As bad as the current Congress is, do we want to swap out the current process of Senate Judiciary hearings followed by a floor vote from 100 sitting senators in favor of a nationwide popularity contest that we can witness going off the rails RIGHT NOW while attempting to select a President?
I have far more faith in the Judiciary Committee to ask questions of substance about legal opinions that matter than for some dudebro in Florida to take time out of his busy schedule of smoking bath salts to make an informed decision about something so important.
The current system for filling a vacant seat on the bench may have it's flaws, but we don't need to throw it out in favor of a system that shows even bigger, more obvious flaws.
... it can't possibly get worse. Honestly, all it would take to make me a happy customer is if Charter comes in and fires anyone responsible for CCI flagging every channel they legally can as CopyOnce and then stops flagging them so. Time Warner is the only cable service that does this, and the only effect it has is reducing customer choice to either renting their absolutely fucking garbage set top boxes, buying a TiVo, buying a HDHomeRun product, or using Windows Media Center.
I'd really like to give the multitude of DVR software that can talk to a CableCARD a try, but I'm saddled with Windows Media Center unless I shitcan my perfectly working tuner. And the best version of WMC shipped with Windows 7 - the Windows 8 version is less featured, and the Windows 10 version doesn't exist because Microsoft killed it.
Please, Charter - let me use an operating system and DVR software that I don't hate, as a choice above the absolutely terrible set top boxes that Time Warner provides at a ridiculous monthly charge.
I guess I'm not sure why anyone buys Sony products after the long list of ways that they've let their customers discover the length, width, and breadth of the shaft. It's not like this is the first, second, third, or even fourth time.
Between the preference for in-house proprietary crap at the expense of industry standard, the draconian DRM, the revoked promises, early termination of supporting services, and auto-installing rootkits it is baffling to me that anyone still buys anything they make. And they won't learn until people stop.
and unless you already have it on UPS, you're screwed. Well, unless you start stripping live wires in order to patch a UPS onto a live circuit, I guess. Is this device really worth all that, though?
Side story: I'm actually shopping for a new fridge right now. I saw one where they integrated a Keurig machine into the fridge, next to the ice maker and water dispenser thing.
At first blush, I thought that was clever. Then, I realized that it will break, and instead of just buying a $100 coffee maker to replace it, I'm paying $450+ for a guy to come out and fix that stupid thing, or have a permanently broken thing on my refrigerator.
No thanks, I'll continue using the coffee maker I already have.
Since when is cracking Flash considered to be some feat of hacking genius? I'd be more interested if someone could make Flash secure without disabling and deleting it completely.
Now Apple is absolutely correct that this is not a one time event. There will surely be other court orders if this one succeeds.
And this is what Apple's problem is: the precedent. They don't want to hire a shitload of people and staff up a department just to work through the truckload of phones that will arrive with warrants attached from every half-assed prosecutor from Cupertino to Miami.
Make no mistake: the FBI couldn't give a rats ass what is on this phone. They want the legal crowbar to take to Apple / Samsung / Google / Microsoft / LG / Sony in the future. And so does every District Attorney in the country.
Yeah, because I'm sure they just have some guy named Chet in the basement who bangs out these court filings, and have absolutely no lawyers on the payroll or on retainer.
They can get more money if there is Congressional will to give it. You might remember back to the DoJ lawsuit against Big Tobacco - the tobacco companies spent more on office supplies than the DoJ had for their entire case.
Can they? Sure. The FBI has a 2016 budget of $8.4B, which is inside the Department of Justice's budget of $28.4B.
Would they? I'm guessing that they wouldn't. That's half of their earnings in a year. Plus, even if you pack the entire courthouse with lawyers billing you hourly, you still couldn't spend that much on this...... though it would be entertaining to shove that many lawyers into a courthouse like a rush hour train in Beijing...
The flaw is that DOJ lawyers aren't in it for the money - they're in it for a future appointment to a federal bench somewhere. Or, to get paid later after they retire from the DOJ with a big fat pension.
They'll probably make a weakened UK version, and then anyone who knows the difference will hop some form of transport over the channel to buy the secure version somewhere else in the EU.
Even if they lock it to a specific serial number / UID, the legal precedent is set. Then every district attorney with an iPhone in their evidence locker starts filing paper with their local judge. Apple gets buried under orders to do the same. In order to cope with these orders, Apple internally makes it easier and more streamlined to comply, which implicitly means granting more access to the signing keys.
Then it's only a matter of time until those keys are leaked / stolen / compromised. We've been down this road before, and that is exactly what Apple is fighting.
Exactly. This guy is like the so-called 'turnaround artist' Gil Amelio that just about killed both National Semiconductor and Apple.
I have no idea how these people can continue to fail upwards. Granted, his tenure at Nokia was a "successful failure" as he was an inside man who's sole job was to destroy enough value to make them affordable for Microsoft... but whatever.
The damage is done. You can play 'coulda woulda shoulda' and 'I told you so" if you want, but all that accomplishes is an increase of smugness, and a continuation of division.
It's time to stop with that bullshit, and actually do something about it. We have several decades before this becomes a problem, which can be used to mitigate the damage.
And there's absolutely no way that this problem can be solved through engineering. New Orleans is already below sea level, and has been for quite some time. Yes, Katrina was bad for them - very - but most of that shit show was the fault of a completely mismanaged response at all levels of government - city, county, state, and federal.
Changes will have to be made, for sure. But suggesting the abandonment of the 8th largest metro area in the US is beyond stupid when we literally have decades to do something about it.
Oh well if it's just too hard, then we'd all better just give up.
Are you serious? Oh, it's just too big, and just too complex for anyone to solve in the next 50 years. Better not even try. I have a feeling that those with the beach view will be just fine with not completely losing their property investment to being permanently underwater.
And pumps do wonders to remove water that gets past the wall. Or is New Orleans still flooded from Katrina and the levy breaches?
There are ways to mitigate. Just like the climate deniers can't wave their hands and make science go away, you cannot wave your hands and make engineering go away.
Especially as there's a pretty good chance the next President will have directly benefited from this administration's lack of transparency, and in fact went to great lengths to violate standing policy in order to be even less transparent while working in the administration.
And, as has been discussed already, you and I both live in places where grid power is stupidly cheap in comparison to other places. Just because Solar doesn't pencil out for you or me, doesn't mean it is bad for everyone. It has something to do with incredibly small sample sizes when doing a statistical study.
Solar does work in Texas, but perhaps not in your municipality because your energy company isn't putting the screws to you like other ones do. It works in Ohio too, but not around the Cincinnati area because we have barges loaded with coal floating past downtown every day, delivering coal to the rest of the nation (and world). However, our two data points don't make an accurate set to analyze.
Fortunately, there are some folks that have far more data than that, and have done it properly. If you look on pages 13 and 14, they've done some nice maps of the US where they've indicated where the break-even cost on solar is depending on the installed cost per watt, and if time-of-use rates applied. At $3/watt, it's break-even everywhere except the Pacific Northwest, some bits of Appalachia (coal country), and southeast Missouri (on the Mississippi, where all the coal form coal country is shipped).
Are you really trying to tell me that because Solar doesn't pencil out for you, that everyone else that researches this stuff is wrong?
You didn't quite understand what I was saying. I'm not happy at all with the unbelievable amount of spending going to defense, where it seems wholly unnecessary unless we're getting ready to fight two gulf-war sized events at the same time. I keep hearing how the current administration has "gutted" the military from the Republican candidates (hyperbole), and how we're going to have the smallest standing army since the end of World War II, and I keep asking myself why that's a bad thing. We're not fighting World War II anymore. We're not even in the Cold War anymore. Why do we need to sink all this money into defense, when 8 of the next 9 governments in the top 10 list of defense spending are allies?
Just one year of not building new bombers, submarines, aircraft carriers, and other stuff we don't need could fund an infrastructure rebuilding across the nation that would repair neglected bridges and roads, rebuild the electrical grid, and cause a revolution in how we generate energy. I know there's not a linear progression to these kinds of things, but if $10B is showing this kind of growth, what would $30B do?
If people truly care about government spending being out of control, they need to let go of their sacred cows, especially when one is a big fat pig that eats more than it's share.
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As bad as the current Congress is, do we want to swap out the current process of Senate Judiciary hearings followed by a floor vote from 100 sitting senators in favor of a nationwide popularity contest that we can witness going off the rails RIGHT NOW while attempting to select a President?
I have far more faith in the Judiciary Committee to ask questions of substance about legal opinions that matter than for some dudebro in Florida to take time out of his busy schedule of smoking bath salts to make an informed decision about something so important.
The current system for filling a vacant seat on the bench may have it's flaws, but we don't need to throw it out in favor of a system that shows even bigger, more obvious flaws.
... it can't possibly get worse. Honestly, all it would take to make me a happy customer is if Charter comes in and fires anyone responsible for CCI flagging every channel they legally can as CopyOnce and then stops flagging them so. Time Warner is the only cable service that does this, and the only effect it has is reducing customer choice to either renting their absolutely fucking garbage set top boxes, buying a TiVo, buying a HDHomeRun product, or using Windows Media Center.
I'd really like to give the multitude of DVR software that can talk to a CableCARD a try, but I'm saddled with Windows Media Center unless I shitcan my perfectly working tuner. And the best version of WMC shipped with Windows 7 - the Windows 8 version is less featured, and the Windows 10 version doesn't exist because Microsoft killed it.
Please, Charter - let me use an operating system and DVR software that I don't hate, as a choice above the absolutely terrible set top boxes that Time Warner provides at a ridiculous monthly charge.
So, without interest in gaming, you'd be testing a Linux distro that is focused on gaming... why?
That's like buying a 2-door sports car and being disappointed that you can't haul a yard of gravel in it.
My question: if you're already going to the Internet for the guide data, what the hell is wrong with NTP?
I hate it when a company decides they know better than the rest of the world and make a square wheel, and then weld it to the hub.
I guess I'm not sure why anyone buys Sony products after the long list of ways that they've let their customers discover the length, width, and breadth of the shaft. It's not like this is the first, second, third, or even fourth time.
Between the preference for in-house proprietary crap at the expense of industry standard, the draconian DRM, the revoked promises, early termination of supporting services, and auto-installing rootkits it is baffling to me that anyone still buys anything they make. And they won't learn until people stop.
and unless you already have it on UPS, you're screwed. Well, unless you start stripping live wires in order to patch a UPS onto a live circuit, I guess. Is this device really worth all that, though?
And it's still better than the wasteland circle-jerk called Reddit.
Side story: I'm actually shopping for a new fridge right now. I saw one where they integrated a Keurig machine into the fridge, next to the ice maker and water dispenser thing.
At first blush, I thought that was clever. Then, I realized that it will break, and instead of just buying a $100 coffee maker to replace it, I'm paying $450+ for a guy to come out and fix that stupid thing, or have a permanently broken thing on my refrigerator.
No thanks, I'll continue using the coffee maker I already have.
So it's a locked down tablet, without any of the interactive use of a tablet.
Yeah, can't see why that didn't take off.
Since when is cracking Flash considered to be some feat of hacking genius? I'd be more interested if someone could make Flash secure without disabling and deleting it completely.
Now Apple is absolutely correct that this is not a one time event. There will surely be other court orders if this one succeeds.
And this is what Apple's problem is: the precedent. They don't want to hire a shitload of people and staff up a department just to work through the truckload of phones that will arrive with warrants attached from every half-assed prosecutor from Cupertino to Miami.
Make no mistake: the FBI couldn't give a rats ass what is on this phone. They want the legal crowbar to take to Apple / Samsung / Google / Microsoft / LG / Sony in the future. And so does every District Attorney in the country.
Yeah, because I'm sure they just have some guy named Chet in the basement who bangs out these court filings, and have absolutely no lawyers on the payroll or on retainer.
They can get more money if there is Congressional will to give it. You might remember back to the DoJ lawsuit against Big Tobacco - the tobacco companies spent more on office supplies than the DoJ had for their entire case.
Can they? Sure. The FBI has a 2016 budget of $8.4B, which is inside the Department of Justice's budget of $28.4B.
Would they? I'm guessing that they wouldn't. That's half of their earnings in a year. Plus, even if you pack the entire courthouse with lawyers billing you hourly, you still couldn't spend that much on this... ... though it would be entertaining to shove that many lawyers into a courthouse like a rush hour train in Beijing...
The flaw is that DOJ lawyers aren't in it for the money - they're in it for a future appointment to a federal bench somewhere. Or, to get paid later after they retire from the DOJ with a big fat pension.
They'll probably make a weakened UK version, and then anyone who knows the difference will hop some form of transport over the channel to buy the secure version somewhere else in the EU.
Even if they lock it to a specific serial number / UID, the legal precedent is set. Then every district attorney with an iPhone in their evidence locker starts filing paper with their local judge. Apple gets buried under orders to do the same. In order to cope with these orders, Apple internally makes it easier and more streamlined to comply, which implicitly means granting more access to the signing keys.
Then it's only a matter of time until those keys are leaked / stolen / compromised. We've been down this road before, and that is exactly what Apple is fighting.
Exactly. This guy is like the so-called 'turnaround artist' Gil Amelio that just about killed both National Semiconductor and Apple.
I have no idea how these people can continue to fail upwards. Granted, his tenure at Nokia was a "successful failure" as he was an inside man who's sole job was to destroy enough value to make them affordable for Microsoft... but whatever.
The damage is done. You can play 'coulda woulda shoulda' and 'I told you so" if you want, but all that accomplishes is an increase of smugness, and a continuation of division.
It's time to stop with that bullshit, and actually do something about it. We have several decades before this becomes a problem, which can be used to mitigate the damage.
And there's absolutely no way that this problem can be solved through engineering. New Orleans is already below sea level, and has been for quite some time. Yes, Katrina was bad for them - very - but most of that shit show was the fault of a completely mismanaged response at all levels of government - city, county, state, and federal.
Changes will have to be made, for sure. But suggesting the abandonment of the 8th largest metro area in the US is beyond stupid when we literally have decades to do something about it.
Oh well if it's just too hard, then we'd all better just give up.
Are you serious? Oh, it's just too big, and just too complex for anyone to solve in the next 50 years. Better not even try.
I have a feeling that those with the beach view will be just fine with not completely losing their property investment to being permanently underwater.
And pumps do wonders to remove water that gets past the wall. Or is New Orleans still flooded from Katrina and the levy breaches?
There are ways to mitigate. Just like the climate deniers can't wave their hands and make science go away, you cannot wave your hands and make engineering go away.
Especially as there's a pretty good chance the next President will have directly benefited from this administration's lack of transparency, and in fact went to great lengths to violate standing policy in order to be even less transparent while working in the administration.
And, as has been discussed already, you and I both live in places where grid power is stupidly cheap in comparison to other places. Just because Solar doesn't pencil out for you or me, doesn't mean it is bad for everyone. It has something to do with incredibly small sample sizes when doing a statistical study.
Solar does work in Texas, but perhaps not in your municipality because your energy company isn't putting the screws to you like other ones do. It works in Ohio too, but not around the Cincinnati area because we have barges loaded with coal floating past downtown every day, delivering coal to the rest of the nation (and world). However, our two data points don't make an accurate set to analyze.
Fortunately, there are some folks that have far more data than that, and have done it properly. If you look on pages 13 and 14, they've done some nice maps of the US where they've indicated where the break-even cost on solar is depending on the installed cost per watt, and if time-of-use rates applied. At $3/watt, it's break-even everywhere except the Pacific Northwest, some bits of Appalachia (coal country), and southeast Missouri (on the Mississippi, where all the coal form coal country is shipped).
Are you really trying to tell me that because Solar doesn't pencil out for you, that everyone else that researches this stuff is wrong?
You didn't quite understand what I was saying. I'm not happy at all with the unbelievable amount of spending going to defense, where it seems wholly unnecessary unless we're getting ready to fight two gulf-war sized events at the same time. I keep hearing how the current administration has "gutted" the military from the Republican candidates (hyperbole), and how we're going to have the smallest standing army since the end of World War II, and I keep asking myself why that's a bad thing. We're not fighting World War II anymore. We're not even in the Cold War anymore. Why do we need to sink all this money into defense, when 8 of the next 9 governments in the top 10 list of defense spending are allies?
Just one year of not building new bombers, submarines, aircraft carriers, and other stuff we don't need could fund an infrastructure rebuilding across the nation that would repair neglected bridges and roads, rebuild the electrical grid, and cause a revolution in how we generate energy. I know there's not a linear progression to these kinds of things, but if $10B is showing this kind of growth, what would $30B do?
If people truly care about government spending being out of control, they need to let go of their sacred cows, especially when one is a big fat pig that eats more than it's share.