Did you read TFA? That was one of the things I specifically looked for them to address.
The Infinity's metal skin is similar to that of the Transformer Prime, whose shell was notorious for hampering GPS and Wi-Fi performance. See that little strip along the Infinity's top edge? That's a plastic piece designed to get along with wireless signals. Looks like it works, too; our Infinity's GPS picked up multiple satellites almost instantly, and it was connected to ten within seconds.
Have you seen the Transformer? Do you know what the concept is behind it? You don't really plug much of anything else into it, except maybe headphones. What exactly do you think you're going to be plugging into it?
In your original message, you mentioned "docking." You seem to be under the mistaken impression that "docking" the Transformer is like docking a laptop into a docking station. That is not what it is at all. You are docking the tablet part of it into a keyboard/battery part that essentially turns it from a tablet into an Android-based laptop. If you dockect that into something else, I guess you could argue that that something else will probably be close to power. As it is, though, the "docked" Transformer is basically just a laptop--which is used in many situations where you're not close to power and portability is the key.
That's simply not true. I carry my laptop around with me many times without having it plugged in, even around the house. The circumstances are when you're using it as a portable computer instead of as a tablet--emphasis on portable--and not just as a lightweight desktop workstation.
Of course, re-reading the summary, I am now thinking that it is referring to the Canadian Department of Justice, not the U.S. one. Sorry, but really, my post still applies since I'm pretty sure all of this has come about due to the influence of the RIAA/MPAA. This whole mess could have been avoided if Canada had stood up for its independence back when its version of the DMCA was passed by the House of Commons.
To be honest, I was a bit confused why our Department of Justice would be sending love letters to Canadian courts...
As an American citizen, I know how bullying our government and corporations can be. Believe me, I am not any more happy about it than you are, and as a citizen with the power to vote, I really am diligently trying to change it from inside.
That having been said, if you want to seriously stop being thought of as the 51st state (but a bit colder), there's going to have to come a time when you simply look the U.S. Department of Justice, the RIAA, and any other organization or company trying to steamroll you into making you more like us in the eye and say, "No." It's okay, really! Those of us who hate certain aspects of our government would actually cheer you on, and it might actually effect some change here when our government and citizens realize how ridiculous some of these demands are.
I'd agree with your "don't lump all christians in with this lot" statement. Most of my friends and family are Christians, and they are perfectly nice, well-adjusted people, and I don't make a habit of going around arguing with people.
However, please do not try to set up an equivalence between belief in the existence of God and belief in evolution. Christians cannot provide direct proof of the existence of God. They cannot even provide any compelling evidence, except maybe some philosophical thought experiments that pretty much break down when one simply asks, "are there any other alternatives that could explain this?". Evolution, on the other hand, has vast libraries of direct observations, repeatable experiments, and scientifically testable outcomes that support it. There's a huge difference.
Look, I don't have a problem with Christians. If I did, living in the Bible Belt South, I literally wouldn't be able to talk to hardly anyone. You believe things on faith, I get that, and honestly, as far as religions go, it's got some good parts to it that I respect. But please, just admit it and be at peace with it, don't try to either 1) build up your beliefs with misguided scientific "proof" of things that cannot be proven, or 2) tear down bodies of scientific proof for things that can.
There's no obligation, legal or otherwise, for Apple to publicly comment on this. Frankly, if people were writing grossly biased news stories trying to make me out to be a bigot and a racist, I probably wouldn't either. So the end result is that we have one very vocal side telling her story and another side that's silent. In these cases, I usually ask myself, "What makes more sense?"
In this particular case, it doesn't make sense to me that an Apple store employee would simply assume based on no evidence whatsoever that an American-born person of Iranian descent is going to take an iPad back to Iran. In spite of popular opinion that everyone in Georgia is a racist, this incident took place in the upper-middle class suburb of Alpharetta, on the outskirts of the more liberal and educated Atlanta. The guy had to have some reason other than "her skin is brown and she speaks a funny language" to deny her the sale of the iPad. We have semi-large Muslim communities around here, it's not like such people are weirdly out of place.
I'm sorry, but until I hear more, I'm going with the theory that makes the most sense--that the employee was told that the iPad was headed to Iran and, per company policy, refused the sale. I've heard one side of the story, it doesn't pass muster with my "does this make sense?" sense, so I reject it.
What's bullshit to me is that everyone is raising such a fuss based on ONE side of this story--the person who was supposedly aggrieved. Believe it or not, not everyone in Georgia is stupid, including employees at Apple stores. I have to point out that for all of the sound and fury going on, the employee did the right thing here. The girl does admit that their intention was for her uncle to take the iPad back to Iran with him, which is illegal. I suspect, and think I even read somewhere, that they let the employee know that the intention was to take the iPad back to Iran. If this is the case, then the employee was entirely correct in not selling the iPad to the would-be customer, because if he reasonably thought that it was going to be taken back to Iran, that would have not only been directly against Apple's policy, but it would have been illegal.
So no, this doesn't mean that everyone who speaks Korean or Spanish or whatever--even Farsi--is going to be refused service. But if you let the salesperson know that it's going to be going back to North Korea, Cuba, or Iran, then it's not unreasonable to expect them to refuse to sell you stuff. And yes, I know that she's saying now that she didn't tell the employee that it was going back to Iran. I suppose that some folks are probably willing to believe that wholesale without knowing the whole story.
If you don't like the law, then get your congresscritters to change it. If you don't like Apple's policy (which clearly states, "The exportation, reexportation, sale or supply, directly or indirectly, from the United States, or by a U.S. person wherever located, of any Apple goods, software, technology (including technical data), or services to any of these countries is strictly prohibited without prior authorization by the U.S. Government"), then write to One Infinite Loops and ask them to change it. As it is, though, stop giving the poor employee just trying to do his job to the best of his ability a bunch of unwarranted grief.
Shit, I don't even like Apple, but trying to equating this poor schmuck who did what he was supposed to to racists bigots is sickening me. What the hell alternative do you propose? I suppose you'd prefer it if I could go into any Apple store, tell the clerk that I'd like to order 50 iPads to take to Cuba to sell on the gray market at 50% markup, they should just say, "Gee golly, okay, I'll go get them!" because to do anything else wouldn't be their business? If not, what's the goddamn difference, and how would you propose the law actually be maintained both in letter and in spirit?
Get them to watch The Next Generation episode "The Inner Light." This was by far one of the best hours of television in history. Then maybe "City on the Edge of Forever" from the original series. If those don't hook them, don't bother trying any further, it's a hopeless cause.
I don't have any moral objections to them making a rudimentary liver. They can use as many stem cells from rudimentaries as they want. But if they start doing this to make a human liver though, there's going to be outrage!
Dude, chill. Seriously. It's not that big a deal. In fact, if it was copied with your name still attached to it, if anything, it might help you sell more books. You were credited, after all, which is a lot better than some authors receive.
This offense rates maybe a "slightly miffed" reaction at most. The guy who copied it isn't keeping you from feeding your family. At worst he cost you a few pennies in advertising revenue, except that since you admitted that you took the original down, he's not even costing you that. On principle, you're right, but to be brutally honest, your melodramatic "woe is me" posts are making you come off as a bit of a tool, and thus unsympathetic, in spite of it.
Every creative person in the world has to live with their stuff being taken now and then. Writers, musicians, painters, future theorists, computer programmers, the list goes on and on. Such is the cost of creating something and putting it out there. Sure, you can wallow in anger and misery, or you can take it as a compliment that you actually created something worth copying, which means that you very likely have the capability of creating something worth monetary value.
sigh... *whoosh!* There goes the point, right over your head. Let me try yet again.
By taking deliberate measures to thwart browsers from popping up warnings that an encrypted communications channel is compromised, companies that use transparent SSL interception techniques are misrepresenting to you that you are on a secure communications channel when in effect you are not.
Or put another way, it's settled law that the company owns all equipment in its buildings, rooms, cameras, etc, at least in the USA. Yet if they install said cameras secretly in the restroom, they can and have been successfully sued for breach of privacy. Your employer does not have unmitigated rights to monitor you. If you're using an open communication channel, that's one thing. But if they are misrepresenting a secured channel (i.e. an HTTPS connection) to you when they are actually spying on you, that's and entirely different matter.
Argue the "no expectation of privacy" argument all you want, but the HTTPS protocol carries an inherent expectation of privacy. If it didn't, banks and other financial institutions wouldn't use it, duh. Taking steps to transparently thwart it is the technological equivalent of installing cameras in a restroom.
And no, it is not settled law, unless you can point to cases that have been fought about SSL interception.
Sorry, but that's no excuse. "Sorry, we didn't want you to know that we're spying on you because then you might call and ask why you're getting this warning that we're spying on you."
Look, it's really easy. There are a lot of legitimate ways that companies can handle the issue of data leakage. Here are a few:
1) Handle it the way it's supposed to be, as a management issue. Make the policy clear, and if someone breaks it, you fire them.
2) You set up blacklists and/or whitelists to prevent casual incidents of data leakage. Worst-case scenario, you block SSL altogether except possibly some intranet internal sites. I think that's a pretty dumb policy, but at least you're being up-front and making it obvious what is happening to your employees.
3) You don't install your CA on people's workstations and let the big red warning pop up. If they choose to continue to the site knowing that a third party is intercepting their communications, then you're free to spy away.
But what's not acceptable is presenting a communications channel to a person as secure and encrypted when in fact you have effectively wiretapped it. No matter how you slice it or dice it, it's scummy, it's the province of criminal organizations, and it should be illegal.
If that were true, then you wouldn't be injecting your CA into the root CA lists on your workstations. You wouldn't care if a big red warning screen popped up warning your users that a third party is able to intercept their data. Why are you taking steps to willfully and deliberately hide that fact from employees?
But why hide the fact that you're spying on employees? Why not let the browser pop up the "Something is fishy!" warning to let employees know that the communication channel that they think is private is, in fact, not? I doubt many people would go to their personal banking site if they knew that their employer was watching them, recording their username and password. And you think the answer isn't to let people know in some obvious manner so that they probably won't do that kind of thing, but instead to just hide the fact as much as possible so that they simply won't worry about it?
Bullshit. There are laws against companies doing things like installing hidden cameras in the employee restrooms. This is the technological equivalent and should be just as illegal. I don't mind monitoring data flow. Although I think blocking things such as Gmail is stupid, at least the company is being up front about what they're doing.
But transparent SSL interception is deliberately posing to someone that they are communicating via a private channel when in fact they are not. It's just as egregious as telling employees, "You can change clothes in here, there aren't any cameras," when in fact there are and they're recording. It should be illegal, period.
This is the shit that criminals do, and any company that engages in this behavior should be thought of exactly in that light.
With all due respect, data leakage is a piss-poor excuse to spy on people without their knowledge. These devices and policies work not just to snoop on SSL traffic, but to hide that fact from people browsing SSL-protected sites. I'm sorry, but that's pretty damn scummy and something that is on the level of criminal behavior.
Personally, I think that transparent SSL interception should be illegal. The transparent aspect of it means that you're not just interested in data leakage, but in surreptitiously snooping on people who realistically expect that their activities aren't being monitored. It's the technological equivalent of installing hidden cameras in the employee restrooms. (Which, incidentally, is illegal.)
Go ahead and monitor. Block if you have to. But be up front about what is going on.
There's a HUGE difference between, "This company does some stuff I don't agree with," and "This company consistently screws up." In my opinion, Sony clearly falls in the latter.
For example, I really like Google. Am I 100% on board with everything they do? No; in particular, I think that their tracking and data collection is a bit worrisome. Still, that's about my only beef with the company, and they provide a crap ton of great service and have been an incredible force for innovation.
On the other hand, every time I turn around, Sony is screwing someone else over. I've had a couple of Sony consumer electronics equipment, including a moderately pricey home theater system, go belly up on me. Their customer service was worse than miserable, and they screwed me out of two months of warranty. They distributed rootkits on music CDs. Their music division has been a very high profile member of the RIAA that has been suing filesharers for exorbitant and unreasonable amounts of money. They marketed the "Other OS" functionality of the PlayStation 3, then when some people bought it for the ability to customize their device, they yanked the functionality. They did things that were downright unethical in the Blu-ray/HD-DVD war. Their online entertainment division was compromised by hackers because of some egregious security lapses. And (other than my crappy electronics) those are just the MAJOR stories that have hit in the past several years; I've also seen a litany of more minor idiocies.
So to answer your question, I don't have a problem with many Fortune 500 or, for that matter, many mid-sized or smaller companies either. Plenty of them deserve my business. You seem to be under the impression that I'm boycott-happy or something, but I'm not. I don't like, for example, Apple, but I don't sit around wishing they would go out of business, and I don't deny that they have a LOT of talented people there and put out products that are extraordinarily innovative and well-designed. Sony, on the other hand, is pretty much worthless in my opinion, and I'd just as soon the company go out of business. I'm pretty tolerate of a company making minor mistakes, but with Sony, it seems to be more of a culture of greed and incompetence. No thank you.
You're acting like not offering it on the store is just a minor inconvenience. IT IS AN APP KILLER on iOS devices. Period. End of story. If you're a developer and Apple pulls your app, that means that you're going to make exactly $0.00 from here on out. So unless it was a free app to start with, why the hell would you ever release an update for it? Even if it were free, why would you waste time and energy on an app that has absolutely no hope of further distribution instead of another app that does?
As for the "Android fanboying," do you have ANY idea why Android apps have been pulled off of people's devices? Because they were MALWARE. Would you have preferred that they left the apps on the devices? Do you have any citation whatsoever of an app that was pulled that wasn't malware? Yeah. Didn't think so.
Of course, from there, you'll probably go to, "Ahhh! That proves it, Apple is more secure because there hasn't ever been any malware distributed in the iOS store!" But if you take a moment to ponder that a little longer, do you know why malware is able to get on Android devices? Because unlike Apple, Google gives people more freedom in distributing apps in their app store.
Quick little true anecdote. I actually was going to develop apps for iOS. I sent in my $99, filled out the forms, had been studying up on Object C (blech!), had downloaded Xcode and was ready to go. Except that nothing happened for a few weeks. When I finally got an e-mail back from Apple, it said, "We need to verify your identity, so please send us a copy of a photo id." NOWHERE in the application process did it say that I would have to send a photo id. Nevertheless, whatever, I took a copy of my driver license, blacked out the number (it's none of their damn business what my driver license number is), and fired it off. Another week or two passes, and I get back another e-mail saying that I needed to not alter the copy, and I have to have it notarized. Um... Really?
All this was happening around the same time a bunch of stories were hitting Slashdot about developers being jerked around by Apple not approving their apps, yanking them from the app store, etc. At that point, I decided that if I were having this much trouble just getting into the program, I really didn't want to mess with the pain of actually getting apps out there on the store. I sent them back a nastygram basically saying that I felt like I had jumped through plenty enough hoops, to either approve my application or else refund my $99 and I'll work on Android apps. They chose the latter option. I sold my MacBook Pro and iOS devices, and today I develop Android apps instead.
Say what you want about Google, but the process has been MUCH easier as a developer. As an added bonus, you don't have to go out and buy thousands of dollars of specialized equipment to develop and release apps on their market. I don't have to wait for weeks to get an app published, go through any heavy-handed "approval" process, dictated what friggin' language I can or can't use to develop apps, denied approval because my app "replicates" (that is, makes better) built-in functionality, etc.
So yeah, some unscrupulous people have managed to get a very few malware apps out there due to the greater freedom afforded developers, and Google pulled them to protect users. Maybe you like living in the walled garden that is Apple. Personally, I'd choose (and indeed have chosen) increased freedom with a little extra risk any day.
I know this will sound petty, but I'd rip my intestines out with a fork before buying something branded with Sony, given their recent history of putting out crap hardware, screwing customers over, distributing malware, suing music fans, losing online customer's data, etc.
Yeah, yeah, yeah, I know. "But that wasn't their headphone division!" Still, I don't want that company seeing one red cent of mine. Sorry headphone division of Sony, but your parent company is scummy, so you have to pay the price of their shenanigans. I'm hopeful that there are plenty of alternatives for 20 bones that are just as good or better.
To anyone reading this, please remember all the times you've read an article here about Sony and though, "Wow, that's bad." Please don't fall into the "But their [whatever] is pretty good, so I'll make an exception and buy it." It's putting money in their pocket that they use to keep screwing people over so that we can see even more articles here about their spectacular douchebaggery.
It sounds vaguely familiar, but I don't immediately recognize the reference. Given that it's in quotes and sounds suspiciously like a movie quote, I'm guess it's from some movie? Anyway, my point is that although some folks may not recognize the reference, I wouldn't say that it "soared over a lot of peoples' heads." Normally I only use that phrase when someone says something that makes sense in one context (or possibly doesn't, but in an ironic kind of way), but for those who are "in the know," it takes on a whole different meaning. In other words, for it to soar of your head, the reference should be at such a high level that those whose heads it's soaring over don't even realize it just passed them by.
Of course, with a comment subject of "The cloud," perhaps one could argue that soaring over people's heads is an appropriate phrase to describe this whole metaconversation.
That would be a really expensive gamble, but one with high potential rewards. Personally, I think you're right. A small- to medium-sized hungry player in the market would probably not think twice about taking such a gamble to make it to the big leagues, but Microsoft is so big, old, and luggish these days that it's in what I call the "protectionist" stage of business operations, which is to minimize risk in lieu of chasing huge payoffs and vastly increasing market share into a segment they're not used to playing in. I doubt they'd even consider such a thing. Too bad too, because it essentially means they will forever be pretty much irrelevant in the mobile market.
Fox claims that giving viewers the ability to skip commercials on recorded television shows demonstrates the "clear goal of violating copyrights and destroying the fundamental underpinnings of the broadcast television ecosystem."
Good! Let's tear down that century-old ecosystem, including the business models of those leeches. They're dying anyway. Let's start over from scratch and figure out how we can do it again, this time in ways that don't require stunting technological innovation.
If that's the case, then yeah, that would make them culpable. The news story I had read earlier just said that the bank hadn't disclosed the information, not Facebook (or Zuckerberg) itself. I'll read up on it a little more when I get home from work.
Slashdot Mirror
And a GPS dongle because the one that is built in is broken....
http://www.phonearena.com/news/Free-ASUS-Transformer-Prime-GPS-dongles-available-now_id29205
Did you read TFA? That was one of the things I specifically looked for them to address.
The Infinity's metal skin is similar to that of the Transformer Prime, whose shell was notorious for hampering GPS and Wi-Fi performance. See that little strip along the Infinity's top edge? That's a plastic piece designed to get along with wireless signals. Looks like it works, too; our Infinity's GPS picked up multiple satellites almost instantly, and it was connected to ten within seconds.
Have you seen the Transformer? Do you know what the concept is behind it? You don't really plug much of anything else into it, except maybe headphones. What exactly do you think you're going to be plugging into it?
In your original message, you mentioned "docking." You seem to be under the mistaken impression that "docking" the Transformer is like docking a laptop into a docking station. That is not what it is at all. You are docking the tablet part of it into a keyboard/battery part that essentially turns it from a tablet into an Android-based laptop. If you dockect that into something else, I guess you could argue that that something else will probably be close to power. As it is, though, the "docked" Transformer is basically just a laptop--which is used in many situations where you're not close to power and portability is the key.
That's simply not true. I carry my laptop around with me many times without having it plugged in, even around the house. The circumstances are when you're using it as a portable computer instead of as a tablet--emphasis on portable--and not just as a lightweight desktop workstation.
Of course, re-reading the summary, I am now thinking that it is referring to the Canadian Department of Justice, not the U.S. one. Sorry, but really, my post still applies since I'm pretty sure all of this has come about due to the influence of the RIAA/MPAA. This whole mess could have been avoided if Canada had stood up for its independence back when its version of the DMCA was passed by the House of Commons.
To be honest, I was a bit confused why our Department of Justice would be sending love letters to Canadian courts...
Dear Canada: (an open letter)
As an American citizen, I know how bullying our government and corporations can be. Believe me, I am not any more happy about it than you are, and as a citizen with the power to vote, I really am diligently trying to change it from inside.
That having been said, if you want to seriously stop being thought of as the 51st state (but a bit colder), there's going to have to come a time when you simply look the U.S. Department of Justice, the RIAA, and any other organization or company trying to steamroll you into making you more like us in the eye and say, "No." It's okay, really! Those of us who hate certain aspects of our government would actually cheer you on, and it might actually effect some change here when our government and citizens realize how ridiculous some of these demands are.
Wishing you all the best,
King Skippus
I'd agree with your "don't lump all christians in with this lot" statement. Most of my friends and family are Christians, and they are perfectly nice, well-adjusted people, and I don't make a habit of going around arguing with people.
However, please do not try to set up an equivalence between belief in the existence of God and belief in evolution. Christians cannot provide direct proof of the existence of God. They cannot even provide any compelling evidence, except maybe some philosophical thought experiments that pretty much break down when one simply asks, "are there any other alternatives that could explain this?". Evolution, on the other hand, has vast libraries of direct observations, repeatable experiments, and scientifically testable outcomes that support it. There's a huge difference.
Look, I don't have a problem with Christians. If I did, living in the Bible Belt South, I literally wouldn't be able to talk to hardly anyone. You believe things on faith, I get that, and honestly, as far as religions go, it's got some good parts to it that I respect. But please, just admit it and be at peace with it, don't try to either 1) build up your beliefs with misguided scientific "proof" of things that cannot be proven, or 2) tear down bodies of scientific proof for things that can.
There's no obligation, legal or otherwise, for Apple to publicly comment on this. Frankly, if people were writing grossly biased news stories trying to make me out to be a bigot and a racist, I probably wouldn't either. So the end result is that we have one very vocal side telling her story and another side that's silent. In these cases, I usually ask myself, "What makes more sense?"
In this particular case, it doesn't make sense to me that an Apple store employee would simply assume based on no evidence whatsoever that an American-born person of Iranian descent is going to take an iPad back to Iran. In spite of popular opinion that everyone in Georgia is a racist, this incident took place in the upper-middle class suburb of Alpharetta, on the outskirts of the more liberal and educated Atlanta. The guy had to have some reason other than "her skin is brown and she speaks a funny language" to deny her the sale of the iPad. We have semi-large Muslim communities around here, it's not like such people are weirdly out of place.
I'm sorry, but until I hear more, I'm going with the theory that makes the most sense--that the employee was told that the iPad was headed to Iran and, per company policy, refused the sale. I've heard one side of the story, it doesn't pass muster with my "does this make sense?" sense, so I reject it.
What's bullshit to me is that everyone is raising such a fuss based on ONE side of this story--the person who was supposedly aggrieved. Believe it or not, not everyone in Georgia is stupid, including employees at Apple stores. I have to point out that for all of the sound and fury going on, the employee did the right thing here. The girl does admit that their intention was for her uncle to take the iPad back to Iran with him, which is illegal. I suspect, and think I even read somewhere, that they let the employee know that the intention was to take the iPad back to Iran. If this is the case, then the employee was entirely correct in not selling the iPad to the would-be customer, because if he reasonably thought that it was going to be taken back to Iran, that would have not only been directly against Apple's policy, but it would have been illegal.
So no, this doesn't mean that everyone who speaks Korean or Spanish or whatever--even Farsi--is going to be refused service. But if you let the salesperson know that it's going to be going back to North Korea, Cuba, or Iran, then it's not unreasonable to expect them to refuse to sell you stuff. And yes, I know that she's saying now that she didn't tell the employee that it was going back to Iran. I suppose that some folks are probably willing to believe that wholesale without knowing the whole story.
If you don't like the law, then get your congresscritters to change it. If you don't like Apple's policy (which clearly states, "The exportation, reexportation, sale or supply, directly or indirectly, from the United States, or by a U.S. person wherever located, of any Apple goods, software, technology (including technical data), or services to any of these countries is strictly prohibited without prior authorization by the U.S. Government"), then write to One Infinite Loops and ask them to change it. As it is, though, stop giving the poor employee just trying to do his job to the best of his ability a bunch of unwarranted grief.
Shit, I don't even like Apple, but trying to equating this poor schmuck who did what he was supposed to to racists bigots is sickening me. What the hell alternative do you propose? I suppose you'd prefer it if I could go into any Apple store, tell the clerk that I'd like to order 50 iPads to take to Cuba to sell on the gray market at 50% markup, they should just say, "Gee golly, okay, I'll go get them!" because to do anything else wouldn't be their business? If not, what's the goddamn difference, and how would you propose the law actually be maintained both in letter and in spirit?
Get them to watch The Next Generation episode "The Inner Light." This was by far one of the best hours of television in history. Then maybe "City on the Edge of Forever" from the original series. If those don't hook them, don't bother trying any further, it's a hopeless cause.
I don't have any moral objections to them making a rudimentary liver. They can use as many stem cells from rudimentaries as they want. But if they start doing this to make a human liver though, there's going to be outrage!
Dude, chill. Seriously. It's not that big a deal. In fact, if it was copied with your name still attached to it, if anything, it might help you sell more books. You were credited, after all, which is a lot better than some authors receive.
This offense rates maybe a "slightly miffed" reaction at most. The guy who copied it isn't keeping you from feeding your family. At worst he cost you a few pennies in advertising revenue, except that since you admitted that you took the original down, he's not even costing you that. On principle, you're right, but to be brutally honest, your melodramatic "woe is me" posts are making you come off as a bit of a tool, and thus unsympathetic, in spite of it.
Every creative person in the world has to live with their stuff being taken now and then. Writers, musicians, painters, future theorists, computer programmers, the list goes on and on. Such is the cost of creating something and putting it out there. Sure, you can wallow in anger and misery, or you can take it as a compliment that you actually created something worth copying, which means that you very likely have the capability of creating something worth monetary value.
sigh... *whoosh!* There goes the point, right over your head. Let me try yet again.
By taking deliberate measures to thwart browsers from popping up warnings that an encrypted communications channel is compromised, companies that use transparent SSL interception techniques are misrepresenting to you that you are on a secure communications channel when in effect you are not.
Or put another way, it's settled law that the company owns all equipment in its buildings, rooms, cameras, etc, at least in the USA. Yet if they install said cameras secretly in the restroom, they can and have been successfully sued for breach of privacy. Your employer does not have unmitigated rights to monitor you. If you're using an open communication channel, that's one thing. But if they are misrepresenting a secured channel (i.e. an HTTPS connection) to you when they are actually spying on you, that's and entirely different matter.
Argue the "no expectation of privacy" argument all you want, but the HTTPS protocol carries an inherent expectation of privacy. If it didn't, banks and other financial institutions wouldn't use it, duh. Taking steps to transparently thwart it is the technological equivalent of installing cameras in a restroom.
And no, it is not settled law, unless you can point to cases that have been fought about SSL interception.
Sorry, but that's no excuse. "Sorry, we didn't want you to know that we're spying on you because then you might call and ask why you're getting this warning that we're spying on you."
Look, it's really easy. There are a lot of legitimate ways that companies can handle the issue of data leakage. Here are a few:
1) Handle it the way it's supposed to be, as a management issue. Make the policy clear, and if someone breaks it, you fire them.
2) You set up blacklists and/or whitelists to prevent casual incidents of data leakage. Worst-case scenario, you block SSL altogether except possibly some intranet internal sites. I think that's a pretty dumb policy, but at least you're being up-front and making it obvious what is happening to your employees.
3) You don't install your CA on people's workstations and let the big red warning pop up. If they choose to continue to the site knowing that a third party is intercepting their communications, then you're free to spy away.
But what's not acceptable is presenting a communications channel to a person as secure and encrypted when in fact you have effectively wiretapped it. No matter how you slice it or dice it, it's scummy, it's the province of criminal organizations, and it should be illegal.
So I'll ask yet again, why are you so averse to the warning that the SSL connection that the employees are using isn't secure?
Our stuff. Our network. Our data. You have no privacy
Again, with the "Our building. Our restroom. Our cameras. You have no privacy." rationale, apparently.
If that were true, then you wouldn't be injecting your CA into the root CA lists on your workstations. You wouldn't care if a big red warning screen popped up warning your users that a third party is able to intercept their data. Why are you taking steps to willfully and deliberately hide that fact from employees?
But why hide the fact that you're spying on employees? Why not let the browser pop up the "Something is fishy!" warning to let employees know that the communication channel that they think is private is, in fact, not? I doubt many people would go to their personal banking site if they knew that their employer was watching them, recording their username and password. And you think the answer isn't to let people know in some obvious manner so that they probably won't do that kind of thing, but instead to just hide the fact as much as possible so that they simply won't worry about it?
Bullshit. There are laws against companies doing things like installing hidden cameras in the employee restrooms. This is the technological equivalent and should be just as illegal. I don't mind monitoring data flow. Although I think blocking things such as Gmail is stupid, at least the company is being up front about what they're doing.
But transparent SSL interception is deliberately posing to someone that they are communicating via a private channel when in fact they are not. It's just as egregious as telling employees, "You can change clothes in here, there aren't any cameras," when in fact there are and they're recording. It should be illegal, period.
This is the shit that criminals do, and any company that engages in this behavior should be thought of exactly in that light.
With all due respect, data leakage is a piss-poor excuse to spy on people without their knowledge. These devices and policies work not just to snoop on SSL traffic, but to hide that fact from people browsing SSL-protected sites. I'm sorry, but that's pretty damn scummy and something that is on the level of criminal behavior.
Personally, I think that transparent SSL interception should be illegal. The transparent aspect of it means that you're not just interested in data leakage, but in surreptitiously snooping on people who realistically expect that their activities aren't being monitored. It's the technological equivalent of installing hidden cameras in the employee restrooms. (Which, incidentally, is illegal.)
Go ahead and monitor. Block if you have to. But be up front about what is going on.
There's a HUGE difference between, "This company does some stuff I don't agree with," and "This company consistently screws up." In my opinion, Sony clearly falls in the latter.
For example, I really like Google. Am I 100% on board with everything they do? No; in particular, I think that their tracking and data collection is a bit worrisome. Still, that's about my only beef with the company, and they provide a crap ton of great service and have been an incredible force for innovation.
On the other hand, every time I turn around, Sony is screwing someone else over. I've had a couple of Sony consumer electronics equipment, including a moderately pricey home theater system, go belly up on me. Their customer service was worse than miserable, and they screwed me out of two months of warranty. They distributed rootkits on music CDs. Their music division has been a very high profile member of the RIAA that has been suing filesharers for exorbitant and unreasonable amounts of money. They marketed the "Other OS" functionality of the PlayStation 3, then when some people bought it for the ability to customize their device, they yanked the functionality. They did things that were downright unethical in the Blu-ray/HD-DVD war. Their online entertainment division was compromised by hackers because of some egregious security lapses. And (other than my crappy electronics) those are just the MAJOR stories that have hit in the past several years; I've also seen a litany of more minor idiocies.
So to answer your question, I don't have a problem with many Fortune 500 or, for that matter, many mid-sized or smaller companies either. Plenty of them deserve my business. You seem to be under the impression that I'm boycott-happy or something, but I'm not. I don't like, for example, Apple, but I don't sit around wishing they would go out of business, and I don't deny that they have a LOT of talented people there and put out products that are extraordinarily innovative and well-designed. Sony, on the other hand, is pretty much worthless in my opinion, and I'd just as soon the company go out of business. I'm pretty tolerate of a company making minor mistakes, but with Sony, it seems to be more of a culture of greed and incompetence. No thank you.
You're acting like not offering it on the store is just a minor inconvenience. IT IS AN APP KILLER on iOS devices. Period. End of story. If you're a developer and Apple pulls your app, that means that you're going to make exactly $0.00 from here on out. So unless it was a free app to start with, why the hell would you ever release an update for it? Even if it were free, why would you waste time and energy on an app that has absolutely no hope of further distribution instead of another app that does?
As for the "Android fanboying," do you have ANY idea why Android apps have been pulled off of people's devices? Because they were MALWARE. Would you have preferred that they left the apps on the devices? Do you have any citation whatsoever of an app that was pulled that wasn't malware? Yeah. Didn't think so.
Of course, from there, you'll probably go to, "Ahhh! That proves it, Apple is more secure because there hasn't ever been any malware distributed in the iOS store!" But if you take a moment to ponder that a little longer, do you know why malware is able to get on Android devices? Because unlike Apple, Google gives people more freedom in distributing apps in their app store.
Quick little true anecdote. I actually was going to develop apps for iOS. I sent in my $99, filled out the forms, had been studying up on Object C (blech!), had downloaded Xcode and was ready to go. Except that nothing happened for a few weeks. When I finally got an e-mail back from Apple, it said, "We need to verify your identity, so please send us a copy of a photo id." NOWHERE in the application process did it say that I would have to send a photo id. Nevertheless, whatever, I took a copy of my driver license, blacked out the number (it's none of their damn business what my driver license number is), and fired it off. Another week or two passes, and I get back another e-mail saying that I needed to not alter the copy, and I have to have it notarized. Um... Really?
All this was happening around the same time a bunch of stories were hitting Slashdot about developers being jerked around by Apple not approving their apps, yanking them from the app store, etc. At that point, I decided that if I were having this much trouble just getting into the program, I really didn't want to mess with the pain of actually getting apps out there on the store. I sent them back a nastygram basically saying that I felt like I had jumped through plenty enough hoops, to either approve my application or else refund my $99 and I'll work on Android apps. They chose the latter option. I sold my MacBook Pro and iOS devices, and today I develop Android apps instead.
Say what you want about Google, but the process has been MUCH easier as a developer. As an added bonus, you don't have to go out and buy thousands of dollars of specialized equipment to develop and release apps on their market. I don't have to wait for weeks to get an app published, go through any heavy-handed "approval" process, dictated what friggin' language I can or can't use to develop apps, denied approval because my app "replicates" (that is, makes better) built-in functionality, etc.
So yeah, some unscrupulous people have managed to get a very few malware apps out there due to the greater freedom afforded developers, and Google pulled them to protect users. Maybe you like living in the walled garden that is Apple. Personally, I'd choose (and indeed have chosen) increased freedom with a little extra risk any day.
I know this will sound petty, but I'd rip my intestines out with a fork before buying something branded with Sony, given their recent history of putting out crap hardware, screwing customers over, distributing malware, suing music fans, losing online customer's data, etc.
Yeah, yeah, yeah, I know. "But that wasn't their headphone division!" Still, I don't want that company seeing one red cent of mine. Sorry headphone division of Sony, but your parent company is scummy, so you have to pay the price of their shenanigans. I'm hopeful that there are plenty of alternatives for 20 bones that are just as good or better.
To anyone reading this, please remember all the times you've read an article here about Sony and though, "Wow, that's bad." Please don't fall into the "But their [whatever] is pretty good, so I'll make an exception and buy it." It's putting money in their pocket that they use to keep screwing people over so that we can see even more articles here about their spectacular douchebaggery.
It sounds vaguely familiar, but I don't immediately recognize the reference. Given that it's in quotes and sounds suspiciously like a movie quote, I'm guess it's from some movie? Anyway, my point is that although some folks may not recognize the reference, I wouldn't say that it "soared over a lot of peoples' heads." Normally I only use that phrase when someone says something that makes sense in one context (or possibly doesn't, but in an ironic kind of way), but for those who are "in the know," it takes on a whole different meaning. In other words, for it to soar of your head, the reference should be at such a high level that those whose heads it's soaring over don't even realize it just passed them by.
Of course, with a comment subject of "The cloud," perhaps one could argue that soaring over people's heads is an appropriate phrase to describe this whole metaconversation.
That would be a really expensive gamble, but one with high potential rewards. Personally, I think you're right. A small- to medium-sized hungry player in the market would probably not think twice about taking such a gamble to make it to the big leagues, but Microsoft is so big, old, and luggish these days that it's in what I call the "protectionist" stage of business operations, which is to minimize risk in lieu of chasing huge payoffs and vastly increasing market share into a segment they're not used to playing in. I doubt they'd even consider such a thing. Too bad too, because it essentially means they will forever be pretty much irrelevant in the mobile market.
Good! Let's tear down that century-old ecosystem, including the business models of those leeches. They're dying anyway. Let's start over from scratch and figure out how we can do it again, this time in ways that don't require stunting technological innovation.
If that's the case, then yeah, that would make them culpable. The news story I had read earlier just said that the bank hadn't disclosed the information, not Facebook (or Zuckerberg) itself. I'll read up on it a little more when I get home from work.