We seem to have no limits to our willingness to inflict lifetime punishments
this device is installed for a period of 6 months to 5 years. seems there are some limits huh?
It's only a matter of time before the same punishment is inflicted on the children and grandchildren of anyone with a DWI
can you cite an examples where people are punished for having the potential for a crime? it's a pretty big line to cross and this issue doesn't even go near it.
The system should correct problems, not simply punish them.
why don't you think this is meant to be a deterrent? the cost, the social stigma, the annoyance. all pretty minor prices to pay actually considering you are still a free person walking to streets and can still get to your job, and still pay your bills.
The fact that it triggers on as little as 1/3 of the legal limit is also troubling
in CA, after a DUI conviction, it's zero tolerance. that means if you are pulled over and *any* alcohol is detected in your system, you are going down. i don't have a lot of sympathy for the person that after having one or more DUI, starts doing math about how many beers they had how many hours ago and if they had an empty stomach. pretty poor judgement.
$70-125 to install and another $70-110 per month isn't cheap, especially on top of the major bump in car insurance that they already ate.
the only problem i'd have is if the $ wasn't going back to the state. not that i'd be surprised if it wasn't. it's meant to be a penalty. $125 for the unit, and $110 per month to pay for the services that have to monitor the system doesn't sound unreasonable considering it's not a mass-market produced device.
it's not arbitrary. you are also penalized when you get into a non-drunken auto accidents. it's not like you get a pass for those. drunk drivers are statistically (much) more likely to get in accidents and harm others. the penalty is therefore (much) more extreme.
i don't understand why you are even postulating that this might go too far. you violate the law, you give up your freedom. having a device installed that ensures that i am not *again* violating the law, where the only inconvenience is that it takes a little longer to start my car? i'd feel pretty darned lucky.
I'm convinced that forcing children to sit and pay attention for hours on end is a lousy way to teach them anything at all
if you can't teach your child to sit still and pay attention for long-ish periods of time, you are doing them a disservice. have whatever opinions you want about a child's natural curiosity, etc but if they can't focus on a task then they aren't even qualified to mop floors at mcdonalds.
does allowing this guy to run around with "god squad" damage best buy's ability to stop future trademark violators? that is, are they obligated to apply their concerns equally (and "fairly"?) or not at all?
Good point, a secure platform should let anything be installed. Yup.
code, or even use software much?
there's plenty of legit reasons to install non-market apps. there are also plenty of legit reason fo apps to request access to read your contacts and send SMS messages etc. so tell me, how does this secure platofrm you are dreaming inspect the app developer to determine if they have good intentions?
ever used any of the 3 major desktop operating systems? all of them allow apps to request "root" access. all three of them leave it up to the user to make a decision
The harder Apple fights to lock the phones the more it will push developers and power users to Android.
i would guess they don't care. the problem with allowing easy root access to the phone is that it would make the phone less secure (for users that don't understand, which is a lot of iphone users), less stable, and most important: harder to support.
that's always been true on desktops. give users root, or the equivalent on windows, and they install all sorts of nasty software and muck around in places where they shouldn't. it's a sysadmin's nightmare. i remember a user many years ago that had his/usr/bin folder *magically* disappear.
the cost of supporting some number of rooted devices is greater than letting the few power users that absolutely must have root go to some other platform.
I thought android phones needed to be "rooted". Double standard much?
the main reason for jail breaking an iphone is to allow installation of non-app store apps. you can and have always been able to do that on any stock android device.
now that tethering is available in the OS (or via the debugging port) there's really no reason to root your android phone. here are the to possible reasons though just to represent the other side of the issue,
1) there are a few functions, such as taking a screen capture that do require root. maybe someone can chime in with other possible uses. 2) if you have an older device where the manufacturer isn't providing updates, you need to root before installing custom ROMs
Another good example, not of bricking a phone, was shown on the UK tv news last night - of an example app on Android being able to record arbitrary audio after performing a similar hack.
citation please.
i ask because i really doubt it was a similar hack. most of these so-called android trojans and viruses rely on 1) getting a user to install a non-market app for which they need to have explicitly allowed in their settings and 2) granting the app permissions to do malicious things.
I've read on some sites that say Android has no way to revoke permissions after an app is installed. Had anyone come up with a way to revoke permissions?
it's all or nothing. if you want to install the app, you have to grant it the permissions it asks for. if you don't, it doesn't get installed. to "revoke" the permissions, you uninstall the app.
pretty hairy job for the developer otherwise... trying to figure out which combinations of permissions that it wants have been granted and how to gracefully degrade functionality in the face of that.
If your app needs a contact to send a message, it would have to pass that message to the OS and the OS would prompt the user for the contact to send it to.
oddly, that's how it works for email... but not for SMS. once granted the permission, an app can programmatically send an SMS on behalf of the user with no interaction. for email however, the best you can do is launch the compose window with a pre-defined to:, cc:, subject:, etc.
It's close to impossible to spot a possibly-offensive application such as this Trojan.
it's not that simple. if you add more granularity, then the user is bombarded with information that they will not understand and will probably ignore. there has to be a balance between granularity and understandability.
it's actually not hard at all to spot problem apps. you will probably have a lot of false positives, but that's unavoidable without deluding the user with *exactly* what the app is doing, and then hoping they can understand why it needs to do that to function.
Of course, after the 40th or 50th app installed, no one reads them anymore and just clicks
speak for yourself.
after installing 40 or 50 apps on your PC, do you quit paying attention to virus warnings? after 40 or 50 people pass you by and the street, do you feel safe leaving your backpack unattended?
really, if someone acts like this, they deserve what they get. no amount of security is going to save people from their own sense of complacency.
If that happens I have to think that investors are going to question whether that $20k was worth it.
investors probably want to know also that HP management doesn't stand for execs stealing from the company. it's their money after all. or, maybe the rule should be that as long as they don't steal more than they are ostensibly worth, it's all good.
you'd also have to ask whether you want to employ a man who is dumb enough to steal $20k when he's getting six+ figure salary not to mention bonuses.
i'm very tired of hearing "i'll just fork", or "you can't buy an open source project" whenever this comes up.
most OSS projects are heavily funded by commercial outlets, and most often its a single outlet. you can buy an OSS project by buying the developers, or in other words buying the mindshare. whether they quit after the acquisition with bonuses tied to no-compete clauses, or whether they stay on and get put onto other projects, they are gone for the most part.
sure, it's theoretically possible that a troupe of new developers will swoop in and carry on, but that just doesn't happen, in most cases. developers are not 100% portable. that means that it takes a gifted developer to come in and take over a code base designed by someone else. in most cases, you get spot fixes that don't see the overall vision, resulting in increasing bugs and a code base that eventually must be re-written.
and, you rarely get gifted developers with such an interest. working with someone else's vision is not fun. building your own vision is. why would a gifted developer use their nights and weekends to carry on someone else's vision?
A guy who sells small amounts of drugs three times does 20 years, mandatory
that's called natural selection.
you get caught selling. receive your punishment. now you decide gee that it would be a good idea to do that again. then you get caught *again*, receive your punishment. at this point you've probably even served some jail time.
now, knowing that a third offense carries a 20y mandatory, you decide to sell AGAIN...
don't get me wrong, drug sentencing is way out of whack with the crime. but repeating and getting caught 3x in a row either says your are extremely stupid or trying to make a point.
i've never, ever been directly helped by a cop. now, i am not saying that i don't benefit indirectly from them "keeping the peace" and not letting violent criminals run rampant. i'm just saying that every time i've dealt with them directly, they've been rude (sometimes even threatening) and didn't help resolve my problem in any way. often times they made the problem worse.
i understand *why* cops get like this. it makes sense considering what their jobs entail, although i'm not excusing it. at the same time, cops shouldn't act miffed when public looks at them as a threat
The "victim" was driving 127mph on a public road with other traffic around.
yes the driver was irresponsible and breaking the law. no one is arguing that. however, aiming a gun at the driver after he pulled over didn't help matters. no one was made safer by that action (quite the opposite).
not to mention he just jumped out of an unmarked car aiming a gun. watching the video, there was no indication that he was an officer of the law. the cop was obviously "pissed off" when we got out of his car (watch his face). not exactly the type of cop you want... one that gets mad and pulls his gun when someone is speeding.
Slashdot Mirror
We seem to have no limits to our willingness to inflict lifetime punishments
this device is installed for a period of 6 months to 5 years. seems there are some limits huh?
It's only a matter of time before the same punishment is inflicted on the children and grandchildren of anyone with a DWI
can you cite an examples where people are punished for having the potential for a crime? it's a pretty big line to cross and this issue doesn't even go near it.
The system should correct problems, not simply punish them.
why don't you think this is meant to be a deterrent? the cost, the social stigma, the annoyance. all pretty minor prices to pay actually considering you are still a free person walking to streets and can still get to your job, and still pay your bills.
The fact that it triggers on as little as 1/3 of the legal limit is also troubling
in CA, after a DUI conviction, it's zero tolerance. that means if you are pulled over and *any* alcohol is detected in your system, you are going down. i don't have a lot of sympathy for the person that after having one or more DUI, starts doing math about how many beers they had how many hours ago and if they had an empty stomach. pretty poor judgement.
$70-125 to install and another $70-110 per month isn't cheap, especially on top of the major bump in car insurance that they already ate.
the only problem i'd have is if the $ wasn't going back to the state. not that i'd be surprised if it wasn't. it's meant to be a penalty. $125 for the unit, and $110 per month to pay for the services that have to monitor the system doesn't sound unreasonable considering it's not a mass-market produced device.
Oh, that'll just work great on the 10-lane freeway at 80MPH.
maybe you should go so far as to drive at the speed limit as well?
it's not arbitrary. you are also penalized when you get into a non-drunken auto accidents. it's not like you get a pass for those. drunk drivers are statistically (much) more likely to get in accidents and harm others. the penalty is therefore (much) more extreme.
i don't understand why you are even postulating that this might go too far. you violate the law, you give up your freedom. having a device installed that ensures that i am not *again* violating the law, where the only inconvenience is that it takes a little longer to start my car? i'd feel pretty darned lucky.
D-d-d-don't drink so fucking much! It's the sober guy that gets laid at the after-party anyway. Jesus.
yes, you clearly have a deep understanding of alcoholism / substance abuse.
It's all REAL FOOD ...
as much as that sounds nice, the top allergy-producing foods occur in natural foods: wheat, nuts, eggs, milk, seafood ...
I'm convinced that forcing children to sit and pay attention for hours on end is a lousy way to teach them anything at all
if you can't teach your child to sit still and pay attention for long-ish periods of time, you are doing them a disservice. have whatever opinions you want about a child's natural curiosity, etc but if they can't focus on a task then they aren't even qualified to mop floors at mcdonalds.
can a lawyer-ish type answer?
does allowing this guy to run around with "god squad" damage best buy's ability to stop future trademark violators? that is, are they obligated to apply their concerns equally (and "fairly"?) or not at all?
Good point, a secure platform should let anything be installed. Yup.
code, or even use software much?
there's plenty of legit reasons to install non-market apps. there are also plenty of legit reason fo apps to request access to read your contacts and send SMS messages etc. so tell me, how does this secure platofrm you are dreaming inspect the app developer to determine if they have good intentions?
ever used any of the 3 major desktop operating systems? all of them allow apps to request "root" access. all three of them leave it up to the user to make a decision
yeah, maybe that person was just posting to satisfy their ego and weren't really trying to add anything useful to the conversation.
The harder Apple fights to lock the phones the more it will push developers and power users to Android.
i would guess they don't care. the problem with allowing easy root access to the phone is that it would make the phone less secure (for users that don't understand, which is a lot of iphone users), less stable, and most important: harder to support.
that's always been true on desktops. give users root, or the equivalent on windows, and they install all sorts of nasty software and muck around in places where they shouldn't. it's a sysadmin's nightmare. i remember a user many years ago that had his /usr/bin folder *magically* disappear.
the cost of supporting some number of rooted devices is greater than letting the few power users that absolutely must have root go to some other platform.
I thought android phones needed to be "rooted". Double standard much?
the main reason for jail breaking an iphone is to allow installation of non-app store apps. you can and have always been able to do that on any stock android device.
now that tethering is available in the OS (or via the debugging port) there's really no reason to root your android phone. here are the to possible reasons though just to represent the other side of the issue,
1) there are a few functions, such as taking a screen capture that do require root. maybe someone can chime in with other possible uses.
2) if you have an older device where the manufacturer isn't providing updates, you need to root before installing custom ROMs
Another good example, not of bricking a phone, was shown on the UK tv news last night - of an example app on Android being able to record arbitrary audio after performing a similar hack.
citation please.
i ask because i really doubt it was a similar hack. most of these so-called android trojans and viruses rely on 1) getting a user to install a non-market app for which they need to have explicitly allowed in their settings and 2) granting the app permissions to do malicious things.
i live in the biggest city in silicon valley and we also have 2 choices ... 2 choices that are strangely priced almost identically.
I've read on some sites that say Android has no way to revoke permissions after an app is installed. Had anyone come up with a way to revoke permissions?
it's all or nothing. if you want to install the app, you have to grant it the permissions it asks for. if you don't, it doesn't get installed. to "revoke" the permissions, you uninstall the app.
pretty hairy job for the developer otherwise ... trying to figure out which combinations of permissions that it wants have been granted and how to gracefully degrade functionality in the face of that.
If your app needs a contact to send a message, it would have to pass that message to the OS and the OS would prompt the user for the contact to send it to.
oddly, that's how it works for email ... but not for SMS. once granted the permission, an app can programmatically send an SMS on behalf of the user with no interaction. for email however, the best you can do is launch the compose window with a pre-defined to:, cc:, subject:, etc.
It's close to impossible to spot a possibly-offensive application such as this Trojan.
it's not that simple. if you add more granularity, then the user is bombarded with information that they will not understand and will probably ignore. there has to be a balance between granularity and understandability.
it's actually not hard at all to spot problem apps. you will probably have a lot of false positives, but that's unavoidable without deluding the user with *exactly* what the app is doing, and then hoping they can understand why it needs to do that to function.
Of course, after the 40th or 50th app installed, no one reads them anymore and just clicks
speak for yourself.
after installing 40 or 50 apps on your PC, do you quit paying attention to virus warnings? after 40 or 50 people pass you by and the street, do you feel safe leaving your backpack unattended?
really, if someone acts like this, they deserve what they get. no amount of security is going to save people from their own sense of complacency.
If that happens I have to think that investors are going to question whether that $20k was worth it.
investors probably want to know also that HP management doesn't stand for execs stealing from the company. it's their money after all. or, maybe the rule should be that as long as they don't steal more than they are ostensibly worth, it's all good.
you'd also have to ask whether you want to employ a man who is dumb enough to steal $20k when he's getting six+ figure salary not to mention bonuses.
i'm very tired of hearing "i'll just fork", or "you can't buy an open source project" whenever this comes up.
most OSS projects are heavily funded by commercial outlets, and most often its a single outlet. you can buy an OSS project by buying the developers, or in other words buying the mindshare. whether they quit after the acquisition with bonuses tied to no-compete clauses, or whether they stay on and get put onto other projects, they are gone for the most part.
sure, it's theoretically possible that a troupe of new developers will swoop in and carry on, but that just doesn't happen, in most cases. developers are not 100% portable. that means that it takes a gifted developer to come in and take over a code base designed by someone else. in most cases, you get spot fixes that don't see the overall vision, resulting in increasing bugs and a code base that eventually must be re-written.
and, you rarely get gifted developers with such an interest. working with someone else's vision is not fun. building your own vision is. why would a gifted developer use their nights and weekends to carry on someone else's vision?
A guy who sells small amounts of drugs three times does 20 years, mandatory
that's called natural selection.
you get caught selling. receive your punishment. now you decide gee that it would be a good idea to do that again. then you get caught *again*, receive your punishment. at this point you've probably even served some jail time.
now, knowing that a third offense carries a 20y mandatory, you decide to sell AGAIN ...
don't get me wrong, drug sentencing is way out of whack with the crime. but repeating and getting caught 3x in a row either says your are extremely stupid or trying to make a point.
i've never, ever been directly helped by a cop. now, i am not saying that i don't benefit indirectly from them "keeping the peace" and not letting violent criminals run rampant. i'm just saying that every time i've dealt with them directly, they've been rude (sometimes even threatening) and didn't help resolve my problem in any way. often times they made the problem worse.
i understand *why* cops get like this. it makes sense considering what their jobs entail, although i'm not excusing it. at the same time, cops shouldn't act miffed when public looks at them as a threat
We'd prefer the police department ended up paying Anthony Graber some settlement for malicious prosecution of course, but who knows.
nah. the driver was reckless. even if the cop didn't witness it, the video (he?) posted shows it. he deserves whatever is appropriate under the law.
the issue of the "lapse in procedure" by the cop is abhorrent, but completely separate and should be dealt with as such.
The "victim" was driving 127mph on a public road with other traffic around.
yes the driver was irresponsible and breaking the law. no one is arguing that. however, aiming a gun at the driver after he pulled over didn't help matters. no one was made safer by that action (quite the opposite).
not to mention he just jumped out of an unmarked car aiming a gun. watching the video, there was no indication that he was an officer of the law. the cop was obviously "pissed off" when we got out of his car (watch his face). not exactly the type of cop you want ... one that gets mad and pulls his gun when someone is speeding.