suspect many doctors are reluctant to proscribe diet pills because then people will think "if I take these pills, I can keep eating all the junk I want/not exercising and yet still loose weight" which is not true.
Some phones (Samsung for example) definatly support exFAT.
And thanks to the kernel source from Samsung, anyone who needs exFAT support can get it too (assuming your use of it isn't the sort of use that is likely to get Microsoft interested in suing you for patent violations that is)
The actual spying isn't the biggest issue I have with the NSA (and GCHQ and ASIO and the others), the biggest issue is the way that these agencies are doing things that deliberately weaken computer security in the name of making it easier to spy on people.
Things like backdoors in who knows what software. Or pressuring software vendors under the table not to fix things that the NSA is using to spy. Or their various proposals for "key escrow" over the years. Or the potential compromise of security related algorithms and protocols (dual-ec-drbg for example is suspect and going back there were questions when the key-length of DES was made shorter by the NSA)
And lets not forget the cryptographic export controls (which still exist and can still be an impediment even if they have been wound back a bit) and what the government did to Zimmerman over PGP.
I hope Microsoft does NOT give in to the demands of China for extending XP support, that OS (and the ancient broken version of IE it shipped with) need to die and ending security updates for it will be a good way to help do that.
Assuming the website really violates COPPA, Google "COPPA violations" and grab some links to articles showing where the FTC sued over such violations and got big settlements. Then email those links to the boss (keeping copies of all this as others have suggested) and say something like "these guys got sued by the FTC and had to pay some big $, do you want to see our company get sued?"
If the boss takes an "I dont care" attitude or ignores the emails, go to the legal department or compliance officers with the same thing and say "I pushed this to my superiors and they chose to ignore it, I dont want to see our company held liable by the FTC, what should I do about it?"
If that doesn't work, consider packing up and leaving. Any company where the legal department doesn't care that the company is violating such a law and is one tip-off away from an FTC investigation (which could be a PR nightmare especially for a site that targets kids specifically) isn't a good company to work for.
ok, so to prevent manufacturers from competing with dealers, you pass a law that says that if a manufacturer has a 3rd party dealer anywhere in the US, they can't open a manufacturer-owned dealer. But if they have no dealers anywhere (and more to the point, if they have never had one) then they should be free to do what Telsa has done.
Amazon just needs to say "no more affiliates based in New York" and they wont have to pay the tax.
But are they going to replace the aging copper with fiber or are they going to do nothing and tell people to talk to the cable company (if they can get it in their area) or go wireless?
Biometric devices aren't particularly secure plus if they are compromised somehow you cant change your fingerprints or iris pattern or voice print or palm veins or DNA in the way that you can change a password or a security card.
Oh and using a device secured by biometrics rather than a good strong password can reduce your legal protections if the cops want to get at whatever it protects
Or all the ads I have seen asking for x years experience in .NET or C# or technologies related to that (or to specific versions such as ".NET 4.0") when the tech hasn't even been out for x years yet.
What microsoft SHOULD have done is what Google and Apple did and basically made "Windows Tablet" based on the Windows Phone OS. So they would have had x86 machines running Windows 8 with a normal desktop OS (possibly with a few enhancements to make it run better on x86 tablets) then ARM devices (phone and tablet) running the Windows Phone codebase and supporting the Windows Phone interface and apps.
As a geek, a software developer and a security guy with a library of Schneier books on his bookshelf, I personally think that a list of "Technologies now considered "safe" for foreign spies, terrorists, and criminals to use - but have actually been hacked" is EXACTLY the sort of thing someone like Snowden should be leaking.
Deliberately making widely-used things less secure in order to catch bad guys (including withholding exploit information that could be used to make things more secure) is NOT something the good guys should be engaging in. (and yes I still consider the US, UK and Australia as "good guys")
They have just released a "tech preview" of the compiler that (per the Microsoft provided info) supports constexpr and inheriting constructors with a clear roadmap to supporting the rest of C++11/C++14 (including user defined literals and attributes)
http://blogs.msdn.com/b/vcblog/archive/2013/11/18/announcing-the-visual-c-compiler-november-2013-ctp.aspx is the announcement from the Visual C++ guys about it.