At least with closed source you can just assume you're compromised, or trust the (known) people who put it out. Open source backdoors, if anybody even notices them (and let's be fair here, the NSA hires way smarter people than your average coder), will appear as accidental bugs, placed there anonymously. Open source is no more secure than closed source, for a host of reasons, but at least with closed source, you know where the code came from and can judge it based on that.
There is some indication that the NSA is a rampant bureaucracy run by geeks with an unlimited budget who do things just to see if they can, but that doesn't mean they haven't gotten useful information or accomplished anything significant. I'd say the destruction of Iranian centrifuges was a master stroke, personally.
Now, as for their domestic surveillance operations, I'd say it's pretty fair that they've not prevented any terrorist attacks whatsoever. That's the problem with broad collection of data, it's all the harder to sort through for anything useful. It's unfortunate that they're going to keep trying, instead of returning to targeted intelligence gathering.
Most diplomacy is economic in nature, what do you think the G8 is all about, or the WTO? Countries spy on each other to gain an upper hand in negotiations, much more than to gain an upper hand militarily. Since most of this diplomacy happens between friends, much of the spying happens between friends (or at least trade partners). Spying on Iran or North Korea may get most of the press, but don't let that fool you.
Is it embarrassing when this sort of thing comes out? Of course. Will countries go to war over it? Of course not. Germany is spying on us just as much as we're spying on them (or at least trying to), and everyone in the upper echelons of government in both countries know it. The reason this is even big news is because the German government doesn't want their own citizenry to start asking questions about German domestic spying. Best to keep the focus on Snowden and the US. Meanwhile I'm sure Merkel is furious more at her own security than the NSA.
I don't disagree. I'm merely saying Snowden has gone beyond his alleged duty to the American people in revealing unconstitutional, broad warrantless domestic spying. I'm glad he's leaked that information, and I hope things are changed.
But everything else he's up to, talking about spying on Merkel's phone calls and the like, that does nothing but hurt US interests. I'm not talking about the Federal Government's interests, but the interests of all Americans.
Nothing is so black and white. He may have revealed some things that will help Americans understand what policy changes need to be made, but he's also revealing information about operations the NSA is supposed to be doing, and now there's talk of him helping foreign governments in exchange for asylum. I'd say that makes him a naive idealist, at best.
It's increasingly clear that Snowden is being "handled" though. We shouldn't overlook the fact that he is a prime target for exploitation, by the Russians, by whoever ends up with him. If he does indeed go to Germany and help them defeat NSA spying in that country, well then the treason label fits.
I don't have any problem with Snowden revealing mass surveillance on American citizens to American citizens, but spying on foreign governments is what the NSA is supposed to do. Yes, even our allies, and yes, even for economic reasons (most spying is economic in nature, and every ally spies on every ally). Snowden's reveal of spying on foreign governments and leaders, and any methods to do so, does cross a definite line. That does actually harm the US diplomatically, harms US businesses, and harms those American citizens Snowden claims to support. Snowden may be a naive idealist in over his head, or he may have been "turned" by those who are currently surrounding him.
If you really believe that every world government does not spy on other world governments, you're an idiot. If you think that friends don't spy on friends, you're an idiot. The NSA has a bigger budget, and probably more expertise and technology, but every country is doing it.
All this supposed outrage by foreign leaders is simply to deflect attention from the fact that these same foreign leaders are currently spying on their own citizens just as much as the NSA is spying on US citizens. These foreign leaders don't want their citizens to ask questions about the other revelations, here, about a government spying on its own citizens, and instead be distracted by something that is obvious yet rarely talked about. Otherwise, the citizens of Germany might have questions about what intelligence the German government is collecting on them, for example.
All the American citizens outraged that the NSA is spying on foreign government officials are absolutely crazy. That's the NSA's job, you fools. You should be outraged that the NSA is spying on YOU, decidedly against its mission statement, and in violation of your constitutional rights. I for one am glad the NSA is spying on foreign heads of state.
I've been saying it for years, but nobody will listen! Jellyfish aren't from this planet at all, they're intelligent aliens creating global warming to xenoform our planet to better serve their purposes!
Rugby Football existed before the Rugby Football Union, dating back to at least 1845, predating even Cambridge Rules. The sport of Rugby branched off into Canadian Gridiron Football (1861), American Gridiron Football (1869), Rugby Football Union (1871), and all of the variants of Rugby and Gridiron we enjoy today.
If anyone should be arrogantly claiming the title of the one true football, it should be Australians, as theirs was codified before any other extant football rules, ahead of the Canadians by two years, the British by four, Americans by ten, and the Irish by twenty-eight. The Australians use their hands plenty in their football, so maybe we should give up on the notion that football is played with only the feet (especially since it's not, in any variant, actually true).
I say, why can't we all just be friends, and enjoy as many footballs as we care to invent? Every type I've ever played or watched, I've enjoyed. Who really cares which was first, or who calls which one by a common nickname?
Well, and the whole football name criticism is a bit disingenuous as well. There is no such sport as "football." That's merely a common shortening of the name of several sports. In America, technically it's American Gridiron Football, whereas what most of the rest of the world calls football is Association Football, which itself is a "ripoff" of Rugby Football and Cambridge Rules Football. Then there's Australian Rules Football, Canadian Gridiron Football, Gaelic Football, two major kinds of Rugby Football, and a host of other related sports. Most of these involve a fair bit of hand use, with Association Football being the exception, though let's not forget the goalkeeper uses his hands quite a bit. All the games involve the feet, and all the games share a common ancestry. Just as we didn't evolve from chimpanzees, both species evolved from a common ancestor, the same can be said of the various football sports.
I think there's something to be said in spreading it around. It will garner more interest worldwide, and probably have economic benefits as well, with more money flowing into the competition from more than just three or four countries.
I would take it a step further, though. Instead of 3 permanent cities and 1 floating competition, how about 3 permanent continents and a floating one? It could be sort of like the Olympics, with the events moving so it's more of a worldwide competition. Moscow may be a good choice for representing Asia, but what about China, India, and Japan? Let the Asian chess championship tournament move around all of Asia, then have a European chess championship tournament bounce between Amsterdam and Linares if they like, and other cities in Europe too. Then put a third one in North or South America moving to various cities. The fourth championship can hit up any other cities in other continents not on the permanent continents.
And for those saying the US has no good chess scene, how do you think it's supposed to get one? And who cares where the players are from. Not only is the money there in the US to support a tournament, but there's plenty of chess players, regardless of skill, who would be interested in watching a tournament hosted in the US.
FIDE should absolutely get involved and set up a Grand Slam of some sort, but the reasons aren't purely for determining who the best players are. It's also about bringing new players into the game. For that, they'll need a global outlook.
Truly the greatest thing about America is its ability to attract immigrants that then add to its greatness. We should be very careful not to ruin that, either through policy or xenophobia. It's the one thing we can compete in better than anybody else, and that fresh infusion of energy and labor keeps our economy and culture going.
Yeah, unfortunately it's named after an obscure Californian inside joke, as if the whole world revolves around California. They should have just named it Sea Lion to hang a lampshade on this terrible chapter, then dropped cutesy nicknames entirely with OS 11+.
John Siracusa's reviews of OS X over at Ars Technica have always been in-depth and informative, and while John Siracusa himself may be a fan of OS X, he doesn't shy away from being very critical when it does something not-so-great, or he sees a problem with Apple's direction. This year he (rightfully) railed against several UI elements that are pretty bizarre. It's hardly a puff piece. It's more educational, than anything.
In general, I find his reviews much more about explaining how things work, than actually praising or criticizing. It's a review, in the sense that it's an overview of the new operating system, rather than some sort of grading of the operating system. He's not comparing it to anything except the previous versions of OS X, and then only in objective technical respects. It's not about competing views of different products, it's to tell existing OS X users what they can expect if they upgrade.
Mostly Siracusa talks about under-the-hood workings of the operating system and computer hardware, and past Siracusa reviews have even included code examples to explain new APIs to developers interested in the platform, and users who may be the beneficiaries of developers using new APIs. This year it talks quite a bit about race-to-sleep and other technical issues that apply to computing as a whole. It's exactly the sort of review somebody would want to read if they were technically-inclined, like the Slashdot audience. I would say a Siracusa OS X review is entirely appropriate, here. If you're just looking for some kind of Windows vs. Mac (vs. Linux) argument fodder, it's not the review for you. I wouldn't want or care about those sorts of reviews on Slashdot.
The legal system cannot work without officers of the court acting with honesty in the interests of justice. In this case, officers of the court (Samsung's lawyers) disobeyed a lawful order from the court in order to give their client an unjust advantage in that client's negotiations with a third party. This is called contempt of court, and it violates their obligation to act in good faith as officers of the court. It's similar to suborning perjury, or helping your client flee the jurisdiction to escape justice, or hiding evidence they have full knowledge of. On the prosecution side, it would be like destroying evidence that clears a suspect of charges. There will be severe penalties for the lawyers in question. They will likely not be officers of the court for much longer.
Samsung, to be fair, didn't violate any such obligation. We don't know if they encouraged lawyers to do this or not, but we do know that they took unfair advantage of it. A company acting in good faith as part of a legal process would have put a stop to it immediately, fired said lawyers, and informed the judge and made whatever efforts they could on their end to limit the damage. We know Samsung didn't do this, and in fact bragged about their corporate espionage. It's a murkier issue as to Samsung's actual liability or criminality in this, but if it is determined they induced this contempt of court by their lawyers, I imagine the consequences will be severe for them as well. Certainly Nokia has cause to sue Samsung's lawyers, if not Samsung directly. Apple will no doubt use Samsung and their lawyers' actions in this matter as argument for further limiting of their confidential information in current and future cases, and I imagine courts will agree. The fact is Samsung persuaded a judge that Apple should give up certain confidential information, that judge gave an order that only Samsung's lawyers would be allowed to see this information and no one else, but Samsung's executive team got the information anyway after their lawyers took this confidential information and sent it to Samsung in violation of court order.
At a minimum, Samsung got caught not reporting unethical behavior by their legal counsel, and taking advantage of it for their own gain, likely in the many tens or hundreds of millions of dollars. Considering Samsung's history of destroying evidence and other legal shenanigans, I don't think it's such a stretch that they somehow induced their lawyers to commit contempt of court. Logically, the lawyers would need such inducement, as why would they risk being disbarred if they weren't being pressured or incentivized in some way by their client?
The nature of the court order that was violated is not the issue here. The issue is a serious breach of obligations by Samsung's lawyers, and Samsung subsequently having an unfair advantage in their negotiations with Nokia, and an unfair competitive advantage in the marketplace with Apple.
Exactly. Just because "analysts" thought the C stood for China, doesn't mean that's what Apple was thinking. It's pretty clear now, after their announcement, that this is really meant to be Apple's iPod Mini for the iPhone.
The iPod Mini, people may recall, was seen as a colorful but overpriced and outdated device that surely nobody would want. It ended up being Apple's best selling iPod, with kids (or rather their parents) and people who don't care about specs buying them up like crazy. They were a fashion accessory, as much as anything else, and Apple sold a ridiculous amount of those things. I fully expect that Apple will sell more 5Cs than they'll sell 5Ss.
I really don't think the 5C is such a low margin device as people think. TFS seems to think it's using current-generation technology, but the internals are pretty much the same as the iPhone 5, which came out last year. Manufacturing it is surely much cheaper than manufacturing the 5S which is actually current tech. I'm willing to bet the margin is fairly similar to the 5S, if not higher, and even if it was a lower margin, Apple still makes money off of iTunes and the App Store so having more people running iOS is only a good thing.
There may be some cannibalization, but Apple has a consistent history of selling more devices every year than the year before. Clearly they think the iPhone market has grown enough that it can support two models. A one-size-fits-all model may not be good enough to sustain that year-over-year growth, and it would be a mistake not to release a second model. It remains to be seen if the market will grow large enough to support a third model, as the iPod market eventually did, but people have been clamoring for a second model for a while now.
It's not legal for any US citizen to have sex with a 12 year old in Thailand. There's US laws against sex tourism like that.
Whether or not such laws make sense (I'm not talking morally here, but legally), is debatable. Following the laws of other countries overseas getting you in trouble at home when you get back is kind of weird. Stuff like the UCMJ makes sense because the military needs to control its soldiers and have consistent rules, of course, but civilian laws applying in other jurisdictions while perhaps well-intentioned, does raise some interesting issues. Putting aside sex with children, which obviously is going to involve a lot of other issues for people, let's say the US made a law that applied its own federal drug laws to US tourists in Amsterdam, using sex tourism laws as precedent. It could happen. I imagine some people would have a problem with that on legal grounds.
Just because the standard sucks doesn't mean a company should tolerate it. If younger more capable workers are able to do the job for less pay, and an old timer is dragging down the bottom line and not doing his job (and worse, making other people's jobs harder), of course a company is going to go with the "younger, faster, more curious people" who can accomplish the job they need to do.
If those older workers have useful knowledge and skills that are still relevant to somebody, they will find another job. Lots of companies with aging mainframes are looking for people who know languages and systems that nobody learns anymore, and they're willing to pay to get that expertise. If those older workers don't have useful knowledge and skills, why do they deserve employment at all?
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Well, in fact they did claim they stopped terrorist attacks, but that was later determined to be a complete fabrication.
At least with closed source you can just assume you're compromised, or trust the (known) people who put it out. Open source backdoors, if anybody even notices them (and let's be fair here, the NSA hires way smarter people than your average coder), will appear as accidental bugs, placed there anonymously. Open source is no more secure than closed source, for a host of reasons, but at least with closed source, you know where the code came from and can judge it based on that.
There is some indication that the NSA is a rampant bureaucracy run by geeks with an unlimited budget who do things just to see if they can, but that doesn't mean they haven't gotten useful information or accomplished anything significant. I'd say the destruction of Iranian centrifuges was a master stroke, personally.
Now, as for their domestic surveillance operations, I'd say it's pretty fair that they've not prevented any terrorist attacks whatsoever. That's the problem with broad collection of data, it's all the harder to sort through for anything useful. It's unfortunate that they're going to keep trying, instead of returning to targeted intelligence gathering.
Better check your compiler while you're at it, and your hardware.
Most diplomacy is economic in nature, what do you think the G8 is all about, or the WTO? Countries spy on each other to gain an upper hand in negotiations, much more than to gain an upper hand militarily. Since most of this diplomacy happens between friends, much of the spying happens between friends (or at least trade partners). Spying on Iran or North Korea may get most of the press, but don't let that fool you.
Is it embarrassing when this sort of thing comes out? Of course. Will countries go to war over it? Of course not. Germany is spying on us just as much as we're spying on them (or at least trying to), and everyone in the upper echelons of government in both countries know it. The reason this is even big news is because the German government doesn't want their own citizenry to start asking questions about German domestic spying. Best to keep the focus on Snowden and the US. Meanwhile I'm sure Merkel is furious more at her own security than the NSA.
Perhaps you should at least RTFS before you comment. I know this is Slashdot, and I'm not new here, but come on.
I don't disagree. I'm merely saying Snowden has gone beyond his alleged duty to the American people in revealing unconstitutional, broad warrantless domestic spying. I'm glad he's leaked that information, and I hope things are changed.
But everything else he's up to, talking about spying on Merkel's phone calls and the like, that does nothing but hurt US interests. I'm not talking about the Federal Government's interests, but the interests of all Americans.
I think a legal definition of treason is what people are talking about.
Nothing is so black and white. He may have revealed some things that will help Americans understand what policy changes need to be made, but he's also revealing information about operations the NSA is supposed to be doing, and now there's talk of him helping foreign governments in exchange for asylum. I'd say that makes him a naive idealist, at best.
It's increasingly clear that Snowden is being "handled" though. We shouldn't overlook the fact that he is a prime target for exploitation, by the Russians, by whoever ends up with him. If he does indeed go to Germany and help them defeat NSA spying in that country, well then the treason label fits.
I don't have any problem with Snowden revealing mass surveillance on American citizens to American citizens, but spying on foreign governments is what the NSA is supposed to do. Yes, even our allies, and yes, even for economic reasons (most spying is economic in nature, and every ally spies on every ally). Snowden's reveal of spying on foreign governments and leaders, and any methods to do so, does cross a definite line. That does actually harm the US diplomatically, harms US businesses, and harms those American citizens Snowden claims to support. Snowden may be a naive idealist in over his head, or he may have been "turned" by those who are currently surrounding him.
If you really believe that every world government does not spy on other world governments, you're an idiot. If you think that friends don't spy on friends, you're an idiot. The NSA has a bigger budget, and probably more expertise and technology, but every country is doing it.
All this supposed outrage by foreign leaders is simply to deflect attention from the fact that these same foreign leaders are currently spying on their own citizens just as much as the NSA is spying on US citizens. These foreign leaders don't want their citizens to ask questions about the other revelations, here, about a government spying on its own citizens, and instead be distracted by something that is obvious yet rarely talked about. Otherwise, the citizens of Germany might have questions about what intelligence the German government is collecting on them, for example.
All the American citizens outraged that the NSA is spying on foreign government officials are absolutely crazy. That's the NSA's job, you fools. You should be outraged that the NSA is spying on YOU, decidedly against its mission statement, and in violation of your constitutional rights. I for one am glad the NSA is spying on foreign heads of state.
I've been saying it for years, but nobody will listen! Jellyfish aren't from this planet at all, they're intelligent aliens creating global warming to xenoform our planet to better serve their purposes!
Why won't anybody believe me?!?
Rugby Football existed before the Rugby Football Union, dating back to at least 1845, predating even Cambridge Rules. The sport of Rugby branched off into Canadian Gridiron Football (1861), American Gridiron Football (1869), Rugby Football Union (1871), and all of the variants of Rugby and Gridiron we enjoy today.
If anyone should be arrogantly claiming the title of the one true football, it should be Australians, as theirs was codified before any other extant football rules, ahead of the Canadians by two years, the British by four, Americans by ten, and the Irish by twenty-eight. The Australians use their hands plenty in their football, so maybe we should give up on the notion that football is played with only the feet (especially since it's not, in any variant, actually true).
I say, why can't we all just be friends, and enjoy as many footballs as we care to invent? Every type I've ever played or watched, I've enjoyed. Who really cares which was first, or who calls which one by a common nickname?
Well, and the whole football name criticism is a bit disingenuous as well. There is no such sport as "football." That's merely a common shortening of the name of several sports. In America, technically it's American Gridiron Football, whereas what most of the rest of the world calls football is Association Football, which itself is a "ripoff" of Rugby Football and Cambridge Rules Football. Then there's Australian Rules Football, Canadian Gridiron Football, Gaelic Football, two major kinds of Rugby Football, and a host of other related sports. Most of these involve a fair bit of hand use, with Association Football being the exception, though let's not forget the goalkeeper uses his hands quite a bit. All the games involve the feet, and all the games share a common ancestry. Just as we didn't evolve from chimpanzees, both species evolved from a common ancestor, the same can be said of the various football sports.
I think there's something to be said in spreading it around. It will garner more interest worldwide, and probably have economic benefits as well, with more money flowing into the competition from more than just three or four countries.
I would take it a step further, though. Instead of 3 permanent cities and 1 floating competition, how about 3 permanent continents and a floating one? It could be sort of like the Olympics, with the events moving so it's more of a worldwide competition. Moscow may be a good choice for representing Asia, but what about China, India, and Japan? Let the Asian chess championship tournament move around all of Asia, then have a European chess championship tournament bounce between Amsterdam and Linares if they like, and other cities in Europe too. Then put a third one in North or South America moving to various cities. The fourth championship can hit up any other cities in other continents not on the permanent continents.
And for those saying the US has no good chess scene, how do you think it's supposed to get one? And who cares where the players are from. Not only is the money there in the US to support a tournament, but there's plenty of chess players, regardless of skill, who would be interested in watching a tournament hosted in the US.
FIDE should absolutely get involved and set up a Grand Slam of some sort, but the reasons aren't purely for determining who the best players are. It's also about bringing new players into the game. For that, they'll need a global outlook.
Truly the greatest thing about America is its ability to attract immigrants that then add to its greatness. We should be very careful not to ruin that, either through policy or xenophobia. It's the one thing we can compete in better than anybody else, and that fresh infusion of energy and labor keeps our economy and culture going.
Yeah, unfortunately it's named after an obscure Californian inside joke, as if the whole world revolves around California. They should have just named it Sea Lion to hang a lampshade on this terrible chapter, then dropped cutesy nicknames entirely with OS 11+.
John Siracusa's reviews of OS X over at Ars Technica have always been in-depth and informative, and while John Siracusa himself may be a fan of OS X, he doesn't shy away from being very critical when it does something not-so-great, or he sees a problem with Apple's direction. This year he (rightfully) railed against several UI elements that are pretty bizarre. It's hardly a puff piece. It's more educational, than anything.
In general, I find his reviews much more about explaining how things work, than actually praising or criticizing. It's a review, in the sense that it's an overview of the new operating system, rather than some sort of grading of the operating system. He's not comparing it to anything except the previous versions of OS X, and then only in objective technical respects. It's not about competing views of different products, it's to tell existing OS X users what they can expect if they upgrade.
Mostly Siracusa talks about under-the-hood workings of the operating system and computer hardware, and past Siracusa reviews have even included code examples to explain new APIs to developers interested in the platform, and users who may be the beneficiaries of developers using new APIs. This year it talks quite a bit about race-to-sleep and other technical issues that apply to computing as a whole. It's exactly the sort of review somebody would want to read if they were technically-inclined, like the Slashdot audience. I would say a Siracusa OS X review is entirely appropriate, here. If you're just looking for some kind of Windows vs. Mac (vs. Linux) argument fodder, it's not the review for you. I wouldn't want or care about those sorts of reviews on Slashdot.
How, exactly, do you propose to do that?
The legal system cannot work without officers of the court acting with honesty in the interests of justice. In this case, officers of the court (Samsung's lawyers) disobeyed a lawful order from the court in order to give their client an unjust advantage in that client's negotiations with a third party. This is called contempt of court, and it violates their obligation to act in good faith as officers of the court. It's similar to suborning perjury, or helping your client flee the jurisdiction to escape justice, or hiding evidence they have full knowledge of. On the prosecution side, it would be like destroying evidence that clears a suspect of charges. There will be severe penalties for the lawyers in question. They will likely not be officers of the court for much longer.
Samsung, to be fair, didn't violate any such obligation. We don't know if they encouraged lawyers to do this or not, but we do know that they took unfair advantage of it. A company acting in good faith as part of a legal process would have put a stop to it immediately, fired said lawyers, and informed the judge and made whatever efforts they could on their end to limit the damage. We know Samsung didn't do this, and in fact bragged about their corporate espionage. It's a murkier issue as to Samsung's actual liability or criminality in this, but if it is determined they induced this contempt of court by their lawyers, I imagine the consequences will be severe for them as well. Certainly Nokia has cause to sue Samsung's lawyers, if not Samsung directly. Apple will no doubt use Samsung and their lawyers' actions in this matter as argument for further limiting of their confidential information in current and future cases, and I imagine courts will agree. The fact is Samsung persuaded a judge that Apple should give up certain confidential information, that judge gave an order that only Samsung's lawyers would be allowed to see this information and no one else, but Samsung's executive team got the information anyway after their lawyers took this confidential information and sent it to Samsung in violation of court order.
At a minimum, Samsung got caught not reporting unethical behavior by their legal counsel, and taking advantage of it for their own gain, likely in the many tens or hundreds of millions of dollars. Considering Samsung's history of destroying evidence and other legal shenanigans, I don't think it's such a stretch that they somehow induced their lawyers to commit contempt of court. Logically, the lawyers would need such inducement, as why would they risk being disbarred if they weren't being pressured or incentivized in some way by their client?
The nature of the court order that was violated is not the issue here. The issue is a serious breach of obligations by Samsung's lawyers, and Samsung subsequently having an unfair advantage in their negotiations with Nokia, and an unfair competitive advantage in the marketplace with Apple.
It's trivial to change your password, if it's ever compromised. It's not so easy to change your fingerprints.
Exactly. Just because "analysts" thought the C stood for China, doesn't mean that's what Apple was thinking. It's pretty clear now, after their announcement, that this is really meant to be Apple's iPod Mini for the iPhone.
The iPod Mini, people may recall, was seen as a colorful but overpriced and outdated device that surely nobody would want. It ended up being Apple's best selling iPod, with kids (or rather their parents) and people who don't care about specs buying them up like crazy. They were a fashion accessory, as much as anything else, and Apple sold a ridiculous amount of those things. I fully expect that Apple will sell more 5Cs than they'll sell 5Ss.
I really don't think the 5C is such a low margin device as people think. TFS seems to think it's using current-generation technology, but the internals are pretty much the same as the iPhone 5, which came out last year. Manufacturing it is surely much cheaper than manufacturing the 5S which is actually current tech. I'm willing to bet the margin is fairly similar to the 5S, if not higher, and even if it was a lower margin, Apple still makes money off of iTunes and the App Store so having more people running iOS is only a good thing.
There may be some cannibalization, but Apple has a consistent history of selling more devices every year than the year before. Clearly they think the iPhone market has grown enough that it can support two models. A one-size-fits-all model may not be good enough to sustain that year-over-year growth, and it would be a mistake not to release a second model. It remains to be seen if the market will grow large enough to support a third model, as the iPod market eventually did, but people have been clamoring for a second model for a while now.
It's not legal for any US citizen to have sex with a 12 year old in Thailand. There's US laws against sex tourism like that.
Whether or not such laws make sense (I'm not talking morally here, but legally), is debatable. Following the laws of other countries overseas getting you in trouble at home when you get back is kind of weird. Stuff like the UCMJ makes sense because the military needs to control its soldiers and have consistent rules, of course, but civilian laws applying in other jurisdictions while perhaps well-intentioned, does raise some interesting issues. Putting aside sex with children, which obviously is going to involve a lot of other issues for people, let's say the US made a law that applied its own federal drug laws to US tourists in Amsterdam, using sex tourism laws as precedent. It could happen. I imagine some people would have a problem with that on legal grounds.
If this is what the government is doing to protect me, I don't want to be protected anymore. I'll take my own chances.
I would rather be dead to a terrorist bomb than live in 1984.
Just because the standard sucks doesn't mean a company should tolerate it. If younger more capable workers are able to do the job for less pay, and an old timer is dragging down the bottom line and not doing his job (and worse, making other people's jobs harder), of course a company is going to go with the "younger, faster, more curious people" who can accomplish the job they need to do.
If those older workers have useful knowledge and skills that are still relevant to somebody, they will find another job. Lots of companies with aging mainframes are looking for people who know languages and systems that nobody learns anymore, and they're willing to pay to get that expertise. If those older workers don't have useful knowledge and skills, why do they deserve employment at all?