The primary issue the EU is arguing is that Google uses a monopoly position to encourage or force hardware vendors to include as default certain features in Android OS. Other software monopolies have tried to solve this anti-competitive issue by giving a selection of competitive options, even if a preferred option is listed first or has advertising to suggest choosing the preferred option.
The Microsoft Windows anti-competitive EU (2009) and US(1998) case was this issue but also the fact that IE was baked into the operating system. That fundamentally the Internet Explorer browser was not an uninstallable core part of the operating system. It was found that it is somewhat OK to have software that was not uninstallable and included as long as choice was presented and the product was not default. The same ideas are being extended to any competitive service such as a search engine. It is worth noting that Microsoft didn't exactly play nice after the ruling and in 2013 was fined $732 Million. In all Microsoft paid about 3.4 billion in fines between 1998 and 2009.
The google search engine API might be baked into Android and not uninstallable. However competitive search engine and browser choices would be to need to be presented. My guess is that like Microsoft, Google won't be forced to change the google search bar functionality as it is baked into the Google search suite. However folks may in the future be presented with competitive search bar options such as Amazon or Microsoft. It will be interesting to see how this all plays out as surely Apple, Microsoft, Amazon and others have a key interest in the rulings only harming Google. But not harming so much that they are not able to continue using and gaining from the Android platform.
As others have said, the primary competition in the mobile smartphone market is far less open. Their market share and owning the hardware potentially being their only excuse.
This is intriguing! I had no idea that my shaver and vacuum had digital content! Here I thought that they were a simple battery connected to a fancy tiny motor that either connected to a worm drive or made this fancy cyclone effect. The idea of playing music on my vacuum while I perform house chores is an interesting concept though. Saves me from having to figure out where I put my Walkman and which CD I want to play. OP please enlighten which models offer DRM?
Back in my day we referred to malicious hackers as blackhats and they read 2600
Society could correct the "hacker" term by including security hacker or blackhat hacker or malicious hacker in news articles. Throughout history lots of benign hobbies have been related to criminal or social negative behavior. Though it is difficult to reprogram society at large to understand the difference between good and bad behavior via a single word or description, we can tackle the issue of applying pre-crime and profiling to these words and descriptions.
For example let's say I hacked a nissan diesel pickup to run on vegetable oil by changing out the hoses. If a police officer overhears a conversation I have with someone that I "hacked a Nissan truck", by simply hearing the description they shouldn't have a lawful way to arrest me or at minimum should attempt to get more information before giving me a hard time. This same situation and argument should be able to be applied to any other benign hobby that doesn't harm others.
USA Cyber command, which was started in 2009, is really just an arm of the NSA. It makes perfect sense from a political view point for the lead of the NSA to also oversee the Cyber command. One counter argument to this might be that Cyber command is/was intended to be defensive focused while the NSA is focused on all communication intelligence both offensive and defensive. At some level there is likely to be some management structure that is only Cyber Command focused. This story is likely a non-event.
It has been an incredible honor to be alive at the same time as Stephen Hawking. His idea's and his story impacted so many people around the world. The impact he made on science will likely be remembered and studied for thousands of years. The Maya, Plato, Copernicus, Einstein, Hawking. These are just a few. Hawking is now and we all got to live in his time! Thank you Dr. Hawking, you will be greatly missed and always remembered.
There is real value in the resources of our moon https://www.space.com/28189-mo.... Staking a claim to those resources could be a bargaining chip even if there is no real value extracted. It isn't hard to see the value. For example if there was an island in the middle of the pacific that no government had laid claim to and was later found to contain 10 billion units of natural resources but would take 1 billion units of resources to extract. Anyone with the capacity to start the process of investigation or extraction would. Others with less resources may want to partner up or even try to pay off "the first to market." There has been increased interest from Russia and China to go to the moon. Industrial races can also be good for economies as well as uniting a divided populous. Even if the Trump administration doesn't actually back NASA monetarily they may have a lot to gain by lip service alone.
Free/Open Software is an ideal of the STEM community. It is great and I think it is better. However the entire global software user base is not of the STEM mindset. Many companies want to have a business model of selling software licenses. Some sell both licenses and support. Stallman has long preferred the idea that we as a society share information the is easy to copy. He supports a reasonable compensation related to creative works. But puts more emphasis on compensation through continued support of that creative work. He cites situations where people use non-free/open software, support ends for that software and people are then often forced to either discontinue use, increase vulnerability or loss of productivity risks, and/or purchase a new license of what is essentially the same software that has extra non-security related enhancements. For the latter argument it is made that users end up paying not just for the enhancements, but also for the original product as well as a built in support retainer in many cases.
It is my belief that the problem Mr. Stallman really wants to fix is this last business model. For every person in the world to have full control over all the information they are given is a great idea. Reality is that the Human condition of greed, or improving ones self by disadvantaging another, prevents FOSS. It, indeed then, would be enough to mandate software and information not be double charged. That either an ongoing support license for use or a support license retainer built into an original product followed by cheaper enhancements with a further retainer built in be possible. Many companies already do this. It isn't FOSS, it isn't giving the user base full control over information. That isn't possible due to greed. In the same way certain governments such as Marxist Communism really isn't possible.
But, to defend greed just a bit, a sense of bettering ones self does drive many people to do things that are not comfortable, that are above average, that give them a sense of fulfillment in their lives. For those of us that embrace FOSS we are free to continue our scientific sharing of ideas. We should be thankful that those who oppose or seek to abuse FOSS must follow the same rules that protect non-free closed software.
My first reaction to this story is what will prevent fraud? It has already been proven that editing video and audio is possible to significantly change the story of what has been captured. It might be trivial to add an object to a video such as gun or another bystander that didn't exist. Something to cause confusion or doubt in a court case. Computers can be used to rearrange voice and even learn a voice and be able to make up sounds that didn't exist.
I would hope that appropriate protections exist to prevent this kind of fraud on a body camera. However there is nothing to prevent that from a public video without further expert analysis to somehow prove that the public video is authentic. I think I like the idea, but it will need a lot of authenticity and security considerations.
And... Creating and controlling a new company is relatively simple. Create a company that is independent with a huge amount of starting debt. Then "invest" in this new company because you care. You give this new company all the starting capitol and require this company to come to you for future loans. The interest of the seed money and loan money would be much higher than a bank, but hey you are taking a huge risk. Since you are the primary investor, then you control the board, the leadership. But you ARE NOT that company. Any problems, laws, rules, anything to do with that company isn't your liability because you just kindly are helping this new company survive. Now, this new independent company can do whatever it wants. If it eventually collapses then you either lose a portion of your investment money and/or you get to fight out in court with other "creditors" for the liquidation money. Creditors may include legal settlements. If this new company does really well, starts making profits well above expectation, and/or doesn't have much legal risk, then you simply force the company to sell themselves to you. Somehow people make full careers out of figuring out how to do this instead of spending all this effort producing something actually useful to the masses.
Allan Turing and Alonzo Church are rolling in their graves thinking about this. They believed that it was possible to have a machine simulate anything physical, presumably in physics. Thus we could indeed be a simulation! My personal belief is not that Allan or Alonzo thought that we and everything we know is a simulation. I believe they were focused on much more practical applications. That is solving world peace through mathematics.
EX-CIO Beth Jacob's from Target Corp. My opinion on why she was really asked to leave is due to the significant number of vendors and outsourcing of IT that was done before 2014. IBM was one of the largest vendors and since 2014 and since Beth Jacob's departure a departure from IBM has also occurred.
From a person who has had similar international headlines for systems that I can impact. My heart goes out to you. System failures are never fun, failures that affect a lot of customers are just plain stressful. Document processes and learn from this event all the you can. Customers care most what was learned and how to prevent this and future scoped events from occurring again.
I disagree. If you go before investors you want to make the best case possible. There are plenty of investors out there that would gladly give you their money if you can make a good case for completely raping and pillaging an industry in a legal way. The real trick then is hiding the fact that you have a disruptive business idea from the competition until it is too late. For example Amazon. Yes, they are known for their "catalog sales", an idea that has been around for ever. Anyone remember Sears? What Amazon figured out is how to get around as much tax as possible, logistics, an attractive digital marketplace for anything and everything, finally massive distributed compute. Sears, Walmart, Target, and all of the other big retailers all banked on the "I want it now" factor. Amazon showed the USA and the world that people are willing to wait a few days, even a few weeks, for goods that are significantly cheaper due to logistics and tax discounts.
Innovations, be it a physical gadget, an idea, or now a virtual gadget have always tried to be disruptive. Else it would not be an innovation.
I try to use fixedsys fonts such as system in all of my writing they are widely accepted and have a tested user base. On top of that the system font avoid most modern time based conflicts as it dates back to the 1980's. It takes low resources and low resolution to create on a display device. I would encourage everyone to use system font and avoid all the painful issues of compatibility, performance, and legal ramifications that other much newer fonts can have.
I am curious how they plan to service the town. The town airport doesn't even show up on the list of airports in the country. I would estimate it at 200ft or less. A Beechcraft Kingair, a typical small town cargo plane, requires more runway space. Narvik is the closest large airport and that is 110 miles away through a twisty highway through the fjords. Ships are great for large cargo but not for fast cargo. The DC manager can overcome some vendor issues by having trained/certified intelligent hands that work shifts. But if you are creating the largest datacenter in the world then I hope that you also plan to have a large commercial airport as well and possibly some amount of major vendor buy in. Expect requirements of 4 hours or less vendor presence. 4 hours from Narvik to Ballangen in the winter might be tricky.
This is why companies like Akamai have products geared specifically for this problem. However stopping bots is nearly impossible unless you deal with them on a realtime basis. It would be interesting if Linkedin could get the entire world to make website scrapers illegal and then actually enforce that illegality. As of now when a bot owner is shutdown they just move the operation overnight to the ISP that will take their business in the same country or move countries all together. Likely the only way to stop this behavior is in the website transaction process or to make scraping not monetarily feasible.
Given the wealth that most of the cabinet and staff have in the current white house it confuses me why many of them would want to risk image issues or care to face the daily workload and headaches that these positions entail. Though many are earning a comfortable salary, the money pulled in is likely secondary to the access to impact decisions as well as access to information. Given the chaos and drama however we must be left to think carefully about what kind of corruption might be brewing behind this relatively opaque administration. Like a poorly tuned monitoring system there is so much noise in US politics right now it is difficult to pick out where the real harm to the world might be.
I just hope that the rest of the world understands that the greater percentage of the USA population does not hate any particular group of people as the current government would lead the world to believe. There are too many people in the country left behind by automation. Those disenfranchised folks look for a conduit for their frustration. It is a bit scary because that is one of the components that led to global political struggles in the 1930's. The difficult part is educating those disenfranchised on how they can improve their position and grow with the world rather than trying to figure out how to get what they had back. Hating another cultural group might make you feel better, but it is unlikely to fix the root cause of your frustration.
Accenture is an Irish company. It has about 33% of its workforce as Indian based labor, 12% United States, and 12.5% Filipino. Since the company is a global operation one could argue that they hire plenty of US Americans. Compared to Wipro and Infosys, both India based companies, Accenture operates under a different business model. Its heritage also stems from a US based company. IBM is a better example of a competitor and business model.
As I grow older I keep on comparing the behaviors of those in their late teens and 20's to my own to best understand how the world, or at least the culture around me, might be changing. "Kids" today take for granted having a personal computer in their pockets at all times. They are not really forced to memorize as much, be quite as creative, or have as much face to face time. I've seen them sitting in the same room staring at their phone texting/instant messaging each other as a form of communication. WotC are latching on to this idea. Though I believe there is a lot lost in not seeing a friend stand up gleefully and make sword thrust motions after rolling a Nat 20 and confirming. I suspect this product will work. The biggest concern will be WotC's ability to be a software/service provider instead of just licensing to other developers as they have done in the past http://www.mobygames.com/compa.... Presumably WotC would use their Magic Online development group to do this.
I remember back when I was 17, I drank some very good beer. Wait, that was a Simpsons reference. At 17 you don't think about consequences and largely you don't have much to lose. Still using commercial services in a way the company did not intend might have consequences. My hope is this kid will get a kudos for bringing the fault to light for T-mobile, a slap on the wrist to say be more careful about what you play around with, and later a fun and successful college career and productive life. The failure was to make it public if the fault in the system still exists because it could cause the company monetary damage. That damage would then likely come back to haunt the kid. The correct order for all of you out there who might be in the same boat is to hack politely, cause no damage, report only to an authority and/or owner who can responsibly fix the issue. Yes, there is still the potential for consequences but at least one could argue that they brought the greatest benefit to what was hacked and that they did not bring harm or intended harm to a person or persons.
Though really it is best to hack only things that you own or "have an implied license to own."
Slashdot Mirror
The primary issue the EU is arguing is that Google uses a monopoly position to encourage or force hardware vendors to include as default certain features in Android OS. Other software monopolies have tried to solve this anti-competitive issue by giving a selection of competitive options, even if a preferred option is listed first or has advertising to suggest choosing the preferred option.
The Microsoft Windows anti-competitive EU (2009) and US(1998) case was this issue but also the fact that IE was baked into the operating system. That fundamentally the Internet Explorer browser was not an uninstallable core part of the operating system. It was found that it is somewhat OK to have software that was not uninstallable and included as long as choice was presented and the product was not default. The same ideas are being extended to any competitive service such as a search engine. It is worth noting that Microsoft didn't exactly play nice after the ruling and in 2013 was fined $732 Million. In all Microsoft paid about 3.4 billion in fines between 1998 and 2009.
The google search engine API might be baked into Android and not uninstallable. However competitive search engine and browser choices would be to need to be presented. My guess is that like Microsoft, Google won't be forced to change the google search bar functionality as it is baked into the Google search suite. However folks may in the future be presented with competitive search bar options such as Amazon or Microsoft. It will be interesting to see how this all plays out as surely Apple, Microsoft, Amazon and others have a key interest in the rulings only harming Google. But not harming so much that they are not able to continue using and gaining from the Android platform.
As others have said, the primary competition in the mobile smartphone market is far less open. Their market share and owning the hardware potentially being their only excuse.
This is intriguing! I had no idea that my shaver and vacuum had digital content! Here I thought that they were a simple battery connected to a fancy tiny motor that either connected to a worm drive or made this fancy cyclone effect. The idea of playing music on my vacuum while I perform house chores is an interesting concept though. Saves me from having to figure out where I put my Walkman and which CD I want to play. OP please enlighten which models offer DRM?
Back in my day we referred to malicious hackers as blackhats and they read 2600
Society could correct the "hacker" term by including security hacker or blackhat hacker or malicious hacker in news articles. Throughout history lots of benign hobbies have been related to criminal or social negative behavior. Though it is difficult to reprogram society at large to understand the difference between good and bad behavior via a single word or description, we can tackle the issue of applying pre-crime and profiling to these words and descriptions.
For example let's say I hacked a nissan diesel pickup to run on vegetable oil by changing out the hoses. If a police officer overhears a conversation I have with someone that I "hacked a Nissan truck", by simply hearing the description they shouldn't have a lawful way to arrest me or at minimum should attempt to get more information before giving me a hard time. This same situation and argument should be able to be applied to any other benign hobby that doesn't harm others.
USA Cyber command, which was started in 2009, is really just an arm of the NSA. It makes perfect sense from a political view point for the lead of the NSA to also oversee the Cyber command. One counter argument to this might be that Cyber command is/was intended to be defensive focused while the NSA is focused on all communication intelligence both offensive and defensive. At some level there is likely to be some management structure that is only Cyber Command focused. This story is likely a non-event.
It has been an incredible honor to be alive at the same time as Stephen Hawking. His idea's and his story impacted so many people around the world. The impact he made on science will likely be remembered and studied for thousands of years. The Maya, Plato, Copernicus, Einstein, Hawking. These are just a few. Hawking is now and we all got to live in his time! Thank you Dr. Hawking, you will be greatly missed and always remembered.
"But I was going to Tosche Station to pick up power converters."
There is real value in the resources of our moon https://www.space.com/28189-mo.... Staking a claim to those resources could be a bargaining chip even if there is no real value extracted. It isn't hard to see the value. For example if there was an island in the middle of the pacific that no government had laid claim to and was later found to contain 10 billion units of natural resources but would take 1 billion units of resources to extract. Anyone with the capacity to start the process of investigation or extraction would. Others with less resources may want to partner up or even try to pay off "the first to market." There has been increased interest from Russia and China to go to the moon. Industrial races can also be good for economies as well as uniting a divided populous. Even if the Trump administration doesn't actually back NASA monetarily they may have a lot to gain by lip service alone.
Very fair, English is hard some days. :-)
Free/Open Software is an ideal of the STEM community. It is great and I think it is better. However the entire global software user base is not of the STEM mindset. Many companies want to have a business model of selling software licenses. Some sell both licenses and support. Stallman has long preferred the idea that we as a society share information the is easy to copy. He supports a reasonable compensation related to creative works. But puts more emphasis on compensation through continued support of that creative work. He cites situations where people use non-free/open software, support ends for that software and people are then often forced to either discontinue use, increase vulnerability or loss of productivity risks, and/or purchase a new license of what is essentially the same software that has extra non-security related enhancements. For the latter argument it is made that users end up paying not just for the enhancements, but also for the original product as well as a built in support retainer in many cases.
It is my belief that the problem Mr. Stallman really wants to fix is this last business model. For every person in the world to have full control over all the information they are given is a great idea. Reality is that the Human condition of greed, or improving ones self by disadvantaging another, prevents FOSS. It, indeed then, would be enough to mandate software and information not be double charged. That either an ongoing support license for use or a support license retainer built into an original product followed by cheaper enhancements with a further retainer built in be possible. Many companies already do this. It isn't FOSS, it isn't giving the user base full control over information. That isn't possible due to greed. In the same way certain governments such as Marxist Communism really isn't possible.
But, to defend greed just a bit, a sense of bettering ones self does drive many people to do things that are not comfortable, that are above average, that give them a sense of fulfillment in their lives. For those of us that embrace FOSS we are free to continue our scientific sharing of ideas. We should be thankful that those who oppose or seek to abuse FOSS must follow the same rules that protect non-free closed software.
Amp, also known as Ampere. Electromagnetic force between electrical conductors carrying electric current.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
Due to this prior art, I request that any other use of AMP be changed to a different name. Also that AMP not be copyright-able nor patent-able.
My first reaction to this story is what will prevent fraud? It has already been proven that editing video and audio is possible to significantly change the story of what has been captured. It might be trivial to add an object to a video such as gun or another bystander that didn't exist. Something to cause confusion or doubt in a court case. Computers can be used to rearrange voice and even learn a voice and be able to make up sounds that didn't exist.
I would hope that appropriate protections exist to prevent this kind of fraud on a body camera. However there is nothing to prevent that from a public video without further expert analysis to somehow prove that the public video is authentic. I think I like the idea, but it will need a lot of authenticity and security considerations.
And... Creating and controlling a new company is relatively simple. Create a company that is independent with a huge amount of starting debt. Then "invest" in this new company because you care. You give this new company all the starting capitol and require this company to come to you for future loans. The interest of the seed money and loan money would be much higher than a bank, but hey you are taking a huge risk. Since you are the primary investor, then you control the board, the leadership. But you ARE NOT that company. Any problems, laws, rules, anything to do with that company isn't your liability because you just kindly are helping this new company survive. Now, this new independent company can do whatever it wants. If it eventually collapses then you either lose a portion of your investment money and/or you get to fight out in court with other "creditors" for the liquidation money. Creditors may include legal settlements. If this new company does really well, starts making profits well above expectation, and/or doesn't have much legal risk, then you simply force the company to sell themselves to you. Somehow people make full careers out of figuring out how to do this instead of spending all this effort producing something actually useful to the masses.
Allan Turing and Alonzo Church are rolling in their graves thinking about this. They believed that it was possible to have a machine simulate anything physical, presumably in physics. Thus we could indeed be a simulation! My personal belief is not that Allan or Alonzo thought that we and everything we know is a simulation. I believe they were focused on much more practical applications. That is solving world peace through mathematics.
EX-CIO Beth Jacob's from Target Corp. My opinion on why she was really asked to leave is due to the significant number of vendors and outsourcing of IT that was done before 2014. IBM was one of the largest vendors and since 2014 and since Beth Jacob's departure a departure from IBM has also occurred.
From a person who has had similar international headlines for systems that I can impact. My heart goes out to you. System failures are never fun, failures that affect a lot of customers are just plain stressful. Document processes and learn from this event all the you can. Customers care most what was learned and how to prevent this and future scoped events from occurring again.
Hang in there!
I disagree. If you go before investors you want to make the best case possible. There are plenty of investors out there that would gladly give you their money if you can make a good case for completely raping and pillaging an industry in a legal way. The real trick then is hiding the fact that you have a disruptive business idea from the competition until it is too late. For example Amazon. Yes, they are known for their "catalog sales", an idea that has been around for ever. Anyone remember Sears? What Amazon figured out is how to get around as much tax as possible, logistics, an attractive digital marketplace for anything and everything, finally massive distributed compute. Sears, Walmart, Target, and all of the other big retailers all banked on the "I want it now" factor. Amazon showed the USA and the world that people are willing to wait a few days, even a few weeks, for goods that are significantly cheaper due to logistics and tax discounts.
Innovations, be it a physical gadget, an idea, or now a virtual gadget have always tried to be disruptive. Else it would not be an innovation.
I try to use fixedsys fonts such as system in all of my writing they are widely accepted and have a tested user base. On top of that the system font avoid most modern time based conflicts as it dates back to the 1980's. It takes low resources and low resolution to create on a display device. I would encourage everyone to use system font and avoid all the painful issues of compatibility, performance, and legal ramifications that other much newer fonts can have.
I am curious how they plan to service the town. The town airport doesn't even show up on the list of airports in the country. I would estimate it at 200ft or less. A Beechcraft Kingair, a typical small town cargo plane, requires more runway space. Narvik is the closest large airport and that is 110 miles away through a twisty highway through the fjords. Ships are great for large cargo but not for fast cargo. The DC manager can overcome some vendor issues by having trained/certified intelligent hands that work shifts. But if you are creating the largest datacenter in the world then I hope that you also plan to have a large commercial airport as well and possibly some amount of major vendor buy in. Expect requirements of 4 hours or less vendor presence. 4 hours from Narvik to Ballangen in the winter might be tricky.
Good luck with the logistics!
I have direct experience with this myself.
This is why companies like Akamai have products geared specifically for this problem. However stopping bots is nearly impossible unless you deal with them on a realtime basis. It would be interesting if Linkedin could get the entire world to make website scrapers illegal and then actually enforce that illegality. As of now when a bot owner is shutdown they just move the operation overnight to the ISP that will take their business in the same country or move countries all together. Likely the only way to stop this behavior is in the website transaction process or to make scraping not monetarily feasible.
Given the wealth that most of the cabinet and staff have in the current white house it confuses me why many of them would want to risk image issues or care to face the daily workload and headaches that these positions entail. Though many are earning a comfortable salary, the money pulled in is likely secondary to the access to impact decisions as well as access to information. Given the chaos and drama however we must be left to think carefully about what kind of corruption might be brewing behind this relatively opaque administration. Like a poorly tuned monitoring system there is so much noise in US politics right now it is difficult to pick out where the real harm to the world might be.
This apparently coincides with a crackdown in China. The BBC is running a story about Apple pulling VPN's from its app store.
I just hope that the rest of the world understands that the greater percentage of the USA population does not hate any particular group of people as the current government would lead the world to believe. There are too many people in the country left behind by automation. Those disenfranchised folks look for a conduit for their frustration. It is a bit scary because that is one of the components that led to global political struggles in the 1930's. The difficult part is educating those disenfranchised on how they can improve their position and grow with the world rather than trying to figure out how to get what they had back. Hating another cultural group might make you feel better, but it is unlikely to fix the root cause of your frustration.
Accenture is an Irish company. It has about 33% of its workforce as Indian based labor, 12% United States, and 12.5% Filipino. Since the company is a global operation one could argue that they hire plenty of US Americans. Compared to Wipro and Infosys, both India based companies, Accenture operates under a different business model. Its heritage also stems from a US based company. IBM is a better example of a competitor and business model.
As I grow older I keep on comparing the behaviors of those in their late teens and 20's to my own to best understand how the world, or at least the culture around me, might be changing. "Kids" today take for granted having a personal computer in their pockets at all times. They are not really forced to memorize as much, be quite as creative, or have as much face to face time. I've seen them sitting in the same room staring at their phone texting/instant messaging each other as a form of communication. WotC are latching on to this idea. Though I believe there is a lot lost in not seeing a friend stand up gleefully and make sword thrust motions after rolling a Nat 20 and confirming. I suspect this product will work. The biggest concern will be WotC's ability to be a software/service provider instead of just licensing to other developers as they have done in the past http://www.mobygames.com/compa.... Presumably WotC would use their Magic Online development group to do this.
I remember back when I was 17, I drank some very good beer. Wait, that was a Simpsons reference. At 17 you don't think about consequences and largely you don't have much to lose. Still using commercial services in a way the company did not intend might have consequences. My hope is this kid will get a kudos for bringing the fault to light for T-mobile, a slap on the wrist to say be more careful about what you play around with, and later a fun and successful college career and productive life. The failure was to make it public if the fault in the system still exists because it could cause the company monetary damage. That damage would then likely come back to haunt the kid. The correct order for all of you out there who might be in the same boat is to hack politely, cause no damage, report only to an authority and/or owner who can responsibly fix the issue. Yes, there is still the potential for consequences but at least one could argue that they brought the greatest benefit to what was hacked and that they did not bring harm or intended harm to a person or persons.
Though really it is best to hack only things that you own or "have an implied license to own."