This is exactly why I quit using Gnome 20 years ago. Breaking UI conventions that work perfectly fine and destroying consistency.
Why in god's name would I want apps to cram even more useless controls in my face? A window needs two things:
a title so I know WTH it is, and min/max/close buttons. That's it. Now Gnome is taking that away? Just for 20 pixels of real estate ?
Anyone calling themselves a "modern UI developer" should be tarred and feathered. Apple went to flat controls and borderless buttons. Microsoft made Office 2016 flatter than Kansas and decided light gray text controls on bright white background was somehow legible. Gnome has been lost in their own rabbit hole for decades. All of it making interfaces less intuitive and harder to use. A pox on all their houses.
For decades, browser scientists warned us this was coming. We had simple static pages, but no that wasn't enough for us. We needed dynamic content. We needed javascript.
Suddenly we had all this free computation. It was exhilirating. We could make hampsters dance and punch the monkey to win. But that computation had a cost. We kept burning more and more CPU cycles.
Browser scientists raised the alarm. All those cycles produced heat. At first our fans dissipated it, but they couldn't keep it. Eventually the heat crept into the rest of the system. They told us it would lead to tab warming. We just laughed and loaded more instagram kittens.
Who's laughing now? Our tabs are getting so hot they overflow into other programs. Their behavior is increasingly erratic and unpredictable. Now we have rogue sites mining cryptocurrency in them. Face it, our tabs are damaged beyond repair, unable to sustain simple online email anymore.
Like Icarus, we flew too close to the sun. We have no one to blame but ourselves.
The decision is dictated by economics. Depends entirely on the software's purpose. Is it infrastructure or is it a source of competitive advantage?
Common infrastructure code begs to be open source. Having 20 subtly incompatible flavors of Unix does the world no good - hence linux and bsd's success. Likewise Android gives all mobile phones a common base, taking away the burden of 20 vendors each creating a mobile OS poorly. Same thing with web browsers, few benefit anymore from making a closed proprietary platform. Better to share the burden.
Software that gives companies a competitive advantage is completely different. Open sourcing that would be killing the golden goose. Yes companies can build their business model around services and support instead of proprietary code - but that decision is made very early on and hard to reverse later.
You don't see Microsoft open sourcing the windows kernel and API, or Apple open sourcing their GUI libraries, or Google releasing their web search or data center code, or Amazon open sourcing their cloud server platform (it's built on open source but the custom parts stay proprietary). These things will stay closed because that's how these companies make money. Putting this code in competitor's hands makes no sense.
As long as these companies derive competitive advantage from a piece of software, they'd be foolish to open source it. In other areas where the software is just a cost to the company, it makes sense to open source and share the burden.
Then use computers to adjust the weight of each vote based on how much land you own.
Awful awful idea. Either you measure land by:
1) Physical size: Farmers, ranchers, and other rural folks run the country. Along with the super rich.
2) Dollar value: City dwellers with tiny apts/condos/houses in high cost of living areas run the country. Along with the super rich.
Either way, congratulations! You just collapsed society.
So, the "flaw" is that the user forgot to set the lock? I am stunned that this is considered a vulnerability/flaw. I mean, when I buy a new gun safe or document safe for my home or office, it comes from the factory with a default combination. I have to set it to one of my choosing. If I choose to not change the default combination, then that is on me.
Bad analogy. The difference here is once the attacker turns on remote monitoring, it occurs silently. There's no indication that it's happened and no way to recover. If you forget the combination to your safe, then 1) it's obvious and 2) you can still retrieve the contents in other ways.
This is not just a case of "stupid user". It's a poor design on Intel's part. Intel handed them a loaded shotgun with a hair trigger pointed directly at their foot.
You cannot be required to pay a sales tax on a purchase made across state lines by anyone but the feds, it would violate interstate commerce.
The root problem is not a Constitutional one. The question is this: with an internet (or snail mail) retailer, where does the transaction take place? Purchaser lives CA, seller lives in NV, billing address is in CA, shipping address is in CA. If this is considered a NV sale, CA can't collect sales tax. If it's considered a CA sale, they can.
By all rights, it should be a CA sale. The purchaser never crossed state lines, he had the goods sent to him in CA. It's no different than if he buys the item at the local Best Buy, who had it delivered to them from a distributor in NV. By all rights the sale should count as CA sale.
However courts created this legal fiction that it counts as a NV sale. In the snail mail days, they didn't want to burden catalog retailers with figuring out sales tax rules all over the country and remitting payments to hundreds of municipalities. So they devised a test based on a business's contacts and physical presence in a state to determine if they had to follow that state's tax laws.
Pop quiz: two internet retailers are located in TX. One has a warehouse in NJ, the other in VA. If you live in NJ, you have to pay sales tax on items bought from the first retailer but not the second - even if in both cases your item actually ships from TX. How does that make logical sense? Answer: it doesn't. It's just a convenient legal fiction for establishing jurisdiction.
What made sense in the snail mail days may not make sense anymore. Electronic tracking of sales tax rates indexed by shipping address makes it much simpler to handle these days.
The point is, designating the "location" of the sale is a court-created doctrine that is free of Constitutional issues. Once it's a NV sale, the commerce clause is in effect. However if the court decides to declare it a CA sale instead, then the commerce clause is irrelevant. It's all about how the court decides jurisdiction.
Now changing the test for jurisdiction isn't easy. I don't expect the court to go that way. I'm just pointing out that the issue does not inherently raise Constitutional implications. Yes IAAL.
Annual payroll expense per McDonald's restaurant: $602,000
Annual net profit per McDonald's restaurant: $153,900
Even a 25% increase in payroll would put them out of business. There is no way they could absorb a 300-400% increase, which is what you are claiming.
Not so fast. A 25% wage increase would make them unprofitable under their current structure. But structures are dynamic, there's no reason they would go out of business. Consider:
What portion of their expenses are wages vs other costs? According to this, the industry norm is wages comprise 25% of revenue. So 25% wage increase can be offset by a 6.25% reduction in the rest of the expenses.
For instance, perhaps they are carrying excess inventory that can be cut. Perhaps they can make due with fewer workers (other than lunch/dinner rush, most periods are slow for fast food workers). Perhaps they can cut back on their advertising budget. There are many adjustments to be made.
You're ignoring the biggest adjustment of all - price. They could fully cover a 25% wage increase with a 6.25% price increase. That's an extra 31 cents on a $5 value meal. Not going to drive customers away.
While a 300% wage increase would have significant impacts, there's plenty of room for a modest increase without upsetting the business.
This is the problem. You have armchair climatologists ridiculing the president or anyone who dares to deny climate change based on regional weather patterns, while at the same time these pseudo intellectuals likely don't know the first fact about how climate change can cause more severe weather patterns. My guess is most of them couldn't begin to explain why winters can continue to be cold, and even colder than in years past, while global warming continues to increase.
Hmm, let's see. So if you haven't studied the data rigorously then you're not allowed to call bullshit on others? Great - then Trump and his Republican cronies can all STFU cause they haven't studied squat.
Or there's the reasonable view: Laymen are perfectly justified - rational even - to accept the scientific consensus at their word. Yes the scientific consensus can sometimes be "wrong" (more like incomplete), but no one has time to study everything themselves. Your best bet is to trust the consensus, especially when it's been this well studied.
Climate experts all agree what is happening. Anyone who disputes it without extraordinary evidence is an idiot and should be ridiculed.
Stick to the facts. If you disagree with someone, make a solid argument to prove your point.
That's why we're in this mess. Too much pandering to idiots. The science is settled. Factual debate is useless. Those who are against it argue from emotion. You'll never overcome that with facts.
Companies like Comcast (which you're oddly confusing with being a "monopoly"... despite the fact that are only one provider of such services out of multiple) - especially the big ones like them, Verizon, etc - LIKED Obama's rule.
I work in this field. Seeing a lot of bad information here. Consolidating several replies to save space:
I'm curious, do you (or anyone here) know of any substantial evidence that actually supports this claim? Are there any good, relevant examples of historical evidence that show that a patent/copyright system is required for and/or effective at fostering innovation?
Yes. There are empirical studios by economists that correlate a country's patent laws with increased investment in technology. Can't remember cites offhand but Dr. Schankerman at LSE is a good place to start searching.
Actually, there are a few examples of the contrary - I think it was the Dutch that eliminated patents at one point, and ushered in years of technological growth and prosperity, lasting until they reinstated patents.
Examples from before the late 20th century are a bad comparison. It was much easier to keep information secret back then. Nowadays all it takes is one person to figure out what you're doing and post it online.
Yes you can free ride for awhile. Eventually it catches up to you.
Many corporations use patents defensively, as weapons against other corporations suing them. It is very common for companies to form "patent pools" to share technology among themselves while excluding outsiders.
This indicates that most companies see little or no inherent value in patents, and consider them more of a Prisoner's Dilemma.
Only in a very narrow set of industries. While that's common in software, it's not universally true. Mechanical, chemical, and medical industries rely on patents a lot more. Pharmaceuticals in particular cost billions to develop. No company is investing that without patent protection.
I'm not saying patents don't have problems. There are things that should change. But on the whole, patents are a necessary tool for protecting R&D investments. Looking at them only through the lens of software is shortsighted.
They merely don't identify as a religion.
Scripture? Check (works of Marx, Engels and Lenin). Clergy? Check. Rituals? Check. Portraits of prophets and saints everywhere? Check. Proselitysm? Check. Hatred for unbelievers? Big fat check.
That's zealotry not religion. Many religions have zealotry. So does politics (right wing as much as left). So does technology (Apple vs Android, Windows vs Linux, etc).
Religion is set of beliefs about life and often the afterlife. That's it. Nothing more required. Just because some asshats use it to shove conformity down your throats doesn't mean everything shoved down your throat is religion. Intolerance is a fundamental problem across all human endeavors.
Words mean things. Learn to use them properly so you don't sound like an idiot.
I'm also very curious as to what the hell legal grounds the various states have to sue.
The Internet very clearly crosses states, and Congress has given the FCC authority to regulate interstate communications. The FCC has the authority to declare ISPs being under Title II or not.
There's no basis to sue. The states have no standing. The FCC did nothing illegal.
Sigh. More armchair lawyering on slashdot.
Federal agencies are legally required to have a reasonable basis for policy making. That's part of why they do public comments on proposed rulemakings. They require evidence to support their position and they need to address concerns raised by the public.
That's why Pai dismissed millions of comments in support by saying he would ignore anything that wasn't a "legal argument". He's saying they don't count and shouldn't trigger the requirement to address them. Otherwise he'd have to make a case why each of them is wrong (not each one individually, but each unique argument).
The requirements are even tougher when overturning a policy already in place. The agency has to document with factual evidence how the prior policy is inadequate and how the new policy is an improvement. These rules bring stability and protect the public from arbitrary and capricious decision making. Otherwise you'd have chaos as each agency overturns its rules every time there's a transition of power.
Pai did none of this. He dismissed the public comments and declared by fiat that NN should be gone. This was the most naked power grab since Lady Godiva. He didn't even bother with a thin veneer of reasonable evidence-based justification.
There's a solid court case that the FCC didn't follow the most basic requirements of the Administrative Procedure Act. That's what the states will likely sue on. And even if the courts don't strike it down, it's very likely Congress would pass legislation implementing NN. If not immediately, then in 2018 or 2020. This is doomed to be shortlived.
My guess is that Pai knows this decision will get overturned in a New York minute. He's giving ISPs a short window to reap in the profits before NN is reinstated through Congress or the courts. He'll probably cash out long before his mess makes it to court, leaving someone else holding the bag. I bet in the next year or so he takes a cushy job at Verizon, Comcast or an industry trade group they prop up.
This does indeed require that something shipped with the hardware should say that MINIX is in there. Even if there is no documentation provided.
Not necessarily. The "and/or" conjunction is a bit sloppy. It indicates flexible interpretation, which can include that notice is only required if at least one of those things is provided (documentation, other materials). If neither are provided with the product, the BSD clause may not be triggered - at least under one reasonable interpretation of the language. The ME portion is not publicly documented, therefore one can argue there is no violation.
IOW creative lawyering. It wouldn't surprise me if a court went for that, depending on the particulars of the case (how the attorneys behave, how sympathetic their clients are - you know, those things that "blind justice" isn't supposed to consider). Of course the easier fix is just to add a damn notice.
Like I said I find it right on the edge so I wouldn't be unhappy to see the trademark validated, but I feel there's some justification there if it is upheld.
A nuanced response?? WHO ARE YOU AND WHAT HAVE YOU DONE WITH SLASHDOT?!?!
It's actually pretty brief and clear:
Article I Section 8. Clause 8 â" Patent and Copyright Clause of the Constitution. [The Congress shall have power] âoeTo promote the progress of science and useful arts, by securing for limited times to authors and inventors the exclusive right to their respective writings and discoveries.â
Which tells you precisely nothing. The Constitution gives a very clear and concise motivational statement. Copyright is anything but. It's a highly negotiated morass of rules and exceptions and exceptions to exceptions catering to a multitude of special interests. It's the very definition of legislative bargaining.
You won't find anything that looks like a principle or rational public policy in copyright law. Just carve out after carve out, built on the lobbying power of each interest.
A good way to explain it to his son is Empire Strikes Back. Evil rules the universe. The good guys jump from one disaster to another, constantly on the run and getting picked apart. They can't catch a break.
I don't see how this makes it more habitable however as large glacial tectonic forces, while similar is appearance to regulr tectonics don't seem to make life any easier on the surface.
Who cares about the surface? We're talking about a subsurface ocean. Get over your "topdweller privilege", man. Subterranean lives matter!
Author knows nothing about security. Updated crypto algorithms / libraries have next to nothing to do with application security.
How many apps are hacked through outdated crypto algorithms? Now how many are hacked through unchecked user input, careless key/password handling, privilege escalation, default passwords, sensitive files left in open locations, and other programming errors?
There's a reason OpenBSD is one of (if not the) most secure operating systems. Code audits, careful input / output checking, sane error handling, etc. It has nothing to do with crypto algorithms.
Bad programmers can create write-only code in any language...I could name a few that are worse than perl, since they copied the regular expression engine and too-clever-by-half beginner people abuse the snot out of it. Is that what you mean? I don't know anyone who has troubles reading and maintaining my code in any language. Hmm...maybe it's not the language.
You can cut off your foot with a scalpel or a chainsaw - but one of them makes it a lot easier to do accidentally.
With strict discipline a good programmer can write good programs in any language. But most programmers aren't good programmers. Even most good programmers don't have great discipline. We all get lazy, slip up, eyes glaze over after too many hours staring at the screen, make a mental error.
A tool with more safety features to prevent stupid mistakes will usually, in fact, prevent more stupid mistakes. A language with fewer hidden side effects and magic variables/expressions is generally better at preventing such things. Python is far superior to Perl in this regard.
So while you may be the World's Greatest Programmer, safer languages make life easier for the rest of us mere mortals. A good programmer doesn't take 100 yards of rope when 10 feet with do. Use the right tool for the job. Perl is good for some niches but better options are usually available.
This is the current problem with such sites -- that's too expensive. Back when you had to subscribe to newspapers, they didn't cost that much even with the additional expense of printing and distributing physical paper.
Here's the kicker. The physical paper subscription is much cheaper - and it includes unlimited digital access.Check out the plans. Digital only for $100 / year or Sunday paper + digital sub for $40 / year. This is insane. I would sign up for the $40 a year plan to get digital access - but I refuse to have their nasty dead tree pulp deposited on my driveway.
Even when newspapers go digital they fuck it up. Newspapers deserve to die if this is all the better they can do. Wasn't Bezos supposed to save WaPo? You can't teach and old dog new tricks.
The minor action isn't what needs to be stopped, it's the extreme over-reaction that needs to be addressed.
If I'm driving down the road and forgot to turn off my turn signal, and suddenly I've got road blocks and swat teams and snipers ahead trying to stop my car, we don't say "!ow guess he shouldn't have left his turn signal on, look at that huge commotion he caused, we gotta do something about those turn signals!" Yes the signal was a problem and you might want to do something about it, but it's the extreme over-reaction that really demands some examination, because there's no reasonable justification my turn signal should lead to an evacuation of two city blocks.
Your turn signal isn't a potential threat to human life. If you can't see the difference then you shouldn't be allowed to fly.
What's the difference in these scenarios?
passenger tells crew "There's a bomb on board"
passenger hands crew a note that says "bomb on board"
passenger scrawls "bomb on board" in lavatory
passenger advertises "bomb on board" wifi network
95 times out of 100 these are all nothing. But you have to check them out. When human lives are potentially at stake, you can't ignore such statements. Do you want your pilot / cabin crew to make the decision "Well it says there's a bomb, but it's probably just a joke. Let's ignore it."? No. It's their professional obligation to take all possible threats seriously.
Now there's a 99.99% chance this was some idiot who forgot to change their default network name, or who was trying to be funny. Even so, you can't ignore it. If there's.01% chance the bomb is real - some deranged attention seekers advertise their intentions, hoping to get caught - you have to treat every potential threat as legitimate. Is getting to your destination a few hours later really worth risking hundreds of lives?
There's a lot of bad security and overreaction in the world. This is not one of those times.
Slashdot Mirror
This is exactly why I quit using Gnome 20 years ago. Breaking UI conventions that work perfectly fine and destroying consistency.
Why in god's name would I want apps to cram even more useless controls in my face? A window needs two things: a title so I know WTH it is, and min/max/close buttons. That's it. Now Gnome is taking that away? Just for 20 pixels of real estate ?
Anyone calling themselves a "modern UI developer" should be tarred and feathered. Apple went to flat controls and borderless buttons. Microsoft made Office 2016 flatter than Kansas and decided light gray text controls on bright white background was somehow legible. Gnome has been lost in their own rabbit hole for decades. All of it making interfaces less intuitive and harder to use. A pox on all their houses.
Time to update my resume.
2006: Time Magazine's Person of the Year
2017: NASA-designated Astrobiologist
For decades, browser scientists warned us this was coming. We had simple static pages, but no that wasn't enough for us. We needed dynamic content. We needed javascript.
Suddenly we had all this free computation. It was exhilirating. We could make hampsters dance and punch the monkey to win. But that computation had a cost. We kept burning more and more CPU cycles.
Browser scientists raised the alarm. All those cycles produced heat. At first our fans dissipated it, but they couldn't keep it. Eventually the heat crept into the rest of the system. They told us it would lead to tab warming. We just laughed and loaded more instagram kittens.
Who's laughing now? Our tabs are getting so hot they overflow into other programs. Their behavior is increasingly erratic and unpredictable. Now we have rogue sites mining cryptocurrency in them. Face it, our tabs are damaged beyond repair, unable to sustain simple online email anymore.
Like Icarus, we flew too close to the sun. We have no one to blame but ourselves.
The decision is dictated by economics. Depends entirely on the software's purpose. Is it infrastructure or is it a source of competitive advantage?
Common infrastructure code begs to be open source. Having 20 subtly incompatible flavors of Unix does the world no good - hence linux and bsd's success. Likewise Android gives all mobile phones a common base, taking away the burden of 20 vendors each creating a mobile OS poorly. Same thing with web browsers, few benefit anymore from making a closed proprietary platform. Better to share the burden.
Software that gives companies a competitive advantage is completely different. Open sourcing that would be killing the golden goose. Yes companies can build their business model around services and support instead of proprietary code - but that decision is made very early on and hard to reverse later.
You don't see Microsoft open sourcing the windows kernel and API, or Apple open sourcing their GUI libraries, or Google releasing their web search or data center code, or Amazon open sourcing their cloud server platform (it's built on open source but the custom parts stay proprietary). These things will stay closed because that's how these companies make money. Putting this code in competitor's hands makes no sense.
As long as these companies derive competitive advantage from a piece of software, they'd be foolish to open source it. In other areas where the software is just a cost to the company, it makes sense to open source and share the burden.
Awful awful idea. Either you measure land by:
1) Physical size: Farmers, ranchers, and other rural folks run the country. Along with the super rich.
2) Dollar value: City dwellers with tiny apts/condos/houses in high cost of living areas run the country. Along with the super rich.
Either way, congratulations! You just collapsed society.
Bad analogy. The difference here is once the attacker turns on remote monitoring, it occurs silently. There's no indication that it's happened and no way to recover. If you forget the combination to your safe, then 1) it's obvious and 2) you can still retrieve the contents in other ways.
This is not just a case of "stupid user". It's a poor design on Intel's part. Intel handed them a loaded shotgun with a hair trigger pointed directly at their foot.
The root problem is not a Constitutional one. The question is this: with an internet (or snail mail) retailer, where does the transaction take place? Purchaser lives CA, seller lives in NV, billing address is in CA, shipping address is in CA. If this is considered a NV sale, CA can't collect sales tax. If it's considered a CA sale, they can.
By all rights, it should be a CA sale. The purchaser never crossed state lines, he had the goods sent to him in CA. It's no different than if he buys the item at the local Best Buy, who had it delivered to them from a distributor in NV. By all rights the sale should count as CA sale.
However courts created this legal fiction that it counts as a NV sale. In the snail mail days, they didn't want to burden catalog retailers with figuring out sales tax rules all over the country and remitting payments to hundreds of municipalities. So they devised a test based on a business's contacts and physical presence in a state to determine if they had to follow that state's tax laws.
Pop quiz: two internet retailers are located in TX. One has a warehouse in NJ, the other in VA. If you live in NJ, you have to pay sales tax on items bought from the first retailer but not the second - even if in both cases your item actually ships from TX. How does that make logical sense? Answer: it doesn't. It's just a convenient legal fiction for establishing jurisdiction.
What made sense in the snail mail days may not make sense anymore. Electronic tracking of sales tax rates indexed by shipping address makes it much simpler to handle these days.
The point is, designating the "location" of the sale is a court-created doctrine that is free of Constitutional issues. Once it's a NV sale, the commerce clause is in effect. However if the court decides to declare it a CA sale instead, then the commerce clause is irrelevant. It's all about how the court decides jurisdiction.
Now changing the test for jurisdiction isn't easy. I don't expect the court to go that way. I'm just pointing out that the issue does not inherently raise Constitutional implications. Yes IAAL.
Not so fast. A 25% wage increase would make them unprofitable under their current structure. But structures are dynamic, there's no reason they would go out of business. Consider:
While a 300% wage increase would have significant impacts, there's plenty of room for a modest increase without upsetting the business.
Jupiter has a moon in Antarctica?
Hmm, let's see. So if you haven't studied the data rigorously then you're not allowed to call bullshit on others? Great - then Trump and his Republican cronies can all STFU cause they haven't studied squat.
Or there's the reasonable view: Laymen are perfectly justified - rational even - to accept the scientific consensus at their word. Yes the scientific consensus can sometimes be "wrong" (more like incomplete), but no one has time to study everything themselves. Your best bet is to trust the consensus, especially when it's been this well studied.
Climate experts all agree what is happening. Anyone who disputes it without extraordinary evidence is an idiot and should be ridiculed.
That's why we're in this mess. Too much pandering to idiots. The science is settled. Factual debate is useless. Those who are against it argue from emotion. You'll never overcome that with facts.
God, give me coffee to change the things I can
And wine to accept the things I can not.
There, FTFY.
Begone troll! Your foul astroturf is no use here!
I work in this field. Seeing a lot of bad information here. Consolidating several replies to save space:
Yes. There are empirical studios by economists that correlate a country's patent laws with increased investment in technology. Can't remember cites offhand but Dr. Schankerman at LSE is a good place to start searching.
Examples from before the late 20th century are a bad comparison. It was much easier to keep information secret back then. Nowadays all it takes is one person to figure out what you're doing and post it online.
Yes you can free ride for awhile. Eventually it catches up to you.
Only in a very narrow set of industries. While that's common in software, it's not universally true. Mechanical, chemical, and medical industries rely on patents a lot more. Pharmaceuticals in particular cost billions to develop. No company is investing that without patent protection.
I'm not saying patents don't have problems. There are things that should change. But on the whole, patents are a necessary tool for protecting R&D investments. Looking at them only through the lens of software is shortsighted.
That's zealotry not religion. Many religions have zealotry. So does politics (right wing as much as left). So does technology (Apple vs Android, Windows vs Linux, etc).
Religion is set of beliefs about life and often the afterlife. That's it. Nothing more required. Just because some asshats use it to shove conformity down your throats doesn't mean everything shoved down your throat is religion. Intolerance is a fundamental problem across all human endeavors.
Words mean things. Learn to use them properly so you don't sound like an idiot.
Sigh. More armchair lawyering on slashdot.
Federal agencies are legally required to have a reasonable basis for policy making. That's part of why they do public comments on proposed rulemakings. They require evidence to support their position and they need to address concerns raised by the public.
That's why Pai dismissed millions of comments in support by saying he would ignore anything that wasn't a "legal argument". He's saying they don't count and shouldn't trigger the requirement to address them. Otherwise he'd have to make a case why each of them is wrong (not each one individually, but each unique argument).
The requirements are even tougher when overturning a policy already in place. The agency has to document with factual evidence how the prior policy is inadequate and how the new policy is an improvement. These rules bring stability and protect the public from arbitrary and capricious decision making. Otherwise you'd have chaos as each agency overturns its rules every time there's a transition of power.
Pai did none of this. He dismissed the public comments and declared by fiat that NN should be gone. This was the most naked power grab since Lady Godiva. He didn't even bother with a thin veneer of reasonable evidence-based justification.
There's a solid court case that the FCC didn't follow the most basic requirements of the Administrative Procedure Act. That's what the states will likely sue on. And even if the courts don't strike it down, it's very likely Congress would pass legislation implementing NN. If not immediately, then in 2018 or 2020. This is doomed to be shortlived.
My guess is that Pai knows this decision will get overturned in a New York minute. He's giving ISPs a short window to reap in the profits before NN is reinstated through Congress or the courts. He'll probably cash out long before his mess makes it to court, leaving someone else holding the bag. I bet in the next year or so he takes a cushy job at Verizon, Comcast or an industry trade group they prop up.
Not necessarily. The "and/or" conjunction is a bit sloppy. It indicates flexible interpretation, which can include that notice is only required if at least one of those things is provided (documentation, other materials). If neither are provided with the product, the BSD clause may not be triggered - at least under one reasonable interpretation of the language. The ME portion is not publicly documented, therefore one can argue there is no violation.
IOW creative lawyering. It wouldn't surprise me if a court went for that, depending on the particulars of the case (how the attorneys behave, how sympathetic their clients are - you know, those things that "blind justice" isn't supposed to consider). Of course the easier fix is just to add a damn notice.
A nuanced response?? WHO ARE YOU AND WHAT HAVE YOU DONE WITH SLASHDOT?!?!
Fortunately intelligent people don't post on slashdot.
Which tells you precisely nothing. The Constitution gives a very clear and concise motivational statement. Copyright is anything but. It's a highly negotiated morass of rules and exceptions and exceptions to exceptions catering to a multitude of special interests. It's the very definition of legislative bargaining.
You won't find anything that looks like a principle or rational public policy in copyright law. Just carve out after carve out, built on the lobbying power of each interest.
A good way to explain it to his son is Empire Strikes Back. Evil rules the universe. The good guys jump from one disaster to another, constantly on the run and getting picked apart. They can't catch a break.
Who cares about the surface? We're talking about a subsurface ocean. Get over your "topdweller privilege", man. Subterranean lives matter!
Give Elon time, he's just getting started. I'm sure that's on his supervillain todo list.
Also, to be fair, Christ never built a bitching hot rod.
Author knows nothing about security. Updated crypto algorithms / libraries have next to nothing to do with application security.
How many apps are hacked through outdated crypto algorithms? Now how many are hacked through unchecked user input, careless key/password handling, privilege escalation, default passwords, sensitive files left in open locations, and other programming errors?
There's a reason OpenBSD is one of (if not the) most secure operating systems. Code audits, careful input / output checking, sane error handling, etc. It has nothing to do with crypto algorithms.
You can cut off your foot with a scalpel or a chainsaw - but one of them makes it a lot easier to do accidentally.
With strict discipline a good programmer can write good programs in any language. But most programmers aren't good programmers. Even most good programmers don't have great discipline. We all get lazy, slip up, eyes glaze over after too many hours staring at the screen, make a mental error.
A tool with more safety features to prevent stupid mistakes will usually, in fact, prevent more stupid mistakes. A language with fewer hidden side effects and magic variables/expressions is generally better at preventing such things. Python is far superior to Perl in this regard.
So while you may be the World's Greatest Programmer, safer languages make life easier for the rest of us mere mortals. A good programmer doesn't take 100 yards of rope when 10 feet with do. Use the right tool for the job. Perl is good for some niches but better options are usually available.
Here's the kicker. The physical paper subscription is much cheaper - and it includes unlimited digital access. Check out the plans. Digital only for $100 / year or Sunday paper + digital sub for $40 / year. This is insane. I would sign up for the $40 a year plan to get digital access - but I refuse to have their nasty dead tree pulp deposited on my driveway.
Even when newspapers go digital they fuck it up. Newspapers deserve to die if this is all the better they can do. Wasn't Bezos supposed to save WaPo? You can't teach and old dog new tricks.
Your turn signal isn't a potential threat to human life. If you can't see the difference then you shouldn't be allowed to fly.
What's the difference in these scenarios?
95 times out of 100 these are all nothing. But you have to check them out. When human lives are potentially at stake, you can't ignore such statements. Do you want your pilot / cabin crew to make the decision "Well it says there's a bomb, but it's probably just a joke. Let's ignore it."? No. It's their professional obligation to take all possible threats seriously.
Now there's a 99.99% chance this was some idiot who forgot to change their default network name, or who was trying to be funny. Even so, you can't ignore it. If there's .01% chance the bomb is real - some deranged attention seekers advertise their intentions, hoping to get caught - you have to treat every potential threat as legitimate. Is getting to your destination a few hours later really worth risking hundreds of lives?
There's a lot of bad security and overreaction in the world. This is not one of those times.