Phones are a more open market too, it is easier to compete when the majority of existing users are not locked into a single platform... And windows mobile has been around longer than both android and ios.
The risk of crashing a manned plane is your death... Flying a drone is more like a video game, you don't have any fear of personal injury so you expend less effort to avoid crashing.
If you encrypt/hash the data before you send it then you no longer need the plaintext, the hash becomes the plaintext equivalent. Also any sensible passwd hashing algorithm will be salted, so you would need to leak the user's salt *before* they authenticate.
While not illegal, many security guidelines (some of which are mandatory within certain circles) require that passwords be appropriately hashed etc... Windows generally doesn't comply with such guidelines (stores plaintext in memory, uses unsalted hash, allows hash to be used instead of plaintext) etc, so many such guidelines make special exception for windows... But anyone else has to comply, so clearly a ridiculous situation.
So, anyone running windows is storing their user passwords in a plaintext equivalent form.
No, read the article, their smartphone sales as a whole made a profit... A majority of those phones sold were the Asha series, which do not run windows, and a significant portion were also symbian based which again don't run windows. And this was also over the holiday season, which is traditionally the most profitable quarter.
Motorola who was already struggling, and has been for a long time... Samsung who are making billions from Android devices, their windows phone sales are totally insignificant to them. Blackberry who's primary product is dependent on microsoft (blackberry server is windows only, and also tied closely to exchange). Palm were already dying on windows mobile, a platform with no future... HP killed webos without really pushing it properly. HTC started off doing very well with android, and are now being killed by samsung... HTC also make windows based phones.
MS are ruthless and extremely arrogant, they have never had any qualms about stabbing their partners in the back when it suited them, and there's no reason to believe they won't do it again.
It's often carriers rather than the phone manufacture that bundle all manner of crap, and other modifications to the firmware...
Often you can go back to the manufacturer's default (ie not network branded) firmware for a much better experience, or you can buy a phone direct from the manufacturer which already has this firmware rather than buying it from your operator. In many cases you can also install a third party android firmware such as cyanogenmod.
I have had several phones which were crippled by carrier-specific firmware, missing features, features not working, instability, bloatware, poor battery life, and which were fixed by installing stock firmware.
That's the problem with being ubiquitous, microsoft have worked hard to make users consider windows to be the whole package including hardware, so users won't see the hardware as a blank canvas on which they could run all manner of different software. But it cuts both ways, if the hardware is garbage people blame windows.
It doesn't save anyone any money, it allows the manufacturer to price-gouge you... They clearly make a profit selling the hardware, so then subsequently selling you an "upgrade" which is really just an unlock code allowing you to make better use of the hardware you already bought is 100% additional profit for them.
Effectively they are selling you a product which is intentionally defective, and then charging you to fix it... Such practices should be illegal.
They may react slower, but demanding a faster reaction makes the assumption that what you need from them is more important than what they're already doing... I find that the constant distractions from people who need help with something or "just 5 minutes of your time" constantly interrupt my thought processes and severely delay what i'm already doing. On the other hand, if they send an email or im it can wait until i'm finished or need a break, and then get prioritised accordingly.
EXACTLY! There is such a drive to reduce energy usage these days, and yet they completely miss the most obvious - reduce the need for travel.
And similarly with city planning, big cities like london are spending huge amounts of money to upgrade their transport infrastructure to cope with yet more customers at peak times, leaving a system which is still massively overcrowded and unpleasant for users at peak times and is completely wasteful at other times. A combination of spreading the load around (encouraging businesses to setup in different places and not in certain crowded areas), spreading the load by time (ie different working hours), and reducing the load (eg home working) would make far better use of the transport infrastructure and be much more pleasant for those who have to use it.
The problem in many countries, is that while this guy has skills he may not necessarily have the paperwork to prove his skills. As such, companies simply won't hire him, and will never give him the chance to prove what skills he has.
Also, if he gets convicted he will have a criminal record, which will be yet another reason why companies won't hire him.
So the end result is that once all the dust settles, his only way of earning a living will be to use his skills for illegal purposes. And if he goes to jail, he will meet all manner of people who can introduce him to organised crime gangs who may want his services.
The closest analogy is the spirit of the law vs the letter of the law...
Hackers generally obey the letter of the law, that is they are only making a computer do what it was programmed to do. Wether that programming was intentional, or the result of a bug comes down to the spirit in which the program was written.
A similar scenario is the law... There are many loopholes (ie bugs) in the law which allow people to legally perform acts which were never intended by the people who wrote those laws.
So why then is it legal for a lawyer to exploit loopholes in the law, but not legal for a hacker to exploit loopholes in program code?
They harass such people because they acted in good faith and informed them. Malicious hackers will try to be stealthy, so they will NEVER invite dialog with their victims unless it's for purposes of extortion, and they will generally go to extreme lengths to disguise their identities, keep access to whatever systems they breached and use them to gain further access if possible.
Someone who tries to help them by identifying a hole and helping to fix it makes themselves an easy target. Someone who is stealthy, doesn't enter into dialog and is probably located in a far away country is very difficult to prosecute if you can even find them at all.
Of course this guy may be on questionable legal ground, but the fact is vulnerabilities were there... Is it not preferable that someone like this found them, rather than someone more malicious?
So don't do it. Don't run the risk, instead leave any exploitable holes for real malicious criminals to find.
It entirely depends on the individual, the company and the circumstances... If I go into the office, the place is like a zoo... I am constantly interrupted, the environment is noisy, the seats are uncomfortable, the a/c doesn't work in summer and the heating doesn't work in winter, the network is slow and unreliable (and worse if more people are there), and most people are agitated having just suffered through an hour+ commute to get there. If I work at home i have a quiet office room which is dedicated to work, which contains a comfortable chair etc. When i have lunch i only have to go as far as the kitchen, eat and then return to work instead of having to leave the building and stand in line. If i need to communicate with colleagues they can email, im or call me depending on the urgency of the communication, and they know only to call (which forces me to stop whatever i'm already doing to answer) if its an urgent matter. I don't have any children, i am here alone during the day. I don't work longer hours at home, but it does mean that i get more relaxation time since i don't lose 3 hours/day to commuting (time which is totally non productive and wasted). But you are right about working longer hours not being more productive, as you get tired you become less able to concentrate and are more prone to mistakes... A lot of people fail to understand this however, and would prefer staff to work longer hours, they often think of their employees as machines in this respect.
So working from home i waste no time on commuting, i sit more comfortably and i have less distractions. I am generally able to get considerably more done when at home than if i was in the office.
He is lucky, to have an honest employee... Corporations exist to increase profit for their owners, employees are considered as expendable resources and unfortunate necessities. Similarly, employees work because they are being paid, their primary goal is to earn money and they won't do anything that's for the benefit of the company if it's to the detriment of themselves. Anyone who says differently is lying, and is probably saying it because they think its what their boss wants to hear.
Well, you can only overhear stuff which is close enough to you and you are listening at the time, depending on the size of your office that may not be practical. With a shared communication medium like an IRC channel being properly used it is much easier, any number of people can be talking at once and you can scroll back up to read earlier talk.
Then most of the world is communism... The government builds roads and all manner of other infrastructure for the benefit of all the people. Many things are simply not economically viable to do in a capitalist system, so they would never get done at all without government intervention.
You want a security system that is visible from the outside, so it acts as a deterrent... And you want it to not just store the video locally, but upload it or store it to a disk stored in a locked and bolted to a wall safe etc. It's no good having video of the crime if the thief has stolen your only copy of the video.
Exactly.. Locking phones is immoral and their claimed reasons for doing it are completely ridiculous. Contract law already provides protection against customers buying subsidised phones and then refusing to pay for the rest of the contract.
They are going about it completely the wrong way if they want to discourage the use of plastic bags...
Introducing reusable bags is troublesome, not only do they get dirty and damaged but the customer also has to remember to bring them, and this only really works if someone explicitly plans to visit the supermarket, not if someone casually decides to walk in unless you want people to carry their reusable bags around with them at all times.
So why not just go back to how thing used to be, that is paper shopping bags and a stack of cardboard boxes by the registers.
Supermarkets throw out hundreds of cardboard boxes every day, it costs them nothing to put a few by the registers and let customers use them to carry their shopping home. Most customers will have travelled to the supermarket by car, and boxes are far more convenient than bags for stacking up in the back of a car. Most customers can then put the used boxes out for their household recycling collection (if they have one).
And paper bags are nicely biodegradable, much better than the plastic bags currently offered.
Years ago this was how these stores worked, plastic bags are a relatively recent thing...
There is noone willing to pay people to be anti-ms and pro-linux online, people who take this viewpoint are doing so entirely on their own. Yet it has been shown that ms have paid people to spread pro-ms propaganda.
And as for technology enthusiasts, i fail to see how any true enthusiast could be enthusiastic about a closed system which they are only renting.
The fact is iPads sell like hotcakes, while windows based tablets have been around for years and have never taken off.
While there is *more* software for windows tablets, virtually none of it is designed for a tablet form factor and so while you can use it, it will be extremely frustrating or require you to attach a keyboard in which case you could just as well have bought a cheaper laptop. You *could* compile decades worth of open source unix based software to run on your ipad or android device too, and the reason noone does is because such software was never designed for such an input method and would be awkward to use.
When it comes to applications which are actually designed for and usable on a tablet form factor, both ipad and android have far more of them.
If people want "small and portable", they won't be buying a surface pro... They're more likely to buy an ipad, which is not only smaller and more portable, but is also cheaper and easier to service.
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Phones are a more open market too, it is easier to compete when the majority of existing users are not locked into a single platform... And windows mobile has been around longer than both android and ios.
The risk of crashing a manned plane is your death...
Flying a drone is more like a video game, you don't have any fear of personal injury so you expend less effort to avoid crashing.
If you encrypt/hash the data before you send it then you no longer need the plaintext, the hash becomes the plaintext equivalent. Also any sensible passwd hashing algorithm will be salted, so you would need to leak the user's salt *before* they authenticate.
While not illegal, many security guidelines (some of which are mandatory within certain circles) require that passwords be appropriately hashed etc... Windows generally doesn't comply with such guidelines (stores plaintext in memory, uses unsalted hash, allows hash to be used instead of plaintext) etc, so many such guidelines make special exception for windows... But anyone else has to comply, so clearly a ridiculous situation.
So, anyone running windows is storing their user passwords in a plaintext equivalent form.
No, read the article, their smartphone sales as a whole made a profit... A majority of those phones sold were the Asha series, which do not run windows, and a significant portion were also symbian based which again don't run windows.
And this was also over the holiday season, which is traditionally the most profitable quarter.
Motorola who was already struggling, and has been for a long time...
Samsung who are making billions from Android devices, their windows phone sales are totally insignificant to them.
Blackberry who's primary product is dependent on microsoft (blackberry server is windows only, and also tied closely to exchange).
Palm were already dying on windows mobile, a platform with no future... HP killed webos without really pushing it properly.
HTC started off doing very well with android, and are now being killed by samsung... HTC also make windows based phones.
MS are ruthless and extremely arrogant, they have never had any qualms about stabbing their partners in the back when it suited them, and there's no reason to believe they won't do it again.
It's often carriers rather than the phone manufacture that bundle all manner of crap, and other modifications to the firmware...
Often you can go back to the manufacturer's default (ie not network branded) firmware for a much better experience, or you can buy a phone direct from the manufacturer which already has this firmware rather than buying it from your operator.
In many cases you can also install a third party android firmware such as cyanogenmod.
I have had several phones which were crippled by carrier-specific firmware, missing features, features not working, instability, bloatware, poor battery life, and which were fixed by installing stock firmware.
That's the problem with being ubiquitous, microsoft have worked hard to make users consider windows to be the whole package including hardware, so users won't see the hardware as a blank canvas on which they could run all manner of different software.
But it cuts both ways, if the hardware is garbage people blame windows.
It doesn't save anyone any money, it allows the manufacturer to price-gouge you...
They clearly make a profit selling the hardware, so then subsequently selling you an "upgrade" which is really just an unlock code allowing you to make better use of the hardware you already bought is 100% additional profit for them.
Effectively they are selling you a product which is intentionally defective, and then charging you to fix it... Such practices should be illegal.
They may react slower, but demanding a faster reaction makes the assumption that what you need from them is more important than what they're already doing... I find that the constant distractions from people who need help with something or "just 5 minutes of your time" constantly interrupt my thought processes and severely delay what i'm already doing.
On the other hand, if they send an email or im it can wait until i'm finished or need a break, and then get prioritised accordingly.
EXACTLY!
There is such a drive to reduce energy usage these days, and yet they completely miss the most obvious - reduce the need for travel.
And similarly with city planning, big cities like london are spending huge amounts of money to upgrade their transport infrastructure to cope with yet more customers at peak times, leaving a system which is still massively overcrowded and unpleasant for users at peak times and is completely wasteful at other times.
A combination of spreading the load around (encouraging businesses to setup in different places and not in certain crowded areas), spreading the load by time (ie different working hours), and reducing the load (eg home working) would make far better use of the transport infrastructure and be much more pleasant for those who have to use it.
The problem in many countries, is that while this guy has skills he may not necessarily have the paperwork to prove his skills.
As such, companies simply won't hire him, and will never give him the chance to prove what skills he has.
Also, if he gets convicted he will have a criminal record, which will be yet another reason why companies won't hire him.
So the end result is that once all the dust settles, his only way of earning a living will be to use his skills for illegal purposes. And if he goes to jail, he will meet all manner of people who can introduce him to organised crime gangs who may want his services.
Well, if the police see someone stealing your television it's likely they too would gain access to your house in order to arrest the thief.
Also it's unlikely a stranger would need to do any additional damage to "break" in, they could gain entry via the same means as the original thief.
The closest analogy is the spirit of the law vs the letter of the law...
Hackers generally obey the letter of the law, that is they are only making a computer do what it was programmed to do. Wether that programming was intentional, or the result of a bug comes down to the spirit in which the program was written.
A similar scenario is the law... There are many loopholes (ie bugs) in the law which allow people to legally perform acts which were never intended by the people who wrote those laws.
So why then is it legal for a lawyer to exploit loopholes in the law, but not legal for a hacker to exploit loopholes in program code?
They harass such people because they acted in good faith and informed them.
Malicious hackers will try to be stealthy, so they will NEVER invite dialog with their victims unless it's for purposes of extortion, and they will generally go to extreme lengths to disguise their identities, keep access to whatever systems they breached and use them to gain further access if possible.
Someone who tries to help them by identifying a hole and helping to fix it makes themselves an easy target. Someone who is stealthy, doesn't enter into dialog and is probably located in a far away country is very difficult to prosecute if you can even find them at all.
Of course this guy may be on questionable legal ground, but the fact is vulnerabilities were there... Is it not preferable that someone like this found them, rather than someone more malicious?
So don't do it. Don't run the risk, instead leave any exploitable holes for real malicious criminals to find.
It entirely depends on the individual, the company and the circumstances...
If I go into the office, the place is like a zoo... I am constantly interrupted, the environment is noisy, the seats are uncomfortable, the a/c doesn't work in summer and the heating doesn't work in winter, the network is slow and unreliable (and worse if more people are there), and most people are agitated having just suffered through an hour+ commute to get there.
If I work at home i have a quiet office room which is dedicated to work, which contains a comfortable chair etc. When i have lunch i only have to go as far as the kitchen, eat and then return to work instead of having to leave the building and stand in line.
If i need to communicate with colleagues they can email, im or call me depending on the urgency of the communication, and they know only to call (which forces me to stop whatever i'm already doing to answer) if its an urgent matter.
I don't have any children, i am here alone during the day.
I don't work longer hours at home, but it does mean that i get more relaxation time since i don't lose 3 hours/day to commuting (time which is totally non productive and wasted). But you are right about working longer hours not being more productive, as you get tired you become less able to concentrate and are more prone to mistakes... A lot of people fail to understand this however, and would prefer staff to work longer hours, they often think of their employees as machines in this respect.
So working from home i waste no time on commuting, i sit more comfortably and i have less distractions. I am generally able to get considerably more done when at home than if i was in the office.
He is lucky, to have an honest employee...
Corporations exist to increase profit for their owners, employees are considered as expendable resources and unfortunate necessities.
Similarly, employees work because they are being paid, their primary goal is to earn money and they won't do anything that's for the benefit of the company if it's to the detriment of themselves.
Anyone who says differently is lying, and is probably saying it because they think its what their boss wants to hear.
Well, you can only overhear stuff which is close enough to you and you are listening at the time, depending on the size of your office that may not be practical. With a shared communication medium like an IRC channel being properly used it is much easier, any number of people can be talking at once and you can scroll back up to read earlier talk.
Then most of the world is communism...
The government builds roads and all manner of other infrastructure for the benefit of all the people.
Many things are simply not economically viable to do in a capitalist system, so they would never get done at all without government intervention.
You want a security system that is visible from the outside, so it acts as a deterrent...
And you want it to not just store the video locally, but upload it or store it to a disk stored in a locked and bolted to a wall safe etc. It's no good having video of the crime if the thief has stolen your only copy of the video.
Exactly..
Locking phones is immoral and their claimed reasons for doing it are completely ridiculous. Contract law already provides protection against customers buying subsidised phones and then refusing to pay for the rest of the contract.
They are going about it completely the wrong way if they want to discourage the use of plastic bags...
Introducing reusable bags is troublesome, not only do they get dirty and damaged but the customer also has to remember to bring them, and this only really works if someone explicitly plans to visit the supermarket, not if someone casually decides to walk in unless you want people to carry their reusable bags around with them at all times.
So why not just go back to how thing used to be, that is paper shopping bags and a stack of cardboard boxes by the registers.
Supermarkets throw out hundreds of cardboard boxes every day, it costs them nothing to put a few by the registers and let customers use them to carry their shopping home. Most customers will have travelled to the supermarket by car, and boxes are far more convenient than bags for stacking up in the back of a car. Most customers can then put the used boxes out for their household recycling collection (if they have one).
And paper bags are nicely biodegradable, much better than the plastic bags currently offered.
Years ago this was how these stores worked, plastic bags are a relatively recent thing...
Although you always get the latest version, which is quite a good thing in these days of "release early, patch often"...
When it comes to PR, follow the money...
There is noone willing to pay people to be anti-ms and pro-linux online, people who take this viewpoint are doing so entirely on their own.
Yet it has been shown that ms have paid people to spread pro-ms propaganda.
And as for technology enthusiasts, i fail to see how any true enthusiast could be enthusiastic about a closed system which they are only renting.
The fact is iPads sell like hotcakes, while windows based tablets have been around for years and have never taken off.
While there is *more* software for windows tablets, virtually none of it is designed for a tablet form factor and so while you can use it, it will be extremely frustrating or require you to attach a keyboard in which case you could just as well have bought a cheaper laptop.
You *could* compile decades worth of open source unix based software to run on your ipad or android device too, and the reason noone does is because such software was never designed for such an input method and would be awkward to use.
When it comes to applications which are actually designed for and usable on a tablet form factor, both ipad and android have far more of them.
If people want "small and portable", they won't be buying a surface pro...
They're more likely to buy an ipad, which is not only smaller and more portable, but is also cheaper and easier to service.