This article can be summed up with "company respects sovereignty of a country, and I'm outraged!"
Anyone doing business in China has to follow the laws, even if they don't align with the typical morals of the country where the business is based.
"Obey our laws or get out of China." It's just that simple.
TFA makes it sound like they have some magical 3rd choice and they're being evil for not "doing the right thing". It's pretty self-evident that they don't want to pack up and leave China, and removing a few songs from their store there (that are basically illegal to distribute in China) is a very small price to pay for them to stay in the market. Apple isn't above the law in China, they mow down large crowds of people trying to push this song's message, you don't think they will kick out Apple? This article is just trying to grab some headlines by reminding us that water is wet.
Migration assistant is one "consumer option", recovering from a time machine backup is another easy option that most users can pull off without much trouble.
When the computer won't start up anymore (and no time machine backup is available) is where the techs usually need to step in. I've personally removed hundreds of hard drives from dead computers over the years, sometimes needing to run various tools to repair damaged directories or recover as much as is possible off a failing hard drive. Usually it just migrates over after an easy repair, but often times I'd have to just plain copy files over for the user to pick through.
I don't know how aggressive the Apple Geniuses handling this are, but my prior experience is they're (sadly) not much better than the Geek Squad staff. I'd be willing to bet they're not trained on anything beyond the basics of time machine and migration assistant, so if you have a failing hard drive or a damaged directory they may be helpless. It really depends (1) on how good the actual tech is, and (2) whether or not they're allowed to go the extra mile. I've worked with MANY former Geek Squad techs that left because of the intense frustration of threat of being FIRED if they went any farther than using the approved geeksquad repair CD on customer's machines. (because if that didn't fix it, it was a mail-in to their repair center, and that was a LOT more expensive) So don't hate too hard on geeksquad techs - a lot of them are smarter than they look because they're being forced to be stupid to keep BB's profits high. I hope Apple isn't taking the same approach.
Our AASP store charged $50 for data migration assuming there were no complications, that was usually handled by the sales staff. Beyond that it was just service time for a tech, usually an hour or so, to repair directories or pry data off failing drives, or up to a couple hours if it required a lot of effort. Before I left I think they had transitioned up front to free data transfers with purchases of a new computer though.
I personally get a new time machine drive every few years, and set the old one up on the shelf in the closet beside the others. Those are my "archival backups". I've only needed to get one out once to retrieve one file I couldn't find on my current system, but it's good to know I have it.
It's a shame Windows has gone so long without having a bundled migration solution. Most users are simply resigned to starting over with their new computer, short of what files they could drag and drop to floppy or now ext hard drive or flash drive, and drop onto the new computer. Macs have had firewire target mode since the late 90's, and even could do SCSI target mode before that. Windows users on the other hand often having to buy migration kits that include bubbles with usb A cords out each end and special included migration software. (or take it to a tech to drag and drop what they can - not really a proper migration of things like bookmarks etc) And migrating windows apps from one computer to another usually is not going to work. I prefer the macs for their migration - you get all the accounts, exactly as they were on the old computer, and almost all apps also migrate. Basically the computer appears 100% identical, except for a new app or two, and often with a newer OS.
Macs have gone from being able to migrate over scsi, to over firewire, to over thunderbolt, and now can even migrate 100% over ethernet. But then again, it's in Apple's best interest to make upgrading as easy as possible, seeing as they're a hardware manufacturer and want you to refresh your hardware as frequently as possible (every 3-5 years is actually a reasonable rate IMO) so they're going to make it as painless and transparent as possible. At this point it's so easy to do and so complete that literally anyone can do it. But I suppose if they're going to do it for free, sure, why not, go for it.
and to select for radiation-resistant fungi and bacteria
Well, anything you do to try to kill bacteria that's not 100% effective will do that.
The only response we really have for that right now is to use "multispectral" antibiotics - using several things at a time to kill them, to get the odds as close to 100% as possible by killing bacteria that have evolved a resistance to one of the included methods.
Sadly, this just means that we are selecting for superbugs now. (microbes that are resistant to all of the common treatments at once) The odds of getting one is very low since they have to spontaneously develop immunity to multiple attacks, but the odds are not zero, and we're starting to see them as a result.
well for example, EVERY cluster you write in a new file needs to mark that cluster as used, and that's a change in the free space map and the free cluster count, as well as the cluster list and directory's size indicator for the file. Obviously, updating it every time you write one more cluster would be grossly inefficient, so it's done in blocks, hopefully adjusted to the write speed of the device, so that most of these things are only updated maybe once a second. So if you yank a drive while it's saving a file, it may have written 150 clusters, but only 140 of them are accounted for, but hopefully it's accounted for EVERYWHERE. (since it can't update the cluster map, file size, etc etc all at the same time, you could easily pull it DURING one of those saves, and only get SOME of them done)
Journaled file systems try to cover for this by doing things in stages, where each stage is noted, performed, and completed, before moving to the next. If the device is pulled, and reattached later, it can see the "open transactions" and roll them back, so the file system is consistent again. (even if you do lose a little data)
I've seen older systems though that clearly have a long delay on updates. I'd save a file, and see it flash and flash and flash, and then go dark. and then like 5 seconds later, another little burst of flashing. I'm sadly assumign that was a final write operation, that if I had unplugged it when it stopped flashing, would have messed something up.
and by raising prices of course. Workers are thrilled to see that minimum wage go from say $13 to $15/hr, right up until they take home their new paycheck and discover the cost of dinner out just went from $13 to $15. Imagine that. And that's how inflation works. When businesses have to pay more, they just have to pass along the costs. Raising the minimum wage doesn't just magically make money appear in the economy. Well, I suppose it DOES make money appear, but with a corresponding drop in value. So, no net gain. The only way this can possibly put more value in people's paychecks is if businesses volunteer to lower their profit margins (or go bankrupt trying), and no smart business is going to do that. Expecting that to happen is on par with believing in trickle-down-economics. People and groups aren't rich because they're stupid and generous, they're rich because they're smart and shrewd, and you must anticipate consistent behavior from them.
I think we have to assume the people making these changes understand how the process works, and are only doing it to entertain the people that don't understand it and think it'll be helpful to do. Making the voters (the stupid ones anyway) happy for a little while.
And the cable really does matter. I bought two (a cheap 3ft'er and a nice handy 6ft'er) to go with my new higher end USB C enclosure with SSD. It came with a cable too, so I had three cables to test. And they all clearly had their ratings. The cheap 3ft and the 6ft both run 20. The one that came with the enclosure does 40. Very hard to tell apart even when digging into the specs. Impossible visually.
Don't forget to add "don't use social media". And I wasn't talking about worrying about my criminal behavior, it's a concern about breaking a law I wasn't expecting. Venting on social media over how the bus wasn't on time is one of those things that just might not be "OK" if the wrong political official reads it.
The headline makes it look like money is being taken from them. What they really mean is they lost the opportunity to make money. It's like the difference between robbing a cabbie for $200 and letting the air our of his tires. One directly costs him money, the other prevents him from making it. Of course the cabbie can then argue any practical (or impractical I suppose?) amount "lost" for the day he was unable to work. Maybe he would have made $50. Maybe $200. Maybe $10,000?! Lets go with $10,000, since it's the big, eye-catching amount though, right!? That's what they always do, max out all of the assumptions possible (and often ignore all of the associated expenses/taxes/etc) to grab headlines and make people feel more sorry for them because of "all that money we LOST!"
Although I know a few people that go there periodically like florida snowbirds because of the insanely low cost of living (you can go there with a small stash of american dollars and live the high life for a year pretty easily), it's a military dictatorship with a king that legally can throw you in jail for 15 years for looking at him wrong. Despite having some "good reviews", I'd be a bit scared to go there, simply due to the ease at which you can get yourself in serious trouble, and the almost complete lack of options if it happens. So them passing a draconian "internet security" law just seems like they're modernizing their laws to keep up with technology. They've got a noose around everything else, this is just in keeping with the theme - piss off the government, rot in jail. Too much walking on eggshells over there for me thanks.
It's all that much worse when you closelycompare the names:
usb 1.1 renamed to "usb 2.0 full speed" usb 2.0 renamed to "usb 2.0 high speed"
And of course the names and logos were very similar and easily confused unless you read the fine print.
Rumor was at the time that there were hardware manufacturers with warehouses full of PC motherboards they couldn't sell "because everyone wanted usb 2.0", so they muscled/bribed the standards committee to rename usb 1.1 off the books so they could empty their warehouses by hustling the public. So many people were posting at the time they couldn't understand how their computer they just built with a "good new usb 2 board" was running slow, where to find drivers to "fix" it, etc. It's easy to see what usb 2.0 was "full of".
This probably is falling along similar lines. More bribes to help manufacturers not pay for their bad planning/overstock by robbing the public.
What kills me is the irony. It's a standard, the purpose is to prevent confusion, and they're leveraging it to create confusion, that they can take advantage of.
This sounds like the exact plot for the movie Johnny Mnemonic. The "black shakes" was affecting much of the population, due to excessive exposire to technology, and the "big pharma" / pharmacorp were keeping the cure a secret because "it was more profitable to treat the symptoms than to cure the patient"
This guy regularly seriously abused a system designed to protect people, in a way he knew was hurting large groups of people every time he did it, and to top it off, he was doing it for personal gain.
That's not a bad childhood, that's just plain being an evil person. Sure, a person's circumstances and upbringing influences a person's development, but if they're still left with the ability to tell right from wrong (as the community they are a part of defines it), and they choose to be evil, that's just the person they are.
If hurting people is all you've ever known, then you didn't have a choice, but that does't sound like the case here. He's not a victim of bad upbringing, he's the result of his own bad decisions. Society will be better off with him not continuing to harm it, and hopefully he can serve as an example to others that are considering making the same bad decisions.
"loophole" usually means finding a legal way to do something that would normally be illegal. "unpaid taxes" usually means illegally underpaying your taxes. So it can't be both.
I'm curious as to whether this was actually paying taxes they were legally obligated to do, or more of a settlement / concession / bribe to get them to quit harassing Apple for doing something they don't like but were legally able to get away with?
I could really see it being a case of them arguing "ok Apple, technically you don't have to pay this, but if you refuse to, we're just going to pass some laws that in the end will cost you more than what we're going to call a 'fine', just go get the public off our backs."
Tax loopholes are nothing shocking or new. Any person, group, or company with money uses them extensively to hang onto as much of their money as possible. This should surprise no one. "International tax havens" are very similar to your retirement account, they're both designed to entice you to invest your money somewhere in exchange for low property taxes. The investors aren't the ones that made the loopholes, they were created by the people that want to make money off YOUR money while they hang onto and protect it for you. (could be a bank, could be an investment group, could be a country) If you're getting mad at the investors because you can't legally tax them as much as you want to, you're focusing on the wrong party.
When the public gets upset over international tax havens, it's basically coming down to a problem of the benefit of they money being there having been shifted from taxes to something else in the country. They set up the loopholes in the first place to benefit the country in some way, be it increasing forein investments or something else. Wanting to have those benefits AND still tax the money the same is double-dipping, on a country-size scale. There's only one pie, and two different groups within the country both want the same slices. The loophole just changes the distribution of a few of the slices. In other words, it comes down to a problem created by the greed of a country.
And because you can't "fix" greed, this issue will never go away.
Imagine senators saying "hey, Merrill Lynch, our voters are mad at us since we created these tax shelters to increase your investments here, but the public is only looking at the lost tax revenue and thinks it's unfair they can't have their cake and eat it too. So if you don't pay us these token 'fines' so we look like we're 'addressing the problem', we're going to change the laws in a way that hurts your bottom line a lot more than the 'fines' would." Is this basically what's happening here?
There are really three possibilities here, either you're not in the list, you ARE in the list and you know it, or you ARE in the list and you don't know it.
Since the only "you need to change your password immediately" is only the response for one of those situations, knowing you're in such a list is very important. It lets you know you need to take action.
It's actually worse if you're in a list like that and you have no way of knowing it, (like if it's only being passed around on darkweb sites) because you don't get any warning to change your password until after someone has abused it. So be thankful that the list is available for you to check, instead of only available to the criminals that would much prefer to have a head start on emptying your bank account.
Modern cryptography uses a function that not only varies at each byte of the encode, but also each byte encoded influences the future of the pad. So changing a single character in the middle of the message causes all of the cyphertext after that point to change. The engima wasn't quite that good, the wheels, wheel arrangement, and plugobard settings created a long random pad, and the passcode used to pre-set the position of the wheels selected at what point in the string to start using the pad. This means changing one character in a message only changes ONE CHARACTER in the ciphertext. (as long as you don't insert or delete characters) You could look at enigma as a method that changes every character in the message using a different function, based on its place in the message. (but having nothing to do with any prior part of the message) And that's precisely what a one-time pad does. It's the re-use of the formula and merely changing the start position that makes it not a "pure" OTP.
The reason they do [either of these methods] is because it's easier and more secure to exchange a machine or formula once and a short passcode frequently, than it is to exchange large amount of OTP regularly. The big problem for GB was the u-boats using it, and they had especially big problems with getting updates so for them the enigma was an enormous help. They went out to sea with a fresh littl code book full of short passcodes (wheel and plugboard arrangements, and passcodes for each day) rather than a telephone book full of OTP. Back then, to change the "method" of the code required changing the machine itself, and that was "top secret", you can't just go transporting those all over the place all the time. They DID change wheels occasionally though. It's much easier to get them a new little code book every few months, and you could even give different groups different books, without having to design dozens of different machines, or even different wheels for the different groups.
On the surface, enigma may not look like a one-time pad, but it basically is, though there is the "can't output the same as the input" limitation. That weakness was most useful for "breaking wheels" once they'd figured out the method. (go look that up, that's a good keyword to get you where you need to be)
After the wheels were broken, they needed to figure out the "day code". (and work out the plugboard settings) The weather reports you're mentioning were very useful for that, but were only useful AFTER they had figured out how it worked, and had wheels broken. Again, this tells you at what point in the (very long for enigma) cycle to start using for the OTP. So, technically, it's not a ONE-TIME pad, but it's a very long, fixed pad, which you can start at some arbitrary, pre-arranged point at for each new message. Computers today could just shift through a pad like enigma made, and (fairly quickly) find the right position, but that level of processing was unavailable during WW2.
The big initial break was made when a transmission was sent across a "secure cable" (that wasn't secure, it was being monitored). They don't explicitly SAY it, but I'm pretty sure they interrupted the transmission cable during the message, so the british had a full copy and the receiver didn't. Due to how OTPs work, you have to stay in sync. If you lose a character or two, your pad is shifted, the pad gets out of sync with the ciphertext, and the rest of the message turns into white noise. The coders were under strict orders to never re-use a day code, as this basically meant reusing a OTP, because that opens the door to crypto-analysis. NORMALLY this would be OK, as long as you sent the exact same message again. But they committed a compounding error - the sender was in a hurry, and to make resending it faster, he replaced several words with abbreviations. This created a ciphertext that started the same, and suddenly become completely different, (where the first abbreviation was encountered) whil
'm being told, XOR encryption is "mathematically proven" to be "perfect".
It's basically a "one-time pad", and yes, that method itself is theoretically unbreakable. Attacks will all be focused on the peripheral though, things like trying to intercept your key exchange. Key exchange and key size are the problems for OTP's. You have to have some secure way to get that random data to the other party (and keep it secure on both sides), and it needs to be big enough to serve your needs until the next exchange can occur.
The minute you say "we ran out of padding early, we need to re-use it", it immediately becomes beatable. That's how enigma was initially broken, as it was (at the time) an incredibly good source for essentially random data. The germans goofed exactly once, repeating a single transmission, which laid the groundwork for it being broken. (they were trained not to reuse it, it was "operator error")
Just as a thought, you can keep the device and still get a new phone (and might want to, just to preserve the life of the iPhone so you can keep using it with the camera.)
What makes it so useful is always having it handy. Is the AC in the room not working? Which server in the rack is overheating? What's affecting the thermostat in that room? Is a component on the board overheating? Do I have a brake shoe dragging on one of my wheels? Which car was the last one to arrive in the lot? Is that remote broken or are the batteries just dead? Where's that cold draft coming into the basement from? How's the insulation holding up around those old upstairs windows? It's this always-available that makes it so much more useful. And I don't think I'd want to carry around TWO cell phone-size items all at the same time, regardless of whether or not one wasn't able to "be" a phone anymore. I know several people that have two (and a couple that have THREE) cell phones, and I don't want to do that.
That, and it comes in handy in ways you would never imagine. It's actually already paid for itself more than once, identifying a defective (new) brake caliper (two weeks before it went out of warranty) AND before it warped another rotor. I love how that justifies the impulse-purchase of the "toy I've always wanted".:)
CAT actually makes a job-site cell phone that has FLIR built-in, but then I lose the nice Apple App Store. (https://www.amazon.com/CAT-PHONES-Waterproof-Smartphone-integrated/dp/B01JO9ZF3Y) The 5S with the FLIR One really is the best way to do FLIR on-the-go IMO, and I'm really going to miss it when this 5S of mine finally dies. (or when the FLIR back itself dies I suppose! That will probably be what pushes me to get a new iPhone and one of the dongle FLIRs)
I bought a new 32gb iPhone 5S for my new job in mid 2014. That christmas I picked up a FLIR for it when they had it on sale as they were replacing their "camera back" design with the "radio transmitter dongle" form factor. Since it's a back not just a lightning dongle, it only works with this model of phone.
Nevermind that I've always wanted a FLIR as a bit of a toy, now that I have it I've found it's an incredibly useful tool and I turn it on at least weekly. I'd hate to lose it, and not having to deal with a fragile dongle that has to be remembered and plugged in to use instead of a durable always-available back. But if I change phones, I lose the FLIR.
So that's one of my main reasons for keeping it. That, and I'm not a fad-chaser. I want practical, and my 5S is very practical. At the time I got a good deal on it because someone had ordered the 32gb and changed their mind, and at this point nobody was interested in paying more for 32gb. Now THAT I know is going to be useful and help future-proof it so it was perfect for me.
It's small enough that I don't have to have it in my hand or in my pocket, it fits great in a small camera pouch on my belt. Really the size is perfect for a cell phone. The screen is as big as it can be while still being practical It's a bit of a compromise for some applications, but is still perfectly usable. Not something I want to be doing lots of email on, but it's very rare for me to be dealing with lots of text on it. It's perfect for text messages though.
I'll miss it when I have to give it up. I've considered getting a spare, but I know at SOME point it's just not going to be practical to keep and I'm going to have to move on. But until then, I'll continue to enjoy it. Technology will always be that way - you have to let go of even the best tech at some point, and because of how fast things advance, it affects things like cell phones a lot more than other things. There comes a point where you just have to toss it out and get what you hope will turn out to be the next thing you want to keep forever. Hopefully you can guess right the first time.
Actually, in this case, yes it does good. The thing is, "swatting" is a fairly new problem. There's still way too many little punks that see it as a low-risk, high-reward job, and that just entices them to continue doing it. It's just free money for those that haven't developed a moral compass yet, along with those that have already chosen to be evil. Laws serve many purposes, not just punishment. They also serve as a guide for "what your community has decided is NOT ok to do", as well as a deterrent for those that are considering doing it anyway. Right now there are dozens of other little punks around the country looking at this story and reconsidering whether or not they are going to continue to sway for hire, pay someone to swat people they don't like, phone in bomb threats to get a day off school, etc. And that's a good thing for the rest of the society that are having to suffer their presence.
I don't think you can really tell an adolescent anything that they don't want to hear. Part of growing up and becoming an adult is building up independence and pushing back against authority.
That's where parents come in. Responsible parents neither want to see their kid locked up, nor want to go to jail FOR their kids, so again the laws serve as both a guide as to what to teach their kids, as well as a motivator to get them to drive the lesson home. "Some of them are just going to break the law anyway" is a terrible reason to avoid making a law. We only have laws because people were already doing something that hurt the public. It's like why we have to have "do not eat" on silica packets - it's because yes there really were people stupid enough to DO it. You can't fix all of the idiots of the world, you can only encourage them to behave reasonably by laying down the rules and demonstrating that they won't like what happens to them if they choose to do it anyway. Like you're saying, you can't force them to behave. And because many of them simply don't WANT to behave, you have to encourage them. With laws. Laws with teeth. Laws with punishments.
Of course no matter what laws you have and what punishments you have, there will still be a small minority that continue to be antisocial. Getting anywhere near 100% will require intolerable laws and unreasonable punishments. So you have to strike a good balance, which is tricky to do. But that doesn't mean you shouldn't try.
Thing with eBay is that sellers and buyers get each other's email address once payment is made. It is provided via PayPal and there is really nothing eBay can do about that, since PayPal is not exclusive to eBay and the email address is what PayPal payments are based around.
Actually there is. Most email providers offer you a way to add an "alias" (or MANU aliases) to your address, that all forward to your mailbox. Simply add an alias for paypal, and set that as your contact address on paypal. If someone starts spamming you after a purchase, you can just change the alias, without the huge inconvenience of changing your main email address. It looks like paypal sends both parties the other's email address when a payment is made though.
And even then, there is nothing stopping a seller from adding a business card or a thank you note to the package that has the seller's email address as well as other places they sell. In fact, that ability has been a big boost for me and has actually generated sales on both my eCrater stores and my Etsy store.
There will always be the possibility of a seller directly contacting you via postal mail if they're shipping you something.
It's impossible to tell without better information. There's customers that try to use PR threats to get discounts or free stuff (even long before reviewers like Yelp were a thing) just as much as there are sellers that try to get legitimate negative reviews removed.
Both of them are motivated by money, and money's an excellent motivator for fraud.
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you wouldn't like him when he's angry!
This article can be summed up with "company respects sovereignty of a country, and I'm outraged!"
Anyone doing business in China has to follow the laws, even if they don't align with the typical morals of the country where the business is based.
"Obey our laws or get out of China." It's just that simple.
TFA makes it sound like they have some magical 3rd choice and they're being evil for not "doing the right thing". It's pretty self-evident that they don't want to pack up and leave China, and removing a few songs from their store there (that are basically illegal to distribute in China) is a very small price to pay for them to stay in the market. Apple isn't above the law in China, they mow down large crowds of people trying to push this song's message, you don't think they will kick out Apple? This article is just trying to grab some headlines by reminding us that water is wet.
Migration assistant is one "consumer option", recovering from a time machine backup is another easy option that most users can pull off without much trouble.
When the computer won't start up anymore (and no time machine backup is available) is where the techs usually need to step in. I've personally removed hundreds of hard drives from dead computers over the years, sometimes needing to run various tools to repair damaged directories or recover as much as is possible off a failing hard drive. Usually it just migrates over after an easy repair, but often times I'd have to just plain copy files over for the user to pick through.
I don't know how aggressive the Apple Geniuses handling this are, but my prior experience is they're (sadly) not much better than the Geek Squad staff. I'd be willing to bet they're not trained on anything beyond the basics of time machine and migration assistant, so if you have a failing hard drive or a damaged directory they may be helpless. It really depends (1) on how good the actual tech is, and (2) whether or not they're allowed to go the extra mile. I've worked with MANY former Geek Squad techs that left because of the intense frustration of threat of being FIRED if they went any farther than using the approved geeksquad repair CD on customer's machines. (because if that didn't fix it, it was a mail-in to their repair center, and that was a LOT more expensive) So don't hate too hard on geeksquad techs - a lot of them are smarter than they look because they're being forced to be stupid to keep BB's profits high. I hope Apple isn't taking the same approach.
Our AASP store charged $50 for data migration assuming there were no complications, that was usually handled by the sales staff. Beyond that it was just service time for a tech, usually an hour or so, to repair directories or pry data off failing drives, or up to a couple hours if it required a lot of effort. Before I left I think they had transitioned up front to free data transfers with purchases of a new computer though.
I personally get a new time machine drive every few years, and set the old one up on the shelf in the closet beside the others. Those are my "archival backups". I've only needed to get one out once to retrieve one file I couldn't find on my current system, but it's good to know I have it.
It's a shame Windows has gone so long without having a bundled migration solution. Most users are simply resigned to starting over with their new computer, short of what files they could drag and drop to floppy or now ext hard drive or flash drive, and drop onto the new computer. Macs have had firewire target mode since the late 90's, and even could do SCSI target mode before that. Windows users on the other hand often having to buy migration kits that include bubbles with usb A cords out each end and special included migration software. (or take it to a tech to drag and drop what they can - not really a proper migration of things like bookmarks etc) And migrating windows apps from one computer to another usually is not going to work. I prefer the macs for their migration - you get all the accounts, exactly as they were on the old computer, and almost all apps also migrate. Basically the computer appears 100% identical, except for a new app or two, and often with a newer OS.
Macs have gone from being able to migrate over scsi, to over firewire, to over thunderbolt, and now can even migrate 100% over ethernet. But then again, it's in Apple's best interest to make upgrading as easy as possible, seeing as they're a hardware manufacturer and want you to refresh your hardware as frequently as possible (every 3-5 years is actually a reasonable rate IMO) so they're going to make it as painless and transparent as possible. At this point it's so easy to do and so complete that literally anyone can do it. But I suppose if they're going to do it for free, sure, why not, go for it.
Well, anything you do to try to kill bacteria that's not 100% effective will do that.
The only response we really have for that right now is to use "multispectral" antibiotics - using several things at a time to kill them, to get the odds as close to 100% as possible by killing bacteria that have evolved a resistance to one of the included methods.
Sadly, this just means that we are selecting for superbugs now. (microbes that are resistant to all of the common treatments at once) The odds of getting one is very low since they have to spontaneously develop immunity to multiple attacks, but the odds are not zero, and we're starting to see them as a result.
well for example, EVERY cluster you write in a new file needs to mark that cluster as used, and that's a change in the free space map and the free cluster count, as well as the cluster list and directory's size indicator for the file. Obviously, updating it every time you write one more cluster would be grossly inefficient, so it's done in blocks, hopefully adjusted to the write speed of the device, so that most of these things are only updated maybe once a second. So if you yank a drive while it's saving a file, it may have written 150 clusters, but only 140 of them are accounted for, but hopefully it's accounted for EVERYWHERE. (since it can't update the cluster map, file size, etc etc all at the same time, you could easily pull it DURING one of those saves, and only get SOME of them done)
Journaled file systems try to cover for this by doing things in stages, where each stage is noted, performed, and completed, before moving to the next. If the device is pulled, and reattached later, it can see the "open transactions" and roll them back, so the file system is consistent again. (even if you do lose a little data)
I've seen older systems though that clearly have a long delay on updates. I'd save a file, and see it flash and flash and flash, and then go dark. and then like 5 seconds later, another little burst of flashing. I'm sadly assumign that was a final write operation, that if I had unplugged it when it stopped flashing, would have messed something up.
Unsurprisingly, XKCD has a take on this: https://xkcd.com/323/
and by raising prices of course. Workers are thrilled to see that minimum wage go from say $13 to $15/hr, right up until they take home their new paycheck and discover the cost of dinner out just went from $13 to $15. Imagine that. And that's how inflation works. When businesses have to pay more, they just have to pass along the costs. Raising the minimum wage doesn't just magically make money appear in the economy. Well, I suppose it DOES make money appear, but with a corresponding drop in value. So, no net gain. The only way this can possibly put more value in people's paychecks is if businesses volunteer to lower their profit margins (or go bankrupt trying), and no smart business is going to do that. Expecting that to happen is on par with believing in trickle-down-economics. People and groups aren't rich because they're stupid and generous, they're rich because they're smart and shrewd, and you must anticipate consistent behavior from them.
I think we have to assume the people making these changes understand how the process works, and are only doing it to entertain the people that don't understand it and think it'll be helpful to do. Making the voters (the stupid ones anyway) happy for a little while.
All sorts of surprises await the fools that buy lie-detecting robots! https://i.pinimg.com/originals...
actually iirc they can do 10, 20, 30, OR 40 Gbps.
And the cable really does matter. I bought two (a cheap 3ft'er and a nice handy 6ft'er) to go with my new higher end USB C enclosure with SSD. It came with a cable too, so I had three cables to test. And they all clearly had their ratings. The cheap 3ft and the 6ft both run 20. The one that came with the enclosure does 40. Very hard to tell apart even when digging into the specs. Impossible visually.
Don't forget to add "don't use social media". And I wasn't talking about worrying about my criminal behavior, it's a concern about breaking a law I wasn't expecting. Venting on social media over how the bus wasn't on time is one of those things that just might not be "OK" if the wrong political official reads it.
they DO love to do that.
The headline makes it look like money is being taken from them. What they really mean is they lost the opportunity to make money. It's like the difference between robbing a cabbie for $200 and letting the air our of his tires. One directly costs him money, the other prevents him from making it. Of course the cabbie can then argue any practical (or impractical I suppose?) amount "lost" for the day he was unable to work. Maybe he would have made $50. Maybe $200. Maybe $10,000?! Lets go with $10,000, since it's the big, eye-catching amount though, right!? That's what they always do, max out all of the assumptions possible (and often ignore all of the associated expenses/taxes/etc) to grab headlines and make people feel more sorry for them because of "all that money we LOST!"
yeah, no.
mod parent as spam
Although I know a few people that go there periodically like florida snowbirds because of the insanely low cost of living (you can go there with a small stash of american dollars and live the high life for a year pretty easily), it's a military dictatorship with a king that legally can throw you in jail for 15 years for looking at him wrong. Despite having some "good reviews", I'd be a bit scared to go there, simply due to the ease at which you can get yourself in serious trouble, and the almost complete lack of options if it happens. So them passing a draconian "internet security" law just seems like they're modernizing their laws to keep up with technology. They've got a noose around everything else, this is just in keeping with the theme - piss off the government, rot in jail. Too much walking on eggshells over there for me thanks.
It's all that much worse when you closelycompare the names:
usb 1.1 renamed to "usb 2.0 full speed"
usb 2.0 renamed to "usb 2.0 high speed"
And of course the names and logos were very similar and easily confused unless you read the fine print.
Rumor was at the time that there were hardware manufacturers with warehouses full of PC motherboards they couldn't sell "because everyone wanted usb 2.0", so they muscled/bribed the standards committee to rename usb 1.1 off the books so they could empty their warehouses by hustling the public. So many people were posting at the time they couldn't understand how their computer they just built with a "good new usb 2 board" was running slow, where to find drivers to "fix" it, etc. It's easy to see what usb 2.0 was "full of".
This probably is falling along similar lines. More bribes to help manufacturers not pay for their bad planning/overstock by robbing the public.
What kills me is the irony. It's a standard, the purpose is to prevent confusion, and they're leveraging it to create confusion, that they can take advantage of.
This sounds like the exact plot for the movie Johnny Mnemonic. The "black shakes" was affecting much of the population, due to excessive exposire to technology, and the "big pharma" / pharmacorp were keeping the cure a secret because "it was more profitable to treat the symptoms than to cure the patient"
As I recall, it didn't end well for PharmaCorp.
This guy regularly seriously abused a system designed to protect people, in a way he knew was hurting large groups of people every time he did it, and to top it off, he was doing it for personal gain.
That's not a bad childhood, that's just plain being an evil person. Sure, a person's circumstances and upbringing influences a person's development, but if they're still left with the ability to tell right from wrong (as the community they are a part of defines it), and they choose to be evil, that's just the person they are.
If hurting people is all you've ever known, then you didn't have a choice, but that does't sound like the case here. He's not a victim of bad upbringing, he's the result of his own bad decisions. Society will be better off with him not continuing to harm it, and hopefully he can serve as an example to others that are considering making the same bad decisions.
"loophole" usually means finding a legal way to do something that would normally be illegal. "unpaid taxes" usually means illegally underpaying your taxes. So it can't be both.
I'm curious as to whether this was actually paying taxes they were legally obligated to do, or more of a settlement / concession / bribe to get them to quit harassing Apple for doing something they don't like but were legally able to get away with?
I could really see it being a case of them arguing "ok Apple, technically you don't have to pay this, but if you refuse to, we're just going to pass some laws that in the end will cost you more than what we're going to call a 'fine', just go get the public off our backs."
Tax loopholes are nothing shocking or new. Any person, group, or company with money uses them extensively to hang onto as much of their money as possible. This should surprise no one. "International tax havens" are very similar to your retirement account, they're both designed to entice you to invest your money somewhere in exchange for low property taxes. The investors aren't the ones that made the loopholes, they were created by the people that want to make money off YOUR money while they hang onto and protect it for you. (could be a bank, could be an investment group, could be a country) If you're getting mad at the investors because you can't legally tax them as much as you want to, you're focusing on the wrong party.
When the public gets upset over international tax havens, it's basically coming down to a problem of the benefit of they money being there having been shifted from taxes to something else in the country. They set up the loopholes in the first place to benefit the country in some way, be it increasing forein investments or something else. Wanting to have those benefits AND still tax the money the same is double-dipping, on a country-size scale. There's only one pie, and two different groups within the country both want the same slices. The loophole just changes the distribution of a few of the slices. In other words, it comes down to a problem created by the greed of a country.
And because you can't "fix" greed, this issue will never go away.
Imagine senators saying "hey, Merrill Lynch, our voters are mad at us since we created these tax shelters to increase your investments here, but the public is only looking at the lost tax revenue and thinks it's unfair they can't have their cake and eat it too. So if you don't pay us these token 'fines' so we look like we're 'addressing the problem', we're going to change the laws in a way that hurts your bottom line a lot more than the 'fines' would." Is this basically what's happening here?
There are really three possibilities here, either you're not in the list, you ARE in the list and you know it, or you ARE in the list and you don't know it.
Since the only "you need to change your password immediately" is only the response for one of those situations, knowing you're in such a list is very important. It lets you know you need to take action.
It's actually worse if you're in a list like that and you have no way of knowing it, (like if it's only being passed around on darkweb sites) because you don't get any warning to change your password until after someone has abused it. So be thankful that the list is available for you to check, instead of only available to the criminals that would much prefer to have a head start on emptying your bank account.
Modern cryptography uses a function that not only varies at each byte of the encode, but also each byte encoded influences the future of the pad. So changing a single character in the middle of the message causes all of the cyphertext after that point to change. The engima wasn't quite that good, the wheels, wheel arrangement, and plugobard settings created a long random pad, and the passcode used to pre-set the position of the wheels selected at what point in the string to start using the pad. This means changing one character in a message only changes ONE CHARACTER in the ciphertext. (as long as you don't insert or delete characters) You could look at enigma as a method that changes every character in the message using a different function, based on its place in the message. (but having nothing to do with any prior part of the message) And that's precisely what a one-time pad does. It's the re-use of the formula and merely changing the start position that makes it not a "pure" OTP.
The reason they do [either of these methods] is because it's easier and more secure to exchange a machine or formula once and a short passcode frequently, than it is to exchange large amount of OTP regularly. The big problem for GB was the u-boats using it, and they had especially big problems with getting updates so for them the enigma was an enormous help. They went out to sea with a fresh littl code book full of short passcodes (wheel and plugboard arrangements, and passcodes for each day) rather than a telephone book full of OTP. Back then, to change the "method" of the code required changing the machine itself, and that was "top secret", you can't just go transporting those all over the place all the time. They DID change wheels occasionally though. It's much easier to get them a new little code book every few months, and you could even give different groups different books, without having to design dozens of different machines, or even different wheels for the different groups.
On the surface, enigma may not look like a one-time pad, but it basically is, though there is the "can't output the same as the input" limitation. That weakness was most useful for "breaking wheels" once they'd figured out the method. (go look that up, that's a good keyword to get you where you need to be)
After the wheels were broken, they needed to figure out the "day code". (and work out the plugboard settings) The weather reports you're mentioning were very useful for that, but were only useful AFTER they had figured out how it worked, and had wheels broken. Again, this tells you at what point in the (very long for enigma) cycle to start using for the OTP. So, technically, it's not a ONE-TIME pad, but it's a very long, fixed pad, which you can start at some arbitrary, pre-arranged point at for each new message. Computers today could just shift through a pad like enigma made, and (fairly quickly) find the right position, but that level of processing was unavailable during WW2.
The big initial break was made when a transmission was sent across a "secure cable" (that wasn't secure, it was being monitored). They don't explicitly SAY it, but I'm pretty sure they interrupted the transmission cable during the message, so the british had a full copy and the receiver didn't. Due to how OTPs work, you have to stay in sync. If you lose a character or two, your pad is shifted, the pad gets out of sync with the ciphertext, and the rest of the message turns into white noise. The coders were under strict orders to never re-use a day code, as this basically meant reusing a OTP, because that opens the door to crypto-analysis. NORMALLY this would be OK, as long as you sent the exact same message again. But they committed a compounding error - the sender was in a hurry, and to make resending it faster, he replaced several words with abbreviations. This created a ciphertext that started the same, and suddenly become completely different, (where the first abbreviation was encountered) whil
It's basically a "one-time pad", and yes, that method itself is theoretically unbreakable. Attacks will all be focused on the peripheral though, things like trying to intercept your key exchange. Key exchange and key size are the problems for OTP's. You have to have some secure way to get that random data to the other party (and keep it secure on both sides), and it needs to be big enough to serve your needs until the next exchange can occur.
The minute you say "we ran out of padding early, we need to re-use it", it immediately becomes beatable. That's how enigma was initially broken, as it was (at the time) an incredibly good source for essentially random data. The germans goofed exactly once, repeating a single transmission, which laid the groundwork for it being broken. (they were trained not to reuse it, it was "operator error")
What makes it so useful is always having it handy. Is the AC in the room not working? Which server in the rack is overheating? What's affecting the thermostat in that room? Is a component on the board overheating? Do I have a brake shoe dragging on one of my wheels? Which car was the last one to arrive in the lot? Is that remote broken or are the batteries just dead? Where's that cold draft coming into the basement from? How's the insulation holding up around those old upstairs windows? It's this always-available that makes it so much more useful. And I don't think I'd want to carry around TWO cell phone-size items all at the same time, regardless of whether or not one wasn't able to "be" a phone anymore. I know several people that have two (and a couple that have THREE) cell phones, and I don't want to do that.
That, and it comes in handy in ways you would never imagine. It's actually already paid for itself more than once, identifying a defective (new) brake caliper (two weeks before it went out of warranty) AND before it warped another rotor. I love how that justifies the impulse-purchase of the "toy I've always wanted". :)
CAT actually makes a job-site cell phone that has FLIR built-in, but then I lose the nice Apple App Store. (https://www.amazon.com/CAT-PHONES-Waterproof-Smartphone-integrated/dp/B01JO9ZF3Y) The 5S with the FLIR One really is the best way to do FLIR on-the-go IMO, and I'm really going to miss it when this 5S of mine finally dies. (or when the FLIR back itself dies I suppose! That will probably be what pushes me to get a new iPhone and one of the dongle FLIRs)
I bought a new 32gb iPhone 5S for my new job in mid 2014. That christmas I picked up a FLIR for it when they had it on sale as they were replacing their "camera back" design with the "radio transmitter dongle" form factor. Since it's a back not just a lightning dongle, it only works with this model of phone.
Nevermind that I've always wanted a FLIR as a bit of a toy, now that I have it I've found it's an incredibly useful tool and I turn it on at least weekly. I'd hate to lose it, and not having to deal with a fragile dongle that has to be remembered and plugged in to use instead of a durable always-available back. But if I change phones, I lose the FLIR.
So that's one of my main reasons for keeping it. That, and I'm not a fad-chaser. I want practical, and my 5S is very practical. At the time I got a good deal on it because someone had ordered the 32gb and changed their mind, and at this point nobody was interested in paying more for 32gb. Now THAT I know is going to be useful and help future-proof it so it was perfect for me.
It's small enough that I don't have to have it in my hand or in my pocket, it fits great in a small camera pouch on my belt. Really the size is perfect for a cell phone. The screen is as big as it can be while still being practical It's a bit of a compromise for some applications, but is still perfectly usable. Not something I want to be doing lots of email on, but it's very rare for me to be dealing with lots of text on it. It's perfect for text messages though.
I'll miss it when I have to give it up. I've considered getting a spare, but I know at SOME point it's just not going to be practical to keep and I'm going to have to move on. But until then, I'll continue to enjoy it. Technology will always be that way - you have to let go of even the best tech at some point, and because of how fast things advance, it affects things like cell phones a lot more than other things. There comes a point where you just have to toss it out and get what you hope will turn out to be the next thing you want to keep forever. Hopefully you can guess right the first time.
Actually, in this case, yes it does good. The thing is, "swatting" is a fairly new problem. There's still way too many little punks that see it as a low-risk, high-reward job, and that just entices them to continue doing it. It's just free money for those that haven't developed a moral compass yet, along with those that have already chosen to be evil. Laws serve many purposes, not just punishment. They also serve as a guide for "what your community has decided is NOT ok to do", as well as a deterrent for those that are considering doing it anyway. Right now there are dozens of other little punks around the country looking at this story and reconsidering whether or not they are going to continue to sway for hire, pay someone to swat people they don't like, phone in bomb threats to get a day off school, etc. And that's a good thing for the rest of the society that are having to suffer their presence.
That's where parents come in. Responsible parents neither want to see their kid locked up, nor want to go to jail FOR their kids, so again the laws serve as both a guide as to what to teach their kids, as well as a motivator to get them to drive the lesson home. "Some of them are just going to break the law anyway" is a terrible reason to avoid making a law. We only have laws because people were already doing something that hurt the public. It's like why we have to have "do not eat" on silica packets - it's because yes there really were people stupid enough to DO it. You can't fix all of the idiots of the world, you can only encourage them to behave reasonably by laying down the rules and demonstrating that they won't like what happens to them if they choose to do it anyway. Like you're saying, you can't force them to behave. And because many of them simply don't WANT to behave, you have to encourage them. With laws. Laws with teeth. Laws with punishments.
Of course no matter what laws you have and what punishments you have, there will still be a small minority that continue to be antisocial. Getting anywhere near 100% will require intolerable laws and unreasonable punishments. So you have to strike a good balance, which is tricky to do. But that doesn't mean you shouldn't try.
Actually there is. Most email providers offer you a way to add an "alias" (or MANU aliases) to your address, that all forward to your mailbox. Simply add an alias for paypal, and set that as your contact address on paypal. If someone starts spamming you after a purchase, you can just change the alias, without the huge inconvenience of changing your main email address. It looks like paypal sends both parties the other's email address when a payment is made though.
There will always be the possibility of a seller directly contacting you via postal mail if they're shipping you something.
It's impossible to tell without better information. There's customers that try to use PR threats to get discounts or free stuff (even long before reviewers like Yelp were a thing) just as much as there are sellers that try to get legitimate negative reviews removed.
Both of them are motivated by money, and money's an excellent motivator for fraud.