company failed to take reasonable steps to secure the software it developed for its smartphones and tablet computers, introducing security flaws that placed sensitive information about millions of consumers at risk
It should also be illegal to install bloatware that is embedded to the point of not being removable (without at least rooting the device and perhaps voiding warranty). Nothing makes the phone more secure than facebook processes -- there are several, and a dozen other built-in crapware clients (peddling games, services, etc).
And I don't think that buying full-priced phone changes anything, either.
incorporating AdBlockPlus and NoScript and enabling both by default.
Quite a few websites (whether intentionally or not) make it difficult to figure out which domain needs to run javascript for them to function. It is often _not_ the current domain. So users will end up choosing "Enable all scripts (dangerous)" option with NoScript sooner or later.
Also, when the webpage redirects you to a processor for finalizing a payment, a lot of work can be lost. Cannot go back without losing entered data and cannot complete the payment because reload will screw things up. NoScript should really ask you "Click redirects to a different domain -- enable scripts there?"
And to hell with marketers, they can cry all they want. They have already stripped most television show of a title sequence and forced shows to start rolling credits while still running.
If they only stopped at that!
Are you not getting the damn characters running across your show, in the middle of the show? It superimposes over the current show I am actually watching, just like a popup ad online
Also, a simple comparison of show length, demonstrates that in the 60s/70s shows ran for 26.5 minutes, while current sitcoms are around 22.5 minutes per half hour. And you get to see pop-ads in the middle of some of those three 7-minute long pieces.
Except that it's much, much easier to prepare a book for print than it is to prepare an eBook.... Perhaps in ten years, when the technology has improved dramatically, eBook sales will be pure profit.
Paper books also require storage (particularly if you are dealing with large amounts) can be damaged in transit at any point (to/from retailer)... and a book that ultimately fails to sell is a total loss
Seems like eBooks should be much cheaper than paper books and often they are not. Your argument about the preparation-to-print expense makes sense for a relatively small release, but not for anyone operating in bulk, since that cost is completely independent of how many books you end up selling.
*except to prompt some White House drone to hit the button 'generate response email': "Thank you for your interest in (issue). Please be assured that the (current president) administration takes your concern, and those of your other petitioners very seriously.
You don't even get THAT. Favorite example: "Abolish TSA" petition did not get a canned response "Thank you for your interest -- but TSA is the only thing keeping terrorists away from us"
Instead, the petition response could as well have been an answer to the question "Please tell us just how awesome TSA is" because it didn't reference a single complaint in the petition -- even to dismiss that complaint
The "Build a Death Star" petition got a response that was based on the actual petition.
The problem here is that while companies are free to shop for labor where it's cheaper, even across country lines, workers can't shop for higher-paid jobs across the same. So the workforce is artificially segregated into compartments, enabling price discrimination between them.
Don't forget the effort that goes into blocking the resulting products from crossing international borders! Even customers cannot always shop cross-country
Things like DVD region encoding or textbook licensing come to mind.
You seem to be under the impression that executive positions are pay for x amount of work like wage positions. They're not.... Only results matter, hours put in mean nothing.
Or perhaps he is suggesting that the "3 hour" metric is meaningless for the regular workers too. If they get their job done, who cares how many hours they work, 3 or more? If they don't, then working 12 hours a day will not benefit anyone either.
Obviously if they have no optical drive they have broken compatibility with existing titles from earlier playstations.
Didn't stop them with PS3! First releases were backwards compatible, but by the time I was on the market for PS3, they were not. So now I have PS2 for old titles and PS3 for new titles
So what exactly is gonna differentiate this from a mid-level to high-end gaming rig?
The fact that you do not need a CS degree to figure out whether your rig meets game requirements? If the game says "for PS4" then it will work on PS4. Take PC Starcraft 2...
PC Starcraft 2 Recommended System Requirements:
* Windows Vista®/Windows® 7
* Dual Core 2.4Ghz Processor
* 2 GB RAM
* 512 MB NVIDIA® GeForce® 8800 GTX or ATI Radeon® HD 3870 or better
*Note: Due to potential programming changes, the Minimum System Requirements for this game may change over time.
Now I have a CS degree, but I don't know what "GeForce® 8800 GTX or ATI Radeon® HD 3870 or better" means given a particular video card. Also, note the "system requirements may change" gem.
The WH raised the threshold for comment only because once the site became popular, it was trivially easy to reach that number for stupid things, and the WH didn't want to have to comment on stupid things.
I do not see why raise the threshold -- they do not even always respond to your petition. Sometimes it is just a random response. The petition to "Abolish TSA" could have gotten a response "We feel your pain, but TSA is too important" or "We hear you, but we don't think TSA is so bad".
Instead, the answer was "TSA is awesome and has big plans for next 10 years" without as much as referencing the petition text in a meaningfulness way. How much work is it to copy-paste a response from somewhere?
"The big trio of online poker... were all shut down, domains seized, and executives arrested on charges related to fraud, money laundering, and illegal gambling"
It'd be nice if something like that were to happen to some banks these days.
Or, hell, maybe they can start with whoever runs the various lotteries? It is also gambling and of a much worse kind:
1. The lottery only pays back about 50%, while most casinos skim a small percentage and pay back the rest.
2. At least theoretically, you can get good at poker.
I do not know much about defamation law in other countries, but in the US there would be no valid case. The statements are derogatory, but are opinions and not facts.... the plaintiff here would lose quickly
This, of course, assumes that the University would go to fight
In US they can (and often do, right or wrong!) choose to settle instead and institute new policies limiting what employees can blog on the next day.
Even in US, I am afraid this would not get tossed out of court automatically. Someone would have to stand and fight at a significant expense.
in the US tax code, you can defer paying taxes by paying employees more, by making investments, etc. Only if that dollar you collect becomes profit do you generally pay taxes on it.
I believe Facebook and other companies eliminate their profits by paying "licensing" fees to a shell subsidiary. This not an investment in any way, just rerouting the profits somewhere else to avoid taxes.
The point is that everyone gets tax breaks and the reason why is that our tax code is crazy complicated
In practice, it turns out that you get better tax breaks when you have a dedicated team of lawyers who can route your profits across international borders. I suspect I'd get higher tax breaks if I had headquarters in Dublin and a couple of subsidiaries in Cayman Islands.
Just like the equality in politics. Everyone can lobby the politicians -- but lobbyists get paid to do it full time and the rest of us have to take time off from our job. The amount of resources behind you make a big difference in practice, even if "everyone can do it"
Interestingly enough, not every corporation gets to avoid taxes to such degree. Some corporations do pay taxes, if not at the official "highest" tax rate
So there is more to it. Is it the mega-rich that really pay no taxes? Is it the non-manufacturing companies that can license their profits away to a shell subsidiary?
A gene is a naturally occuring entity and should not be patentable. Patents are there to give right of ownership of a novel idea, concept or mechanism, not things that already exist in nature.
You know, the explanation here may be simpler than it looks. A bribed or blackmailed judge? From TFA:
Justice Nicholas also awarded costs against the applicants.
He awarded costs to a private company that patented the gene against the woman who actually has (had) cancer?
Have I got to patent myself now to stop anybody else from 'owning' me?
Don't worry -- no one is going to 'own' you. But they will 'license' you and possibly 'terminate' you by extracting the body parts that have the gene when you can't pay the license fee. Better start saving now...
The result is an "existential conflict" in some UAV pilots, says Col. Hernando Ortega, surgeon for the Air Force Intelligence, Surveillance, and Reconnaissance Agency. It is "a guilt feeling, perhaps â" or a 'Did I make the right decision?'
Mayhaps part of the problem is that some of the drone-related operations are so blatantly wrong that soldiers who are executing them must feel the inevitable guilt. Not "was it right or was it wrong?", but "why did I just kill a group of civilians on purpose?".
Rice's travails through the EPA's Integrated Risk Information System, or IRIS, program reveal the flip side of industry's sway. Not only does the ACC back many scientists named to IRIS panels, it also has the power to help remove ones it doesn't favor.
So... what's the pre-flip good side of the industry's sway?
Can't they just say -- industry has full control and can both nominate people they like and cut out people they do not like.
President: Legislator, executive, judge, jury, and executioner.
Does this carry any (real) legal power? I can't image why would ACLU support that...
Hypothetically, can Obama just write an executive order saying that Congress is to be disbanded immediately (or be handpicked by him instead of being elected) and that next presidential election happens in 2020?
A lot of what this shows is that the president can do a lot without cybersecurity legislation," said Mark Jaycox, policy analyst and legislative assistant for the Electronic Frontier Foundation, who points out that the executive order satisfies the need for information sharing...
It seems to me that the biggest bottleneck in making a ROI for something like this isn't even so much the logistics of getting up there, mining it, and bringing it back down gracefully. It's the fuel consumption.
I think the ability to monetize the asteroid would be a serious concern too.
a. How many years would it take to materialize a sale for $195B worth or raw materials?
b. Wouldn't the price of these materials fall as you sell them in large amounts?
Wouldn't material influx on that level affect the market and depress the cost? For example, an asteroid made of gold would be worth a lot of money, but the price of gold may fall worldwide if we do catch one.
OK, what will YOU do when they pass a law that allows them to pass judgement on you and execute you without a trial? Oh... ermm... they did that too.
I don't know if that makes it better or worse -- but they have _not_ passed a law that allows them to execute you without a trial.
What they did, was to write a secret memo that explains why that have that right already. Then they wrote a summary of the secret memo which they just released. They may already be executing people without a trial, but the law allowing this is yet to pass.
Slashdot Mirror
company failed to take reasonable steps to secure the software it developed for its smartphones and tablet computers, introducing security flaws that placed sensitive information about millions of consumers at risk
It should also be illegal to install bloatware that is embedded to the point of not being removable (without at least rooting the device and perhaps voiding warranty). Nothing makes the phone more secure than facebook processes -- there are several, and a dozen other built-in crapware clients (peddling games, services, etc).
And I don't think that buying full-priced phone changes anything, either.
incorporating AdBlockPlus and NoScript and enabling both by default.
Quite a few websites (whether intentionally or not) make it difficult to figure out which domain needs to run javascript for them to function. It is often _not_ the current domain. So users will end up choosing "Enable all scripts (dangerous)" option with NoScript sooner or later.
Also, when the webpage redirects you to a processor for finalizing a payment, a lot of work can be lost. Cannot go back without losing entered data and cannot complete the payment because reload will screw things up. NoScript should really ask you "Click redirects to a different domain -- enable scripts there?"
And to hell with marketers, they can cry all they want. They have already stripped most television show of a title sequence and forced shows to start rolling credits while still running.
If they only stopped at that!
Are you not getting the damn characters running across your show, in the middle of the show? It superimposes over the current show I am actually watching, just like a popup ad online
Also, a simple comparison of show length, demonstrates that in the 60s/70s shows ran for 26.5 minutes, while current sitcoms are around 22.5 minutes per half hour. And you get to see pop-ads in the middle of some of those three 7-minute long pieces.
How would you know if they are inflating prices?
I think a book with the price that is higher than the paper copy of the same is one good indication.
"We have found no evidence that Google's policy has had a demonstrable impact on demoting sites with large amounts of piracy,"
Except that it's much, much easier to prepare a book for print than it is to prepare an eBook. ... Perhaps in ten years, when the technology has improved dramatically, eBook sales will be pure profit.
Paper books also require storage (particularly if you are dealing with large amounts) can be damaged in transit at any point (to/from retailer)... and a book that ultimately fails to sell is a total loss
Seems like eBooks should be much cheaper than paper books and often they are not. Your argument about the preparation-to-print expense makes sense for a relatively small release, but not for anyone operating in bulk, since that cost is completely independent of how many books you end up selling.
*except to prompt some White House drone to hit the button 'generate response email': "Thank you for your interest in (issue). Please be assured that the (current president) administration takes your concern, and those of your other petitioners very seriously.
You don't even get THAT.
Favorite example: "Abolish TSA" petition did not get a canned response "Thank you for your interest -- but TSA is the only thing keeping terrorists away from us"
Instead, the petition response could as well have been an answer to the question "Please tell us just how awesome TSA is" because it didn't reference a single complaint in the petition -- even to dismiss that complaint
The "Build a Death Star" petition got a response that was based on the actual petition.
The problem here is that while companies are free to shop for labor where it's cheaper, even across country lines, workers can't shop for higher-paid jobs across the same. So the workforce is artificially segregated into compartments, enabling price discrimination between them.
Don't forget the effort that goes into blocking the resulting products from crossing international borders! Even customers cannot always shop cross-country
Things like DVD region encoding or textbook licensing come to mind.
You seem to be under the impression that executive positions are pay for x amount of work like wage positions. They're not. ... Only results matter, hours put in mean nothing.
Or perhaps he is suggesting that the "3 hour" metric is meaningless for the regular workers too. If they get their job done, who cares how many hours they work, 3 or more? If they don't, then working 12 hours a day will not benefit anyone either.
Obviously if they have no optical drive they have broken compatibility with existing titles from earlier playstations.
Didn't stop them with PS3! First releases were backwards compatible, but by the time I was on the market for PS3, they were not. So now I have PS2 for old titles and PS3 for new titles
Makes it that much less likely I will buy a PS4
So what exactly is gonna differentiate this from a mid-level to high-end gaming rig?
The fact that you do not need a CS degree to figure out whether your rig meets game requirements? If the game says "for PS4" then it will work on PS4. Take PC Starcraft 2...
PC Starcraft 2 Recommended System Requirements:
* Windows Vista®/Windows® 7
* Dual Core 2.4Ghz Processor
* 2 GB RAM
* 512 MB NVIDIA® GeForce® 8800 GTX or ATI Radeon® HD 3870 or better
*Note: Due to potential programming changes, the Minimum System Requirements for this game may change over time.
Now I have a CS degree, but I don't know what "GeForce® 8800 GTX or ATI Radeon® HD 3870 or better" means given a particular video card. Also, note the "system requirements may change" gem.
The WH raised the threshold for comment only because once the site became popular, it was trivially easy to reach that number for stupid things, and the WH didn't want to have to comment on stupid things.
I do not see why raise the threshold -- they do not even always respond to your petition. Sometimes it is just a random response. The petition to "Abolish TSA" could have gotten a response "We feel your pain, but TSA is too important" or "We hear you, but we don't think TSA is so bad".
Instead, the answer was "TSA is awesome and has big plans for next 10 years" without as much as referencing the petition text in a meaningfulness way. How much work is it to copy-paste a response from somewhere?
"The big trio of online poker ... were all shut down, domains seized, and executives arrested on charges related to fraud, money laundering, and illegal gambling"
It'd be nice if something like that were to happen to some banks these days.
Or, hell, maybe they can start with whoever runs the various lotteries? It is also gambling and of a much worse kind:
1. The lottery only pays back about 50%, while most casinos skim a small percentage and pay back the rest.
2. At least theoretically, you can get good at poker.
I do not know much about defamation law in other countries, but in the US there would be no valid case. The statements are derogatory, but are opinions and not facts. ... the plaintiff here would lose quickly
This, of course, assumes that the University would go to fight
In US they can (and often do, right or wrong!) choose to settle instead and institute new policies limiting what employees can blog on the next day.
Even in US, I am afraid this would not get tossed out of court automatically. Someone would have to stand and fight at a significant expense.
in the US tax code, you can defer paying taxes by paying employees more, by making investments, etc. Only if that dollar you collect becomes profit do you generally pay taxes on it.
I believe Facebook and other companies eliminate their profits by paying "licensing" fees to a shell subsidiary. This not an investment in any way, just rerouting the profits somewhere else to avoid taxes.
The point is that everyone gets tax breaks and the reason why is that our tax code is crazy complicated
In practice, it turns out that you get better tax breaks when you have a dedicated team of lawyers who can route your profits across international borders. I suspect I'd get higher tax breaks if I had headquarters in Dublin and a couple of subsidiaries in Cayman Islands.
Just like the equality in politics. Everyone can lobby the politicians -- but lobbyists get paid to do it full time and the rest of us have to take time off from our job. The amount of resources behind you make a big difference in practice, even if "everyone can do it"
This is normal - the rich don't pay tax.
Interestingly enough, not every corporation gets to avoid taxes to such degree. Some corporations do pay taxes, if not at the official "highest" tax rate
So there is more to it. Is it the mega-rich that really pay no taxes? Is it the non-manufacturing companies that can license their profits away to a shell subsidiary?
A gene is a naturally occuring entity and should not be patentable. Patents are there to give right of ownership of a novel idea, concept or mechanism, not things that already exist in nature.
You know, the explanation here may be simpler than it looks. A bribed or blackmailed judge? From TFA:
Justice Nicholas also awarded costs against the applicants.
He awarded costs to a private company that patented the gene against the woman who actually has (had) cancer?
Have I got to patent myself now to stop anybody else from 'owning' me?
Don't worry -- no one is going to 'own' you. But they will 'license' you and possibly 'terminate' you by extracting the body parts that have the gene when you can't pay the license fee. Better start saving now...
The result is an "existential conflict" in some UAV pilots, says Col. Hernando Ortega, surgeon for the Air Force Intelligence, Surveillance, and Reconnaissance Agency. It is "a guilt feeling, perhaps â" or a 'Did I make the right decision?'
Mayhaps part of the problem is that some of the drone-related operations are so blatantly wrong that soldiers who are executing them must feel the inevitable guilt. Not "was it right or was it wrong?", but "why did I just kill a group of civilians on purpose?".
For example, an attack on the funeral procession of "militants" killed earlier in the day
(quotes around militants are added by me, since at least nowdays that is defined as "adult males")
Rice's travails through the EPA's Integrated Risk Information System, or IRIS, program reveal the flip side of industry's sway. Not only does the ACC back many scientists named to IRIS panels, it also has the power to help remove ones it doesn't favor.
So... what's the pre-flip good side of the industry's sway?
Can't they just say -- industry has full control and can both nominate people they like and cut out people they do not like.
President: Legislator, executive, judge, jury, and executioner.
Does this carry any (real) legal power? I can't image why would ACLU support that...
Hypothetically, can Obama just write an executive order saying that Congress is to be disbanded immediately (or be handpicked by him instead of being elected) and that next presidential election happens in 2020?
A lot of what this shows is that the president can do a lot without cybersecurity legislation," said Mark Jaycox, policy analyst and legislative assistant for the Electronic Frontier Foundation, who points out that the executive order satisfies the need for information sharing...
It seems to me that the biggest bottleneck in making a ROI for something like this isn't even so much the logistics of getting up there, mining it, and bringing it back down gracefully. It's the fuel consumption.
I think the ability to monetize the asteroid would be a serious concern too.
a. How many years would it take to materialize a sale for $195B worth or raw materials?
b. Wouldn't the price of these materials fall as you sell them in large amounts?
Wouldn't material influx on that level affect the market and depress the cost?
For example, an asteroid made of gold would be worth a lot of money, but the price of gold may fall worldwide if we do catch one.
We should also devote equal time in astronomy to the hypothesis that the Sun revolves around the Earth, and that the Earth is, in fact, flat.
Why, are there any influential religions that believe that?
It's never about "fair/equal coverage", it is always about lobbying.
Yes, the concept of 'Cybespace' is quite stupid.
OK, what will YOU do when they pass a law that allows them to pass judgement on you and execute you without a trial? Oh... ermm... they did that too.
I don't know if that makes it better or worse -- but they have _not_ passed a law that allows them to execute you without a trial.
What they did, was to write a secret memo that explains why that have that right already. Then they wrote a summary of the secret memo which they just released. They may already be executing people without a trial, but the law allowing this is yet to pass.