Why not simply set your iPhone backups to be encrypted...?
A backup is a copy made from an original source of data. You can encrypt them all you like. It still doesn't explain why the original source of data was collected, what its purpose is, and whether there are implications for privacy.
That was far too trivial to answer. Therefore, I am guessing I have misunderstood your point. If not, well, now you know why I didn't mention encrypted backups.
Someone needs to mod this post up. It's rare on/. (or anywhere else, for that matter) for someone to admit that they're wrong, especially after so many vitriolic responses.
Truth be told, this general fact is probably why so many responses are vitriolic. It's assumed that no one will ever admit when they were wrong, that they are too proud to accept a correction, so the prevalent method is to rub their nose in it.
What I most often see is a more subtle form of failure to admit when you're wrong. Say someone makes 4 separate points in a post. Let's say I can clearly refute 3 of them. When they respond to me, do they acknowledge that? Almost never. They pretend like they never tried to make 3 points which were refuted. They then proceed to talk exclusively about the 4th point.
It's like most of Slashdot were required to attend a class called "Marketing and PR for Egotists" prior to creating an account. Gotta look good no matter what, and somehow "having the character and the guts to own a mistake, and maybe even to thank the one who set you straight" doesn't fall under "looking good".
Personal intrusion? your cellphone provider has a nice database of your every move that is accurate. They've had this for years. THAT is what you need to be outraged about, not a file that is safely on your phone that is not sent to anyone.
The people who run the cell networks have this data. The cell towers know where you are. Apple does not run a cell network. They just make the phone and leave it to AT&T or Verizon to provide network service. Therefore, it's possible this file provides Apple a way to track location data without owning the cell network. The same could also apply to Google's Android, of course.
If the data is inaccurate, that could be because this system is buggy -- maybe it doesn't get the attention and polish that advertised shiny features receive. It could be because it doesn't need to be accurate to serve its purpose. It could be for any number of reasons. The important part is that none of this answers the question of what the actual intention is. None of this answers the question: if it is a benevolent, innocuous feature, why isn't it listed as a selling point? That above all other things is what creates the suspicion, IMO.
If only there was some way to fix the whole thing to some wheels. Perhaps make it self-propelled in some way.
A man can dream.
If only there were some way to disregard the point being made in order to sarcastically point out the obvious. Apparently that's a very important source of jollies for a lot of people.
Oh by the way, if you did want to mount a laser on a vehicle, it wouldn't be a laser designed to replace spark plugs.
It's synced to your PC, which is a vulnerability in itself.
Is there a way to delete this "consolidated.db" file and replace it with a symlink to/dev/null? Not sure if iPhones have a/dev/null (or equiv.) but Android should.
It'd be interesting to do that and see if it breaks anything. If nothing breaks, even slightly, we can be fairly sure this "feature" provides nothing that benefits the owner of the phone, the paying customer. The question of who does benefit would then become more interesting.
For Apple and Google, this is how you avoid "panic", "hysteria", and various other words used to mischaracterize legitimate questions of trust: document features and files like this in a thorough, open, and easily searched manner instead of waiting for third parties to discover them and speculate about their function. If you refuse to do that, you are setting up this very situation.
Why anyone who is not an employee of Apple and Google would characterize legitimate inquiry as "hysteria" is another interesting question. It's obviously an attempt to dismiss and belittle ("you disagree with me about whether this should be questioned, so obviously you are panicking"). It would seem that in their minds, it's far more reasonable to blame people for wondering if this has privacy implications than it would be to blame the companies for leaving everyone in the dark.
Seriously, just think of the potential hacking uses of a pencil sized high powered laser! Cutting and drilling through hardened steel. Remote ignition of fires or detonation of explosives. Actual blinding weapons in a flashlight case.
I'm afraid they'll be too cool to be let out in public.
All you'd have to do is find a way to carry around an engine, a gas tank, an alternator, and any needed transformer/induction coils and you'll be all set. Maybe you can start doing some push-ups or something.
Relatively small yet powerful (enough to do serious damage) lasers have been around for a while now. It's the power supply that tends to be big and bulky. That's the main reason that laser pistols have not replaced traditional firearms. If you want to quickly dump 800-2000+ joules into a distant target, gunpowder and lead remain the easiest way to do it.
Not like the two are mutually exclusive. Just because the reason someone hasn't created an account is they are too lazy to create an account since they can post comments anyway, doesn't mean they are otherwise willing to share their name and address.
They'll be rescinding their stance that privacy doesn't matter, then?
Just, rest assured, cops rarely get away with it if you have a decent lawyer.
It takes a damn good lawyer to get a cop tried for deprivation of rights under color of law. It ought to happen every time the exclusionary rule is applied.
I know an easier way to make this happen. Convince the cell phone manufacturers and service providers that laws and practices like this are hurting phone sales by removing some of the utility of the phones and making them into a potential liability. Then we'd finally have large, powerful, monied, well-represented coporate interests lobbying in our favor. Suddenly this practice would end in record time.
All it takes is a K9 officer to fake a "tell" on your car, and they can search you. Cops lie about probable cause all the time.
Which is why all searches should require both that another citizen (who is not a cop) has accused you of a crime and that a judge has issued a warrant. No matter what they see or how suspicious they think it is. They keep abusing this power to the point where they don't deserve to have it.
If that means a few more criminals get away with it, so be it. I consider my government to be far more dangerous than a few individual criminals. I'd be happy to take my chances with this scenario. I'd rather criminals be deterred by things like conceal-carry permits than the possibility of essentially random police searches.
Not good to give false information to a cop but you are not required to give information that might incriminate you either.
You could say nothing or:
"I do not consent to searches, am I free to do now?"
or just:
"am I free to go now".
That "I do not consent to searches" is key. A lot of times the cops will phrase the question as "do you mind if we search your car?" If you say "no" they take that to mean "no, I don't mind" and if you say "yes" they take it to mean "yes you may search". Saying you do not consent to a search removes this ambiguity.
It's some sad times we live in that such a concern would ever cross the minds of a regular citizen who is not a career criminal.
My dad likes to file FOIA requests when the police in his home town (of 1 million people) do something illegal. They frequently quote absurd fees, after which he leaves and comes back with an officer of the court who makes them do it for free. He should have been a lawyer. Or maybe the world is better off with one fewer lawyer and one more electrical engineer.
Seriously, cops seem to wonder why they're not better appreciated and respected. No sense of irony.
As a whole, it's not like the police have a great deal of respect for citizens who exercise their rights. So I have to wonder: do they retaliate? Do they suddenly take a really hard look at his driving and see how many things they can charge him with that they'd normally let slide? Do they insist on searching him for guns/drugs/dead hookers/etc. every time he gets pulled over for i.e. speeding?
What Facebook has accomplished is to make using technology completely socially acceptable, even mundane. This is not a trivial feat, although I suppose the importance is up for discussion. I think it's very important, especially given the miasma of anti-intellectualism we seem to be in as a society.
Did you ever stop to consider that maybe appreciating technology only when it's socially acceptable, only when "everybody else is doing it", is a large part of the anti-intellectualism? That it doesn't help when the main purpose of this technology is not edification or academic advancement, but advertisement and small talk? If the 99% enjoy new and interesting technologies that enhance their lives and allow them to do things that were once difficult or impossible, it's not because of them. It's because of the 1%.
I am sure some of them exist someplace, but I have never known intellectuals to be trendy crowd-followers. It is not something associated with independent thought, with those who are learned. I'd also speculate that the most rudimentary ability to use a complex tool is not nearly so intellectually challenging and stimulating as developing an actual understanding of how and why the tool works.
Significant intelligence is often accompanied by a sort of natural curiosity that delights in learning new things. That's usually how it developed in the first place. Either no one taught the person that learning is tedious, boring work that can only be done by rote, never by first principles and reasoning from them in order to apply knowledge to new situations and make personal discoveries... or more likely, the public schools attempted to teach this to the person but the teaching was rejected.
3. Creating a "black market" is EXACTLY what Apple is trying to AVOID. That suggestion is just brain-dead stupid.
You have repeatedly displayed this general tendency. This one is a simpler example. The general tendency is to play "hostile audience" and try to use everything I say against me. No complaint there, it's par for the course, except that it makes a constructive discussion nearly impossible and prevents you from seeing my point. That wouldn't be a problem either, except you insist on refuting what you clearly do not understand. Seems like you'll never know the satisfaction and certainty of truly understanding something before deciding whether you're against it. So be it.
Now for a concrete rebuttal. I wasn't suggesting that Apple should create a black market. See how I never said that? You are reading things into my words that are simply not there. You are then passionately responding as though I said them. You don't need me for that. You can do that with a mirror. Of course then it would be difficult to pretend that you're doing anything other than mental masturbation.
I was saying that if a black market existed, and people were getting apps through it that implemented this business model (because none were allowed in the App Store per Condition 1), then the case that Apple has no part in the current situation would be much stronger.
I can't tell if you are really that dense or if you just single-mindedly decided to twist everything I say instead of making at least a token attempt to understand what I said. People tend to do that when they decide ahead of time that the other guy is wrong/stupid/a moron for disagreeing/etc. therefore everything he says must be interpreted according to that prejudice. That doesn't make it real or an accurate reflection of what I was saying, however. Honestly it's rather childish of you.
Anyway, here's what it boils down to: are you positively claiming that a company which controls the storefront, controls the platform, and retains the right to selectively approve/refuse Apps bears 0.00% responsibility for the nature of those Apps? Yes or no?
My answer to that is an emphatic yes. Thus, I conclude that there is no meaningful distinction between the devs and the company in this specific instance. I even went so far as to say it's understandable and that I don't want anything other than customer choice to stop it. Despite your attempts to distort what I say I believe I am being quite reasonable here.
The truth is, and boy is this a hard one to offer up in mixed company, that Abraham Lincoln fucked this country over permanently by showing that the bounds set by the Constitution were freely ignorable.
The way history is taught is quite... distorted, to put it mildly. It's definitely proof of that old saying about so much of history being written by the victors. The North was the victor and Lincoln was its martyr/champion.
Boothe didn't shoot Lincoln because he wanted slavery so badly. He did it because Lincoln was a straight-up tyrant. Lincoln would jail members of Congress for disagreeing with him. Lincoln fought an illegal war to prevent states from seceding. Lincoln suspended habeus corpus. He was a dictator even if he thought he had to be a dictator, even if he meant well.
It's amazing how much public schools downplay this fact, as though it had nothing to do with why Lincoln was assassinated. History was among several subjects I considered far too important to trust to assholes like the public school bureaucracies, so I educated myself about this and found out how short-changed I really was. Suddenly the Civil War made a lot more sense.
I suppose that did sound a bit "lofty" but "As above, so below". By that I mean the same things that would apply to a major, important, significant decision also apply to the purchase of consumer goods. A purchase of consumer goods does not really end at the initial exchange, sort of like the way no man is an island. It's also a vote in favor of the company producing it and their business practices. I am simply aware of that.
I like convenience too, but I don't idolize it to the point that I lose awareness. That's the difference. If I have a real problem with the way a company does business, I won't patronize that company no matter how shiny and alluring the product may be. I call that having priorities. If I think it's a good company run by decent people who at least try to respect their customers, and I can afford the product, then I don't see why not.
I could have much more simply summed it up this way: if something doesn't suit you, don't buy it. I think it was the "blame the victims" comment that made me want to lay a foundation for why I would look at it that way. The only "victims" here are "victims" of their own unwillingness to read a summarized description of a product prior to purchasing it. That would be too inconvenient. Fine with me -- they have their priorities too.
I use two facebook accounts; one polished and clean for my parents and family, and one for my friends...
I have *ONE* Facebook page because I've long ago decided that my parents know who I am, and I don't care to work for people I have to lie to.
I am happy to work for people who don't really care what I do when I'm off the clock. It's not their business and they aren't trying to make it their business. I come in, I do a good job, I get paid, I clock out. That sums up my involvement with them. Anything I do off the clock is done as a private individual and not as a representative of the company. There is no grounds for anyone to expect anything different. They don't go around trying to dig up dirt on anyone. They don't go snooping through Facebook to try to find me there to see if I perfectly fit the Puritannical image of a goody two-shoes so they can overreact and play drama-queen if I don't.
"OH MY GOD IS THAT A BEER IN HIS HAND?! Some tiny fraction of our customers might be teetotalers. They might be.. *gasp*... OFFENDED! Quick, fire a good worker!" Seriously, fuck that. Fuck that and fuck the whole "cater to every offended person however unreasonable" with it. Whatever happened to allowing consenting adults to live their lives as they see fit and showing your disagreement with a lifestyle by living a different one? Not enough excuse in there to control others?
I can see one potential exception to this. I can see how that might not be the case for say, a politician or a CEO (which is a different type of politician) or a celebrity who advertises a product on TV. By becoming public figures and seeking public attention, those people have largely surrendered their privacy anyway. They wanted fame and did what it took to obtain it even though they knew their personal lives would be aired for public consumption (hope it was worth it). But really, how much of the population does that describe? Most of the people fired over relatively tame pictures on Facebook were not celebrities or public figures.
"The best minds of my generation are thinking about how to make people click ads" - Has there ever been a brief description that describes so well the technological time we live in? Hammerbacher should write a book or two.
His statement might be flawed: Maybe so that many bright minds of our generation work for these companies, but these companies don't just "make people click ads". It might be at their business's core, however, they provide services which many of us embrace while they last and it helps us be more productive (exceptions exist), which in turn contributes to the overall achievements we will see in the following years.
That is only that. Many of these companies also have people in employment who work, full time, on open-source software, do research and publish academic papers, etc. If ads fund these, by all means, go ahead.
His argument can be somewhat justified if the business's ONLY operations surround "making people click ads".
I personally took it to mean that someone else noticed one fact about Facebook: they aren't doing anything now that wasn't technologically possible ten years ago. The Flash games might be a bit more complex than ten years ago but that's about all. No real innovation has taken place. They haven't invented anything of significance. They aren't facing problems of scale that weren't already tackled by the likes of Microsoft and Yahoo and Google.
Facebook is a database backend (and those have been around a long time now), some JavaScript (available since 1995), some HTML (circa 1991), and Flash (1996). What have they invented? They're just another advertiser with nothing technically interesting to offer.
So, despite your snarky comments about me not backing down, I hereby admit that we are pretty much on the same side on everything, as long as your "Slimy Business Model" agreement was directed at the App Devs, not Apple.
Long as it's appreciated that Apple retains enough control over its platform and its App Store that it could choose not to allow this type of business model to happen within its branded storefront. Which means that there's no meaningful distinction here between Apple devs and Apple Inc. in this matter.
Giving the following conditions, if all were true, I would agree that there is a meaningful distinction between Apple Inc. and the Apple devs: 1) Apple has a TOS or equivalent for anyone putting anything up for sale in the App Store that does not allow this business model; 2) Apple takes real and reasoanble action to enforce this TOS; 3) Developers who insist on retaining this business model are forced out of the App Store and create their very own "black market" or "underground" scene for unauthorized Apps that implement this business model.
Until then, here's how I view the situation: so long as it doesn't become too much of a controversy and make them look bad, Apple would rather accommodate as many developers as possible and rake in its cut of as many App sales through its stores as possible and would rather make that money than sanction developers over their choice of how to do business. That means they're teammates.
I still don't really blame them for responding to a market where this is the way to make money. I don't want shame or government or anything like that to prevent this. I want people to stop buying things they don't really want and wouldn't have bought if they fully understood what they were buying. That's voluntary. It doesn't rely on anyone pressuring anyone else to change their behavior. It just creates a different market for companies to respond to. Unfortunately the few minutes at a time to educate oneself about what you vote for when you vote with your wallet seems like too much to ask.
It's a shame you choose to trivialize the nature of this discussion instead of appreciating a different point of view, even if you don't ultimately agree with it.
It's not a matter of blaming the victims. It's more like: a genuine victim who suffers through no fault of his/her own is an incredibly rare thing. It's really, utterly, exquisitely simple here: Apple Inc. did not use physical force. Apple Inc. did not use fraud. Therefore, Apple Inc. is not the bad guy in this instance.
If this situation happened to me, personally, not some random Joe Sixpack I never heard of, but to yours truly, I would not call myself a victim. Instead, I'd realize that there were several things I could have done differently to prevent a situation that ultimately required my active participation before it could happen. I could have learned what I was buying. I could have used the global parental controls. I could have understood what the app was and what it did and didn't do before trusting it to run on my hardware. I would have to fail to do all of these things before I could possibly end up in this situation. That would be my failure and no one else's.
If I do everything right, inform myself, take reasonable actions, and there is nothing you could easily point to and say that it was my failure, and I still get screwed, then and only then would I qualify as a victim. That's really quite rare, outside of violent crimes.
I am a responsible adult. When something doesn't turn out the way I wanted it to turn out, I look at how I could have taken control of the situation. I realize that if I don't take control over my own possessions and my own life, someone or something else will. Some people think it's god-awful to have no one else to blame. I think it's a relief to know that having no one to blame means all I have to do is modify my choices and learn from the experience.
So you believe Apple's customers asked for applications that had "in-app" purchases and Apple simply acquiesced? That if Apple's customers had not begged Apple to sell programs with in-app purchases there would never be such apps?
Did you fail to understand my point about the real power coming from regular people? That applies here too.
It's really simple. If apps that tried to offer "in-app" purchases never made any sales, there would be no apps that offer in-app purchases. People want or at least decide to tolerate them. Therefore, such apps succeed financially. If I had a problem with in- app purchases I would never patronize anyone who produces such apps on principle. If others don't have principles because convenience is all they care about, or don't have the backbone to back their principles up with action, then others get the results of their own choices and priorities. Again there is no victim here.
The reality is that most people have no solid principles. They only care about convenience. It is like their god. They will sacrifice nearly anything at its altar. Much of the time this mostly works, simply because most people are decent enough not to exploit the grevious character weakness this actually represents. So people who are like this get comfortable and complacent. Then eventually something comes along where the possibilities left open by this widespread mentality finally inconvenience them. Then they cry bloody murder instead of questioning why they embraced a lifestyle and a mentality that not only made this possible, but actively invited it. I say tough shit. Be a man or be a woman and accept the way you have chosen to be, or change it until you can accept it gladly.
But don't cry foul because you learn that your approach to life that you have chosen does in fact have a downside and isn't always going to produce results you like. That's not so different from a small child throwing a temper tantrum and about as honorable. Instead, deal with that by refining your a
First off: an opinion isn't libel. I never represented a single thing I said as indisputable fact. Maybe armchair lawyer wasn't your strong suit.
For another, you are making my point for me. The global lockout means I am right: if I ever ended up in this situation it would be MY FAULT. Maybe you would like to re-read that portion I put in caps. MY FAULT. That's why I would not end up with this problem in the first place. That's why I wouldn't cry foul if I somehow did.
Even if there were no global lockout, it would still be MY FAULT if I ever ended up in that position. The only option here is whether it would be my fault for failing to understand what I was spending a significant chunk of money on, or whether it'd be my fault for not using the global lockout. Either way, what I said, to those who can comprehend what they read, is that Apple does not deserve legal liability in this situation. So you can rest assured, I have not bashed the company that is obviously so precious to you that you will start foaming at the mouth the moment you falsely think someone said something bad about it.
Take a breath, pull your head out of your ass, and try actually understanding what I said. You'll feel less stupid that way. You're welcome. Now go find another way to demonize me because you don't give up so easily even when it's a completely lost cause.
The politicians who call themselves "conservative"... I'd like to know what they are conserving. Certainly it isn't tax money or political power.
The old answer to this question was along the lines of, "well, a 'conservative' is someone who doesn't want to rock the boat, doesn't want to make any sudden or drastic changes to society"... to that I'd say that the way government has become much larger and more authoritarian during my lifetime alone, or since 9/11 alone, represents a drastic and sudden departure from what were once traditional American values. Much of that was done by those calling themselves "conservative". So that definition is also a no-go.
Maybe "Liberals" and "Anti-Liberals" would make better labels. For some reason a lot of media personalities hate the word "neo-con" or "neo-conservative" but it was created from the need to distinguish what the word once meant from what it now represents.
Note that all I want is a smaller and less powerful government that doesn't try to protect me from every perceived threat, doesn't try to manage my life for me, doesn't try to separate me from the consequences of my decision-making. I don't want their brand of "for my safety" and "for my own good". I don't want there to ever be a law against consentual activity among adults. For those who find that distasteful, who are fearful, or who want to control what others do, there are many existing countries where you'd be happier. Why not go there instead of trying to make this one a clone of those? I want there to be at least one remaining nation with a minimal government, such that anyone who doesn't like that can go to any other nation on earth.
Is that so much to ask? Or is this like the very worst of religion, where it is not good enough that the "infidels" live in peace and leave you alone, their very existence is offensive to you?
Slashdot Mirror
Why not simply set your iPhone backups to be encrypted...?
A backup is a copy made from an original source of data. You can encrypt them all you like. It still doesn't explain why the original source of data was collected, what its purpose is, and whether there are implications for privacy.
That was far too trivial to answer. Therefore, I am guessing I have misunderstood your point. If not, well, now you know why I didn't mention encrypted backups.
Someone needs to mod this post up. It's rare on /. (or anywhere else, for that matter) for someone to admit that they're wrong, especially after so many vitriolic responses.
Truth be told, this general fact is probably why so many responses are vitriolic. It's assumed that no one will ever admit when they were wrong, that they are too proud to accept a correction, so the prevalent method is to rub their nose in it.
What I most often see is a more subtle form of failure to admit when you're wrong. Say someone makes 4 separate points in a post. Let's say I can clearly refute 3 of them. When they respond to me, do they acknowledge that? Almost never. They pretend like they never tried to make 3 points which were refuted. They then proceed to talk exclusively about the 4th point.
It's like most of Slashdot were required to attend a class called "Marketing and PR for Egotists" prior to creating an account. Gotta look good no matter what, and somehow "having the character and the guts to own a mistake, and maybe even to thank the one who set you straight" doesn't fall under "looking good".
Personal intrusion? your cellphone provider has a nice database of your every move that is accurate. They've had this for years. THAT is what you need to be outraged about, not a file that is safely on your phone that is not sent to anyone.
The people who run the cell networks have this data. The cell towers know where you are. Apple does not run a cell network. They just make the phone and leave it to AT&T or Verizon to provide network service. Therefore, it's possible this file provides Apple a way to track location data without owning the cell network. The same could also apply to Google's Android, of course.
If the data is inaccurate, that could be because this system is buggy -- maybe it doesn't get the attention and polish that advertised shiny features receive. It could be because it doesn't need to be accurate to serve its purpose. It could be for any number of reasons. The important part is that none of this answers the question of what the actual intention is. None of this answers the question: if it is a benevolent, innocuous feature, why isn't it listed as a selling point? That above all other things is what creates the suspicion, IMO.
If only there was some way to fix the whole thing to some wheels. Perhaps make it self-propelled in some way.
A man can dream.
If only there were some way to disregard the point being made in order to sarcastically point out the obvious. Apparently that's a very important source of jollies for a lot of people.
Oh by the way, if you did want to mount a laser on a vehicle, it wouldn't be a laser designed to replace spark plugs.
It's synced to your PC, which is a vulnerability in itself.
Is there a way to delete this "consolidated.db" file and replace it with a symlink to /dev/null? Not sure if iPhones have a /dev/null (or equiv.) but Android should.
It'd be interesting to do that and see if it breaks anything. If nothing breaks, even slightly, we can be fairly sure this "feature" provides nothing that benefits the owner of the phone, the paying customer. The question of who does benefit would then become more interesting.
For Apple and Google, this is how you avoid "panic", "hysteria", and various other words used to mischaracterize legitimate questions of trust: document features and files like this in a thorough, open, and easily searched manner instead of waiting for third parties to discover them and speculate about their function. If you refuse to do that, you are setting up this very situation.
Why anyone who is not an employee of Apple and Google would characterize legitimate inquiry as "hysteria" is another interesting question. It's obviously an attempt to dismiss and belittle ("you disagree with me about whether this should be questioned, so obviously you are panicking"). It would seem that in their minds, it's far more reasonable to blame people for wondering if this has privacy implications than it would be to blame the companies for leaving everyone in the dark.
I was considering this comment rude before I read other comments about pros and cons and finally it is somewhat accurate.
Accuracy is often rude, at least to some.
...carry around an engine, a gas tank, an alternator...
You know, I could be wrong of course... but I'm pretty sure it doesn't take the entire engine to power the lasers that run the engine.
Pretty sure your average household outlet could power all the lasers at once, or even just the car battery, if only for a second or two.
Portability seemed like a big concern to GP, considering the uses he was talking about.
The point was that the possibilities you mention predate the invention of this sparkplug replacement system.
Seriously, just think of the potential hacking uses of a pencil sized high powered laser! Cutting and drilling through hardened steel. Remote ignition of fires or detonation of explosives. Actual blinding weapons in a flashlight case.
I'm afraid they'll be too cool to be let out in public.
All you'd have to do is find a way to carry around an engine, a gas tank, an alternator, and any needed transformer/induction coils and you'll be all set. Maybe you can start doing some push-ups or something.
Relatively small yet powerful (enough to do serious damage) lasers have been around for a while now. It's the power supply that tends to be big and bulky. That's the main reason that laser pistols have not replaced traditional firearms. If you want to quickly dump 800-2000+ joules into a distant target, gunpowder and lead remain the easiest way to do it.
(yet another AC)
Not like the two are mutually exclusive. Just because the reason someone hasn't created an account is they are too lazy to create an account since they can post comments anyway, doesn't mean they are otherwise willing to share their name and address.
They'll be rescinding their stance that privacy doesn't matter, then?
Just, rest assured, cops rarely get away with it if you have a decent lawyer.
It takes a damn good lawyer to get a cop tried for deprivation of rights under color of law. It ought to happen every time the exclusionary rule is applied.
I know an easier way to make this happen. Convince the cell phone manufacturers and service providers that laws and practices like this are hurting phone sales by removing some of the utility of the phones and making them into a potential liability. Then we'd finally have large, powerful, monied, well-represented coporate interests lobbying in our favor. Suddenly this practice would end in record time.
All it takes is a K9 officer to fake a "tell" on your car, and they can search you. Cops lie about probable cause all the time.
Which is why all searches should require both that another citizen (who is not a cop) has accused you of a crime and that a judge has issued a warrant. No matter what they see or how suspicious they think it is. They keep abusing this power to the point where they don't deserve to have it.
If that means a few more criminals get away with it, so be it. I consider my government to be far more dangerous than a few individual criminals. I'd be happy to take my chances with this scenario. I'd rather criminals be deterred by things like conceal-carry permits than the possibility of essentially random police searches.
Not good to give false information to a cop but you are not required to give information that might incriminate you either.
You could say nothing or:
"I do not consent to searches, am I free to do now?"
or just:
"am I free to go now".
That "I do not consent to searches" is key. A lot of times the cops will phrase the question as "do you mind if we search your car?" If you say "no" they take that to mean "no, I don't mind" and if you say "yes" they take it to mean "yes you may search". Saying you do not consent to a search removes this ambiguity.
It's some sad times we live in that such a concern would ever cross the minds of a regular citizen who is not a career criminal.
My dad likes to file FOIA requests when the police in his home town (of 1 million people) do something illegal. They frequently quote absurd fees, after which he leaves and comes back with an officer of the court who makes them do it for free. He should have been a lawyer. Or maybe the world is better off with one fewer lawyer and one more electrical engineer.
Seriously, cops seem to wonder why they're not better appreciated and respected. No sense of irony.
As a whole, it's not like the police have a great deal of respect for citizens who exercise their rights. So I have to wonder: do they retaliate? Do they suddenly take a really hard look at his driving and see how many things they can charge him with that they'd normally let slide? Do they insist on searching him for guns/drugs/dead hookers/etc. every time he gets pulled over for i.e. speeding?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Protected_class
I don't see IQ on the list of protected classes. Maybe it's simply that there are no defenses for discrimination based on IQ.
After all, employers need to discriminate based on /something/, otherwise the hiring process would simply be based on first-come first-serve.
This was not about whether IQ is on some arbitrary list you found. It was about the logic used to justify that fact.
The judge made a defense for discrimination based on IQ. That's what this ruling was. That ruling, in turn, has an obvious logical flaw.
What Facebook has accomplished is to make using technology completely socially acceptable, even mundane. This is not a trivial feat, although I suppose the importance is up for discussion. I think it's very important, especially given the miasma of anti-intellectualism we seem to be in as a society.
Did you ever stop to consider that maybe appreciating technology only when it's socially acceptable, only when "everybody else is doing it", is a large part of the anti-intellectualism? That it doesn't help when the main purpose of this technology is not edification or academic advancement, but advertisement and small talk? If the 99% enjoy new and interesting technologies that enhance their lives and allow them to do things that were once difficult or impossible, it's not because of them. It's because of the 1%.
I am sure some of them exist someplace, but I have never known intellectuals to be trendy crowd-followers. It is not something associated with independent thought, with those who are learned. I'd also speculate that the most rudimentary ability to use a complex tool is not nearly so intellectually challenging and stimulating as developing an actual understanding of how and why the tool works.
Significant intelligence is often accompanied by a sort of natural curiosity that delights in learning new things. That's usually how it developed in the first place. Either no one taught the person that learning is tedious, boring work that can only be done by rote, never by first principles and reasoning from them in order to apply knowledge to new situations and make personal discoveries ... or more likely, the public schools attempted to teach this to the person but the teaching was rejected.
You have repeatedly displayed this general tendency. This one is a simpler example. The general tendency is to play "hostile audience" and try to use everything I say against me. No complaint there, it's par for the course, except that it makes a constructive discussion nearly impossible and prevents you from seeing my point. That wouldn't be a problem either, except you insist on refuting what you clearly do not understand. Seems like you'll never know the satisfaction and certainty of truly understanding something before deciding whether you're against it. So be it.
Now for a concrete rebuttal. I wasn't suggesting that Apple should create a black market. See how I never said that? You are reading things into my words that are simply not there. You are then passionately responding as though I said them. You don't need me for that. You can do that with a mirror. Of course then it would be difficult to pretend that you're doing anything other than mental masturbation.
I was saying that if a black market existed, and people were getting apps through it that implemented this business model (because none were allowed in the App Store per Condition 1), then the case that Apple has no part in the current situation would be much stronger.
I can't tell if you are really that dense or if you just single-mindedly decided to twist everything I say instead of making at least a token attempt to understand what I said. People tend to do that when they decide ahead of time that the other guy is wrong/stupid/a moron for disagreeing/etc. therefore everything he says must be interpreted according to that prejudice. That doesn't make it real or an accurate reflection of what I was saying, however. Honestly it's rather childish of you.
Anyway, here's what it boils down to: are you positively claiming that a company which controls the storefront, controls the platform, and retains the right to selectively approve/refuse Apps bears 0.00% responsibility for the nature of those Apps? Yes or no?
My answer to that is an emphatic yes. Thus, I conclude that there is no meaningful distinction between the devs and the company in this specific instance. I even went so far as to say it's understandable and that I don't want anything other than customer choice to stop it. Despite your attempts to distort what I say I believe I am being quite reasonable here.
The truth is, and boy is this a hard one to offer up in mixed company, that Abraham Lincoln fucked this country over permanently by showing that the bounds set by the Constitution were freely ignorable.
The way history is taught is quite ... distorted, to put it mildly. It's definitely proof of that old saying about so much of history being written by the victors. The North was the victor and Lincoln was its martyr/champion.
Boothe didn't shoot Lincoln because he wanted slavery so badly. He did it because Lincoln was a straight-up tyrant. Lincoln would jail members of Congress for disagreeing with him. Lincoln fought an illegal war to prevent states from seceding. Lincoln suspended habeus corpus. He was a dictator even if he thought he had to be a dictator, even if he meant well.
It's amazing how much public schools downplay this fact, as though it had nothing to do with why Lincoln was assassinated. History was among several subjects I considered far too important to trust to assholes like the public school bureaucracies, so I educated myself about this and found out how short-changed I really was. Suddenly the Civil War made a lot more sense.
or to summarise the result, maybe the reason that American police are all such pricks is that the recruitment process requires them to be stupid.
You can be stupid without loving power and viewing your fellow human beings as skulls that you're looking for an excuse to crack.
I suppose that did sound a bit "lofty" but "As above, so below". By that I mean the same things that would apply to a major, important, significant decision also apply to the purchase of consumer goods. A purchase of consumer goods does not really end at the initial exchange, sort of like the way no man is an island. It's also a vote in favor of the company producing it and their business practices. I am simply aware of that.
I like convenience too, but I don't idolize it to the point that I lose awareness. That's the difference. If I have a real problem with the way a company does business, I won't patronize that company no matter how shiny and alluring the product may be. I call that having priorities. If I think it's a good company run by decent people who at least try to respect their customers, and I can afford the product, then I don't see why not.
I could have much more simply summed it up this way: if something doesn't suit you, don't buy it. I think it was the "blame the victims" comment that made me want to lay a foundation for why I would look at it that way. The only "victims" here are "victims" of their own unwillingness to read a summarized description of a product prior to purchasing it. That would be too inconvenient. Fine with me -- they have their priorities too.
I use two facebook accounts; one polished and clean for my parents and family, and one for my friends...
I have *ONE* Facebook page because I've long ago decided that my parents know who I am, and I don't care to work for people I have to lie to.
I am happy to work for people who don't really care what I do when I'm off the clock. It's not their business and they aren't trying to make it their business. I come in, I do a good job, I get paid, I clock out. That sums up my involvement with them. Anything I do off the clock is done as a private individual and not as a representative of the company. There is no grounds for anyone to expect anything different. They don't go around trying to dig up dirt on anyone. They don't go snooping through Facebook to try to find me there to see if I perfectly fit the Puritannical image of a goody two-shoes so they can overreact and play drama-queen if I don't.
"OH MY GOD IS THAT A BEER IN HIS HAND?! Some tiny fraction of our customers might be teetotalers. They might be .. *gasp* ... OFFENDED! Quick, fire a good worker!" Seriously, fuck that. Fuck that and fuck the whole "cater to every offended person however unreasonable" with it. Whatever happened to allowing consenting adults to live their lives as they see fit and showing your disagreement with a lifestyle by living a different one? Not enough excuse in there to control others?
I can see one potential exception to this. I can see how that might not be the case for say, a politician or a CEO (which is a different type of politician) or a celebrity who advertises a product on TV. By becoming public figures and seeking public attention, those people have largely surrendered their privacy anyway. They wanted fame and did what it took to obtain it even though they knew their personal lives would be aired for public consumption (hope it was worth it). But really, how much of the population does that describe? Most of the people fired over relatively tame pictures on Facebook were not celebrities or public figures.
"The best minds of my generation are thinking about how to make people click ads" - Has there ever been a brief description that describes so well the technological time we live in? Hammerbacher should write a book or two.
His statement might be flawed: Maybe so that many bright minds of our generation work for these companies, but these companies don't just "make people click ads". It might be at their business's core, however, they provide services which many of us embrace while they last and it helps us be more productive (exceptions exist), which in turn contributes to the overall achievements we will see in the following years.
That is only that. Many of these companies also have people in employment who work, full time, on open-source software, do research and publish academic papers, etc. If ads fund these, by all means, go ahead.
His argument can be somewhat justified if the business's ONLY operations surround "making people click ads".
I personally took it to mean that someone else noticed one fact about Facebook: they aren't doing anything now that wasn't technologically possible ten years ago. The Flash games might be a bit more complex than ten years ago but that's about all. No real innovation has taken place. They haven't invented anything of significance. They aren't facing problems of scale that weren't already tackled by the likes of Microsoft and Yahoo and Google.
Facebook is a database backend (and those have been around a long time now), some JavaScript (available since 1995), some HTML (circa 1991), and Flash (1996). What have they invented? They're just another advertiser with nothing technically interesting to offer.
Long as it's appreciated that Apple retains enough control over its platform and its App Store that it could choose not to allow this type of business model to happen within its branded storefront. Which means that there's no meaningful distinction here between Apple devs and Apple Inc. in this matter.
Giving the following conditions, if all were true, I would agree that there is a meaningful distinction between Apple Inc. and the Apple devs: 1) Apple has a TOS or equivalent for anyone putting anything up for sale in the App Store that does not allow this business model; 2) Apple takes real and reasoanble action to enforce this TOS; 3) Developers who insist on retaining this business model are forced out of the App Store and create their very own "black market" or "underground" scene for unauthorized Apps that implement this business model.
Until then, here's how I view the situation: so long as it doesn't become too much of a controversy and make them look bad, Apple would rather accommodate as many developers as possible and rake in its cut of as many App sales through its stores as possible and would rather make that money than sanction developers over their choice of how to do business. That means they're teammates.
I still don't really blame them for responding to a market where this is the way to make money. I don't want shame or government or anything like that to prevent this. I want people to stop buying things they don't really want and wouldn't have bought if they fully understood what they were buying. That's voluntary. It doesn't rely on anyone pressuring anyone else to change their behavior. It just creates a different market for companies to respond to. Unfortunately the few minutes at a time to educate oneself about what you vote for when you vote with your wallet seems like too much to ask.
It's a shame you choose to trivialize the nature of this discussion instead of appreciating a different point of view, even if you don't ultimately agree with it.
It's not a matter of blaming the victims. It's more like: a genuine victim who suffers through no fault of his/her own is an incredibly rare thing. It's really, utterly, exquisitely simple here: Apple Inc. did not use physical force. Apple Inc. did not use fraud. Therefore, Apple Inc. is not the bad guy in this instance.
If this situation happened to me, personally, not some random Joe Sixpack I never heard of, but to yours truly, I would not call myself a victim. Instead, I'd realize that there were several things I could have done differently to prevent a situation that ultimately required my active participation before it could happen. I could have learned what I was buying. I could have used the global parental controls. I could have understood what the app was and what it did and didn't do before trusting it to run on my hardware. I would have to fail to do all of these things before I could possibly end up in this situation. That would be my failure and no one else's.
If I do everything right, inform myself, take reasonable actions, and there is nothing you could easily point to and say that it was my failure, and I still get screwed, then and only then would I qualify as a victim. That's really quite rare, outside of violent crimes.
I am a responsible adult. When something doesn't turn out the way I wanted it to turn out, I look at how I could have taken control of the situation. I realize that if I don't take control over my own possessions and my own life, someone or something else will. Some people think it's god-awful to have no one else to blame. I think it's a relief to know that having no one to blame means all I have to do is modify my choices and learn from the experience.
Did you fail to understand my point about the real power coming from regular people? That applies here too.
It's really simple. If apps that tried to offer "in-app" purchases never made any sales, there would be no apps that offer in-app purchases. People want or at least decide to tolerate them. Therefore, such apps succeed financially. If I had a problem with in- app purchases I would never patronize anyone who produces such apps on principle. If others don't have principles because convenience is all they care about, or don't have the backbone to back their principles up with action, then others get the results of their own choices and priorities. Again there is no victim here.
The reality is that most people have no solid principles. They only care about convenience. It is like their god. They will sacrifice nearly anything at its altar. Much of the time this mostly works, simply because most people are decent enough not to exploit the grevious character weakness this actually represents. So people who are like this get comfortable and complacent. Then eventually something comes along where the possibilities left open by this widespread mentality finally inconvenience them. Then they cry bloody murder instead of questioning why they embraced a lifestyle and a mentality that not only made this possible, but actively invited it. I say tough shit. Be a man or be a woman and accept the way you have chosen to be, or change it until you can accept it gladly.
But don't cry foul because you learn that your approach to life that you have chosen does in fact have a downside and isn't always going to produce results you like. That's not so different from a small child throwing a temper tantrum and about as honorable. Instead, deal with that by refining your a
First off: an opinion isn't libel. I never represented a single thing I said as indisputable fact. Maybe armchair lawyer wasn't your strong suit.
For another, you are making my point for me. The global lockout means I am right: if I ever ended up in this situation it would be MY FAULT. Maybe you would like to re-read that portion I put in caps. MY FAULT. That's why I would not end up with this problem in the first place. That's why I wouldn't cry foul if I somehow did.
Even if there were no global lockout, it would still be MY FAULT if I ever ended up in that position. The only option here is whether it would be my fault for failing to understand what I was spending a significant chunk of money on, or whether it'd be my fault for not using the global lockout. Either way, what I said, to those who can comprehend what they read, is that Apple does not deserve legal liability in this situation. So you can rest assured, I have not bashed the company that is obviously so precious to you that you will start foaming at the mouth the moment you falsely think someone said something bad about it.
Take a breath, pull your head out of your ass, and try actually understanding what I said. You'll feel less stupid that way. You're welcome. Now go find another way to demonize me because you don't give up so easily even when it's a completely lost cause.
The politicians who call themselves "conservative"... I'd like to know what they are conserving. Certainly it isn't tax money or political power.
The old answer to this question was along the lines of, "well, a 'conservative' is someone who doesn't want to rock the boat, doesn't want to make any sudden or drastic changes to society"... to that I'd say that the way government has become much larger and more authoritarian during my lifetime alone, or since 9/11 alone, represents a drastic and sudden departure from what were once traditional American values. Much of that was done by those calling themselves "conservative". So that definition is also a no-go.
Maybe "Liberals" and "Anti-Liberals" would make better labels. For some reason a lot of media personalities hate the word "neo-con" or "neo-conservative" but it was created from the need to distinguish what the word once meant from what it now represents.
Note that all I want is a smaller and less powerful government that doesn't try to protect me from every perceived threat, doesn't try to manage my life for me, doesn't try to separate me from the consequences of my decision-making. I don't want their brand of "for my safety" and "for my own good". I don't want there to ever be a law against consentual activity among adults. For those who find that distasteful, who are fearful, or who want to control what others do, there are many existing countries where you'd be happier. Why not go there instead of trying to make this one a clone of those? I want there to be at least one remaining nation with a minimal government, such that anyone who doesn't like that can go to any other nation on earth.
Is that so much to ask? Or is this like the very worst of religion, where it is not good enough that the "infidels" live in peace and leave you alone, their very existence is offensive to you?