That is a real problem. And, honestly, I don't think there's a large enough set to make such statistics all that meaningful to begin with. But what you can do is to rate against other risks. Don't say its an exact percentage, break it down into something more like 99% (almost certain), 75% (ilkely), 25% (possibly) and 1% (unlikely). Notice I left out 50%... It might be worth adding in a (0.01%, highly unlikely) but the point is to emphasize the label, not the percentage. Don't claim it as an actual percentage, just a generalized expectation. If you *want* to be mathematical about it take a starting point (say 99% for the "highly likely") and treat it as z scores moving perhaps two standard deviations for each category with the basic idea of keeping a large separation between categories.
The percentages can be used to do math as suggested before hand, but by having clear separation between categories it helps whoever is being communicated to grasp it.
It isn't just the probability of the event, however. Usually there's no clear idea of the cost. I recommend the same approach: divide into general cost categories and put them where it makes most sense. All of these decisions are made easier by having fewer choices and less hair splitting. Essentially you are accounting for the imprecision of the metrics even if you had the numbers. What cost one company of comparable size $1M might cost you $2M or $0.5M. Too many factors and too many ways to count the costs.
I'm not saying to just make the numbers up: there should be some clear reasoning for why picking a category. But, again, it gets easier when you aren't busy hair splitting.
there's another option to the two you present: IT-related legal risk and liability (it isn't always technical, even if it falls under IT security). I got an out of band compliment for an explanation I gave to management after they insisted we do something wrong/illegal/risky and I laid out the reasons why we should not -- apparently I got the point across but *management just didn't care* and we were instructed to procede.
Seriously: I was complimented for clearly communicating the risk and liability, and at the same time they didn't care. If it weren't for the former I could understand the latter. Bizarre.
And now you know why the guillotine was invented -- the mass execution needed some efficiency improvements. Sure, it hasn't kept up with the times and even more efficient methods have been invented as a result.
Related to what you said, IMO the problem with using drones for execution is that it makes it easier. By easier I specifically mean:
1. quicker -- just a few phone calls to get authorization? no need to select, equip and deploy a special ops team?
2. cheaper -- a drone has a high price tag, but the cost is actually quite cheap compared to the alternatives (which is of course why they are used). Manned aircraft are expensive and training the pilots costs quite a bit as well. Not only can you field more drones than pilots for the same amount of money the cost of losing one is lower.
3. less risk -- if you deploy a team or pilot that could be captured and interrogated that is quite a bit of risk. A drone can't answer questions as to who was being targeted, or about prior missions or future missions.
By making it easier it is lowering the threshold for use. So executing someone in a foreign country is more likely to happen (and the evidence bears this out). For some, this isn't a problem -- its just allowing the desired job to be done more often. For others, however, it is definitely seen as a problem. Just one issue is the impact on foreign relations.
It has long been good advice for traveling Americans to reduce risk by posing as being Canadian it being somewhat plausible due to similarities -- there has been, on the whole, less dislike of Canada and Canadians than the US. I can only see such advice becoming more important along with developing a real cover.
I'm not sure that I would've categorized it as FUD, but some defintions.
FUD: Fear, Uncertainty and Doubt characterized by non-specific statements and innuendo to create such about specific targets
Fear: that encryption will be bypassed Uncertainty: you can't trust closed source software Doubt: in the silent circle offering
Fear: that you can't trust Schneier Uncertainty: he recommends silent circle, but recommends against US/UK based software Doubt: maybe Schneier has a hidden agenda
As to silent circle: you have no evidence that silent circle is compromised and appear to rely on Schneier's general caution and ignore mitigations. In essence this is relying on Schneier's general advice for a specific case and posits Schneier as an authority.
As to Schneier: you take your application of Schneier's general (not absolute) rule in a specific case and find that it contradicts his *specific* recommendation. Somehow you find a contradiction in this.
There is no contradiction.
I can safely say that -- in general -- male athletes run faster than female athletes. Or, more particularly, I might recommend that if you bet on the outcome of a race that you put your money on male athletes rather than female. However, in terms of *specific* recommendations I might recommend putting money on a particular female athlete in a particular race. This may appear contradictory, but only until you realize that this female athlete out performs most male athletes.
Schneier may not have specifically justified his recommendation of silent circle despite where they are based, but others have pointed out logical reasons why. There are plenty of reasons for people to take Schneier and Phil Zimmerman seriously even if they don't provide a detailed analysis of all parts of a statement.
you mean like Apple? I had long wondered why I was getting cert changes for the email. This would appear to explain it.
The thing is, without some information as to what the NSA is doing you think "that's strange" but unless you're incredibly paranoid you are very likely to chalk up inconsistencies as "unexplained but harmless". We get ssh cert changes all the time where I work because the admins don't bother to preserve them. Its nothing nefarious. So when I get yet-another-cert change for Apple I think: I basically trust my network, it goes to the ISP, across the backbone and to Apple. There just doesn't seem like much opportunity for a MITM attack.
With the recent revelations, however, perspective changes and it would appear *very* plausible that the NSA is using one of its back bone intercepts to MITM traffic.
What isn't clear is if it was my session that was being compromised or if it was a general attack against Apple's mail servers. But it is looking less likely all the time that it has been innocent cert changes or load balancing without sharing cert or whatever else.
Cracking encryption isn't a crap shoot -- its not like they get a single roll of the dice and say "damn, we didn't crack that one" -- it is just a matter of time. The question, really, is "how much time would it take to crack this encrypted communication" and the answer depends on a lot of factors. It rarely, if ever, is the theoretical limit to difficulty. A trivial example is the debian fiasco where nearly all entropy was removed from key generation. That is a bit extreme, but the point stands that the difficulty is, due to implementation issues and side channel attacks, very likely less than the theoretical.
It is popular to express the difficulty of decryption in time-to-decrypt. Even if the difficulty were always the theoretical this would still be wrong. There are orders of magnitude difference in computing power that can be applied. Just switching from a fast CPU to a good GPU will give you a very nice speed up -- and that is before clustering. Periodically I have to update a "time to crack a password based on complexity rules" table and its sad. Anyone using that kind of guidance is being misled: it isn't even useful for doing relative comparisons. "But these complexity rules mean that my password is 1000x harder to crack" is meaningless if it can still be done in less than five minutes.
Yes, breaking SSL is not the same as cracking passwords. But the same principles apply: a guided attack will usually perform far better. Periodically there is news in the security field about a vulnerability that made communications/stored files/SSL encryption much less strong than it should have been. And some people still don't see why the NSA maintains recordings of encrypted sessions. Can't crack it within a year? Better luck next month.
But regardless of any of that, it isn't going to do you much good to generate your own certificates when you connect to Amazon, Facebook, Google, etc., etc., etc.
your evidence does suggest that it is not deliberate -- but your evidence also describes a way to obfuscate a denial of service attack against Tor. And I can certainly see the appeal in eliminating Tor. It isn't what I would do* but it seems at least plausible.
Just a thought. I'd guess you to be right in the assessment, just acknowledging it as a probability.
* I'd setup enough exit nodes to conduct an attack against anonymity and record traffic for cracking, with priority based on other intelligence and the removal of anonymity -- cracking doesn't have to be real time and intelligence agencies have at times spent years on efforts to crack targeted communications.
Apple's evidence is that the actual pricing for others is a lot less (http://www.fosspatents.com/2013/07/apple-says-motorola-demanded-more-than.html). Same as with Microsoft, Motorola (now Google) wanted free access to *all* of the patents, both those covered by FRAND and those that aren't and attempted to bully Microsoft and Apple into such an agreement by demanding decidedly unfair licensing terms for just FRAND patents.
Yeah. As much as I dislike Microsoft and patents (which is quite a bit...) this is a pretty clear example of abuse by Google. It doesn't matter if the mess started before Google's acquisition -- Google could have elected to be reasonable post acquisition and chose not to. Google bought Motorola for its patent portfolio in a move that seems remarkably like Oracle's acquisition of Sun. The only possible difference is that Google may not have really intended to turn the patents into a cash cow (which was clearly Oracle's plan for Sun's assets), but instead for basic anti-competitive behavior.
And, yes, despite some opinions to the contrary, patents *are* for more than just anti-competitive behavior. They *can* be used to make money in a non-vexatious manner. The fact that there is little motivation to do so is part of the problem with patents but there is no necessity in it.
As to the licensing costs? In general there aren't limits to what a patent holder can ask (they are not even required to make licenses available), but for *some* patents this is so *obviously* bad there are *some* restrictions. Meaning FRAND (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fair%2C_reasonable%2C_and_non-discriminatory_terms) which definitely applies in this case. Google cannot require a free license for all of Microsoft's patents in order for Microsoft to get access to FRAND patents owned by Google. They attempted this by establishing a false dichotomy: free cross licensing of everything or $$$ for the FRAND where the $$$ far exceeded FRAND terms. I say a false dichotomy because the whole point was to set the fee prohibitively high leaving only one actual choice. Given the legal reality of patents it is no wonder that Microsoft took Motorola to court.
Its fine to be against patents (I am), but judging the actions of others by an ideal that doesn't exist is not realistic. And its unfair when the same standard is not applied to both sides.
Nice try. I never made the broad and absolute statement that you seem to be implying. "the more it is..." leads to "...the less likely". But I'm guessing you knew that.
no, no, they will need the entire file system just in case there was something else they needed. Once you've read government requests (I'm not talking the secret ones, just regular investigatory) the fishing expedition methodology employed quickly becomes apparent.
in hdd this is the same for reads and writes. for ssd its the smallest adressanle unit but....
blocks: no such concept with hdd. traditionally there were cylinders, heads and sectors (addressing scheme) and some folks may have used block to refer to a sector, but normally in data storage a block is the smallest addressable unit in a file system, sometimes called a cluster.
for ssd its different: it can only write either ones or zeros, not both. by definition, a sector is the smallest addressable unit on the drive: so whatever the smallest data unit that can be written at a time is, is a sector. This can be complicated (as it is for high capacity hdd) by the drive lying about its sector size. but wiping is done in groups of pages -- all at once, all data in that "block" is wiped out. Confusingly, called a "block" which is also a term from file systems, joy.
in short, you are backwards and confused. sector/block are *not* "amost synomymous in SSDs". If you take the SSD "block" (smallest unit that can be erased) and note that, for a spinning platter drive, sector and *this* notion of a "block" are synomymous then you realize that the aboev statement was reversed. Writing for SSDs is much more complicated than for spinning platter due to the separation of writing ones and zeros, the consequent requirement for over capacity, and the wear that comes from writing to an SSD (whereas frequent writing to a spinning platter drive keeps it "refreshed").
are you talking about the military? law enforcement? prison guards? And those are just the obvious ones -- really there are a lot people in jobs where they get paid "for causing people harm".
The fact that this tripe got modded insightful is even worse than the post itself.
In the US, unless it is an illegal operation, odds are very good that the cold caller is a telco employee. For Sprint, et all, its just another service they offer: low paid "employees" who only keep the "job" until they can get something better. If you don't like the system don't rail at the people who took it to make some money until they got a better job: complain about the telcos who charge for privacy (unlisted numbers) and then charge the marketers more for lists that include the unlisted numbers.
And you are looking at the 2012 version that lacks the examples and explanations. It isn't a new invention if it is just software -- it must be part of a greater whole, such as an embedded device.
So with all the gun regulation legislation going on and it continuing to be a topic you think there should be, but is not, a "WAR ON GUNS!!!"?
Supposedly 2/3 of gun deaths are suicides (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gun_violence_in_the_United_States) which is not how traffic deaths play out. Even if it were relatively self inflicted (refusal to wear a seat belt) it isn't the same thing.
this post is both informative and insightful. I can only hope that the moderators notice. I was worried about this until I found out that you have to unlock the device. Oh, wait, it also requires a developer account -- it cannot actually install unsigned code and have it run. It also requires an Internet connection. Oops.
Don't get me wrong: this is bad. But for those who are security conscious (that is, actually use a passcode) it is unlikely to be developed into an effective attack before the patch is in place. And it drives home the fact that physical access can be used to bypass otherwise effective controls. For the vast majority of users (ios or otherwise) who don't even use a passcode? The evil maid doesn't even need this.
Define success. After accounting for all costs (such as marketing) the XBox never made money (to be fair, it wasn't intended to -- Balmer bragged initially that they were planning on losing a few billion over five years in the interest of gaining share in a new market). The XBox 360 was more parsimonious and their console (hardware and MS games) more or less breaks even on an annual basis.
If by success you mean they made a console you liked? Okay, that's up to you. But in business terms the only "success" of the line was competing against Sony -- and that only counts (business-wise) if, in the long term, you make money. Which hasn't happened yet and, with the third gen, doesn't look like it will ever come about.
ACs are so much fun. Post weird and wild things without any consequence.
Anyway, I had MS "smart phones" and they sucked. 2 days of battery life sure, but only if you didn't use it. Crashed a lot? Yep. Required stylus? Yep. Interface lockout? Yep.
And god forbid you actually try to use it. The main reason I had it was for email, but that part was basically non-functional. When management finally got over the anti-Apple fears we switched/entirely/ to iPhone. There have been a few employees since the switch that hate Apple and jumped ship to Android as soon as they could but *no one* stuck with MS.
if by "created MS-DOS" you actually mean "hired a programmer to copy CPM", then, sure. Because IBM tried to license CPM, but there was a culture clash fiasco and when they approached Bill Gates for an operating system he sold them vaporware, then turned around and hired it to be stolen -- not that the contract was for theft, but as protection for Bill Gates having any liability.
MS (at least under Bill Gates) was successful due to cut-throat and (at best) barely legal business practices.
Suggesting that MS is no different than Apple or Google? In the sense of acquisition? I don't keep up on Apple's ventures, but based on the ones I know of they primarily acquire to "secure" their business. For example, buying CUPS when they could've just used it. If they hadn't, then MS could've purchased and killed CUPS. The purchase was a means of securing their business. It adds up front costs but gives better stability and *may* decrease long term costs.
OTOH Google appears to be speculative about their acquisitions. Instead of securing their base they are after expansion. Perhaps the distinction is subtle, perhaps not. Apple sells hardware -- the rest is support for the hardware. Buying a maps company is securing the base for support for the phones. In contrast, Google's core business is advertising. Google tries to expand its scope, but it always comes back to "how can we leverage this for advertising".
Microsoft sells software. Yes, they sell hardware too (some of which has been quite good), but that is not their core business. And that is why they were scared when Netscape had the vision of the web browser becoming the desktop -- it was a direct threat to their core business (MS survives on profits from Windows and Office, not much else) and would allow dropping in a different underlying OS without the user seeing a difference. Google apps also threatens their core business as few people have any actual use for Office's additional features.
It isn't that MS would go away (there are still many people who do use Office's additional features, or are otherwise tied to using a MS operating system), but they would lose a significant amount of revenue. And, understandably, they don't want that future. So MS is trying to compete. It just looks like the mad flailing of a blinded cyclops as they do so.
"Apple is not newsworthy" -- the one accurate part of your post.
Yes, Apple is an abusive employer. Oh, wait, you mean those Chinese companies that produce parts for Asus, etc., are abusive. Wrong you are.
Apple's profits are down and they are plummeting. Oh, wait, you mean that was just a dip and they really do make things beside the iPhone. Wow, wrong again.
But you *are* right that Apple is not newsworthy. But for some reason everytime a journalist wants to popularize a negative tech article they write it up in a way that pushes Apple. Still, you're right. They aren't newsworthy, its just they get page hits.
care for some data to support your assertion that "women, particularly mothers, are far more prone to except[sic] statist rule"? I'd be interested in where such data came from (other than your ass) because it does not fit generally known facts.
Lets have an example: in the state of Missouri it only recently became legal to have a birth at home with a midwife present* -- that law wasn't changed because women, particularly mothers, just accepted the status quo. In point of fact it was changed because of wide spread efforts by women, especially mothers, to apply effective pressure on white male politicians. Working within the rules for change doesn't make them more prone to accept statist rule.
Although your misogynist view of women is not uncommon that does not mean it is accurate.
* For accuracy I must point out that actually, in practice, it is mostly illegal to have a home birth in Missouri. This is due to the licensing requirement for midwives and a requirement (I don't recall at the moment if it is codified in law or just a matter of practice) to be supervised by a doctor that has resulted in I think one "birthing center" for the entire state. The only *legal* way to have a home birth in Missouri is to have no one present. And I know mothers who do just that, but there are others who dare find a midwife who is willing to come to the home.
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That is a real problem. And, honestly, I don't think there's a large enough set to make such statistics all that meaningful to begin with. But what you can do is to rate against other risks. Don't say its an exact percentage, break it down into something more like 99% (almost certain), 75% (ilkely), 25% (possibly) and 1% (unlikely). Notice I left out 50%... It might be worth adding in a (0.01%, highly unlikely) but the point is to emphasize the label, not the percentage. Don't claim it as an actual percentage, just a generalized expectation. If you *want* to be mathematical about it take a starting point (say 99% for the "highly likely") and treat it as z scores moving perhaps two standard deviations for each category with the basic idea of keeping a large separation between categories.
The percentages can be used to do math as suggested before hand, but by having clear separation between categories it helps whoever is being communicated to grasp it.
It isn't just the probability of the event, however. Usually there's no clear idea of the cost. I recommend the same approach: divide into general cost categories and put them where it makes most sense. All of these decisions are made easier by having fewer choices and less hair splitting. Essentially you are accounting for the imprecision of the metrics even if you had the numbers. What cost one company of comparable size $1M might cost you $2M or $0.5M. Too many factors and too many ways to count the costs.
I'm not saying to just make the numbers up: there should be some clear reasoning for why picking a category. But, again, it gets easier when you aren't busy hair splitting.
there's another option to the two you present: IT-related legal risk and liability (it isn't always technical, even if it falls under IT security). I got an out of band compliment for an explanation I gave to management after they insisted we do something wrong/illegal/risky and I laid out the reasons why we should not -- apparently I got the point across but *management just didn't care* and we were instructed to procede.
Seriously: I was complimented for clearly communicating the risk and liability, and at the same time they didn't care. If it weren't for the former I could understand the latter. Bizarre.
hey, you asked to have what you said broken down into FUD. I started by saying I wouldn't necessarily categorize it as FUD, but showed how to apply.
Funny what qualifies as a strawman these days...
And now you know why the guillotine was invented -- the mass execution needed some efficiency improvements. Sure, it hasn't kept up with the times and even more efficient methods have been invented as a result.
Related to what you said, IMO the problem with using drones for execution is that it makes it easier. By easier I specifically mean:
1. quicker -- just a few phone calls to get authorization? no need to select, equip and deploy a special ops team?
2. cheaper -- a drone has a high price tag, but the cost is actually quite cheap compared to the alternatives (which is of course why they are used). Manned aircraft are expensive and training the pilots costs quite a bit as well. Not only can you field more drones than pilots for the same amount of money the cost of losing one is lower.
3. less risk -- if you deploy a team or pilot that could be captured and interrogated that is quite a bit of risk. A drone can't answer questions as to who was being targeted, or about prior missions or future missions.
By making it easier it is lowering the threshold for use. So executing someone in a foreign country is more likely to happen (and the evidence bears this out). For some, this isn't a problem -- its just allowing the desired job to be done more often. For others, however, it is definitely seen as a problem. Just one issue is the impact on foreign relations.
It has long been good advice for traveling Americans to reduce risk by posing as being Canadian it being somewhat plausible due to similarities -- there has been, on the whole, less dislike of Canada and Canadians than the US. I can only see such advice becoming more important along with developing a real cover.
I'm not sure that I would've categorized it as FUD, but some defintions.
FUD: Fear, Uncertainty and Doubt characterized by non-specific statements and innuendo to create such about specific targets
Fear: that encryption will be bypassed
Uncertainty: you can't trust closed source software
Doubt: in the silent circle offering
Fear: that you can't trust Schneier
Uncertainty: he recommends silent circle, but recommends against US/UK based software
Doubt: maybe Schneier has a hidden agenda
As to silent circle: you have no evidence that silent circle is compromised and appear to rely on Schneier's general caution and ignore mitigations. In essence this is relying on Schneier's general advice for a specific case and posits Schneier as an authority.
As to Schneier: you take your application of Schneier's general (not absolute) rule in a specific case and find that it contradicts his *specific* recommendation. Somehow you find a contradiction in this.
There is no contradiction.
I can safely say that -- in general -- male athletes run faster than female athletes. Or, more particularly, I might recommend that if you bet on the outcome of a race that you put your money on male athletes rather than female. However, in terms of *specific* recommendations I might recommend putting money on a particular female athlete in a particular race. This may appear contradictory, but only until you realize that this female athlete out performs most male athletes.
Schneier may not have specifically justified his recommendation of silent circle despite where they are based, but others have pointed out logical reasons why. There are plenty of reasons for people to take Schneier and Phil Zimmerman seriously even if they don't provide a detailed analysis of all parts of a statement.
you mean like Apple? I had long wondered why I was getting cert changes for the email. This would appear to explain it.
The thing is, without some information as to what the NSA is doing you think "that's strange" but unless you're incredibly paranoid you are very likely to chalk up inconsistencies as "unexplained but harmless". We get ssh cert changes all the time where I work because the admins don't bother to preserve them. Its nothing nefarious. So when I get yet-another-cert change for Apple I think: I basically trust my network, it goes to the ISP, across the backbone and to Apple. There just doesn't seem like much opportunity for a MITM attack.
With the recent revelations, however, perspective changes and it would appear *very* plausible that the NSA is using one of its back bone intercepts to MITM traffic.
What isn't clear is if it was my session that was being compromised or if it was a general attack against Apple's mail servers. But it is looking less likely all the time that it has been innocent cert changes or load balancing without sharing cert or whatever else.
Cracking encryption isn't a crap shoot -- its not like they get a single roll of the dice and say "damn, we didn't crack that one" -- it is just a matter of time. The question, really, is "how much time would it take to crack this encrypted communication" and the answer depends on a lot of factors. It rarely, if ever, is the theoretical limit to difficulty. A trivial example is the debian fiasco where nearly all entropy was removed from key generation. That is a bit extreme, but the point stands that the difficulty is, due to implementation issues and side channel attacks, very likely less than the theoretical.
It is popular to express the difficulty of decryption in time-to-decrypt. Even if the difficulty were always the theoretical this would still be wrong. There are orders of magnitude difference in computing power that can be applied. Just switching from a fast CPU to a good GPU will give you a very nice speed up -- and that is before clustering. Periodically I have to update a "time to crack a password based on complexity rules" table and its sad. Anyone using that kind of guidance is being misled: it isn't even useful for doing relative comparisons. "But these complexity rules mean that my password is 1000x harder to crack" is meaningless if it can still be done in less than five minutes.
Yes, breaking SSL is not the same as cracking passwords. But the same principles apply: a guided attack will usually perform far better. Periodically there is news in the security field about a vulnerability that made communications/stored files/SSL encryption much less strong than it should have been. And some people still don't see why the NSA maintains recordings of encrypted sessions. Can't crack it within a year? Better luck next month.
But regardless of any of that, it isn't going to do you much good to generate your own certificates when you connect to Amazon, Facebook, Google, etc., etc., etc.
your evidence does suggest that it is not deliberate -- but your evidence also describes a way to obfuscate a denial of service attack against Tor. And I can certainly see the appeal in eliminating Tor. It isn't what I would do* but it seems at least plausible.
Just a thought. I'd guess you to be right in the assessment, just acknowledging it as a probability.
* I'd setup enough exit nodes to conduct an attack against anonymity and record traffic for cracking, with priority based on other intelligence and the removal of anonymity -- cracking doesn't have to be real time and intelligence agencies have at times spent years on efforts to crack targeted communications.
Apple's evidence is that the actual pricing for others is a lot less (http://www.fosspatents.com/2013/07/apple-says-motorola-demanded-more-than.html). Same as with Microsoft, Motorola (now Google) wanted free access to *all* of the patents, both those covered by FRAND and those that aren't and attempted to bully Microsoft and Apple into such an agreement by demanding decidedly unfair licensing terms for just FRAND patents.
Yeah. As much as I dislike Microsoft and patents (which is quite a bit...) this is a pretty clear example of abuse by Google. It doesn't matter if the mess started before Google's acquisition -- Google could have elected to be reasonable post acquisition and chose not to. Google bought Motorola for its patent portfolio in a move that seems remarkably like Oracle's acquisition of Sun. The only possible difference is that Google may not have really intended to turn the patents into a cash cow (which was clearly Oracle's plan for Sun's assets), but instead for basic anti-competitive behavior.
And, yes, despite some opinions to the contrary, patents *are* for more than just anti-competitive behavior. They *can* be used to make money in a non-vexatious manner. The fact that there is little motivation to do so is part of the problem with patents but there is no necessity in it.
As to the licensing costs? In general there aren't limits to what a patent holder can ask (they are not even required to make licenses available), but for *some* patents this is so *obviously* bad there are *some* restrictions. Meaning FRAND (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fair%2C_reasonable%2C_and_non-discriminatory_terms) which definitely applies in this case. Google cannot require a free license for all of Microsoft's patents in order for Microsoft to get access to FRAND patents owned by Google. They attempted this by establishing a false dichotomy: free cross licensing of everything or $$$ for the FRAND where the $$$ far exceeded FRAND terms. I say a false dichotomy because the whole point was to set the fee prohibitively high leaving only one actual choice. Given the legal reality of patents it is no wonder that Microsoft took Motorola to court.
Its fine to be against patents (I am), but judging the actions of others by an ideal that doesn't exist is not realistic. And its unfair when the same standard is not applied to both sides.
Nice try. I never made the broad and absolute statement that you seem to be implying. "the more it is..." leads to "...the less likely". But I'm guessing you knew that.
no, no, they will need the entire file system just in case there was something else they needed. Once you've read government requests (I'm not talking the secret ones, just regular investigatory) the fishing expedition methodology employed quickly becomes apparent.
this got modded insightful?
Hint, the more broad and absolute a statement is ("all" and "false") the less likely there is to be any truth to it.
I could see it being interpreted as "funny", but it doesn't really get past the joke stage.
wrong.
sector: smallest addressable unit of space
in hdd this is the same for reads and writes. for ssd its the smallest adressanle unit but....
blocks: no such concept with hdd. traditionally there were cylinders, heads and sectors (addressing scheme) and some folks may have used block to refer to a sector, but normally in data storage a block is the smallest addressable unit in a file system, sometimes called a cluster.
for ssd its different: it can only write either ones or zeros, not both. by definition, a sector is the smallest addressable unit on the drive: so whatever the smallest data unit that can be written at a time is, is a sector. This can be complicated (as it is for high capacity hdd) by the drive lying about its sector size. but wiping is done in groups of pages -- all at once, all data in that "block" is wiped out. Confusingly, called a "block" which is also a term from file systems, joy.
in short, you are backwards and confused. sector/block are *not* "amost synomymous in SSDs". If you take the SSD "block" (smallest unit that can be erased) and note that, for a spinning platter drive, sector and *this* notion of a "block" are synomymous then you realize that the aboev statement was reversed. Writing for SSDs is much more complicated than for spinning platter due to the separation of writing ones and zeros, the consequent requirement for over capacity, and the wear that comes from writing to an SSD (whereas frequent writing to a spinning platter drive keeps it "refreshed").
are you talking about the military? law enforcement? prison guards? And those are just the obvious ones -- really there are a lot people in jobs where they get paid "for causing people harm".
The fact that this tripe got modded insightful is even worse than the post itself.
In the US, unless it is an illegal operation, odds are very good that the cold caller is a telco employee. For Sprint, et all, its just another service they offer: low paid "employees" who only keep the "job" until they can get something better. If you don't like the system don't rail at the people who took it to make some money until they got a better job: complain about the telcos who charge for privacy (unlisted numbers) and then charge the marketers more for lists that include the unlisted numbers.
And you are looking at the 2012 version that lacks the examples and explanations. It isn't a new invention if it is just software -- it must be part of a greater whole, such as an embedded device.
But why take my word for it?
https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20130509/09013323019/new-zealand-bans-software-patents-as-such-tries-to-pin-down-what-earth-that-means.shtml
Any particular reason you chose to report that in equivalent units? If it really is 10.3 per 100,000 then that works out to about 30,000 per year. Which is approximately the traffic rate. That's probably right, at least according to some sources (e.g., http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2013/01/09/guns-traffic-deaths-rates/1784595/)
So with all the gun regulation legislation going on and it continuing to be a topic you think there should be, but is not, a "WAR ON GUNS!!!"?
Supposedly 2/3 of gun deaths are suicides (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gun_violence_in_the_United_States) which is not how traffic deaths play out. Even if it were relatively self inflicted (refusal to wear a seat belt) it isn't the same thing.
Basically I'm just curious what your point was.
this post is both informative and insightful. I can only hope that the moderators notice. I was worried about this until I found out that you have to unlock the device. Oh, wait, it also requires a developer account -- it cannot actually install unsigned code and have it run. It also requires an Internet connection. Oops.
Don't get me wrong: this is bad. But for those who are security conscious (that is, actually use a passcode) it is unlikely to be developed into an effective attack before the patch is in place. And it drives home the fact that physical access can be used to bypass otherwise effective controls. For the vast majority of users (ios or otherwise) who don't even use a passcode? The evil maid doesn't even need this.
agreed. and perhaps explains why Apple locked everything down and brought it back up so as to ensure integrity.
it also requires the user to unlock the device.
Define success. After accounting for all costs (such as marketing) the XBox never made money (to be fair, it wasn't intended to -- Balmer bragged initially that they were planning on losing a few billion over five years in the interest of gaining share in a new market). The XBox 360 was more parsimonious and their console (hardware and MS games) more or less breaks even on an annual basis.
If by success you mean they made a console you liked? Okay, that's up to you. But in business terms the only "success" of the line was competing against Sony -- and that only counts (business-wise) if, in the long term, you make money. Which hasn't happened yet and, with the third gen, doesn't look like it will ever come about.
ACs are so much fun. Post weird and wild things without any consequence.
Anyway, I had MS "smart phones" and they sucked. 2 days of battery life sure, but only if you didn't use it. Crashed a lot? Yep. Required stylus? Yep. Interface lockout? Yep.
And god forbid you actually try to use it. The main reason I had it was for email, but that part was basically non-functional. When management finally got over the anti-Apple fears we switched /entirely/ to iPhone. There have been a few employees since the switch that hate Apple and jumped ship to Android as soon as they could but *no one* stuck with MS.
if by "created MS-DOS" you actually mean "hired a programmer to copy CPM", then, sure. Because IBM tried to license CPM, but there was a culture clash fiasco and when they approached Bill Gates for an operating system he sold them vaporware, then turned around and hired it to be stolen -- not that the contract was for theft, but as protection for Bill Gates having any liability.
MS (at least under Bill Gates) was successful due to cut-throat and (at best) barely legal business practices.
Suggesting that MS is no different than Apple or Google? In the sense of acquisition? I don't keep up on Apple's ventures, but based on the ones I know of they primarily acquire to "secure" their business. For example, buying CUPS when they could've just used it. If they hadn't, then MS could've purchased and killed CUPS. The purchase was a means of securing their business. It adds up front costs but gives better stability and *may* decrease long term costs.
OTOH Google appears to be speculative about their acquisitions. Instead of securing their base they are after expansion. Perhaps the distinction is subtle, perhaps not. Apple sells hardware -- the rest is support for the hardware. Buying a maps company is securing the base for support for the phones. In contrast, Google's core business is advertising. Google tries to expand its scope, but it always comes back to "how can we leverage this for advertising".
Microsoft sells software. Yes, they sell hardware too (some of which has been quite good), but that is not their core business. And that is why they were scared when Netscape had the vision of the web browser becoming the desktop -- it was a direct threat to their core business (MS survives on profits from Windows and Office, not much else) and would allow dropping in a different underlying OS without the user seeing a difference. Google apps also threatens their core business as few people have any actual use for Office's additional features.
It isn't that MS would go away (there are still many people who do use Office's additional features, or are otherwise tied to using a MS operating system), but they would lose a significant amount of revenue. And, understandably, they don't want that future. So MS is trying to compete. It just looks like the mad flailing of a blinded cyclops as they do so.
"Apple is not newsworthy" -- the one accurate part of your post.
Yes, Apple is an abusive employer. Oh, wait, you mean those Chinese companies that produce parts for Asus, etc., are abusive. Wrong you are.
Apple's profits are down and they are plummeting. Oh, wait, you mean that was just a dip and they really do make things beside the iPhone. Wow, wrong again.
But you *are* right that Apple is not newsworthy. But for some reason everytime a journalist wants to popularize a negative tech article they write it up in a way that pushes Apple. Still, you're right. They aren't newsworthy, its just they get page hits.
care for some data to support your assertion that "women, particularly mothers, are far more prone to except[sic] statist rule"? I'd be interested in where such data came from (other than your ass) because it does not fit generally known facts.
Lets have an example: in the state of Missouri it only recently became legal to have a birth at home with a midwife present* -- that law wasn't changed because women, particularly mothers, just accepted the status quo. In point of fact it was changed because of wide spread efforts by women, especially mothers, to apply effective pressure on white male politicians. Working within the rules for change doesn't make them more prone to accept statist rule.
Although your misogynist view of women is not uncommon that does not mean it is accurate.
* For accuracy I must point out that actually, in practice, it is mostly illegal to have a home birth in Missouri. This is due to the licensing requirement for midwives and a requirement (I don't recall at the moment if it is codified in law or just a matter of practice) to be supervised by a doctor that has resulted in I think one "birthing center" for the entire state. The only *legal* way to have a home birth in Missouri is to have no one present. And I know mothers who do just that, but there are others who dare find a midwife who is willing to come to the home.