I understand you think your phone must have every feature there is, and it's natural to act like someone else must be the ignorant one when their phone has a feature yours does not, but there's no need. I'm sure owning one you know, the Rumor Touch is not a high-end phone, it's a budget phone and so won't have all of the features of other phones. I'm not saying that's bad, I'm just saying you can't honestly expect that phone to be any sort of standard for what to expect out of other phones. I just checked on my S3, was using an iPhone before, and I pulled the battery after setting the alarm and shutting it down just to be certain, popped the battery back in and waited. Alarm went off. So yeah, pretty positive it wasn't in standby. I find that a lot of people are confused about when they're being smart versus when they're being ignorant. Don't feel bad, though, we're all ignorant sometimes.
Try setting your alarm and turning your phone off. My last maybe five phone have all had this functionality, probably before then too. Even your computer isn't really off when it's off, hell even after you unplug it it's not quite dead for days. If you've seen smaller GPS devices, things like pet trackers, you know they don't actually need the whole cell phone or a big battery to work. I'm not even convinced they can't track you AFTER you pull the battery. That said, it doesn't prove they're doing it. I haven't seen anything that actually confirms this has happened, all I'm saying is it's possible. You can still call it paranoia, but a week ago people would've called someone paranoid for thinking the government is imitating cell towers and intercepting phone calls, able to hear everything, but now we have a court case to point to that shows they engage in this practice regularly. Now, I'm not trying to tell you they're watching you or anything like that, I'm just pointing out it's not some unrealistic fantasy suited for conspiracy nuts, certainly nothing to be compared with the NSA planting an RFID chip in your shoe. Everyone knows the NSA uses an advanced chemical tracking system they reverse engineered from technology recovered in Roswell, you inhale it.
So, correct me if I'm wrong, but it seems like this device doesn't work on just one phone, it'll intercept every phone in the area. Is there anything stopping everyone who was around it at the time from trying to take legal action for the illegal search of all of their phones? I am asking without even knowing if there's anything to do about illegal searches in any other case. A quick google has turned up plenty on what constitutes a legal search, nothing on what to do if you're searched illegally aside from getting the evidence thrown out. Any lawyers around?
I'm really not trying to be harsh, sorry for coming off that way. I'm probably a little biased because I have experience being a small business IT guy by default (as in no real training, just better with computers than the other people there), so that's really who I relate to the most. In my position I understood sometimes you need to seek help elsewhere, and I did, but I also learned that problems aren't as easy to fix as people think, nor are they always cheap, and money can be a big issue for a small business. I would've appreciated the help if PunkSPIDER sent me an email describing a vulnerability, and I would've tried to fix it quickly, but if I couldn't figure it out myself I'd have to call someone else in, which gets expensive and might take time to budget it. Instead, PunkSPIDER just puts it in their search engine, unbeknownst to me the lowly inexperienced IT guy, so instead of me being able to fix it before it becomes a problem I still don't find out about it until it's a bigger issue. I know, the heart of the problem is having an IT guy who doesn't have the proper training, but if you've ever worked at a small business during hard times you know spending more isn't always an option, sometimes you need to work with what you have, and that's what they did, I was there so they used me.
On to everything else, it is actually closer to the first implementation you describe, although I don't know about the rate limit as I didn't test it when the site was still loading quickly earlier.
To clarify my suggestion of searching by software, I didn't intend for it to list addresses, only vulnerabilities related to that software. As for the website owner not being able to remember what software they used, without getting into how one sets up and runs a web site without even knowing what software they're using, if they're that technically deficient they almost definitely won't be able to fix it themselves (if they even understand the information they're looking at) and should already be looking for someone to handle the technical end of things.
And as for what they should take from the article, it is mainstream and people should know about it. However, to use a more extreme example, the same can be said for copyright infringement, but would advertising The Pirate Bay or isoHunt really be the right way to alert people to that fact?
As for the discussion about whether you should host your own site or blog, it seems pretty straightforward to me. If you have the technical know-how and understand what you're doing as well as the costs involved, go ahead and run it yourself. But if you lack that knowledge, it's a silly question to ask. It's like anything else, just because you can make something work doesn't mean it's a good idea to do it yourself. I've been in that position, trying to fix something that's over my head, and while I could generally make it work, it was never as good as having the professionals fix it. If you want an analogy (because those are popular here) you can really swap out web development with any other skill in the world. Just because you can figure out how to (fix your car, plumb/wire your house, build any sort of structure, sew your own clothes, stitch your own cut, tow a car) doesn't mean you should do it yourself instead of leaving it to the professionals. And yes, I know I pointed out why that's not always easy or in the budget, it may not always be an option for people, but if it is an option it's the right one.
I drifted a bit off the real topic in the end here, my bad.
So are you saying your argument in favor of the name & shame strategy is pointing out times where companies were named and shamed and still didn't fix it? I see a flaw in your argument... Which is sad because it's a valid point that you're trying to make, sometimes the name & shame strategy does work. But that's not really what this search engine does anyway, it's not as if they're posting on their front page that a site has vulnerabilities, you still need to go out of your way to check a specific site to find the vulnerabilities, which means it's not likely that the general public will hear about the problem, hard to call it the name & shame strategy when they're not doing much to make it publicly known. Beyond that, you point out that the first thing to do is to alert the developers and give them some time to fix it, and while I have looked, I haven't found anything that suggests this site does either of those. You have a very valid point in that in many cases just alerting the developer gets nothing done, but it holds little meaning in regards to this search engine as it doesn't really do any of those things you think should be done.
1) The software used is a very minor part of the point, and as far as the ethics argument goes means literally nothing.
2) The start of the process he's describing, reporting the bug to the people who can deal with it, is the important step that doesn't change. Yes, it is different than dealing directly with software developers. It also means they probably aren't capable of fixing it so quickly. The software developers have a huge edge in that area. It does need to be dealt with differently, but public shaming without giving them a chance to fix it is not dealing with the problem it's exasperating it.
3) If it's a custom site that no one cares to do security research on, chances are nobody's looking to attack that site anyway, until it's posted on a search engine calling it out as a target. As for who's letting them know, adding them to a search engine is NOT letting them know. Odds are these smaller sites aren't out there looking to see if anyone's found a vulnerability in their site. I didn't see anything that states you warn the site owner and even attempt to give them any time to fix it. If you want someone to get their security ducks in a row, step one is telling them everything you know about their problem, and step two is giving them time to fix it. If putting them in a searchable database is any step, it's much further along.
4) I can't say much about this point as it truly depends on your intentions. You may have good intentions and think this is a great thing to do, but you are most certainly going about it all wrong. You shouldn't be advertising this on Slashdot, you should be emailing webmasters everywhere to tell them about their vulnerabilites. And while I'm here, a feature suggestion: an option to search by software used rather than the specific address, that way people can search the software they're using and find out if any specific implementation is vulnerable without relying on their site already being in this database. And before you say it, yes, web developers could and should run these scans on their own, I'm not defending sloppy security at all, but the developers who aren't running the scans also aren't going to go search for their site on yours without being told they have a problem.
Actually, it's less like telling people they shouldn't park there, and more like creating a searchable database of areas with no security cameras. It doesn't take much thought to realize the people looking for a place to park aren't going to search this database, it'll be used by the people looking for safer areas to steal those cars. Or to drop all this stupid analogy crap that never seems to have a positive effect on discussions, this is a searchable database that's only going to be used by people who are looking for vulnerabilities. Is the average user even going to know about this? Nope, but hackers everywhere will definitely know about it. Odds are, site owners aren't going to search it either, which may be a little irresponsible, but is nowhere near as bad as finding the vulnerabilities and trying to make sure everyone knows about it. They claim good intentions, and maybe they really have good intentions, but there's nothing good about this.
While I don't consider that many missiles coming at us to be a particularly realistic scenario, even less realistic would be that many missiles coming at us that aren't going to hit worthwhile targets at all. Other posters mentioned that Israel allows rockets to hit "expendable" areas and so they don't need to intercept every one, but the US doesn't have very many areas that we can really consider expendable. I'm of a mind that if missiles are going to land in the country, they need to be taken out. That said, our nuclear arsenal is a pretty effective deterrent. I don't see any massive attack against the US happening unless they've somehow managed to knock out our defenses, so as long as we can avoid that, we're good. Too many missiles would be a problem, it's just very unlikely to happen.
I already paid for this content, I pay for Netflix, I pay for Verizon Fios Cable and Internet, I pay for HBO, Showtime, I pay for all of that content to be sent to me. I just want to watch it on my schedule. Explain to me why that should cost an extra five dollars per movie or show when I'm already paying over two hundred. I know the question wasn't directed at me, but I'm in the same boat as a lot of people, I'm paying for all of the content and I'm even using their distribution methods when possible, but frankly I get better quality consistently than streaming provides by downloading episodes and movies instead of streaming. So no, it isn't about being entitled to anything, it's about getting what I'm already paying an obscene amount of money for.
I think you're really narrowing down who would be considered a gamer. All of my close friends are gamers, but I'm the only one that can build my own gaming PC without help. None of them are Slashdotters, most of them really like Macs for their simplicity & stability (it's what I run when I'm not gaming, too), none of them give a damn about open software, and while a few of them are familiar with what Linux is, not one of them uses it. I'm not trying to say any one preference is better than another, but I think your perspective is terribly skewed. Fifteen or twenty years ago, sure, most gamers were self-proclaimed geeks and would have loved to build their own PC. But today, there are many more gamers, and the old stereotypes don't hold at all. Most gamers don't care about Windows vs OS X vs Linux, they want to be able to have fun and not spend a ton of time or money trying to get to that point. Now, I've used various Linux distros in the past and I don't hate it, but it really is far more work than the average user will ever want to endure just to get it and keep it working, much more so if you build your own rig. You can say it isn't much, but I'm sure most people here are not strangers to helping family/friends set up a computer and you know it's too much for them. I'd really like to see any open OS take off and overtake Windows as well as OS X so the world can adjust to using freely available software and let that become the way of things. But realistically, it's going to take much more than game availability to make Linux appeal to the masses. And before the Android comparisons come out, the cell phone market and PC market are not the least bit related, a popular OS on one is typically not so popular on the other (Windows, I'm looking at you) even when they are almost the same.
Going by the stories from back when the quake happened, the summary is more accurate than you think. What they said was that a series of tremors didn't mean there's an earthquake coming, not that there isn't going to be an earthquake. It may not sound like the biggest difference, but it really is. If earthquakes were easy to predict, I'd hesitate to defend them, but they aren't. The people who've decided they should've known are people who are not the least bit qualified to make that call, which is why geologists were hired in the first place.
Well, I'm going to steal from you every week for the next ten years, and within a year I'll tell you you can't get mad at me, because it's just what you should expect.... I don't understand why people think the fact that Facebook keeps doing this means it's alright, and we have no right to be mad about it. It's just crazy. We could have six breaches of PSN a year and nobody would ever come out and say "Well, after the first two you really should've stopped using PSN!" and expect it to be taken seriously. It's a service a lot of people want to use, and they should be able to hold them to their word, it's as simple as that.
They're not the only service you give your information to, they're just the ones that you don't use. I don't have a MasterCard, so if they release all of their customers' information I should think "They're stupid for using MasterCard!" You can argue that they're optional all you want, but so are credit cards, cable, and the internet you use to find said discussion forums. There's no reason to sit there and say it's the users' fault for using a service, that's completely ridiculous. Any time a service, even if it's optional, handles your personal information, they should be held to a certain standard. Calling it the regulation of online identities is a silly way of making it sound like the government would be controlling our online lives, when really all we need is for them to say if a service can't keep to it's word they pay a big-ass fine based on their revenue.
Personally, I'm not bitching, Facebook doesn't have anything of mine I need kept private. They have my name, and some pictures I wanted to share with family and friends, none of which even include any people. I keep it simple partly because I don't trust Facebook, mostly because I don't use it often and don't care to. Facebook is an optional service, sure, you don't need it at all, but as much as I used to hate on it, it does provide a number of benefits for people who want to use it. You can tell people they shouldn't share so much and that's all well and good, but you shouldn't have to avoid services like Facebook because you can't trust them, it should piss people off when things like this happen. Any time you use a service and it doesn't operate as they claim it should, you should be pissed off. Like I said above, you can avoid all of your computer-related woes by staying off the computer, but you really shouldn't have to.
The big problem with this logic is that you do need to give out your personal information to sign up for various services, and the truth is nobody else really gives a damn unless it's regulated, and at that point they only care about the regulations. I'm not saying you're altogether wrong, it's definitely a good idea to keep things you want to stay private off of services like Facebook (or Google+ or Myspace) but that doesn't make it in any way acceptable when they publish information they claimed would be kept private. You can solve all of your computer-related woes by avoiding computers, but you really shouldn't have to...
The phone book doesn't have my cell phone number, or most other peoples' cell phone numbers, but that is what Facebook has most of the time. The phone book doesn't have photos of me, my friends, and my family so as to positively identify me from anyone else in the world who might share my (relatively common) name. The phone book doesn't not allow me to find people by interest so I can find people to call and sell my products to. The phone book requires you to know pretty specifically who you are looking for in order to find them without using the trial and error method. Oh, and lastly, you know the phone book is going to list your number unless you do something about it, and many people choose not to have their number listed, Facebook was never supposed to list your number and so people gave it to them expecting it to remain private. So, while you might not care that Facebook decided to show your number, plenty of people would be bothered by it. It isn't the end of the world or anything, but to downplay it and equate it to having your number in the phone book is a just a bit crazy. Oh, and a point I nearly forgot, lots of teenagers have their cell phone numbers in their Facebook accounts, and without tackling why they shouldn't to begin with, those numbers should definitely not be available publicly.
Development, for starters. Apple's spent quite a bit of time developing both the hardware and software behind the iPhones, costs which naturally have to be covered, and free services like iCloud do cost money to maintain. Obviously Apple is making a boatload of money off the iPhone, and they should they are a business and their goal is to make money, but this is like saying Windows costs Microsoft a nickel to make because they just had to stamp a DVD.
It's a massive world with more options than you can count, as open as game play gets, you can dump hundreds of hours in without ever doing the same thing twice, of course it's buggy. Find me any game with a world that large and open that Bethesda didn't make with fewer bugs. Go for it. I don't think you'll have any luck, though. MMOs are often as big but they're far simpler worlds, much more linear game play, and all the ones I've played (which is a good number) have both been full of bugs and failed to hold my interest past a single end-game run. The closest single-player showing I can think of is Two Worlds, which had such potential to beat out Oblivion with mounted combat and two-player action, but never stood a chance with a crap story and more bugs than you can shake a stick at, definitely more buggy than any Bethesda game I've played. The truth is, most of us know exactly what we're in for with a Bethesda game, it's going to be somewhat buggy, but it's going to be a better game than anything else out there so we put up with it. If you don't want to, that's fine, but to call them incompetent is a bit absurd given the popularity of their games, obviously they're doing something right and most of us appreciate it.
Yes I believe that's true, but that's just one example, albeit an infamous one. When they're looking for a reason, that might matter. But what they're looking for is an excuse and any cyberattack is enough for that.
Even if it is just the excuse they're going to use in order to cut off a widely used means of communication, it's hard to argue against the reasoning. If they were going to stop at taking government facilities off the Internet and move them to a closed network, I'd even believe it really is about protecting themselves from foreign governments launching cyber attacks. I'm not saying this wouldn't have happened anyway, but they do have a great argument against people who see it for what it almost certainly is: a way to better control and monitor communications nationwide.
This is nonsense. I still remember when a half-dozen machines at the small business I did IT work for all went dead with a message claiming Windows was pirated. It had given warnings that users ignored so by the time I was aware of it the computers were all restarting ever fifteen minutes, making them useless for doing anything productive. Contacting Microsoft got me an apology, some new CD keys, and cost the company I work for a day of downtime while I reinstalled Windows (as MS told me going through the registry changing keys won't solve the problem) on most of our computers. Don't tell me MS is kind to pirates, the only two reasons pirated copies aren't fought hard by MS are 1. Pirates will win while legit consumers suffer and 2. Hardly anyone buys Windows unless it's with a new computer, MS knows this and so understands they're not losing a sale for ever pirated copy they're just keeping users.
I've never seen a prepaid plan that offers a discount for bringing your own phone. Not to mention if you actually use your phone frequently, I've never seen a prepaid plan that will save you money, especially if you want data. I'm not saying they don't exist, just wondering what service you're talking about?
Apparently it's been a while. If you want service from one of the major providers, T-Mobile is your only option for getting a discount for bringing your own phone. That's all. Having that option is nice for some people if you don't mind the poor coverage in many areas (like where I live) but it doesn't change the cost of the Nokia Lumia to the customer of AT&T, which is what the article is about. Now, you can definitely bring your own phone, but AT&T won't give you a discount on your monthly bill. So, again, the cost to the customer is actually..... $49.
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I understand you think your phone must have every feature there is, and it's natural to act like someone else must be the ignorant one when their phone has a feature yours does not, but there's no need. I'm sure owning one you know, the Rumor Touch is not a high-end phone, it's a budget phone and so won't have all of the features of other phones. I'm not saying that's bad, I'm just saying you can't honestly expect that phone to be any sort of standard for what to expect out of other phones. I just checked on my S3, was using an iPhone before, and I pulled the battery after setting the alarm and shutting it down just to be certain, popped the battery back in and waited. Alarm went off. So yeah, pretty positive it wasn't in standby. I find that a lot of people are confused about when they're being smart versus when they're being ignorant. Don't feel bad, though, we're all ignorant sometimes.
Try setting your alarm and turning your phone off. My last maybe five phone have all had this functionality, probably before then too. Even your computer isn't really off when it's off, hell even after you unplug it it's not quite dead for days. If you've seen smaller GPS devices, things like pet trackers, you know they don't actually need the whole cell phone or a big battery to work. I'm not even convinced they can't track you AFTER you pull the battery. That said, it doesn't prove they're doing it. I haven't seen anything that actually confirms this has happened, all I'm saying is it's possible. You can still call it paranoia, but a week ago people would've called someone paranoid for thinking the government is imitating cell towers and intercepting phone calls, able to hear everything, but now we have a court case to point to that shows they engage in this practice regularly. Now, I'm not trying to tell you they're watching you or anything like that, I'm just pointing out it's not some unrealistic fantasy suited for conspiracy nuts, certainly nothing to be compared with the NSA planting an RFID chip in your shoe. Everyone knows the NSA uses an advanced chemical tracking system they reverse engineered from technology recovered in Roswell, you inhale it.
So, correct me if I'm wrong, but it seems like this device doesn't work on just one phone, it'll intercept every phone in the area. Is there anything stopping everyone who was around it at the time from trying to take legal action for the illegal search of all of their phones? I am asking without even knowing if there's anything to do about illegal searches in any other case. A quick google has turned up plenty on what constitutes a legal search, nothing on what to do if you're searched illegally aside from getting the evidence thrown out. Any lawyers around?
Oh, I don't know, I doubt the "Boss Key" did anything to help productivity in the workplace...
I'm really not trying to be harsh, sorry for coming off that way. I'm probably a little biased because I have experience being a small business IT guy by default (as in no real training, just better with computers than the other people there), so that's really who I relate to the most. In my position I understood sometimes you need to seek help elsewhere, and I did, but I also learned that problems aren't as easy to fix as people think, nor are they always cheap, and money can be a big issue for a small business. I would've appreciated the help if PunkSPIDER sent me an email describing a vulnerability, and I would've tried to fix it quickly, but if I couldn't figure it out myself I'd have to call someone else in, which gets expensive and might take time to budget it. Instead, PunkSPIDER just puts it in their search engine, unbeknownst to me the lowly inexperienced IT guy, so instead of me being able to fix it before it becomes a problem I still don't find out about it until it's a bigger issue. I know, the heart of the problem is having an IT guy who doesn't have the proper training, but if you've ever worked at a small business during hard times you know spending more isn't always an option, sometimes you need to work with what you have, and that's what they did, I was there so they used me.
On to everything else, it is actually closer to the first implementation you describe, although I don't know about the rate limit as I didn't test it when the site was still loading quickly earlier.
To clarify my suggestion of searching by software, I didn't intend for it to list addresses, only vulnerabilities related to that software. As for the website owner not being able to remember what software they used, without getting into how one sets up and runs a web site without even knowing what software they're using, if they're that technically deficient they almost definitely won't be able to fix it themselves (if they even understand the information they're looking at) and should already be looking for someone to handle the technical end of things.
And as for what they should take from the article, it is mainstream and people should know about it. However, to use a more extreme example, the same can be said for copyright infringement, but would advertising The Pirate Bay or isoHunt really be the right way to alert people to that fact?
As for the discussion about whether you should host your own site or blog, it seems pretty straightforward to me. If you have the technical know-how and understand what you're doing as well as the costs involved, go ahead and run it yourself. But if you lack that knowledge, it's a silly question to ask. It's like anything else, just because you can make something work doesn't mean it's a good idea to do it yourself. I've been in that position, trying to fix something that's over my head, and while I could generally make it work, it was never as good as having the professionals fix it. If you want an analogy (because those are popular here) you can really swap out web development with any other skill in the world. Just because you can figure out how to (fix your car, plumb/wire your house, build any sort of structure, sew your own clothes, stitch your own cut, tow a car) doesn't mean you should do it yourself instead of leaving it to the professionals. And yes, I know I pointed out why that's not always easy or in the budget, it may not always be an option for people, but if it is an option it's the right one.
I drifted a bit off the real topic in the end here, my bad.
So are you saying your argument in favor of the name & shame strategy is pointing out times where companies were named and shamed and still didn't fix it? I see a flaw in your argument... Which is sad because it's a valid point that you're trying to make, sometimes the name & shame strategy does work. But that's not really what this search engine does anyway, it's not as if they're posting on their front page that a site has vulnerabilities, you still need to go out of your way to check a specific site to find the vulnerabilities, which means it's not likely that the general public will hear about the problem, hard to call it the name & shame strategy when they're not doing much to make it publicly known. Beyond that, you point out that the first thing to do is to alert the developers and give them some time to fix it, and while I have looked, I haven't found anything that suggests this site does either of those. You have a very valid point in that in many cases just alerting the developer gets nothing done, but it holds little meaning in regards to this search engine as it doesn't really do any of those things you think should be done.
I'll help resolve these issues for you.
1) The software used is a very minor part of the point, and as far as the ethics argument goes means literally nothing.
2) The start of the process he's describing, reporting the bug to the people who can deal with it, is the important step that doesn't change. Yes, it is different than dealing directly with software developers. It also means they probably aren't capable of fixing it so quickly. The software developers have a huge edge in that area. It does need to be dealt with differently, but public shaming without giving them a chance to fix it is not dealing with the problem it's exasperating it.
3) If it's a custom site that no one cares to do security research on, chances are nobody's looking to attack that site anyway, until it's posted on a search engine calling it out as a target. As for who's letting them know, adding them to a search engine is NOT letting them know. Odds are these smaller sites aren't out there looking to see if anyone's found a vulnerability in their site. I didn't see anything that states you warn the site owner and even attempt to give them any time to fix it. If you want someone to get their security ducks in a row, step one is telling them everything you know about their problem, and step two is giving them time to fix it. If putting them in a searchable database is any step, it's much further along.
4) I can't say much about this point as it truly depends on your intentions. You may have good intentions and think this is a great thing to do, but you are most certainly going about it all wrong. You shouldn't be advertising this on Slashdot, you should be emailing webmasters everywhere to tell them about their vulnerabilites. And while I'm here, a feature suggestion: an option to search by software used rather than the specific address, that way people can search the software they're using and find out if any specific implementation is vulnerable without relying on their site already being in this database. And before you say it, yes, web developers could and should run these scans on their own, I'm not defending sloppy security at all, but the developers who aren't running the scans also aren't going to go search for their site on yours without being told they have a problem.
Actually, it's less like telling people they shouldn't park there, and more like creating a searchable database of areas with no security cameras. It doesn't take much thought to realize the people looking for a place to park aren't going to search this database, it'll be used by the people looking for safer areas to steal those cars. Or to drop all this stupid analogy crap that never seems to have a positive effect on discussions, this is a searchable database that's only going to be used by people who are looking for vulnerabilities. Is the average user even going to know about this? Nope, but hackers everywhere will definitely know about it. Odds are, site owners aren't going to search it either, which may be a little irresponsible, but is nowhere near as bad as finding the vulnerabilities and trying to make sure everyone knows about it. They claim good intentions, and maybe they really have good intentions, but there's nothing good about this.
"There's nothing random or light about this, someone made a mistake!"
While I don't consider that many missiles coming at us to be a particularly realistic scenario, even less realistic would be that many missiles coming at us that aren't going to hit worthwhile targets at all. Other posters mentioned that Israel allows rockets to hit "expendable" areas and so they don't need to intercept every one, but the US doesn't have very many areas that we can really consider expendable. I'm of a mind that if missiles are going to land in the country, they need to be taken out. That said, our nuclear arsenal is a pretty effective deterrent. I don't see any massive attack against the US happening unless they've somehow managed to knock out our defenses, so as long as we can avoid that, we're good. Too many missiles would be a problem, it's just very unlikely to happen.
I already paid for this content, I pay for Netflix, I pay for Verizon Fios Cable and Internet, I pay for HBO, Showtime, I pay for all of that content to be sent to me. I just want to watch it on my schedule. Explain to me why that should cost an extra five dollars per movie or show when I'm already paying over two hundred. I know the question wasn't directed at me, but I'm in the same boat as a lot of people, I'm paying for all of the content and I'm even using their distribution methods when possible, but frankly I get better quality consistently than streaming provides by downloading episodes and movies instead of streaming. So no, it isn't about being entitled to anything, it's about getting what I'm already paying an obscene amount of money for.
I think you're really narrowing down who would be considered a gamer. All of my close friends are gamers, but I'm the only one that can build my own gaming PC without help. None of them are Slashdotters, most of them really like Macs for their simplicity & stability (it's what I run when I'm not gaming, too), none of them give a damn about open software, and while a few of them are familiar with what Linux is, not one of them uses it. I'm not trying to say any one preference is better than another, but I think your perspective is terribly skewed. Fifteen or twenty years ago, sure, most gamers were self-proclaimed geeks and would have loved to build their own PC. But today, there are many more gamers, and the old stereotypes don't hold at all. Most gamers don't care about Windows vs OS X vs Linux, they want to be able to have fun and not spend a ton of time or money trying to get to that point. Now, I've used various Linux distros in the past and I don't hate it, but it really is far more work than the average user will ever want to endure just to get it and keep it working, much more so if you build your own rig. You can say it isn't much, but I'm sure most people here are not strangers to helping family/friends set up a computer and you know it's too much for them. I'd really like to see any open OS take off and overtake Windows as well as OS X so the world can adjust to using freely available software and let that become the way of things. But realistically, it's going to take much more than game availability to make Linux appeal to the masses. And before the Android comparisons come out, the cell phone market and PC market are not the least bit related, a popular OS on one is typically not so popular on the other (Windows, I'm looking at you) even when they are almost the same.
Going by the stories from back when the quake happened, the summary is more accurate than you think. What they said was that a series of tremors didn't mean there's an earthquake coming, not that there isn't going to be an earthquake. It may not sound like the biggest difference, but it really is. If earthquakes were easy to predict, I'd hesitate to defend them, but they aren't. The people who've decided they should've known are people who are not the least bit qualified to make that call, which is why geologists were hired in the first place.
Well, I'm going to steal from you every week for the next ten years, and within a year I'll tell you you can't get mad at me, because it's just what you should expect.... I don't understand why people think the fact that Facebook keeps doing this means it's alright, and we have no right to be mad about it. It's just crazy. We could have six breaches of PSN a year and nobody would ever come out and say "Well, after the first two you really should've stopped using PSN!" and expect it to be taken seriously. It's a service a lot of people want to use, and they should be able to hold them to their word, it's as simple as that.
They're not the only service you give your information to, they're just the ones that you don't use. I don't have a MasterCard, so if they release all of their customers' information I should think "They're stupid for using MasterCard!" You can argue that they're optional all you want, but so are credit cards, cable, and the internet you use to find said discussion forums. There's no reason to sit there and say it's the users' fault for using a service, that's completely ridiculous. Any time a service, even if it's optional, handles your personal information, they should be held to a certain standard. Calling it the regulation of online identities is a silly way of making it sound like the government would be controlling our online lives, when really all we need is for them to say if a service can't keep to it's word they pay a big-ass fine based on their revenue.
Personally, I'm not bitching, Facebook doesn't have anything of mine I need kept private. They have my name, and some pictures I wanted to share with family and friends, none of which even include any people. I keep it simple partly because I don't trust Facebook, mostly because I don't use it often and don't care to. Facebook is an optional service, sure, you don't need it at all, but as much as I used to hate on it, it does provide a number of benefits for people who want to use it. You can tell people they shouldn't share so much and that's all well and good, but you shouldn't have to avoid services like Facebook because you can't trust them, it should piss people off when things like this happen. Any time you use a service and it doesn't operate as they claim it should, you should be pissed off. Like I said above, you can avoid all of your computer-related woes by staying off the computer, but you really shouldn't have to.
The big problem with this logic is that you do need to give out your personal information to sign up for various services, and the truth is nobody else really gives a damn unless it's regulated, and at that point they only care about the regulations. I'm not saying you're altogether wrong, it's definitely a good idea to keep things you want to stay private off of services like Facebook (or Google+ or Myspace) but that doesn't make it in any way acceptable when they publish information they claimed would be kept private. You can solve all of your computer-related woes by avoiding computers, but you really shouldn't have to...
The phone book doesn't have my cell phone number, or most other peoples' cell phone numbers, but that is what Facebook has most of the time. The phone book doesn't have photos of me, my friends, and my family so as to positively identify me from anyone else in the world who might share my (relatively common) name. The phone book doesn't not allow me to find people by interest so I can find people to call and sell my products to. The phone book requires you to know pretty specifically who you are looking for in order to find them without using the trial and error method. Oh, and lastly, you know the phone book is going to list your number unless you do something about it, and many people choose not to have their number listed, Facebook was never supposed to list your number and so people gave it to them expecting it to remain private. So, while you might not care that Facebook decided to show your number, plenty of people would be bothered by it. It isn't the end of the world or anything, but to downplay it and equate it to having your number in the phone book is a just a bit crazy. Oh, and a point I nearly forgot, lots of teenagers have their cell phone numbers in their Facebook accounts, and without tackling why they shouldn't to begin with, those numbers should definitely not be available publicly.
Development, for starters. Apple's spent quite a bit of time developing both the hardware and software behind the iPhones, costs which naturally have to be covered, and free services like iCloud do cost money to maintain. Obviously Apple is making a boatload of money off the iPhone, and they should they are a business and their goal is to make money, but this is like saying Windows costs Microsoft a nickel to make because they just had to stamp a DVD.
It's a massive world with more options than you can count, as open as game play gets, you can dump hundreds of hours in without ever doing the same thing twice, of course it's buggy. Find me any game with a world that large and open that Bethesda didn't make with fewer bugs. Go for it. I don't think you'll have any luck, though. MMOs are often as big but they're far simpler worlds, much more linear game play, and all the ones I've played (which is a good number) have both been full of bugs and failed to hold my interest past a single end-game run. The closest single-player showing I can think of is Two Worlds, which had such potential to beat out Oblivion with mounted combat and two-player action, but never stood a chance with a crap story and more bugs than you can shake a stick at, definitely more buggy than any Bethesda game I've played. The truth is, most of us know exactly what we're in for with a Bethesda game, it's going to be somewhat buggy, but it's going to be a better game than anything else out there so we put up with it. If you don't want to, that's fine, but to call them incompetent is a bit absurd given the popularity of their games, obviously they're doing something right and most of us appreciate it.
Yes I believe that's true, but that's just one example, albeit an infamous one. When they're looking for a reason, that might matter. But what they're looking for is an excuse and any cyberattack is enough for that.
Even if it is just the excuse they're going to use in order to cut off a widely used means of communication, it's hard to argue against the reasoning. If they were going to stop at taking government facilities off the Internet and move them to a closed network, I'd even believe it really is about protecting themselves from foreign governments launching cyber attacks. I'm not saying this wouldn't have happened anyway, but they do have a great argument against people who see it for what it almost certainly is: a way to better control and monitor communications nationwide.
This is nonsense. I still remember when a half-dozen machines at the small business I did IT work for all went dead with a message claiming Windows was pirated. It had given warnings that users ignored so by the time I was aware of it the computers were all restarting ever fifteen minutes, making them useless for doing anything productive. Contacting Microsoft got me an apology, some new CD keys, and cost the company I work for a day of downtime while I reinstalled Windows (as MS told me going through the registry changing keys won't solve the problem) on most of our computers. Don't tell me MS is kind to pirates, the only two reasons pirated copies aren't fought hard by MS are 1. Pirates will win while legit consumers suffer and 2. Hardly anyone buys Windows unless it's with a new computer, MS knows this and so understands they're not losing a sale for ever pirated copy they're just keeping users.
I've never seen a prepaid plan that offers a discount for bringing your own phone. Not to mention if you actually use your phone frequently, I've never seen a prepaid plan that will save you money, especially if you want data. I'm not saying they don't exist, just wondering what service you're talking about?
Apparently it's been a while. If you want service from one of the major providers, T-Mobile is your only option for getting a discount for bringing your own phone. That's all. Having that option is nice for some people if you don't mind the poor coverage in many areas (like where I live) but it doesn't change the cost of the Nokia Lumia to the customer of AT&T, which is what the article is about. Now, you can definitely bring your own phone, but AT&T won't give you a discount on your monthly bill. So, again, the cost to the customer is actually..... $49.