Implementing PGP with (yet another) public key database is easy enough to do. The biggest issue will be the management and protection of the private keys needed to sign and decrypt incoming messages. If Yahoo ends up holding the private keys, then it's completely untrustworthy and useless.
Also, why do they want to create another public key DB? Keybase.io is very nice, and the existing PGP.net servers have a huge existing database of public keys, though it is nearly impossible to delete a key once its published.
You obviously have never done any sort of online investing. Go join E*Trade or any one of the zillion other online brokers and you can easily buy lots of just about any size. You can by 1 share of AAPL if you like.
Its not the same issue at all. Within 30 days of the release of IOS5, something like 90% of the supported phones were updated and running the latest version. Android carriers have 0 incentive to offer ICS upgrades, they would much rather that you go buy a new handset and the way they get you to do that is to NOT provide updates or new features for your existing phone. Plus, they lack the technical expertise or manpower to take the ICS base and reengineer their bloatware onto it before distributing it out to the customers as an upgrade. Also, it becomes an increasingly ugly problem when the carrier has 5 or 10 different handsets from different vendors with different hardware that they have to test and verify before they can release the upgrade. Its just not going to happen. Going from 2.2 to 2.3 is not such a leap and you are lucky your carrier offered and update for you.
Bottom line is that fragmentation on Android phones is a major problem and its only getting worse, not better.
And that is exactly whats wrong with the Android in general. As soon as you buy one, your OS is out of date and you cannot upgrade without doing a root/hack. Using "rootzwiki" may be good enough for the.00005% of the population that really understands what they are doing, but it sucks for the rest of the world who just want a phone that can be updated when fixes and new features and new OS comes out.
1% of the Android market is running ICS today. By the time that figure even approaches 10%, ICS will be out of date and their will be something with an even lamer naming acronym for everyone to crow about.
Apple is in fact circling the drain now. They`re playing "follow-the-leader" with features on their phones.
Do you have anything other than your own personal opinion to back up your "fact"? AAPL corporate earnings continue to grow, their products continue to sell and expand their market share, they are the #1 or #2 company in the world in terms of market cap and they have a ginormous cash hoard to draw upon for further R&D and expansion.
If you want to see a perfect example of a company that actually IS circling the drain, take a look at RIM.
"follow-the-leader features"? Siri-ously (har har)? Oh look, Google has a Siri-like app now! Leading-the-followers is more accurate...
What's really interesting about this is that it now brings PGP to almost device with a browser - that is: those with browsers which have javascript support. This gives us such joys as iPhones with PGP that Apple can't suddenly decide they don't want people to have.
Apple doesn't give a shit if you have PGP on your iPhone or not. There are some decent PGP apps available for a fair price. http://ipgmail.com/ for example.
You fail to understand the point. The point is that DRM is bad. This is a point I agree with. I don't "share" and I don't freeload. Yet there are several works I have purchased which I am no longer able to access because of DRM.
I understand the point entirely. RMS wants to invent some new tax on purchases, which would involve a huge addition to our already bloated government to solve a problem that 99% of the population doesn't view as a problem. They just want their eReader to work. The fact that you can't freely share the eBooks with all of your friends without jumping through some hoops is an inconvenience at worst. I've had iTunes purchased music (with DRM) for many years, I have a shitload of kindle eBooks, I've yet to lose anything due to DRM. Your experience may differ but if you've actually lost significant amounts of content due purely to DRM, maybe you better stick with the free DRM-free shit, mass market products with DRM like iTunes and Kindle are clearly too difficult for you to master.
because you don't believe in DRM and paying for stuff like music and art,
Wow, you've really swallowed the party line whole, haven't you.
I'm definitely in the minority here, but I *LIKE* my kindle and I dont give a shit if the books have DRM or not. I don't need Richard Fucking Stallman dictating the rules by which I am supposed to live my digital life. This is how the world works - someone produces a product, charges a price for it, and you have the FREEDOM to either buy it or not buy it if you dont think it is worth the price. You do not have the right to steal it just because you think the price is too high or you disagree with the concept of capitalism or with selling an artistic work. That is not "rebelling against the system", that is just being a thieving cheapskate asshole.
Sure, I could go to the trouble of breaking the DRM and sharing it with all my friends, the instructions for doing so are freely available, and its not hard. I'd really rather just read the damn thing.
If you want a book and dont want to give up your name or email or credit card, go to a bookstore and buy a hardcopy with cash. Or, write the author a nice letter and ask him to send you a free copy because you don't believe in DRM and paying for stuff like music and art, I'm sure most authors will run right down to FedEX/Kinkos and send you a freebie straight away.
Who gives a shit who had the idea first, that means nothing if you cant capitalize on it. The tech highway is littered with carcasses of shitty companies like Palm and Sandisk and Creative who had a good idea and had no idea how to market it to the masses and dominate the market. Love them or not, you have to give Jobs credit for having an amazing team of visionary designers and engineers who can take someones poorly implemented idea and turn it into gold.
I dont care who first invented the hand-held mp3 player (I had a 128KB Creative RIO ), I care who makes the BEST one, and that happens to be Apple.
Apple frankly does not "suck at innovation", thats narrow minded myopic thinking. They have revolutionized industrial design with their products over the past 10 years, you have to be blind or willfully ignorant not to recognize it. Their "closed" business model is orthogonal to the discussion. The fact is they are one of the only truly successful AND innovative companies and their growing market share and market capitalization speaks directly to that fact.
You can hate the fact that their software and hardware isn't "open", but you cant deny they are well designed and often truly unique when compared to the other products on the market in terms of their physical design.
How in the world does TC technology "fuck with your freedom"? Please give concrete examples. Microsoft uses it for bitlocker security, but they are not "fucking with your freedom" to wipe it out and install whatever OS you want. TPM devices can be disabled by the platform owner at any time.
Also, as I originally wrote, TC != DRM. They are not related. I dont believe there are any mainstream DRM implementations that rely on TPMs to enforce restrictions. It's easy enough to write DRM schemes without it (Apple's FairPlay, for example).
Trusted Computing technology is not necessarily a "downside". The FUD about it being about DRM or denying you the ability to run the OS of choice on your system are just that, FUD. There are some useful applications built on top of TC technology.
I stand by my assertion that RIM is circling the drain and have not had an innovative compelling product line in about 5 years. The Storm was an abortion, and that was their lame attempt at a touch screen to compete with iOS and Android? FAIL. Everything since then is basically a rehash of the same clunky keyboard and joystick interface. Yeah, they have some sort of touch technology, all crammed into a tiny little screen because they have to make room for the physical keyboard at the bottom. Its like a RAZR with a fancier keyboard.
The playbook has been universally panned by everyone who has reviewed it, another epic failure.
Do they have any sort of meaningful developer program to encourage an ecosystem of development for their pathetic app store? No, It's a joke. Nobody develops for RIM first. It's always iOS/Android, and then maybe the rest if they have time. RIM is part of "the rest" and that does not bode well for their future.
You assert that the blackberry is untouchable in security. Please be specific.
Finally, Its not FUD, its an observation and an opinion. I'm not a fanboy of apple or google, but its obvious to anyone paying attention that RIM is an also-ran in the field of mobile phones and consumer electronics in general. The other companies are growing market share, RIM is shrinking. Stick a fork in them now, they are done. They may hang around for a few years with the MS Exchange integration features, but that's not going to save their business, it'll just allow them to tread water or sink a little slower.
Seriously, when was the last time you talked to anyone who excited to go get a new blackberry? iOS and Android have rendered RIMM products utterly irrelevant. Well, that plus their own inability to adapt to the latest trends and provide a product that is interesting.
Netflix ? I assume you are not referring to their streaming service offerings which is extremely limited.
I do agree that Netflix has eliminated the need to rush out and buy every new movie (DVD or Blu Ray) that comes out. Why spend the $25 (for BR) on a new disk when I can just put it on top of my queue and have it come to my mailbox in a day or 2?
Also, I think all of this discussion about DRM is way overemphasized due to the demographics of this site. Perhaps in the/. world, DRM is the biggest reason not to buy a BR, but for the rest of the world (which is a more representative sample of the non-technical world we live in), DRM is meaningless.
The real reasons BR is not growing as fast as some might have expected have already been enumerated - most people don't see a big enough difference in picture quality or additional features to make it worthwhile to replace a perfectly fine DVD player and DVD collection. Plus, the economy sucks and people arent splurging on new gadgets like they used to. Unless they are from Apple, in which case people will sell their children for a new iPad.
I have a Sony BR player and I use it all the time, some for watching BRs I get from Netflix and some for watching streaming video from Netflix, Amazon, Hulu, and lots of other online services. Plus, it plays my old DVDs just fine, so I'm good.
Wow, what an overheated headline. Jobs did not "lash out". He gave very reasoned response and delineated the significant differences in the philosophy and design of the 2 platforms. It wasnt an angry rant by any means.
The article is actually pretty spot-on, IMO. Linux will never be a mainstream desktop OS like OS/X or Windows. For the small percentage of computer users who frequent THIS site, it may seem heretical to state the obvious, but that doesn't make it less true. The article doesn't say that Linux itself is dead or that it is not a viable platform, just that it isn't ever going to be mass-market successful as a desktop platform ala OS/X or Windows.
Why does this piss people off? And just because it works great for *you* doesn't negate the arguments that the author is making.
As others have pointed out, it was not the WaPo saying this, it was right wing hack Marc Theissen. Thiessen is yet another chicken hawk from the Bush/Cheney administration who writes a weekly column that is so utterly predictable and boring in its position (far far to the right) and lack of original thought (Obama is BAD! Democrats are making America weak! Iran is going to attack any day now!! blah blah blah). He basically regurgitates right-wing talking points he gets from the AEI or other conservative "think tanks" (talk about an oxymoron). Him and Bill Kristol and Charles Krauthammer are basically the same person, each one hates the left wingers with equal passion and yearns longingly for the glory days of secrecy and FUD everyone so enjoyed under the Dick Cheney administration.
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Implementing PGP with (yet another) public key database is easy enough to do. The biggest issue will be the management and protection of the private keys needed to sign and decrypt incoming messages. If Yahoo ends up holding the private keys, then it's completely untrustworthy and useless.
Also, why do they want to create another public key DB? Keybase.io is very nice, and the existing PGP.net servers have a huge existing database of public keys, though it is nearly impossible to delete a key once its published.
You obviously have never done any sort of online investing. Go join E*Trade or any one of the zillion other online brokers and you can easily buy lots of just about any size. You can by 1 share of AAPL if you like.
They could give it away and no one would notice. RIM is dead, they just don't know it yet.
Its not the same issue at all. Within 30 days of the release of IOS5, something like 90% of the supported phones were updated and running the latest version. Android carriers have 0 incentive to offer ICS upgrades, they would much rather that you go buy a new handset and the way they get you to do that is to NOT provide updates or new features for your existing phone. Plus, they lack the technical expertise or manpower to take the ICS base and reengineer their bloatware onto it before distributing it out to the customers as an upgrade. Also, it becomes an increasingly ugly problem when the carrier has 5 or 10 different handsets from different vendors with different hardware that they have to test and verify before they can release the upgrade. Its just not going to happen. Going from 2.2 to 2.3 is not such a leap and you are lucky your carrier offered and update for you.
Bottom line is that fragmentation on Android phones is a major problem and its only getting worse, not better.
And that is exactly whats wrong with the Android in general. As soon as you buy one, your OS is out of date and you cannot upgrade without doing a root/hack. Using "rootzwiki" may be good enough for the .00005% of the population that really understands what they are doing, but it sucks for the rest of the world who just want a phone that can be updated when fixes and new features and new OS comes out.
1% of the Android market is running ICS today. By the time that figure even approaches 10%, ICS will be out of date and their will be something with an even lamer naming acronym for everyone to crow about.
Have you tried iPGMail - http://ipgmail.com/ - for the iPhone/iPad?
OS X supports S/MIME encryption, which is quite different from PGP.
You are off by a few hundred billion, do your research...
AAPL is #2 with a market cap of $360 BILLION. XOM (Exxon/Mobil) is #1 with $380 B.
Apple is in fact circling the drain now. They`re playing "follow-the-leader" with features on their phones.
Do you have anything other than your own personal opinion to back up your "fact"? AAPL corporate earnings continue to grow, their products continue to sell and expand their market share, they are the #1 or #2 company in the world in terms of market cap and they have a ginormous cash hoard to draw upon for further R&D and expansion.
If you want to see a perfect example of a company that actually IS circling the drain, take a look at RIM.
"follow-the-leader features"? Siri-ously (har har)? Oh look, Google has a Siri-like app now! Leading-the-followers is more accurate...
What's really interesting about this is that it now brings PGP to almost device with a browser - that is: those with browsers which have javascript support. This gives us such joys as iPhones with PGP that Apple can't suddenly decide they don't want people to have.
Apple doesn't give a shit if you have PGP on your iPhone or not. There are some decent PGP apps available for a fair price. http://ipgmail.com/ for example.
This is the Hangouts feature in Google+. I expect FB to roll out a "circles" feature any day now.
But Clapton done went and put a cap in the sherriff's ass, fo SHO! But not the deputy. He may have been trippin' on Cocaine at the same time.
You fail to understand the point. The point is that DRM is bad. This is a point I agree with. I don't "share" and I don't freeload. Yet there are several works I have purchased which I am no longer able to access because of DRM.
I understand the point entirely. RMS wants to invent some new tax on purchases, which would involve a huge addition to our already bloated government to solve a problem that 99% of the population doesn't view as a problem. They just want their eReader to work. The fact that you can't freely share the eBooks with all of your friends without jumping through some hoops is an inconvenience at worst. I've had iTunes purchased music (with DRM) for many years, I have a shitload of kindle eBooks, I've yet to lose anything due to DRM. Your experience may differ but if you've actually lost significant amounts of content due purely to DRM, maybe you better stick with the free DRM-free shit, mass market products with DRM like iTunes and Kindle are clearly too difficult for you to master.
because you don't believe in DRM and paying for stuff like music and art,
Wow, you've really swallowed the party line whole, haven't you.
I'm definitely in the minority here, but I *LIKE* my kindle and I dont give a shit if the books have DRM or not. I don't need Richard Fucking Stallman dictating the rules by which I am supposed to live my digital life. This is how the world works - someone produces a product, charges a price for it, and you have the FREEDOM to either buy it or not buy it if you dont think it is worth the price. You do not have the right to steal it just because you think the price is too high or you disagree with the concept of capitalism or with selling an artistic work. That is not "rebelling against the system", that is just being a thieving cheapskate asshole.
Sure, I could go to the trouble of breaking the DRM and sharing it with all my friends, the instructions for doing so are freely available, and its not hard. I'd really rather just read the damn thing.
If you want a book and dont want to give up your name or email or credit card, go to a bookstore and buy a hardcopy with cash. Or, write the author a nice letter and ask him to send you a free copy because you don't believe in DRM and paying for stuff like music and art, I'm sure most authors will run right down to FedEX/Kinkos and send you a freebie straight away.
Who gives a shit who had the idea first, that means nothing if you cant capitalize on it. The tech highway is littered with carcasses of shitty companies like Palm and Sandisk and Creative who had a good idea and had no idea how to market it to the masses and dominate the market. Love them or not, you have to give Jobs credit for having an amazing team of visionary designers and engineers who can take someones poorly implemented idea and turn it into gold.
I dont care who first invented the hand-held mp3 player (I had a 128KB Creative RIO ), I care who makes the BEST one, and that happens to be Apple.
Apple frankly does not "suck at innovation", thats narrow minded myopic thinking. They have revolutionized industrial design with their products over the past 10 years, you have to be blind or willfully ignorant not to recognize it. Their "closed" business model is orthogonal to the discussion. The fact is they are one of the only truly successful AND innovative companies and their growing market share and market capitalization speaks directly to that fact.
You can hate the fact that their software and hardware isn't "open", but you cant deny they are well designed and often truly unique when compared to the other products on the market in terms of their physical design.
How in the world does TC technology "fuck with your freedom"? Please give concrete examples. Microsoft uses it for bitlocker security, but they are not "fucking with your freedom" to wipe it out and install whatever OS you want. TPM devices can be disabled by the platform owner at any time. Also, as I originally wrote, TC != DRM. They are not related. I dont believe there are any mainstream DRM implementations that rely on TPMs to enforce restrictions. It's easy enough to write DRM schemes without it (Apple's FairPlay, for example).
Trusted Computing technology is not necessarily a "downside". The FUD about it being about DRM or denying you the ability to run the OS of choice on your system are just that, FUD. There are some useful applications built on top of TC technology.
I stand by my assertion that RIM is circling the drain and have not had an innovative compelling product line in about 5 years. The Storm was an abortion, and that was their lame attempt at a touch screen to compete with iOS and Android? FAIL. Everything since then is basically a rehash of the same clunky keyboard and joystick interface. Yeah, they have some sort of touch technology, all crammed into a tiny little screen because they have to make room for the physical keyboard at the bottom. Its like a RAZR with a fancier keyboard.
The playbook has been universally panned by everyone who has reviewed it, another epic failure.
Do they have any sort of meaningful developer program to encourage an ecosystem of development for their pathetic app store? No, It's a joke. Nobody develops for RIM first. It's always iOS/Android, and then maybe the rest if they have time. RIM is part of "the rest" and that does not bode well for their future.
You assert that the blackberry is untouchable in security. Please be specific.
Finally, Its not FUD, its an observation and an opinion. I'm not a fanboy of apple or google, but its obvious to anyone paying attention that RIM is an also-ran in the field of mobile phones and consumer electronics in general. The other companies are growing market share, RIM is shrinking. Stick a fork in them now, they are done. They may hang around for a few years with the MS Exchange integration features, but that's not going to save their business, it'll just allow them to tread water or sink a little slower.
Seriously, when was the last time you talked to anyone who excited to go get a new blackberry? iOS and Android have rendered RIMM products utterly irrelevant. Well, that plus their own inability to adapt to the latest trends and provide a product that is interesting.
Netflix ? I assume you are not referring to their streaming service offerings which is extremely limited.
/. world, DRM is the biggest reason not to buy a BR, but for the rest of the world (which is a more representative sample of the non-technical world we live in), DRM is meaningless.
I do agree that Netflix has eliminated the need to rush out and buy every new movie (DVD or Blu Ray) that comes out. Why spend the $25 (for BR) on a new disk when I can just put it on top of my queue and have it come to my mailbox in a day or 2?
Also, I think all of this discussion about DRM is way overemphasized due to the demographics of this site. Perhaps in the
The real reasons BR is not growing as fast as some might have expected have already been enumerated - most people don't see a big enough difference in picture quality or additional features to make it worthwhile to replace a perfectly fine DVD player and DVD collection. Plus, the economy sucks and people arent splurging on new gadgets like they used to. Unless they are from Apple, in which case people will sell their children for a new iPad.
I have a Sony BR player and I use it all the time, some for watching BRs I get from Netflix and some for watching streaming video from Netflix, Amazon, Hulu, and lots of other online services. Plus, it plays my old DVDs just fine, so I'm good.
Wow, what an overheated headline. Jobs did not "lash out". He gave very reasoned response and delineated the significant differences in the philosophy and design of the 2 platforms. It wasnt an angry rant by any means.
The article is actually pretty spot-on, IMO. Linux will never be a mainstream desktop OS like OS/X or Windows. For the small percentage of computer users who frequent THIS site, it may seem heretical to state the obvious, but that doesn't make it less true. The article doesn't say that Linux itself is dead or that it is not a viable platform, just that it isn't ever going to be mass-market successful as a desktop platform ala OS/X or Windows.
Why does this piss people off? And just because it works great for *you* doesn't negate the arguments that the author is making.
I stumbled on this site that sort of mocks the whole FourSquare thing - http://www.faquesquare.com/
As others have pointed out, it was not the WaPo saying this, it was right wing hack Marc Theissen. Thiessen is yet another chicken hawk from the Bush/Cheney administration who writes a weekly column that is so utterly predictable and boring in its position (far far to the right) and lack of original thought (Obama is BAD! Democrats are making America weak! Iran is going to attack any day now!! blah blah blah). He basically regurgitates right-wing talking points he gets from the AEI or other conservative "think tanks" (talk about an oxymoron). Him and Bill Kristol and Charles Krauthammer are basically the same person, each one hates the left wingers with equal passion and yearns longingly for the glory days of secrecy and FUD everyone so enjoyed under the Dick Cheney administration.
Obviously. Im wondering, though, if one could change the exploit to execute *nix executables instead.