Putting all that aside - I'd hate anyone who could look at a dead mothers will and decide to enforce an EULA over a piece of plastic with metal that happened to contain information the children could hold dear. It's just wrong.
It's not a EULA. It is an anti-theft protection measure that the user took themselves. If I forget the password to my keychain, all information is gone. I would be very, very upset if Apple even had the ability to unlock my keychain. iPads can be protected by requiring anyone to have the Apple ID and password to unlock it. Great theft deterrence.
Hell, make it simpler, if someone leaves me their computer, does the drive need to be wiped and all the programs and OS repurchased, even if they came with the computer?
You are totally misunderstanding the situation. If someone leaves you their computer, and used full disk encryption but forgot to leave you the password, does anyone have to help you get the data?
In the case of a Mac, there is full disk encryption (which makes the data unreadable, but you can reformat the drive), and there is a firmware password which actually makes the computer unusable if lost. Few people use this. So if you are left a Mac with a firmware password that is lost, would Apple have to unlock it? That's missing the point of the lock, isn't it?
Didn't read the summary huh, he presented Apple with the will, a legal document that transferred ownership. The only thing that has more power than that is a letter from the Executor accompanying the will.
For security to be 100% secure, Apple shouldn't even have the ability to unlock the device without the right AppleId and password. If Apple can't unlock my iPad, then I'd hope that some common thief can't unlock it, and the NSA can't unlock it. If Apple can unlock it, then thief and NSA might be able to do it as well.
But also if there is a simple and convenient way for the legal owner to ask Apple to unlock a device, then there is also a simple and convenient way for thief's and NSA to ask Apple to unlock the device.
So if my father leaves me his safety deposit box, I get the box, but not the contents? I think you are wrong, an old woman wouldn't have thought anyone would separate them. That you understand the difference doesn't make it as obvious as you declare.
If he rents a bank safety deposit box, and there was an agreement that only a person with your father's fingerprints can open the box...
Everything you say is actually true EXCEPT, this isn't that families problem, it is apples. When you die your worldly possessions go to your family or anyone else you deem fit to bequeath them too. It is legal and quite proper, Their is no catch 22, Apple have no legal standing here as a properly written will IS a legal document with the authority to transfer ownership, it is not up to the family to provide further proof, if apple is concerned it is on them to provide proof that this particular item was stolen. I hope Apple get their arses sued off.
It's not Apple's problem at all. The item in question is an iPad that is locked requiring the AppleId + Password to unlock. That is what the mother owned. The other thing that she had was her AppleId + Password. She passed the iPad to her children, and unfortunately didn't pass the AppleId + Password as well. The kids got what she had, an iPad without any value.
which was duplicating a line of code by mistake, and which would be a problem with almost any statement - statement is executed conditionally once and then executed unconditionally. Whether it is "goto fail;" (which is very appropriate) or "i++;" doesn't make much difference. The strange characters are supposed to be non-breaking space characters. Slashdot character handling is so fucked up.
People should remember that "Go To Considered Harmful" was written in the times of FORTRAN, when GO TO and a DO-LOOP where the only ways to do control flow. A simple if / else / endif required two GO TOs. So at that time, programmers _had_ to use GO TO in a harmful way. Nowadays they don't.
C++ makes using goto very hard. The replacement pattern: do {... } while (0); with break statements in the right places. It's equivalent to using goto in a structured way, and it compiles as C++ code.
What are you smoking? A connection with a MITM is not "secure". This is WORSE than sending data in plaintext.
No, he is right. If the NSA is the man-in-the-middle, then you created a secure connection to the NSA, and the NSA will be friendly enough to create another secure connection to your original destination. It's not the secure connection you wanted, but it is secure. Nobody but the man-in-the-middle can listen in.
A bad tradesman uses the wrong tool for the job. strlen is perfectly safe to use and gives totally wrong results when used on data containing zero bytes other than at the end of the data.
How is this insightful? The only way this could be insightful is if the OP had said "This bug has existed since 2005, clearly we need greater adoption of open source software, to get more people interested in testing for bugs", because the option is closed software that has bugs no one can look at or fix.
Well, that's not true. Apple had a rather bad and embarrassing security bug, and someone could look at it and fix it - just had to be an Apple employee, who was paid for it.
It doesn't necessarily need to be a permanent kill switch. It could disable the phone until it is returned to the rightful owner. Besides, if the kill switch doesn't physically damage the hardware of the phone in some way (or some other irreversible action), people will almost certainly find a way to bypass it.
You mean like iOS 7. To use the phone, you need the passcode (unless the user didn't bother to use a passcode, in which case it's their own fault). To reset the phone, you need the AppleID + password. If you buy a used phone, the seller has to reset it before sending it to you.
Wow. I did not think anyone in the world that would quit their job because the coffee machine was bad. Have you considered asking to be allowed to bring you own machine into the office?
Bad coffee is often a symptom. Expect other unpleasant things to go on.
So, I'm not a lawyer, but I guess the thinking applied here is that an NDA can be used to not comply with the law? So, by that reasoning, can anyone scribble an NDA on a napkin and get away with anything?
If someone is stupid enough to get themselves into a situation where complying with the law would mean they breach an NDA, they have a choice which of two troubles they get into. Let's say a police photographer signs an NDA after receiving a prototype of an excellent new camera. If he then takes photos of a crime scene with that camera, well, he's in trouble.
is it legal to forbid someone to speak about something with his relatives?
There are cases where it is legal, without me even agreeing to it. For example, if I'm the juror in a court case. Or if I'm a doctor, I'm not allowed to discuss your sexually transmitted diseases with my relatives.
Here the question is: Can a contract be legal if it includes some provision not to talk about the contract,? Sure it can.
You don't seem to quite understand how the world works. This particular company may not be a scumbag company (though my understanding is that it is in fact one such organization.) This single case is immaterial. The fact is that many, many scumbag companies use the confidentiality "trick" to continue to exibit behaviours that, in many cases, lead to further deaths, disfigurements, etc. So you ask me, what's the alternative? That's easy. Make it illegal to keep secret the details of settlement agreements. Really. Seriously? You couldn't figure that out?
So what do you know about the world? Fact is, in any single case where someone gets money through a settlement with confidential terms, if a settlement hadn't been possible because it is illegal, that someone would have had to find very expensive lawyers fighting there case, possibly against scumbags who would go to any lengths to avoid losing, all with a serious risk of getting slaughtered in court and being stuck with a bill that bankrupts them.
Now it's all well and easy for you to decide that for a victim there should be no possibility to receive compensation through a secret settlement. It's all well and easy for you to decide that their choices are either to shut up and get nothing, or become legal superheroes. You're not in that situation. But fact is, if that father had decided not to enter into a secret settlement, that would have been his choice. If he wanted to be the avenger of illegally fired teachers, he could. You want to force him. That's completely disregarding how real life works.
Ah, I read/saw 10 (instead of 19).
So I agree, it's the fathers own fault then. (Still questioning how a 'don't tell anyone' clause can be legal.
I thought the opposite. If the father told a ten year old "we won this settlement and made $80,000 but you mustn't tell anyone" and she goes on facebook, that's the father's fault. If the father told an 18 year old and she goes on Facebook, that's the daughter's fault.
Gulliver obviously settled because they weren't sure about their chances to win the lawsuit, so why should he accept their terms of non-disclosure and not just see it through? It feels like he gave away a winning hand. If someone's done you wrong you'd want to tell people about it. IANAL so maybe I'm missing something.
Of course you are missing something. The guy probably _wanted_ people to know, but even more wanted to get some money. The settlement would have given him money, but no publicity. Alternative was going to court. Possibly _very_ expensive. No guarantee that you win. No guarantee that you win more than your lawyers cost. Definitely no guarantee that you win $80,000 more than your lawyers cost.
If your lawyer told you "we can go to court and it costs us $100,000 and them $100,000; if the other side is nasty and makes it expensive then it costs each side $200,000. If we are able to prove that they did wrong, I'd expect $100,000 payout, but with all I know getting this payout is not certain. ". Would you go to court or take the $80,000? Of course if the company's lawyers say the same thing to the company, would they go to court or offer some money?
And there's the problem. Confidentiality agreements should be illegal in the context of a legal case. If you don't want people to know you are a scumbag company, don't be a scumbag company. Paying people off to keep the secret seems phenomenally immoral.
Why? What's the alternative? One alternative is that the father would have shut up and got nothing. The other alternative is that he would have gone to court, at possibly enormous cost, with no certainty about winning or losing, possibly ending up with a huge bill and no payment, or ending up with a huge bill and a possibly small payout, the company ending up with a huge bill and possible a payout, and the lawyers with lots of money in their pocket.
Remember that we don't know if the company has actually done anything wrong, or if they have done anything that was provably wrong, or anything that was wrong enough to convince a jury that they should pay out money. "Scumbag company" is an unproven assumption that you are making, nothing more.
OK... then.... her daughter violated the terms of their settlement. Time to proceed with the lawsuit, then, since there is no longer a settlement.
Unlikely. A settlement is a form of contract. "We pay you $80,000. You give up the right to sue us. You also promise to keep silent about this agreement, and return the money if you don't". Neither side's lawyers would allow a settlement agreement where either side could effectively just pull out.
Apple's business philosophy has always been about total control. You will never find Apple sportingly participating in a market, even if it is to their advantage. They built their own maps system in order to compete with a completely free and very effective one(google),
Google Maps on iOS wasn't free. Was never free. Apple paid major amounts of money for it. It may have been free to you, but not to Apple.
Do you really want to have to manage the music library in your car with iTunes though? Android + an SD card or cloud storage would be much better, and you could install whatever navigation app and home screen you liked.
That's your prejudice. Most people disagree. And cloud storage for in car music???
The joke is old, and Apple Maps now looks absolutely fine in the areas of the UK, Germany, and elsewhere in Europe that I know. On the other hand, there is for example Bruce Tognazzini (www.asktog.com), who remarked that Apple was nice enough to move the main road that had been running through his living room on Google Maps for many years.
Slashdot Mirror
Putting all that aside - I'd hate anyone who could look at a dead mothers will and decide to enforce an EULA over a piece of plastic with metal that happened to contain information the children could hold dear. It's just wrong.
It's not a EULA. It is an anti-theft protection measure that the user took themselves. If I forget the password to my keychain, all information is gone. I would be very, very upset if Apple even had the ability to unlock my keychain. iPads can be protected by requiring anyone to have the Apple ID and password to unlock it. Great theft deterrence.
Hell, make it simpler, if someone leaves me their computer, does the drive need to be wiped and all the programs and OS repurchased, even if they came with the computer?
You are totally misunderstanding the situation. If someone leaves you their computer, and used full disk encryption but forgot to leave you the password, does anyone have to help you get the data?
In the case of a Mac, there is full disk encryption (which makes the data unreadable, but you can reformat the drive), and there is a firmware password which actually makes the computer unusable if lost. Few people use this. So if you are left a Mac with a firmware password that is lost, would Apple have to unlock it? That's missing the point of the lock, isn't it?
Didn't read the summary huh, he presented Apple with the will, a legal document that transferred ownership. The only thing that has more power than that is a letter from the Executor accompanying the will.
For security to be 100% secure, Apple shouldn't even have the ability to unlock the device without the right AppleId and password. If Apple can't unlock my iPad, then I'd hope that some common thief can't unlock it, and the NSA can't unlock it. If Apple can unlock it, then thief and NSA might be able to do it as well.
But also if there is a simple and convenient way for the legal owner to ask Apple to unlock a device, then there is also a simple and convenient way for thief's and NSA to ask Apple to unlock the device.
So if my father leaves me his safety deposit box, I get the box, but not the contents? I think you are wrong, an old woman wouldn't have thought anyone would separate them. That you understand the difference doesn't make it as obvious as you declare.
If he rents a bank safety deposit box, and there was an agreement that only a person with your father's fingerprints can open the box...
Everything you say is actually true EXCEPT, this isn't that families problem, it is apples. When you die your worldly possessions go to your family or anyone else you deem fit to bequeath them too. It is legal and quite proper, Their is no catch 22, Apple have no legal standing here as a properly written will IS a legal document with the authority to transfer ownership, it is not up to the family to provide further proof, if apple is concerned it is on them to provide proof that this particular item was stolen. I hope Apple get their arses sued off.
It's not Apple's problem at all. The item in question is an iPad that is locked requiring the AppleId + Password to unlock. That is what the mother owned. The other thing that she had was her AppleId + Password. She passed the iPad to her children, and unfortunately didn't pass the AppleId + Password as well. The kids got what she had, an iPad without any value.
Just hack it but what are the laws like UK over that??
The idea is that you can't.
The poster that you replied to mistakenly believed that using "goto" was the problem. It wasn't. The problem was code of the form
ÂÂÂÂif (condition)
ÂÂÂÂÂÂÂÂstatement;
ÂÂÂÂÂÂÂÂstatement;
which was duplicating a line of code by mistake, and which would be a problem with almost any statement - statement is executed conditionally once and then executed unconditionally. Whether it is "goto fail;" (which is very appropriate) or "i++;" doesn't make much difference. The strange characters are supposed to be non-breaking space characters. Slashdot character handling is so fucked up.
People should remember that "Go To Considered Harmful" was written in the times of FORTRAN, when GO TO and a DO-LOOP where the only ways to do control flow. A simple if / else / endif required two GO TOs. So at that time, programmers _had_ to use GO TO in a harmful way. Nowadays they don't.
... } while (0); with break statements in the right places. It's equivalent to using goto in a structured way, and it compiles as C++ code.
C++ makes using goto very hard. The replacement pattern: do {
What are you smoking? A connection with a MITM is not "secure". This is WORSE than sending data in plaintext.
No, he is right. If the NSA is the man-in-the-middle, then you created a secure connection to the NSA, and the NSA will be friendly enough to create another secure connection to your original destination. It's not the secure connection you wanted, but it is secure. Nobody but the man-in-the-middle can listen in.
A bad tradesman uses the wrong tool for the job. strlen is perfectly safe to use and gives totally wrong results when used on data containing zero bytes other than at the end of the data.
Well, that's just too bad for GPL'd software. No chance then that any GPL'd software would use FIPS certified encryption code?
How is this insightful? The only way this could be insightful is if the OP had said "This bug has existed since 2005, clearly we need greater adoption of open source software, to get more people interested in testing for bugs", because the option is closed software that has bugs no one can look at or fix.
Well, that's not true. Apple had a rather bad and embarrassing security bug, and someone could look at it and fix it - just had to be an Apple employee, who was paid for it.
It doesn't necessarily need to be a permanent kill switch. It could disable the phone until it is returned to the rightful owner. Besides, if the kill switch doesn't physically damage the hardware of the phone in some way (or some other irreversible action), people will almost certainly find a way to bypass it.
You mean like iOS 7. To use the phone, you need the passcode (unless the user didn't bother to use a passcode, in which case it's their own fault). To reset the phone, you need the AppleID + password. If you buy a used phone, the seller has to reset it before sending it to you.
Wow. I did not think anyone in the world that would quit their job because the coffee machine was bad. Have you considered asking to be allowed to bring you own machine into the office?
Bad coffee is often a symptom. Expect other unpleasant things to go on.
So, I'm not a lawyer, but I guess the thinking applied here is that an NDA can be used to not comply with the law? So, by that reasoning, can anyone scribble an NDA on a napkin and get away with anything?
If someone is stupid enough to get themselves into a situation where complying with the law would mean they breach an NDA, they have a choice which of two troubles they get into. Let's say a police photographer signs an NDA after receiving a prototype of an excellent new camera. If he then takes photos of a crime scene with that camera, well, he's in trouble.
is it legal to forbid someone to speak about something with his relatives?
There are cases where it is legal, without me even agreeing to it. For example, if I'm the juror in a court case. Or if I'm a doctor, I'm not allowed to discuss your sexually transmitted diseases with my relatives.
Here the question is: Can a contract be legal if it includes some provision not to talk about the contract,? Sure it can.
You don't seem to quite understand how the world works. This particular company may not be a scumbag company (though my understanding is that it is in fact one such organization.) This single case is immaterial. The fact is that many, many scumbag companies use the confidentiality "trick" to continue to exibit behaviours that, in many cases, lead to further deaths, disfigurements, etc. So you ask me, what's the alternative? That's easy. Make it illegal to keep secret the details of settlement agreements. Really. Seriously? You couldn't figure that out?
So what do you know about the world? Fact is, in any single case where someone gets money through a settlement with confidential terms, if a settlement hadn't been possible because it is illegal, that someone would have had to find very expensive lawyers fighting there case, possibly against scumbags who would go to any lengths to avoid losing, all with a serious risk of getting slaughtered in court and being stuck with a bill that bankrupts them.
Now it's all well and easy for you to decide that for a victim there should be no possibility to receive compensation through a secret settlement. It's all well and easy for you to decide that their choices are either to shut up and get nothing, or become legal superheroes. You're not in that situation. But fact is, if that father had decided not to enter into a secret settlement, that would have been his choice. If he wanted to be the avenger of illegally fired teachers, he could. You want to force him. That's completely disregarding how real life works.
Ah, I read/saw 10 (instead of 19).
So I agree, it's the fathers own fault then. (Still questioning how a 'don't tell anyone' clause can be legal.
I thought the opposite. If the father told a ten year old "we won this settlement and made $80,000 but you mustn't tell anyone" and she goes on facebook, that's the father's fault. If the father told an 18 year old and she goes on Facebook, that's the daughter's fault.
Gulliver obviously settled because they weren't sure about their chances to win the lawsuit, so why should he accept their terms of non-disclosure and not just see it through? It feels like he gave away a winning hand. If someone's done you wrong you'd want to tell people about it. IANAL so maybe I'm missing something.
Of course you are missing something. The guy probably _wanted_ people to know, but even more wanted to get some money. The settlement would have given him money, but no publicity. Alternative was going to court. Possibly _very_ expensive. No guarantee that you win. No guarantee that you win more than your lawyers cost. Definitely no guarantee that you win $80,000 more than your lawyers cost.
If your lawyer told you "we can go to court and it costs us $100,000 and them $100,000; if the other side is nasty and makes it expensive then it costs each side $200,000. If we are able to prove that they did wrong, I'd expect $100,000 payout, but with all I know getting this payout is not certain. ". Would you go to court or take the $80,000? Of course if the company's lawyers say the same thing to the company, would they go to court or offer some money?
And there's the problem. Confidentiality agreements should be illegal in the context of a legal case. If you don't want people to know you are a scumbag company, don't be a scumbag company. Paying people off to keep the secret seems phenomenally immoral.
Why? What's the alternative? One alternative is that the father would have shut up and got nothing. The other alternative is that he would have gone to court, at possibly enormous cost, with no certainty about winning or losing, possibly ending up with a huge bill and no payment, or ending up with a huge bill and a possibly small payout, the company ending up with a huge bill and possible a payout, and the lawyers with lots of money in their pocket.
Remember that we don't know if the company has actually done anything wrong, or if they have done anything that was provably wrong, or anything that was wrong enough to convince a jury that they should pay out money. "Scumbag company" is an unproven assumption that you are making, nothing more.
OK... then.... her daughter violated the terms of their settlement. Time to proceed with the lawsuit, then, since there is no longer a settlement.
Unlikely. A settlement is a form of contract. "We pay you $80,000. You give up the right to sue us. You also promise to keep silent about this agreement, and return the money if you don't". Neither side's lawyers would allow a settlement agreement where either side could effectively just pull out.
What trend are they behind? Just curious.
The trend for smart watches that only nerds without any taste and stalkers could love. (See embarrassing Samsung ads).
Apple's business philosophy has always been about total control. You will never find Apple sportingly participating in a market, even if it is to their advantage. They built their own maps system in order to compete with a completely free and very effective one(google),
Google Maps on iOS wasn't free. Was never free. Apple paid major amounts of money for it. It may have been free to you, but not to Apple.
Do you really want to have to manage the music library in your car with iTunes though? Android + an SD card or cloud storage would be much better, and you could install whatever navigation app and home screen you liked.
That's your prejudice. Most people disagree. And cloud storage for in car music???
The joke is old, and Apple Maps now looks absolutely fine in the areas of the UK, Germany, and elsewhere in Europe that I know. On the other hand, there is for example Bruce Tognazzini (www.asktog.com), who remarked that Apple was nice enough to move the main road that had been running through his living room on Google Maps for many years.