They also design their gui with children in mind, or maybe children design their gui, one or the other
They tend to design guis with ease-of-use in mind, especially aiming for the least-common-denominator, which oftentimes happens to be kids. For Joe Non-Techie, it's easier to understand a dog asking questions about searching, than a bunch of tickyboxen with technical descriptions. (Personally, I hate that animated character, but my Grandfather finds it easier to use and makes the computer seem friendlier. (Good grief - I'm defending the search character. I don't know what I'm smoking, but I'll be sure to pass it around.))
Same here, except that I got two highly probable results, both of which were equally likely: "VIOLENCE INHERENT IN THE SYSADMIN" or "ELECTRIC SHAMPOOS IN OUR BATHROOM".
With Google being quiet about most of its search algorithms, I can see Microsoft potentially using these patents to 'sell' licenses to Google. It'd be a no-win situation for Google - either buy a license for the technology, Microsoft sues them for patent infringement, or reveal (enough of) their search and ranking algorithm to show that they aren't in violation.
On the other hand, can trade secrets (I'm thinking Google's algorithms) be used to show prior art without exposing such secrets to the general public?
And if you have nothing to hide, then you won't mind the police searching your house without a warrant.
Between the line that you selected and the subject, "what is good for the goose is good for the gander," I took the original poster to have his (or her) tongue planted firmly in their cheek. After all, the whole "If you've nothing to hide..." line is often one of the main reasons given to increase the government's investigative powers, cameras in public or private areas, etc... It seems almost poetic that it should be turned from citizens to a corporation, especially one so closely entwined with the government.
However, if this is not the case, then I believe you said it best: "wtfbbqhax!"
Well, this article is about a court case challenging the use of Section 215, specifically searching without a court order. Because of the accompanying gag orders with the requests, we don't know how many other times it's been used, even after the investigation is done.
For the record, I agree with you about your views on legislation; my previous post was more along the lines to show how someone can have the other point of view. I am leery about some of the more controversial sections of the Patriot act, but other parts of it make good sense. If a police officer abuses the powers of arrest, we have the judicial branch of government to provide a check on this power. The single most important part of the government is the system of checks and balances; it prevents any given branch of government from acting with impunity.
> Is not the legislative branch of the US government the body that is supposed to be responsible for passing laws to protect our freedom and liberty?
It is. The legislative branch is also the body that passed the Patriot Act.
> The mere statement made gives me the impression that this type of thing is not the norm. And this makes me sad.
Is it the norm? I don't know. I'd wager against it, in fact, but I don't have enough proof (or time to research to find proof) one way or the other. The sentiment against legislation is quite understandable, though. Some people want a nanny government - to protect people from evil by restricting access to risqué materials, to control the violence children see in movies or TV, or to keep travel (relatively) safe by establishing and enforcing traffic laws. Other people want the government to keep a more hands-off approach - to let companies have unsafe workplaces because it's private property, to let women have easy access to abortions or emergency contraceptives, or to let people express negative views of the government and president. Most people, though, want some sort of happy medium between the two. Apparently you fall more towards the former, while the original poster falls more towards the latter. Good thing both views are allowed, then.
It's a novel concept, but I can't picture how it would work outside of Open Source software. To run a program on such a chipset, it must be specifically compiled for that chipset. So for commercial applications, you either require a separate version for every possible chipset, or a method for the user to compile it for their computer. The latter isn't rational - all it takes is a single unscrupulous user to leak the code, the program gets out of your control. As for the former, I can picture going to a store and being told, "Oh, sorry. We're all out of Office for Chipset 0xDEADBEEF. Is Chipset 0xDEADBEEE ok instead?"
Why? Probably because they've been misinformed, or have misconceptions about how it works. In just about everything else, we have tiers. High Occupancy Vehicle lanes on highways, premium cable channel programs, priority mail at the post office. People are used to the concept that if you pay more, you get more or better service. Heck, even internet access has tiers - you can pay $10 for dial-up, or you can pay $40 for much faster broadband or DSL. If you think of the internet as a limited capacity system, the idea of tiered service becomes much more reasonable. Would you want the critical business document you're loading from the central office held up because some other person is hogging all the bandwidth downloading movies? People want to make sure that critical files get where they need to as soon as possible, and are used to spending more to this end. Picture what would happen if your ISP said that because of increased traffic, not all messages will be sent with equal priority. You'd want to be able to make sure that your stuff got through when you needed it to, even if it meant paying an extra five dollars a month.
> If they want to take down Child Pornography, wouldn't it be smarter to go after the distributors?
The problem with that thinking is that some of the distributers are located overseas. Since they're beyond the reach of the US Government, the next best thing is to go after those who are within reach. In order to keep arrest numbers high, and the statistics impressive, they arrest those they can. It's the difference between saying "We arrested ten child pornographers" and "We arrested two hundred people in the War on Kiddie Porn." Though the second sounds more impressive, the first may have more of an impact on actually *winning* the War on Kiddie Porn, not just *fighting* it.
From the article: "Mr Gonzales also said that he is also investigating ways to ensure that ISPs retain records of a user's web activities to track down offenders."
My questions about this are: 1) What safeguards are put in place, so the system isn't abused? If John Doe is accused of browsing for kiddie porn, what proof is considered sufficient to let someone browse his internet usage? It *should* be the normal burden of proof as required for a normal search warrant, but as we've seen, the government has already shown it is willing to work around that limitation. 2) What limitations are put in place? If we've obtained a search warrant for John Doe's internet records, how detailed are the records going to be? A list of IP addresses? Site names, and the time spent at each site? Data amount transferred? Specific lists of webpages requested? In any case, it's a lot of data that the ISP will need to retain. Granted, storage space is relatively cheap, but if they ask for all packets a person sends/receives, that's a LOT of data. 3) Will the ISPs inform their customers of any changes that occur? Though I haven't seen a contract that they use, I would hope that it contains a clause about protection from fine detail tracking. (If you think someone's filesharing, you can get a rough guess by the quantity of traffic going through specific ports. You don't need to reassemble the entire file to make a rough guess)
I guess in an ideal world, it's treated much the same as phone records - you accessed IP foo, with 25MB transferred - with the same burden of proof required to get access to both. The primary difference between the two, though, is that phone companies charge you on whom you call and connect to, while ISPs don't have site-specific rates. (Yet, at least.) To get phone records, the phone company merely needs to query their existing database of records. To get internet usage records, the ISP needs to implement new technology that they probably don't already have.
I personally stick to sudo. The main reason why is to protect me from myself, more than anyone. Because I have to prefix the command with sudo, it serves as a 'mental brake' to slow down my typing, and double check what I type before I run it.
I do agree that the point is mostly worthless, and that it's easier and more efficient for a neighbors to "settle their differences" with more mundane weapons. I'd guess that the most important point of the article is that the technology to create biotech weaponry is unregulated, but should be. Officials try to regulate nuclear technology, which can be used for good (power generation) or evil (weaponry); why should biotechnology be any different?
I don't quite get it. Why would a person volunteer their time and energies into helping with this? As compared to something you (and possibly other people) would use with open-source software, I don't see anything gained by taking part in this. If a person is (a) fluent enough in both languages and (b) willing to do this sort of translation work, wouldn't they be able to find a job to pay them to do this? Or if they wouldn't want a full time job out of it, find something more people can use and translate that. There are doubtlessly scores of projects that would love someone to do a free translation for them.
Another related thought on this is how the government knows that the translations are accurate? Because of the relative anonymity provided through the internet, the government can't tell whether I really am an Arabic language teacher at a college or a disgruntled monoligual high-school dropout unless if I tell them. Which of these people is more likely to provide an accurate translation? And how can they tell whose translation is correct?
I've seen a number of comments questioning what Dell or Alienware gets out of this deal, if the two 'brands' remain effectively distinct. They both get a number of things out of it: 1) They get an existing, well-known high-end brand. Rather than trying to make a new high-end brand, which would require major expenses as well as a large change in public opinion. Would you want to buy a $4.00 coffee if it was sold under the, say, Maxwell House brand name? No offense to Maxwell House, but people don't necessarily see them as a high-end brand of coffee. They could try to start their own premium brand, and advertise it as such, but it still would bear the name of Maxwell House. If they would buy Starbucks and kept it mostly separate, they would be able to have an instant presence in the high-end market without having to carve out a niche from the existing brands. 2) They get to consolidate portions of the infrastructure. If a company prides itself on its products, it still has other, less glamorous departments, such as distribution. Though the existing distribution may need to expand to handle the additional load, it still would be smaller than the two individual networks. Note that distribution is used here as an example; since they ship using carrier companies, they probably don't have their own distribution networks. The concept may still hold true for certain other departments, though. 3) Alienware gets the benefit of Dell and their extensive advertising network. Where did you first hear about Alienware? Was it from an ad in a newspaper? A commercial on TV? What's more likely is that you heard about them from more specialized advertising, or from other techno-geeks. However, if Dell can convince the general public that "Hey! You're upgrading to the finer things in life - a faster car, a bigger TV - why not get a high-end computer too?" As a result, the Alienware brand gets more commonly known as a high-end computer brand, and sells more units. 4) Alienware gets the benefit of being able to expand more and eliminate bottlenecks in service. If they're waiting until there's money in the budget to expand the repair center, there are probably three or four other departments that can also use the increased budget. But if Dell is willing to put some money into Alienware, and let them smooth out the wrinkles in service, then they'll be able to expand the repair center, upgrade the assembly line, and train more workers all at once. So as long as Dell keeps their promise to let Alienware continue on with its own brand, design, sales and marketing, and support, it looks like the beginning of a highly profitable relationship.
My main issue with the good Doctor is that most of the time, when I had a program that crashed and invoked him, it wasn't a Microsoft product. Typically, it's because I was working on a programming assignment and it 'burped.' So unless Microsoft was willing to help me debug my homework, I didn't see much point in sending the data on to Redmond.
Not that I mind sending back data when it can be useful; if someone is going to look at the error logs, memory, etc., and try and make it so that it won't crash again, I'm all for it. I just pity the poor person who accidentally leaves a major bug in the code, and swamps the system with error reports.
I know that in one particular http://www.kingdomofloathing.com/game, they tend to follow this approach. Once a new feature is created, and debugged enough so that it's stable and doesn't break anything, the feature is released to the general populace. After all, once all of the important bugs are found, a thousand users will find the minor bugs through general usage faster than a small dedicated team of testers. Also, the time the testers save by not having to verify every single minor detail can be used to work on new material.
Add into the equation that without some elaborate software (such as Mercury LoadRunner, or an open-source equivalent), it's hard to simulate the effect the entire population will have when they start hammering on the server. It can also help track down extremely low-occurance bugs, because with enough people working on it, those one-in-a-million cases will eventually come up.
Kinda reminds me of infinite monkeys eventually producing the works of Shakespeare.
I wholeheartedly agree that the world is filled with good design. Because of good design, I can travel through a city without too much hassle, find stuff online quickly and easily, and live in a place that I don't mind looking at.
The problem here, though, is that good design often ends up being invisible. When it's done well, people use the features without even realizing it. Take the IPod for example. One minor feature that often goes unnoticed is that when scrolling quickly through long lists, it actually speeds up the rate which it passes over songs. A slow constant scroll will still only go one song at a time, though. It makes sense: if I'm scrolling over large quantities of songs, I'm only trying to get to the area the song is in, but if I'm checking song-by-song, I want to see each title individually. I know that not everybody likes the IPod, but this is a handy feature on it.
Bad design, though, is quickly noticed. If something is counterintuitive, we notice. If something doesn't 'look' quite right, we notice. If something is garishly colored, we notice. It ends up that the designers that we notice are the ones who use 'pretty pictures' and unconventional designs. Sometimes this is done by request of the person hiring the designer, sometimes it's done by the designers in an effort to make themselves stick out from the croud. No matter the intention, it gets seen, and we end up forming an opinion on the ones we notice.
Not that I'm trying to *justify* the opinion; I'm merely trying to explain *why* we tend towards that view.
I'm glad to hear about the lengths your company goes to to protect your customers' data. Whereas the news only reports on when security fails, I'm glad to hear about a case where data security is handled well.
The question remains, though, how can you find the "right ones"? No company should be willing to tell you more than a brief statment about their security procedures; all they can do is show you any publicly available security policy they have. To the end user, your company's security policy and that of another company may look identical, but how can we tell anything more than that?
Not from how I interpret it. The main difference between the two is that Apple owns iTunes, iPod, and the music store, while Microsoft only owns its Media Player and the operating system. If Apple wants to restrict their iPod to only their product, it's their choice. If Bob makes an MP3 player that will only load music from BobSongs Music Player, it's his choice; he controls both, and that decision is made by him. In either case, if people don't want to use the designated music loader, then they shouldn't buy the music player. Alice has no right to go to Bob and force him to change his product to use only her music player.
In other words, if Microsoft makes a music player of their own, then they can restrict it to only using WMP. But they shouldn't be able to force other MP3 player manufacturers to only use WMP, even though Microsoft controls the operating system.
I find Flashblock to be sufficient for my needs. It allows you to turn it completely on or off, and a whitelist of sites. It replaces flash animations with a button which you can select to play the flash animation.
Personally, I think the idea is good, though it has potential for abuse.
Once such example could be automated issuing of speeding tickets. There are some towns and villages that people know to be speed traps. Two examples of these from the news are New Rome and Macks Creek. I can picture a small town or village like one of these places investing in a pair of readers. Install them on the local highway, and calculate how much time a car should take to travel between these points. If a vehicle goes faster than this, it must be speeding. Use the database to find the driver's address, and send them a ticket. The bill does allow local law enforcement to access the database in Section 601.501 b.
As abusive as this may sound, though, it's nothing that couldn't be done with tracking license plates.
SHA-1 is not an encryption agorithm (in the most common sense of the word).
SHA-1 is a hashing algorithm (or one-way encryption algorithm if you insist on using word "encryption").
My apologies. I guess the point I was trying to make is that though algorithms can be broken, I'd much rather have an algorithm there that needs to be broken than simply the data sitting open and unencrypted.
Slashdot Mirror
Lies! We actually share 100% of DNA with the shrimp right now - they're both made from the same basic four molecules. Oh noes!
I quite liked that magazine, myself. It was a blast!
They tend to design guis with ease-of-use in mind, especially aiming for the least-common-denominator, which oftentimes happens to be kids. For Joe Non-Techie, it's easier to understand a dog asking questions about searching, than a bunch of tickyboxen with technical descriptions. (Personally, I hate that animated character, but my Grandfather finds it easier to use and makes the computer seem friendlier. (Good grief - I'm defending the search character. I don't know what I'm smoking, but I'll be sure to pass it around.))
Same here, except that I got two highly probable results, both of which were equally likely: "VIOLENCE INHERENT IN THE SYSADMIN" or "ELECTRIC SHAMPOOS IN OUR BATHROOM".
Hmm...
With Google being quiet about most of its search algorithms, I can see Microsoft potentially using these patents to 'sell' licenses to Google. It'd be a no-win situation for Google - either buy a license for the technology, Microsoft sues them for patent infringement, or reveal (enough of) their search and ranking algorithm to show that they aren't in violation.
On the other hand, can trade secrets (I'm thinking Google's algorithms) be used to show prior art without exposing such secrets to the general public?
Even if he rolls a natural 20?
However, if this is not the case, then I believe you said it best: "wtfbbqhax!"
Well, this article is about a court case challenging the use of Section 215, specifically searching without a court order. Because of the accompanying gag orders with the requests, we don't know how many other times it's been used, even after the investigation is done.
For the record, I agree with you about your views on legislation; my previous post was more along the lines to show how someone can have the other point of view. I am leery about some of the more controversial sections of the Patriot act, but other parts of it make good sense. If a police officer abuses the powers of arrest, we have the judicial branch of government to provide a check on this power. The single most important part of the government is the system of checks and balances; it prevents any given branch of government from acting with impunity.
> Is not the legislative branch of the US government the body that is supposed to be responsible for passing laws to protect our freedom and liberty?
It is. The legislative branch is also the body that passed the Patriot Act.
> The mere statement made gives me the impression that this type of thing is not the norm. And this makes me sad.
Is it the norm? I don't know. I'd wager against it, in fact, but I don't have enough proof (or time to research to find proof) one way or the other.
The sentiment against legislation is quite understandable, though. Some people want a nanny government - to protect people from evil by restricting access to risqué materials, to control the violence children see in movies or TV, or to keep travel (relatively) safe by establishing and enforcing traffic laws. Other people want the government to keep a more hands-off approach - to let companies have unsafe workplaces because it's private property, to let women have easy access to abortions or emergency contraceptives, or to let people express negative views of the government and president. Most people, though, want some sort of happy medium between the two. Apparently you fall more towards the former, while the original poster falls more towards the latter. Good thing both views are allowed, then.
It's a novel concept, but I can't picture how it would work outside of Open Source software.
To run a program on such a chipset, it must be specifically compiled for that chipset. So for commercial applications, you either require a separate version for every possible chipset, or a method for the user to compile it for their computer. The latter isn't rational - all it takes is a single unscrupulous user to leak the code, the program gets out of your control. As for the former, I can picture going to a store and being told, "Oh, sorry. We're all out of Office for Chipset 0xDEADBEEF. Is Chipset 0xDEADBEEE ok instead?"
Why? Probably because they've been misinformed, or have misconceptions about how it works.
In just about everything else, we have tiers. High Occupancy Vehicle lanes on highways, premium cable channel programs, priority mail at the post office. People are used to the concept that if you pay more, you get more or better service. Heck, even internet access has tiers - you can pay $10 for dial-up, or you can pay $40 for much faster broadband or DSL.
If you think of the internet as a limited capacity system, the idea of tiered service becomes much more reasonable. Would you want the critical business document you're loading from the central office held up because some other person is hogging all the bandwidth downloading movies? People want to make sure that critical files get where they need to as soon as possible, and are used to spending more to this end.
Picture what would happen if your ISP said that because of increased traffic, not all messages will be sent with equal priority. You'd want to be able to make sure that your stuff got through when you needed it to, even if it meant paying an extra five dollars a month.
> If they want to take down Child Pornography, wouldn't it be smarter to go after the distributors?
The problem with that thinking is that some of the distributers are located overseas. Since they're beyond the reach of the US Government, the next best thing is to go after those who are within reach. In order to keep arrest numbers high, and the statistics impressive, they arrest those they can. It's the difference between saying "We arrested ten child pornographers" and "We arrested two hundred people in the War on Kiddie Porn."
Though the second sounds more impressive, the first may have more of an impact on actually *winning* the War on Kiddie Porn, not just *fighting* it.
From the article:
"Mr Gonzales also said that he is also investigating ways to ensure that ISPs retain records of a user's web activities to track down offenders."
My questions about this are:
1) What safeguards are put in place, so the system isn't abused? If John Doe is accused of browsing for kiddie porn, what proof is considered sufficient to let someone browse his internet usage? It *should* be the normal burden of proof as required for a normal search warrant, but as we've seen, the government has already shown it is willing to work around that limitation.
2) What limitations are put in place? If we've obtained a search warrant for John Doe's internet records, how detailed are the records going to be? A list of IP addresses? Site names, and the time spent at each site? Data amount transferred? Specific lists of webpages requested? In any case, it's a lot of data that the ISP will need to retain. Granted, storage space is relatively cheap, but if they ask for all packets a person sends/receives, that's a LOT of data.
3) Will the ISPs inform their customers of any changes that occur? Though I haven't seen a contract that they use, I would hope that it contains a clause about protection from fine detail tracking. (If you think someone's filesharing, you can get a rough guess by the quantity of traffic going through specific ports. You don't need to reassemble the entire file to make a rough guess)
I guess in an ideal world, it's treated much the same as phone records - you accessed IP foo, with 25MB transferred - with the same burden of proof required to get access to both. The primary difference between the two, though, is that phone companies charge you on whom you call and connect to, while ISPs don't have site-specific rates. (Yet, at least.) To get phone records, the phone company merely needs to query their existing database of records. To get internet usage records, the ISP needs to implement new technology that they probably don't already have.
I personally stick to sudo. The main reason why is to protect me from myself, more than anyone. Because I have to prefix the command with sudo, it serves as a 'mental brake' to slow down my typing, and double check what I type before I run it.
I do agree that the point is mostly worthless, and that it's easier and more efficient for a neighbors to "settle their differences" with more mundane weapons. I'd guess that the most important point of the article is that the technology to create biotech weaponry is unregulated, but should be. Officials try to regulate nuclear technology, which can be used for good (power generation) or evil (weaponry); why should biotechnology be any different?
I don't quite get it.
Why would a person volunteer their time and energies into helping with this? As compared to something you (and possibly other people) would use with open-source software, I don't see anything gained by taking part in this. If a person is (a) fluent enough in both languages and (b) willing to do this sort of translation work, wouldn't they be able to find a job to pay them to do this? Or if they wouldn't want a full time job out of it, find something more people can use and translate that. There are doubtlessly scores of projects that would love someone to do a free translation for them.
Another related thought on this is how the government knows that the translations are accurate? Because of the relative anonymity provided through the internet, the government can't tell whether I really am an Arabic language teacher at a college or a disgruntled monoligual high-school dropout unless if I tell them. Which of these people is more likely to provide an accurate translation? And how can they tell whose translation is correct?
I've seen a number of comments questioning what Dell or Alienware gets out of this deal, if the two 'brands' remain effectively distinct. They both get a number of things out of it:
1) They get an existing, well-known high-end brand. Rather than trying to make a new high-end brand, which would require major expenses as well as a large change in public opinion. Would you want to buy a $4.00 coffee if it was sold under the, say, Maxwell House brand name? No offense to Maxwell House, but people don't necessarily see them as a high-end brand of coffee. They could try to start their own premium brand, and advertise it as such, but it still would bear the name of Maxwell House. If they would buy Starbucks and kept it mostly separate, they would be able to have an instant presence in the high-end market without having to carve out a niche from the existing brands.
2) They get to consolidate portions of the infrastructure. If a company prides itself on its products, it still has other, less glamorous departments, such as distribution. Though the existing distribution may need to expand to handle the additional load, it still would be smaller than the two individual networks. Note that distribution is used here as an example; since they ship using carrier companies, they probably don't have their own distribution networks. The concept may still hold true for certain other departments, though.
3) Alienware gets the benefit of Dell and their extensive advertising network. Where did you first hear about Alienware? Was it from an ad in a newspaper? A commercial on TV? What's more likely is that you heard about them from more specialized advertising, or from other techno-geeks. However, if Dell can convince the general public that "Hey! You're upgrading to the finer things in life - a faster car, a bigger TV - why not get a high-end computer too?" As a result, the Alienware brand gets more commonly known as a high-end computer brand, and sells more units.
4) Alienware gets the benefit of being able to expand more and eliminate bottlenecks in service. If they're waiting until there's money in the budget to expand the repair center, there are probably three or four other departments that can also use the increased budget. But if Dell is willing to put some money into Alienware, and let them smooth out the wrinkles in service, then they'll be able to expand the repair center, upgrade the assembly line, and train more workers all at once.
So as long as Dell keeps their promise to let Alienware continue on with its own brand, design, sales and marketing, and support, it looks like the beginning of a highly profitable relationship.
My main issue with the good Doctor is that most of the time, when I had a program that crashed and invoked him, it wasn't a Microsoft product. Typically, it's because I was working on a programming assignment and it 'burped.' So unless Microsoft was willing to help me debug my homework, I didn't see much point in sending the data on to Redmond.
Not that I mind sending back data when it can be useful; if someone is going to look at the error logs, memory, etc., and try and make it so that it won't crash again, I'm all for it. I just pity the poor person who accidentally leaves a major bug in the code, and swamps the system with error reports.
I know that in one particular http://www.kingdomofloathing.com/game, they tend to follow this approach. Once a new feature is created, and debugged enough so that it's stable and doesn't break anything, the feature is released to the general populace. After all, once all of the important bugs are found, a thousand users will find the minor bugs through general usage faster than a small dedicated team of testers. Also, the time the testers save by not having to verify every single minor detail can be used to work on new material.
Add into the equation that without some elaborate software (such as Mercury LoadRunner, or an open-source equivalent), it's hard to simulate the effect the entire population will have when they start hammering on the server. It can also help track down extremely low-occurance bugs, because with enough people working on it, those one-in-a-million cases will eventually come up.
Kinda reminds me of infinite monkeys eventually producing the works of Shakespeare.
I wholeheartedly agree that the world is filled with good design. Because of good design, I can travel through a city without too much hassle, find stuff online quickly and easily, and live in a place that I don't mind looking at.
The problem here, though, is that good design often ends up being invisible. When it's done well, people use the features without even realizing it. Take the IPod for example. One minor feature that often goes unnoticed is that when scrolling quickly through long lists, it actually speeds up the rate which it passes over songs. A slow constant scroll will still only go one song at a time, though. It makes sense: if I'm scrolling over large quantities of songs, I'm only trying to get to the area the song is in, but if I'm checking song-by-song, I want to see each title individually. I know that not everybody likes the IPod, but this is a handy feature on it.
Bad design, though, is quickly noticed. If something is counterintuitive, we notice. If something doesn't 'look' quite right, we notice. If something is garishly colored, we notice. It ends up that the designers that we notice are the ones who use 'pretty pictures' and unconventional designs. Sometimes this is done by request of the person hiring the designer, sometimes it's done by the designers in an effort to make themselves stick out from the croud. No matter the intention, it gets seen, and we end up forming an opinion on the ones we notice.
Not that I'm trying to *justify* the opinion; I'm merely trying to explain *why* we tend towards that view.
I'm glad to hear about the lengths your company goes to to protect your customers' data. Whereas the news only reports on when security fails, I'm glad to hear about a case where data security is handled well.
The question remains, though, how can you find the "right ones"? No company should be willing to tell you more than a brief statment about their security procedures; all they can do is show you any publicly available security policy they have. To the end user, your company's security policy and that of another company may look identical, but how can we tell anything more than that?
Not from how I interpret it. The main difference between the two is that Apple owns iTunes, iPod, and the music store, while Microsoft only owns its Media Player and the operating system. If Apple wants to restrict their iPod to only their product, it's their choice. If Bob makes an MP3 player that will only load music from BobSongs Music Player, it's his choice; he controls both, and that decision is made by him. In either case, if people don't want to use the designated music loader, then they shouldn't buy the music player. Alice has no right to go to Bob and force him to change his product to use only her music player.
In other words, if Microsoft makes a music player of their own, then they can restrict it to only using WMP. But they shouldn't be able to force other MP3 player manufacturers to only use WMP, even though Microsoft controls the operating system.
I find Flashblock to be sufficient for my needs. It allows you to turn it completely on or off, and a whitelist of sites. It replaces flash animations with a button which you can select to play the flash animation.
Personally, I think the idea is good, though it has potential for abuse.
Once such example could be automated issuing of speeding tickets. There are some towns and villages that people know to be speed traps. Two examples of these from the news are New Rome and Macks Creek. I can picture a small town or village like one of these places investing in a pair of readers. Install them on the local highway, and calculate how much time a car should take to travel between these points. If a vehicle goes faster than this, it must be speeding. Use the database to find the driver's address, and send them a ticket. The bill does allow local law enforcement to access the database in Section 601.501 b.
As abusive as this may sound, though, it's nothing that couldn't be done with tracking license plates.
SHA-1 is not an encryption agorithm (in the most common sense of the word). SHA-1 is a hashing algorithm (or one-way encryption algorithm if you insist on using word "encryption"). My apologies. I guess the point I was trying to make is that though algorithms can be broken, I'd much rather have an algorithm there that needs to be broken than simply the data sitting open and unencrypted.