Obviously, you are not familiar with sarcasm. You must be new here?
Or the sarcasm wasn't very funny or poignant.
No, it was only meant to be obvious to anyone with an IQ over 100. And I suggest you look up the meaning of the word "poignant;" I do not think it means what you think it means.
They also clearly haven't used Windows 7 as it has the ability to mount VHDs as well. (Windows 8 improves upon that by adding ISO mounting support) The way they wrote that "feature" is as if the VHD mounting is absent in previous versions.
Hello. here is a direct link to the XP Virtual CD Control Panel, which has been there at Microsoft downloads since the dawn of time, allowing XP users to mount ISO and other suppported virtual filesystems. You may not have heard of Windows XP... its really Windows 2000 with more pretty colors, which is really Windows NT with more pretty colors... now that I think about... Windows 7 is also really XP with more pretty colors... ha ha... you dummasses are actually using a decrepid OS from the mid-90's! Fools! /posted using a BSD-derivitive, the One True Modern OS! OS X!!
Many who purchase modern digital technology seem to be oblivious to the fact that it is not any kind of nostalgic keepsake, that almost without exception, it never appreciates in market value, and always depreciates quite rapidly (abiding by some corollary of Moore's Law). If there was $4,000 in cash, solid gold, or any precious metal, or even cocaine, it would be a different story. But the sad fact remains if the stuff in that briefcase is close to two years old (*and nothing in it was made by Apple, which for inscrutable reasons always retains a high resale value), then regardless of what you spent on it, its only worth, at best, half that, and is also replaceable with new for about half of what was spent (for the same level of technology). And the data? Unless one works for a secretive government agency, or Apple, then the data has no resale market value.
The BSD guys are an interesting crowd. Well they can continue to watch Microsoft and Apple pilfer their software stack usually giving nothing in return while they can use GNOME or KDE or whichever other GPL or LGPLed project exists on their system (takes only a recompile) because otherwise they don't have a useable desktop and are stuck with 1980s user interfaces.
Pretty sure neither Microsoft nor Apple uses GNOME or KDE, but don't let that interrupt your rant.
I have used clang and it was neither faster to compile nor produced faster code than GCC. The only noticeable thing is the ANSI colored error messages... blech. I understand it is supposed to be easy to port because of LLVM but the fact is GCC has already been ported basically to every architecture that matters so it probably wasn't that hard to port GCC either.
I take no issue with this part of your opinion... as it is close to mine.
Apple just wants to clamp down everything to be BSD so they can batter down all hatches eventually for the day when they give nothing back. All it takes is a change of heart or leadership. I still remember in the early days they only released source code much time after they did the release which is counter to the GPL people had to beg to them to get access to the source code or, heaven forbid, actually participate in development (it seems for Apple all developers outside of Apple are a bunch of idiots who can't code or something).
Just fyi, Apple is an enourmous contributor to OSS. Here's what they admit to, but even if there wasn't all that, IMHO, WebKit alone would be sufficient to compensate humanity for all the OSS technologies from which they have freely and legally benefitted.
Once again you are attempting to promote this fallacy that the infrastructure of a particular region magically changes Apple hardware from 4G to not-4G, such that in Australia, it is not 4G, but if you visit Canada with it, suddenly and miraculously, it is 4G again, then, when you return to Australia, it is no longer 4G hardware. Here in America, we have a lot of restaurants that still sell cigarettes, yet no restuarants where you can actually smoke them... but no litigation for deceptive sales practices. We have computers sold with a "turbo boost," yet there is no turbine. If Apple tried to sell the thing as 4G and it didn't contain 4G hardware, what you say would be true. But this is not the case. You country's infrastructure has no effect on 4G hardware that has already been manufactured, whether you have any cell infrastructure whatsoever. TO BE CLEAR... EVEN IF AUSTRALIA HAD ZERO CELL TOWERS AND ZERO CELL TECHNOLOGY... the 4G iPad is a 4G iPad everywhere in the Universe regardless of any lack of connectivity to any non-existant cell towers. Your thought processes are all messed up. Apple has no ability to affect the cell technology infrastructure in your country. At the very least, you should be giving half of the fallicious blame you are laying on Apple on your own cell providers, for claiming they have 4G technology, when they only have a subset of 4G technology, just like the 4G iPad.
Either they are doing it intentionally or their marketing department is incompetent. Take your pick and stop apologising for them. If you advertise a feature your average consumer would expect it to work, this feature does not work at all in the countries they are advertising it in (the reasons why do not matter). Apple is not being singled out, any other company trying to pull this shit in countries with decent consumer protection laws (like the UK and Australia) would get the same treatment, the only special treatment Apple is getting is the media attention over it.
Not apologizing for them. I'm bashing stupid consumers that wish to protect their idiocy and insist on separete definitions of 4G depending on arbitrary infrastructure. And I've given plenty of examples of other manufacturers actually attempting to mislead customers with no threat of litigation. Again, whether or not your particular region has any cell infrastructure cannot change the fact that the hardware contained in the new iPad is actually, technically, and by all legitimate definitions, truly 4th gen cell technology. This cannot be denied. It is incidental that the only 4G infrastructure it is compatible with is in North America. This is not Apple's fault, same as it is not the fault of aircraft carrier manufacturers that an aircraft carrier can't actually carry any aircraft in, say, Hungary... because Hungary has no coast. Its still a damn aircraft carrier!
Let it be known that the foreign "4G deniers" shall forever after be known as Loretta!
So what they are trying to do here is outlaw encryption
I guess you mean "re-outlaw" encryption. I thank you for the very nice, clear explanation, btw... But I still think a decent phishing attack can subvert encryption, and I'm mildly glad the FBI has heard of this, and is using it. Because once the client is compromized, the data can be had, encryption or not. Their legal-malware merely needs to hijack the outgoing data before encryption, and the incoming data after encryption. And I don't see how even if they did this, how the evidence gathered would be any better than installing a spycam behind the suspect where they usually use their computer, or bugging all the suspects rooms and their car and their workplace, girlfriend's house, parents house, etc.. The FBI should keep it simple, go with their longest and strongest suit... if a human is communicating, then bugging the human is sufficent. All this talk of backdoors on servers, where the data gathered increases probably exponentially... its like trying to find a rain drop in an ocean... even if encryption can be subverted at the server level. I believe this server-side approach to surveillance is entirely wrong-headed, since computing resources are always finite. It would be akin to attempting to catch shoplifters by continuously watching and tracking every product in a store that has millions of products, rather than profiling and tracking individual shoppers.
i.e. yoo see burr clee, and even that is incorrect, as the town and the school where named after Bishop Berkeley of "if a tree falls in the forest and no one is around to hear it, does it make a sound?" fame. His name is pronounced BAR clee.
Except that Apple isn't intentionally trying to mislead anyone. The 4G iPad contains 4th gen cell tech, even if the country the consumer lives in has absolutely no cell technology whatsoever. This is not deceptive nor misleading. Apple is of course obligated to explain to consumers exactly which networks iPad is able to interface with, but Apple isn't responsible for any particular country's choice of 4G networks. The complaint is singling out Apple and holding them to a higher standard than any other manufacturer of anything. And the entire idea of this threat of lawsuit is, frankly, whether they realize it or not, insulting to consumers... its self-debasing. "Hey! There's no fucking ham in this hamburger!" is actually a valid complaint. "Hey, this 4G iPad is incompatible with my country's 4G networks, so its not 4G!!" is really not. Its consumers insisting that they are too ignorant to pay attention to what they are buying.
What I find anathema is the sudden sanctification of the moniker "4G," when there is no government oversight anywhere, no governement regulatory body, nor unbiased third-party international standards committee that decides how the nomenclature can be used. Certainly, Apple should inform users exactly which networks it can connect to, but its simply false to claim that the 4G iPad doesn't contain 4th gen cell tech . Remember when Turbo became popular? As I'm sure you are aware, a turbo is turbine driven by the exhaust of an engine that forces fresh air back into the engine giving a non-negligable boost in horsepower. That's great, except that nearly any other product can carry the name "turbo," even computers for a while had "turbo" buttons, when there was no turbine nor fuel combusting engine in sight. You think anyone is gonna try to sue Jaguar if they decide to jump on the popularity of the 4G moniker by calling their next beautiful and ridiculously unreliable coupe the "4G Jaguar?" My point is, Apple should not be held to a higher standard than every other manufacturer of anything. Consumers need to get wise, not more infantile.
The iPad "4G" was advertised as working with UK 4G networks. It doesn't and never will.
I don't think that's precisely accurate. More correctly, it was advertised as having 4G, i.e., 4th gen cell tech, which it does. It does not work with the particular and specific 4G networks in UK. I buy and eat english muffins all the time. Apparently, the joke is, no one in England has heard of them. French fries are an american delicacy... but you won't find them in France. Perhaps the rest of the world has never heard of the notion of "buyer beware."
Apple should have made it clearer in countries with incompatible networks that, although the iPad certainly is a 4G device, i.e., contains 4th gen cell tech, (and this is true everywhere in the Universe), it doesn't contain the ability to connect to networks with which it is incompatible.
Removing feature that is physically unavailable in the country from the feature list is not something extraordinary, it's just common sense.
At the risk of sounding like a zealot, it also seems common sense to me that if a device is the same device everywhere, either it contains 4th generation cell technology or it does not. Do astronauts get to sue Apple, too, if they discover their 4G iPad doesn't work in orbit? If we return to my Porsche metaphor (which I completely made up to make a point, btw)... is Porsche responsible for a country not having any paved roads? It should be clear that regardless of a country's cell infrastructure, a product has the technology it has... will the Apple consumers in Australia promise not to use the 4G technology in iPad if they visit the US? Seems to me Apple didn't need to change the tag, but merely add an asterisk and disclaimer that not all 4G cell networks support the specific 4G cell tech in iPad.
Nowadays, we have cell coverage almost everywhere, but not long ago, good cell coverage was only in populated areas, yet all cell manufacturers and cell providers commonly advertised "call from anywhere." I haven't heard of any domestic lawsuits from cell phone consumers living in the Badlands, or whatever mountainous or valley or wooded region where reception is impossible due to obstruction suing or even threatening to sue. And I'll bet that even in Australia, all cell reception is limited to within range of where the cell towers are. Do the AU providers put towers all the way through the Outback? Then why aren't they threatening to sue other cell device manufacturers because the laws of physics prevent reception in the middle of an enourmous desert, a thousand miles from the nearest tower?
I don't get it. Why don't they sue the Australian cell providers? Aren't they just as much to blame as Apple? Just hypothetically speaking, what if the Australian providers only offered 4G in a band that no cell device manufacturers could interface with? Would Apple still be considered falsely advertising 4G?
I realize its popular groupthink that a computer science degree is the degree to get for information technology... but its a pretty silly and rather ignorant notion. Of course, a computer science degree will benefit any occupation... from flower arraingment to landscaping, to medicine or rocket science. But IT isn't science, its a trade, a practice, and IT isn't computer science, any more than IT is mathematics... because, what very few seem to acknowledge is that a computer science degree is a mathematics degree. Computer science has little to do with computers. Strong edification in logic will be more beneficial than computer science to IT.
and Goobuntu (Google's customized Ubuntu based distro)
I'm not sure you can call it a distro, as it (correct me if I'm wrong) was never distributed. And from the looks of it from videos released by Google, it appeared to be merely Ubuntu with a "Goobuntu" splash screen. So, secondly, I'm not sure changing the boot splash qualifies it as a distinct distro in its own right.
this is a story about an arrogant US media electronics company being sued by Australians and Europeans because they label a gadget as "4G" in said markets despite not being compatible with those networks
I think I remember a similar story involving an American that sued Porsche, which claimed their 959 model as the fastest street car made. He sued for false advertising because when he had it shipped and it finally arrived in the US, it wasn't deemed street-legal because the bumpers were too low to the ground, and the national speed limit at the time was 55MPH... so not only couldn't he drive it on the street, it could only go as fast as every other car. Bad Porsche marketing jerks!
While Mr. Gates was always a personal hero of mine, I used to hate Microsoft with passion. Now, I only hate Windows, and give Microsoft a pass, because Microsoft also made Active-Directory, Exchange, and XBox... almost makes up for Windows, and for all the good companies with better product they ran out of business in the mid/late 90's. Also, Linux and the OSS community tends to mitigate how crappy Windows is, by fixing pretty much everything that is broken in Windows, or that Windows broke.
the FBI can install spyware on a computer just as stealthily as they can bug a room.
I agree completely. They've been in the domestic stealth business for a good long time now, and have quite a bit of stealth capital, over half a century's worth, way more than any gang, which has none, or some arrogant crew of thieves that think they're invisible. What's new here is the computer software and hardware technology, and its seems kind of obvious the individuals (if not the FBI itself) in charge fear computer technology like its black magic. If they'd just hire a damn competant consultant, hopefully a patriot, if not a convicted hacker, they wouldn't need stealth and no one would need to enter anyone's room. In the easiest option I can think of, all they'd need is the suspect's email and a decent clever phishing attack: spoof someone in their addressbook, "dood... someone posted your picture on facebook... wtf? [LINK]." -- and they're pwned.
The suggestions in this thread sound like a pain in the ass. If the metaphor is a phone tap, wouldn't it be a shitton easier, if the warrant is granted, just to install surveillance software on the computer of the person of interest? Unless the suspect is using internet cafe's, another suggestion is to install hardware at the suspect's location, between the suspects router and the Internet, logging everything. I never remember hearing about where the detectives get their phone tap warrant, and then have to install software on the phone company's digital telecommunication switches hoping to catch the suspects calls; I'd expect, they just tap the line, or clone the cell phone, and record all communication.
The FBI needs competant technical consultants, not ridiculous and mythical backdoors on servers and operating systems.
is so that consumers might realize the truth... that Microsoft is actually a decent software company that benefits technology markets and humankind immensely. Apple is not the new old Microsoft, because Apple never floods markets with crappy products. Adobe, however, really is and has been the new old Microsoft. (And I apologize that this comment is so obvious its hardly worth making.)
Slashdot Mirror
Fixed that for you.
Awesome. I thank you, kind rhook. You reign supreme.
Obviously, you are not familiar with sarcasm. You must be new here?
Or the sarcasm wasn't very funny or poignant.
No, it was only meant to be obvious to anyone with an IQ over 100. And I suggest you look up the meaning of the word "poignant;" I do not think it means what you think it means.
/posted using a BSD-derivitive, the One True Modern OS! OS X!!
So, BSD (which predates the mid-90's by a bit) with more pretty colors and a much larger memory footprint? That OS X?
Obviously, you are not familiar with sarcasm. You must be new here?
They also clearly haven't used Windows 7 as it has the ability to mount VHDs as well. (Windows 8 improves upon that by adding ISO mounting support) The way they wrote that "feature" is as if the VHD mounting is absent in previous versions.
Hello. here is a direct link to the XP Virtual CD Control Panel, which has been there at Microsoft downloads since the dawn of time, allowing XP users to mount ISO and other suppported virtual filesystems. You may not have heard of Windows XP... its really Windows 2000 with more pretty colors, which is really Windows NT with more pretty colors... now that I think about... Windows 7 is also really XP with more pretty colors... ha ha... you dummasses are actually using a decrepid OS from the mid-90's! Fools!
/posted using a BSD-derivitive, the One True Modern OS! OS X!!
Four thousand dollars, you say?
Many who purchase modern digital technology seem to be oblivious to the fact that it is not any kind of nostalgic keepsake, that almost without exception, it never appreciates in market value, and always depreciates quite rapidly (abiding by some corollary of Moore's Law). If there was $4,000 in cash, solid gold, or any precious metal, or even cocaine, it would be a different story. But the sad fact remains if the stuff in that briefcase is close to two years old (*and nothing in it was made by Apple, which for inscrutable reasons always retains a high resale value), then regardless of what you spent on it, its only worth, at best, half that, and is also replaceable with new for about half of what was spent (for the same level of technology). And the data? Unless one works for a secretive government agency, or Apple, then the data has no resale market value.
You forgot to mention that BSD rulz while Linux droolz. I hope this clears things up for everyone ;-)
The BSD guys are an interesting crowd. Well they can continue to watch Microsoft and Apple pilfer their software stack usually giving nothing in return while they can use GNOME or KDE or whichever other GPL or LGPLed project exists on their system (takes only a recompile) because otherwise they don't have a useable desktop and are stuck with 1980s user interfaces.
Pretty sure neither Microsoft nor Apple uses GNOME or KDE, but don't let that interrupt your rant.
I have used clang and it was neither faster to compile nor produced faster code than GCC. The only noticeable thing is the ANSI colored error messages... blech. I understand it is supposed to be easy to port because of LLVM but the fact is GCC has already been ported basically to every architecture that matters so it probably wasn't that hard to port GCC either.
I take no issue with this part of your opinion... as it is close to mine.
Apple just wants to clamp down everything to be BSD so they can batter down all hatches eventually for the day when they give nothing back. All it takes is a change of heart or leadership. I still remember in the early days they only released source code much time after they did the release which is counter to the GPL people had to beg to them to get access to the source code or, heaven forbid, actually participate in development (it seems for Apple all developers outside of Apple are a bunch of idiots who can't code or something).
Just fyi, Apple is an enourmous contributor to OSS. Here's what they admit to, but even if there wasn't all that, IMHO, WebKit alone would be sufficient to compensate humanity for all the OSS technologies from which they have freely and legally benefitted.
Once again you are attempting to promote this fallacy that the infrastructure of a particular region magically changes Apple hardware from 4G to not-4G, such that in Australia, it is not 4G, but if you visit Canada with it, suddenly and miraculously, it is 4G again, then, when you return to Australia, it is no longer 4G hardware. Here in America, we have a lot of restaurants that still sell cigarettes, yet no restuarants where you can actually smoke them... but no litigation for deceptive sales practices. We have computers sold with a "turbo boost," yet there is no turbine. If Apple tried to sell the thing as 4G and it didn't contain 4G hardware, what you say would be true. But this is not the case. You country's infrastructure has no effect on 4G hardware that has already been manufactured, whether you have any cell infrastructure whatsoever. TO BE CLEAR... EVEN IF AUSTRALIA HAD ZERO CELL TOWERS AND ZERO CELL TECHNOLOGY... the 4G iPad is a 4G iPad everywhere in the Universe regardless of any lack of connectivity to any non-existant cell towers. Your thought processes are all messed up. Apple has no ability to affect the cell technology infrastructure in your country. At the very least, you should be giving half of the fallicious blame you are laying on Apple on your own cell providers, for claiming they have 4G technology, when they only have a subset of 4G technology, just like the 4G iPad.
Either they are doing it intentionally or their marketing department is incompetent. Take your pick and stop apologising for them. If you advertise a feature your average consumer would expect it to work, this feature does not work at all in the countries they are advertising it in (the reasons why do not matter). Apple is not being singled out, any other company trying to pull this shit in countries with decent consumer protection laws (like the UK and Australia) would get the same treatment, the only special treatment Apple is getting is the media attention over it.
Not apologizing for them. I'm bashing stupid consumers that wish to protect their idiocy and insist on separete definitions of 4G depending on arbitrary infrastructure. And I've given plenty of examples of other manufacturers actually attempting to mislead customers with no threat of litigation. Again, whether or not your particular region has any cell infrastructure cannot change the fact that the hardware contained in the new iPad is actually, technically, and by all legitimate definitions, truly 4th gen cell technology. This cannot be denied. It is incidental that the only 4G infrastructure it is compatible with is in North America. This is not Apple's fault, same as it is not the fault of aircraft carrier manufacturers that an aircraft carrier can't actually carry any aircraft in, say, Hungary... because Hungary has no coast. Its still a damn aircraft carrier!
Let it be known that the foreign "4G deniers" shall forever after be known as Loretta!
relevant: Observer effect
just FYI Bishop Berkeley's solution was (paraphrasing): "yes, it makes a sound, because God hears everything."
So what they are trying to do here is outlaw encryption
I guess you mean "re-outlaw" encryption. I thank you for the very nice, clear explanation, btw... But I still think a decent phishing attack can subvert encryption, and I'm mildly glad the FBI has heard of this, and is using it. Because once the client is compromized, the data can be had, encryption or not. Their legal-malware merely needs to hijack the outgoing data before encryption, and the incoming data after encryption. And I don't see how even if they did this, how the evidence gathered would be any better than installing a spycam behind the suspect where they usually use their computer, or bugging all the suspects rooms and their car and their workplace, girlfriend's house, parents house, etc.. The FBI should keep it simple, go with their longest and strongest suit... if a human is communicating, then bugging the human is sufficent. All this talk of backdoors on servers, where the data gathered increases probably exponentially... its like trying to find a rain drop in an ocean... even if encryption can be subverted at the server level. I believe this server-side approach to surveillance is entirely wrong-headed, since computing resources are always finite. It would be akin to attempting to catch shoplifters by continuously watching and tracking every product in a store that has millions of products, rather than profiling and tracking individual shoppers.
"'IP on Everything." Sounds like his office is a really disgusting place.
LULZZZZ!
sorry, no online video or audio available... but trust me, its ridiculous
In California, we call it UC Berkeley.
i.e. yoo see burr clee, and even that is incorrect, as the town and the school where named after Bishop Berkeley of "if a tree falls in the forest and no one is around to hear it, does it make a sound?" fame. His name is pronounced BAR clee.
/pedant
Except that Apple isn't intentionally trying to mislead anyone. The 4G iPad contains 4th gen cell tech, even if the country the consumer lives in has absolutely no cell technology whatsoever. This is not deceptive nor misleading. Apple is of course obligated to explain to consumers exactly which networks iPad is able to interface with, but Apple isn't responsible for any particular country's choice of 4G networks. The complaint is singling out Apple and holding them to a higher standard than any other manufacturer of anything. And the entire idea of this threat of lawsuit is, frankly, whether they realize it or not, insulting to consumers... its self-debasing. "Hey! There's no fucking ham in this hamburger!" is actually a valid complaint. "Hey, this 4G iPad is incompatible with my country's 4G networks, so its not 4G!!" is really not. Its consumers insisting that they are too ignorant to pay attention to what they are buying.
heh... I actually figured that.
What I find anathema is the sudden sanctification of the moniker "4G," when there is no government oversight anywhere, no governement regulatory body, nor unbiased third-party international standards committee that decides how the nomenclature can be used. Certainly, Apple should inform users exactly which networks it can connect to, but its simply false to claim that the 4G iPad doesn't contain 4th gen cell tech . Remember when Turbo became popular? As I'm sure you are aware, a turbo is turbine driven by the exhaust of an engine that forces fresh air back into the engine giving a non-negligable boost in horsepower. That's great, except that nearly any other product can carry the name "turbo," even computers for a while had "turbo" buttons, when there was no turbine nor fuel combusting engine in sight. You think anyone is gonna try to sue Jaguar if they decide to jump on the popularity of the 4G moniker by calling their next beautiful and ridiculously unreliable coupe the "4G Jaguar?" My point is, Apple should not be held to a higher standard than every other manufacturer of anything. Consumers need to get wise, not more infantile.
The iPad "4G" was advertised as working with UK 4G networks. It doesn't and never will.
I don't think that's precisely accurate. More correctly, it was advertised as having 4G, i.e., 4th gen cell tech, which it does. It does not work with the particular and specific 4G networks in UK. I buy and eat english muffins all the time. Apparently, the joke is, no one in England has heard of them. French fries are an american delicacy... but you won't find them in France. Perhaps the rest of the world has never heard of the notion of "buyer beware."
Apple should have made it clearer in countries with incompatible networks that, although the iPad certainly is a 4G device, i.e., contains 4th gen cell tech, (and this is true everywhere in the Universe), it doesn't contain the ability to connect to networks with which it is incompatible.
Removing feature that is physically unavailable in the country from the feature list is not something extraordinary, it's just common sense.
At the risk of sounding like a zealot, it also seems common sense to me that if a device is the same device everywhere, either it contains 4th generation cell technology or it does not. Do astronauts get to sue Apple, too, if they discover their 4G iPad doesn't work in orbit? If we return to my Porsche metaphor (which I completely made up to make a point, btw)... is Porsche responsible for a country not having any paved roads? It should be clear that regardless of a country's cell infrastructure, a product has the technology it has... will the Apple consumers in Australia promise not to use the 4G technology in iPad if they visit the US? Seems to me Apple didn't need to change the tag, but merely add an asterisk and disclaimer that not all 4G cell networks support the specific 4G cell tech in iPad.
Nowadays, we have cell coverage almost everywhere, but not long ago, good cell coverage was only in populated areas, yet all cell manufacturers and cell providers commonly advertised "call from anywhere." I haven't heard of any domestic lawsuits from cell phone consumers living in the Badlands, or whatever mountainous or valley or wooded region where reception is impossible due to obstruction suing or even threatening to sue. And I'll bet that even in Australia, all cell reception is limited to within range of where the cell towers are. Do the AU providers put towers all the way through the Outback? Then why aren't they threatening to sue other cell device manufacturers because the laws of physics prevent reception in the middle of an enourmous desert, a thousand miles from the nearest tower?
I don't get it. Why don't they sue the Australian cell providers? Aren't they just as much to blame as Apple? Just hypothetically speaking, what if the Australian providers only offered 4G in a band that no cell device manufacturers could interface with? Would Apple still be considered falsely advertising 4G?
Such as computer science.
I realize its popular groupthink that a computer science degree is the degree to get for information technology... but its a pretty silly and rather ignorant notion. Of course, a computer science degree will benefit any occupation... from flower arraingment to landscaping, to medicine or rocket science. But IT isn't science, its a trade, a practice, and IT isn't computer science, any more than IT is mathematics... because, what very few seem to acknowledge is that a computer science degree is a mathematics degree. Computer science has little to do with computers. Strong edification in logic will be more beneficial than computer science to IT.
and Goobuntu (Google's customized Ubuntu based distro)
I'm not sure you can call it a distro, as it (correct me if I'm wrong) was never distributed. And from the looks of it from videos released by Google, it appeared to be merely Ubuntu with a "Goobuntu" splash screen. So, secondly, I'm not sure changing the boot splash qualifies it as a distinct distro in its own right.
this is a story about an arrogant US media electronics company being sued by Australians and Europeans because they label a gadget as "4G" in said markets despite not being compatible with those networks
I think I remember a similar story involving an American that sued Porsche, which claimed their 959 model as the fastest street car made. He sued for false advertising because when he had it shipped and it finally arrived in the US, it wasn't deemed street-legal because the bumpers were too low to the ground, and the national speed limit at the time was 55MPH... so not only couldn't he drive it on the street, it could only go as fast as every other car. Bad Porsche marketing jerks!
While Mr. Gates was always a personal hero of mine, I used to hate Microsoft with passion. Now, I only hate Windows, and give Microsoft a pass, because Microsoft also made Active-Directory, Exchange, and XBox... almost makes up for Windows, and for all the good companies with better product they ran out of business in the mid/late 90's. Also, Linux and the OSS community tends to mitigate how crappy Windows is, by fixing pretty much everything that is broken in Windows, or that Windows broke.
the FBI can install spyware on a computer just as stealthily as they can bug a room.
I agree completely. They've been in the domestic stealth business for a good long time now, and have quite a bit of stealth capital, over half a century's worth, way more than any gang, which has none, or some arrogant crew of thieves that think they're invisible. What's new here is the computer software and hardware technology, and its seems kind of obvious the individuals (if not the FBI itself) in charge fear computer technology like its black magic. If they'd just hire a damn competant consultant, hopefully a patriot, if not a convicted hacker, they wouldn't need stealth and no one would need to enter anyone's room. In the easiest option I can think of, all they'd need is the suspect's email and a decent clever phishing attack: spoof someone in their addressbook, "dood... someone posted your picture on facebook... wtf? [LINK]." -- and they're pwned.
The suggestions in this thread sound like a pain in the ass. If the metaphor is a phone tap, wouldn't it be a shitton easier, if the warrant is granted, just to install surveillance software on the computer of the person of interest? Unless the suspect is using internet cafe's, another suggestion is to install hardware at the suspect's location, between the suspects router and the Internet, logging everything. I never remember hearing about where the detectives get their phone tap warrant, and then have to install software on the phone company's digital telecommunication switches hoping to catch the suspects calls; I'd expect, they just tap the line, or clone the cell phone, and record all communication.
The FBI needs competant technical consultants, not ridiculous and mythical backdoors on servers and operating systems.
is so that consumers might realize the truth... that Microsoft is actually a decent software company that benefits technology markets and humankind immensely. Apple is not the new old Microsoft, because Apple never floods markets with crappy products. Adobe, however, really is and has been the new old Microsoft. (And I apologize that this comment is so obvious its hardly worth making.)