"mean we're moving irresistibly into an era of 'sealed-unit computing,' even for power users?"
Even for power users, open software is more important than sealed or non-sealed hardware. If you have to pay for eventual upgrades (since you can't do it yourself), that could s*ck, but you could live with that. But the important thing is that the OS, the APIs, configurability, programmability, 1st/2nd/3rd party software installation - and so on and so forth - be as open as possible, since that (well, the lack of it) would cause much more harm and trouble than sealed-hardware devices.
So, sub-$1000 you say? Then I'm saying: Hello, sunshine! Time to wake up! Seriously, where in the solar system are you getting a retina macbook pro for less than $1000?
I don't get it. It seems these days smarta**es want "smartphone" to mean only something with ios, android, wp, etc. on it. It's not the OS that makes a smartphone "smart". Granted, it doesn't have a GPS receiver, but otherwise it's not a bad phone [1] for the price, and I wouldn't blame Nokia for marketing it with the goal of selling it - you know, that's the point.
Once the security questions used to be the standard 3, your mums maiden name, your city of birth, and your first pet/car/whatever, now the answers are often on-line or traceable via Facebook
Well, it's not the biggest and most effective way, but what I used to do (and still do if required) in such cases was that I picked randomly from the questions and gave totally unrelated random words as answers, which I recorded in a protected file. Unless someone could get to the file and crack it, there's no way to get through that with social engineering or public profile data collection.
From Wikipedia article (Data Protection Directive - Comparison with US data protection law):
"The United States prefers what it calls a 'sectoral' approach to data protection legislation, which relies on a combination of legislation, regulation, and self-regulation, rather than governmental regulation alone.[10] Former U.S. President Bill Clinton and former Vice-President Al Gore explicitly recommended in their "Framework for Global Electronic Commerce" that the private sector should lead, and companies should implement self-regulation in reaction to issues brought on by Internet technology." (emphasis added)
I never could really understand how this companies-should-self-regulate could work, and up to this day it didn't really prove to work. If companies are let to roam freely, then there's really nothing (good or bad) you can really expect from them, and even if one seems OK, they can change their policies from one second to the next and you're screwed.
Nobody in their right minds would trust all of their data exclusively and only to a company (yes, you know, that "cloud" you like so much is operated by one or more companies with data protection and privacy policies changing by the weather). If you do so, something like the original article mentions can happen anytime.
I'm not saying you shouldn't use the "cloud" (how I hate that word, oh my), but you should never trust and rely on it completely without any (or weak and borderline useless) fallback. Remember, it's your data, it's your life, protect it as you would protect anything that you own and hold precious.
Thing is, since computing and PCs have become everyone's tools and don't require in-depth tech knowledge, it's pretty easy to get average users to use and rely on such services. It's simple, they don't really know what they are getting into. And it's for this reason that it's sad to see a more knowledgable person (i.e. article writer) fail so terribly.
Always remember, just because so many people are hooked to it and it's easy to use, that doesn't mean it's safe and reliable. It's not.
Approach 4: Lobby for manufacturers to include the capability - wether software or hardware (jumpers man, they are good for everything:) - of disabling secure boot if the user wants to. Actually approaches 1 & 2 re crazy stupid, Approach 3 is unrealistic, so the above Approach 4 should be the one and only. We'd all be better off this way I tell ya.
Passive radar has been researched and used for a while now, which is cool. And the reported thing would be cool too, if it would be passive and if it would not require a custom-built active-signal based wifi device with the size of a suitcase which is anything but covert. Also, through-the-wall radars have been used for a time, which don't provide too much detail, but can tell at least the number of moving objects and locate them. Again, this would be quite nice if it wouldn't require the placement of a custom device, or if it does, then it should be quite much smaller and not different in size or looks from any other router you can buy, and then at least they could place them in banks or wherever.
"Some, such as IDC, believe Windows Phone will eclipse iOS by 2016"
[quote]belief (noun): conviction of the truth of some statement or the reality of some being or phenomenon especially when based on examination of evidence[/quote] (m-w.com)
I don't see much evidence or reality in believing WP8 will eclipse anything at all. I don't believe anyone should base development decisions on the beliefs of others who seemingly don't know any better.
If anything, our collective experience should tell us that there's really nothing firm to support this blind faith in WP8.
"nce we start regulating speech the regulators will make it so we criticize them (it might hurt their feelings or upset the social order if the regulators were criticized)."
Exactly. If they arrest someone for mentioning a sportsman's dead father, what would you say a politician could do to you if you call him/her a liar (which almost all of them are) or say your opinion at a political demonstration and hurt the poor fellow's feelings? And these are just one example of the many possible cases where such laws could be misused. If there is someone out there who really thinks such laws and regulations were put in place to serve their best interest can't see further than their own ignorance.
"not having a Facebook account could be the first sign that you are a mass murderer."
All I can say to that is: "SIlence! I kill you!":P
In all honesty, I don't want to be friends with anyone who live their lives on Facebook. I have a few friends who post photos there from time to time, I can live with that, but otherwise...
It seems funny to think people - who saw the intended application, the target audience, the main purpose and the negative properties of facebook-like sites, and decided not to be an active part of it - so so consider such people murderers or something equally bad.
Also, not being on facebook doesn't necessarily mean someone doesn't want to be out there, e.g. I know people who are on linkedin, but are not on facebook - so what does that mean? No, please, never mind answering that, I already have spent more time on this idiotic topic than I ever wanted to.
"Face it, unless you're fucking psychic you don't know the real reason they did it."
Uhmm, the reason? F* the reason, you're a customer, it's the result that matters (which affects you), which seems fairly shady at this point. Reason, right.
Oh, you means you want to get paid. What a pity. You build something, and they don't come, so you start blaming. Grow up and get a clue.
"Open is broken as a money-making platform model, unless youâ(TM)re making the OS or the handsets. Most of us aren't doing that."
So do something else, geez. You fail to earn money one way, and think there's no other way to do it? How the hell did you survive this long, must've been some real miracle. Finding the tools and the right way to do things is part of what makes a developer stand out from the crowd. Crying never did help, and never will.
"Android is designed with far too much nerd philosophy"
Uhmm, why do you think people like it so much? Because it is a geek's OS, but it's also your mom's OS and your daughter's OS. That's why.
"lack of respect in Romania for the fundamental principles of democracy"
Oh well, I've lived 19 years in Romania, and visit back from time to time, and anyone who like me, spent any considerable length of time there, could've told them the above. It's just, westerners are so far "gone", they never believe it. Also, my experience is that most westerners don't care about central/eastern european politics on a daily basis, and so when something happens that triggers their attention, they suddenly start looking in awe what's happening, like they're living on some different planet. It's just how it is.
Really? Creating webapp shortcuts on the desktop or taskbar, and the first analogy that comes to mind is IE9? Seriously? Especially since IE's pinning just puts a link on your taskbar, nothing close to Chrome's app shortcuts' feel/behavior (or previously the doomed Firefox's Prism/Webrunner/Chromeless stuff).
Well, here you go, another idiotic patent which patents something which was already done and done, _but_ - wait for it... - this is for a portable electronic device, yay.
I won't even go into this, and don't talk about how the US SW patent system is a joke. So many people at so many places have talked this out already, without any effect whatsoever, that it seems utterly pointless to even start any new discussion about it. Yes, this is giving up from my part, since this seems just another thing that we can't seem to be able to fight.
But at least we all know from now on, that "the object is a finger":P (ref:pat.8,223,134). Well, I hope it's the middle one, since you'll only see that one from me, from now on.
"They Qwerty keyboard layout was specifically designed to prevent jamming in typewriters while at full typing speed.It optimized the usage of the levers to prevent those jams. This functionality is useless in the modern world [...]" and as with a lot of things in computing, it reached a point where it is totally pointless to compare the current situation to the origins (e.g. think about the endless debates about changing de facto standard icons like floppy disk for save and so on and so forth). It doesn't matter now why it was done so. But it matters that the current majority of computer users are accustomed to it to a point where changing it wouldn't be worth the hassle. Now, providing options for other layouts, that's a different story, there's nothing wrong with that. But this dextr (or what) thing should stay on the touchscreens and be done with it, in the big family of gazillion+1 versions of touchscreen keyboard variants. That's it, nothing more, nothing less. Too much fuss again about some piece of crap.
I watched the video, I showed it to my sister too, and one of my colleagues who is a reserch scientist with a phd and a woman. Neither of them, or me found the video shocking, or sexist, mostly our general opinion was that it's funny. That's it. Who found this overly sexist or codnemnable just should get a reality check. My sisters reaction to these opinions was that they probably come from prude americans - and she does live in the U.S. so go figure:D
Sorry people, but I don't think $12 as a starting salary in a retail job is low. I know some people in retail jobs that earn lower than that, and not as a starting salary, but as a regular one. And no, it's not a salary you could live on, if you're living alone. Yes, this is a problem, but saying this $12 starting wage is lower than the average or that they exploit people with it, is a bit over the edge. Retail jobs are generally not the best paying jobs in the world, as you should know, and I suspect tech retail jobs are among the better ones in the general retail arena. So, while I can understand how low salary is not good for you, don't really think this is something to whine about.
I have multipl issues wih this whole uefi secureboot shebang.
How can it happen that one company (however large) can seemingly make most of the manufacturers to comply with their crazy ideas? The option to easily disable uefi secureboot _should_ be there on every and each motherboard (desktop, server or laptop). It should not be the manufacturer (and indirectly Microsoft) who decides what kernel and drivers (regardless f the operating system) a user or developer uses. How would anyone make custom kernels and/or modules (Linux) and/or drivers (e.g. Windows) if signing everything through a 3rd party signing service would be required every time? This is crazy.
Second, I don't like where Fedora/RH and Ubuntu are going with this. Aligning with MS on this issue is definitely not the right way to go and most people start to see this. Yet, nobody seems to want to find a way out, most seem to even have stopped protesting, or asking for mandatory secureboot disable options. There are not only 2 distros out there, there are a lot more of them, and most of them will not go along with MS-signing kernels and drivers. Also, if Ubuntu goes for a secureboot lockdown scheme, they might be good from the enterprise side, moving away from the average users, and that just might be what they want to do.
Some still say this whole thing is a non-issue and too much fuss about nothing, but if it were so, then please, for crying out loud, why is there so much smoke around about the planned existance or non-existance of a secureboot disable option? If manufacturers would just say disabling will be there always, this whole issue would just go away.
The biggest problem still is that most average users can't see the point in all this, simply don't care, thus unwillingly participating in making it worse for those, who do.
"The unfortunate aspect of using native code is that a large percentage of developers today don't have a fucking clue about C++."
I don't see how that would be unfortunate, or even what's the relation (between enabling native development and new devs not being c++ gurus).
Enabling the possibility of writing native code is a good thing on any platform, and there'll be always a great number of people relying on it. There won't be a huge crowd of such people, but if you want a nice future for your platform and OS, disragarding such developers would be very bad in the long run. You can't base your survival only on stupid webapps.
If I can't use a custom kernel and I can't load custom drivers, than there's no way anyone could convince me this UEFI/SB and the related signing misery is the way to go. I couldn't care less that some distros can sign their kernels and drivers and you can use those, because that essentially would imply a lock-in to a specific company's version - thanks but no thanks. Of course I can imagine how some companies would like it that way.
Slashdot Mirror
"mean we're moving irresistibly into an era of 'sealed-unit computing,' even for power users?"
Even for power users, open software is more important than sealed or non-sealed hardware. If you have to pay for eventual upgrades (since you can't do it yourself), that could s*ck, but you could live with that. But the important thing is that the OS, the APIs, configurability, programmability, 1st/2nd/3rd party software installation - and so on and so forth - be as open as possible, since that (well, the lack of it) would cause much more harm and trouble than sealed-hardware devices.
"Try finding that in a cheap, sub-$1000 laptop)."
So, sub-$1000 you say? Then I'm saying: Hello, sunshine! Time to wake up! Seriously, where in the solar system are you getting a retina macbook pro for less than $1000?
"so they modified their OS to handle the new technology"
Oh, so that's why you have to use 3rd party "hacks" to enable native 2880x1800... handling it indeed.
"Computer Science Curriculum"
Teaching basic coding skills is not computer science. Even teaching more advanced coding skills is not computer science. It's teaching coding.
"Featurephones as Smartphones"
I don't get it. It seems these days smarta**es want "smartphone" to mean only something with ios, android, wp, etc. on it. It's not the OS that makes a smartphone "smart". Granted, it doesn't have a GPS receiver, but otherwise it's not a bad phone [1] for the price, and I wouldn't blame Nokia for marketing it with the goal of selling it - you know, that's the point.
[1] http://www.gsmarena.com/nokia_asha_305-review-792.php
Once the security questions used to be the standard 3, your mums maiden name, your city of birth, and your first pet/car/whatever, now the answers are often on-line or traceable via Facebook
Well, it's not the biggest and most effective way, but what I used to do (and still do if required) in such cases was that I picked randomly from the questions and gave totally unrelated random words as answers, which I recorded in a protected file. Unless someone could get to the file and crack it, there's no way to get through that with social engineering or public profile data collection.
From Wikipedia article (Data Protection Directive - Comparison with US data protection law):
"The United States prefers what it calls a 'sectoral' approach to data protection legislation, which relies on a combination of legislation, regulation, and self-regulation, rather than governmental regulation alone.[10] Former U.S. President Bill Clinton and former Vice-President Al Gore explicitly recommended in their "Framework for Global Electronic Commerce" that the private sector should lead, and companies should implement self-regulation in reaction to issues brought on by Internet technology." (emphasis added)
I never could really understand how this companies-should-self-regulate could work, and up to this day it didn't really prove to work. If companies are let to roam freely, then there's really nothing (good or bad) you can really expect from them, and even if one seems OK, they can change their policies from one second to the next and you're screwed.
Nobody in their right minds would trust all of their data exclusively and only to a company (yes, you know, that "cloud" you like so much is operated by one or more companies with data protection and privacy policies changing by the weather). If you do so, something like the original article mentions can happen anytime.
I'm not saying you shouldn't use the "cloud" (how I hate that word, oh my), but you should never trust and rely on it completely without any (or weak and borderline useless) fallback. Remember, it's your data, it's your life, protect it as you would protect anything that you own and hold precious.
Thing is, since computing and PCs have become everyone's tools and don't require in-depth tech knowledge, it's pretty easy to get average users to use and rely on such services. It's simple, they don't really know what they are getting into. And it's for this reason that it's sad to see a more knowledgable person (i.e. article writer) fail so terribly.
Always remember, just because so many people are hooked to it and it's easy to use, that doesn't mean it's safe and reliable. It's not.
Approach 4: Lobby for manufacturers to include the capability - wether software or hardware (jumpers man, they are good for everything :) - of disabling secure boot if the user wants to. Actually approaches 1 & 2 re crazy stupid, Approach 3 is unrealistic, so the above Approach 4 should be the one and only. We'd all be better off this way I tell ya.
Passive radar has been researched and used for a while now, which is cool. And the reported thing would be cool too, if it would be passive and if it would not require a custom-built active-signal based wifi device with the size of a suitcase which is anything but covert. Also, through-the-wall radars have been used for a time, which don't provide too much detail, but can tell at least the number of moving objects and locate them. Again, this would be quite nice if it wouldn't require the placement of a custom device, or if it does, then it should be quite much smaller and not different in size or looks from any other router you can buy, and then at least they could place them in banks or wherever.
"Some, such as IDC, believe Windows Phone will eclipse iOS by 2016"
[quote]belief (noun): conviction of the truth of some statement or the reality of some being or phenomenon especially when based on examination of evidence[/quote] (m-w.com)
I don't see much evidence or reality in believing WP8 will eclipse anything at all. I don't believe anyone should base development decisions on the beliefs of others who seemingly don't know any better.
If anything, our collective experience should tell us that there's really nothing firm to support this blind faith in WP8.
"nce we start regulating speech the regulators will make it so we criticize them (it might hurt their feelings or upset the social order if the regulators were criticized)."
Exactly. If they arrest someone for mentioning a sportsman's dead father, what would you say a politician could do to you if you call him/her a liar (which almost all of them are) or say your opinion at a political demonstration and hurt the poor fellow's feelings? And these are just one example of the many possible cases where such laws could be misused. If there is someone out there who really thinks such laws and regulations were put in place to serve their best interest can't see further than their own ignorance.
"not having a Facebook account could be the first sign that you are a mass murderer."
:P
All I can say to that is: "SIlence! I kill you!"
In all honesty, I don't want to be friends with anyone who live their lives on Facebook. I have a few friends who post photos there from time to time, I can live with that, but otherwise...
It seems funny to think people - who saw the intended application, the target audience, the main purpose and the negative properties of facebook-like sites, and decided not to be an active part of it - so so consider such people murderers or something equally bad.
Also, not being on facebook doesn't necessarily mean someone doesn't want to be out there, e.g. I know people who are on linkedin, but are not on facebook - so what does that mean? No, please, never mind answering that, I already have spent more time on this idiotic topic than I ever wanted to.
"Face it, unless you're fucking psychic you don't know the real reason they did it."
Uhmm, the reason? F* the reason, you're a customer, it's the result that matters (which affects you), which seems fairly shady at this point. Reason, right.
"People have to get paid"
Oh, you means you want to get paid. What a pity. You build something, and they don't come, so you start blaming. Grow up and get a clue.
"Open is broken as a money-making platform model, unless youâ(TM)re making the OS or the handsets. Most of us aren't doing that."
So do something else, geez. You fail to earn money one way, and think there's no other way to do it? How the hell did you survive this long, must've been some real miracle. Finding the tools and the right way to do things is part of what makes a developer stand out from the crowd. Crying never did help, and never will.
"Android is designed with far too much nerd philosophy"
Uhmm, why do you think people like it so much? Because it is a geek's OS, but it's also your mom's OS and your daughter's OS. That's why.
"lack of respect in Romania for the fundamental principles of democracy"
Oh well, I've lived 19 years in Romania, and visit back from time to time, and anyone who like me, spent any considerable length of time there, could've told them the above. It's just, westerners are so far "gone", they never believe it. Also, my experience is that most westerners don't care about central/eastern european politics on a daily basis, and so when something happens that triggers their attention, they suddenly start looking in awe what's happening, like they're living on some different planet. It's just how it is.
"which sounds a bit like IE9's pinning system"
Really? Creating webapp shortcuts on the desktop or taskbar, and the first analogy that comes to mind is IE9? Seriously? Especially since IE's pinning just puts a link on your taskbar, nothing close to Chrome's app shortcuts' feel/behavior (or previously the doomed Firefox's Prism/Webrunner/Chromeless stuff).
Well, here you go, another idiotic patent which patents something which was already done and done, _but_ - wait for it... - this is for a portable electronic device, yay.
:P (ref:pat.8,223,134). Well, I hope it's the middle one, since you'll only see that one from me, from now on.
I won't even go into this, and don't talk about how the US SW patent system is a joke. So many people at so many places have talked this out already, without any effect whatsoever, that it seems utterly pointless to even start any new discussion about it. Yes, this is giving up from my part, since this seems just another thing that we can't seem to be able to fight.
But at least we all know from now on, that "the object is a finger"
"Doctored or what?"
:P Why, it's true :)
Well, yeah, it seems someone at Bing has been putting some work hours into making the "googirl" response list more irrelevant
"They Qwerty keyboard layout was specifically designed to prevent jamming in typewriters while at full typing speed.It optimized the usage of the levers to prevent those jams. This functionality is useless in the modern world [...]" and as with a lot of things in computing, it reached a point where it is totally pointless to compare the current situation to the origins (e.g. think about the endless debates about changing de facto standard icons like floppy disk for save and so on and so forth). It doesn't matter now why it was done so. But it matters that the current majority of computer users are accustomed to it to a point where changing it wouldn't be worth the hassle. Now, providing options for other layouts, that's a different story, there's nothing wrong with that. But this dextr (or what) thing should stay on the touchscreens and be done with it, in the big family of gazillion+1 versions of touchscreen keyboard variants. That's it, nothing more, nothing less. Too much fuss again about some piece of crap.
I watched the video, I showed it to my sister too, and one of my colleagues who is a reserch scientist with a phd and a woman. Neither of them, or me found the video shocking, or sexist, mostly our general opinion was that it's funny. That's it. Who found this overly sexist or codnemnable just should get a reality check. My sisters reaction to these opinions was that they probably come from prude americans - and she does live in the U.S. so go figure :D
Sorry people, but I don't think $12 as a starting salary in a retail job is low. I know some people in retail jobs that earn lower than that, and not as a starting salary, but as a regular one. And no, it's not a salary you could live on, if you're living alone. Yes, this is a problem, but saying this $12 starting wage is lower than the average or that they exploit people with it, is a bit over the edge. Retail jobs are generally not the best paying jobs in the world, as you should know, and I suspect tech retail jobs are among the better ones in the general retail arena. So, while I can understand how low salary is not good for you, don't really think this is something to whine about.
"Protip: Whenever you think that you are smart and everyone else is a sheep, the way to spot the idiot is to look in a mirror."
So, the crowd is always smarter? Where's your miror?
I have multipl issues wih this whole uefi secureboot shebang.
How can it happen that one company (however large) can seemingly make most of the manufacturers to comply with their crazy ideas? The option to easily disable uefi secureboot _should_ be there on every and each motherboard (desktop, server or laptop). It should not be the manufacturer (and indirectly Microsoft) who decides what kernel and drivers (regardless f the operating system) a user or developer uses. How would anyone make custom kernels and/or modules (Linux) and/or drivers (e.g. Windows) if signing everything through a 3rd party signing service would be required every time? This is crazy.
Second, I don't like where Fedora/RH and Ubuntu are going with this. Aligning with MS on this issue is definitely not the right way to go and most people start to see this. Yet, nobody seems to want to find a way out, most seem to even have stopped protesting, or asking for mandatory secureboot disable options. There are not only 2 distros out there, there are a lot more of them, and most of them will not go along with MS-signing kernels and drivers. Also, if Ubuntu goes for a secureboot lockdown scheme, they might be good from the enterprise side, moving away from the average users, and that just might be what they want to do.
Some still say this whole thing is a non-issue and too much fuss about nothing, but if it were so, then please, for crying out loud, why is there so much smoke around about the planned existance or non-existance of a secureboot disable option? If manufacturers would just say disabling will be there always, this whole issue would just go away.
The biggest problem still is that most average users can't see the point in all this, simply don't care, thus unwillingly participating in making it worse for those, who do.
"The unfortunate aspect of using native code is that a large percentage of developers today don't have a fucking clue about C++."
I don't see how that would be unfortunate, or even what's the relation (between enabling native development and new devs not being c++ gurus).
Enabling the possibility of writing native code is a good thing on any platform, and there'll be always a great number of people relying on it. There won't be a huge crowd of such people, but if you want a nice future for your platform and OS, disragarding such developers would be very bad in the long run. You can't base your survival only on stupid webapps.
"your owns keys is certainly not a guaranteed"
If I can't use a custom kernel and I can't load custom drivers, than there's no way anyone could convince me this UEFI/SB and the related signing misery is the way to go. I couldn't care less that some distros can sign their kernels and drivers and you can use those, because that essentially would imply a lock-in to a specific company's version - thanks but no thanks. Of course I can imagine how some companies would like it that way.