There are cases where it is actually genuine. I have a hell of a hard time understanding French (my mother tongue) with accent I'm not used to. Now that I live in a foreign country, I even get nervous when people try to speak to me in French because I'm afraid I won't understand them although I should.
That must be some overspecialisation of my French ear because for example, I have no problem handling accent, even strong one in English.
How often do you need to have your tin-foil hat refitted?
Preventing/controlling government secrets leaks and acquiring other government one is like the mandate of the CIA and all other intelligence service in the world. That means that their job is to look for people that have secret document from the government and plan to leak (to China or Wikileaks, it does not matter).
To take an analogy, it is not paranoia to think that police will try to get you/trap you if you plan to rob a bank / set up a drug dealing network / assassinate somebody /...
BTW, that makes the original XKCD comic irrelevant. You would need 5 or 6 words instead of 4 if you need to defeat a system that can process several order of magnitude faster than 1000/s.
The password you choose is just a security against somebody that specifically targets *you* and I would say that your weakest link in that scenario is probably your mobile phone. Other non-targeted attack will use vulnerabilities or what not, YOUR password strength is a small element of the problem. The backend system can fuck up in a number of ways like simply not encrypting/hashing the password at all. Obviously it is still a good advice to choose a strong password, but that's no silver bullet either.
why someone would buy an iPhone in the first place with the intent on jailbreaking it is a mystery to me
That's called expectations clash with real life. Other examples:
Why would you buy an Android phone with the intention of installing cyanogen on it ?
Why would you buy a Windows computer with the intention of installing Linux ?
Why would you get your internet connection from an ISP and access content from censured source using VPN ?
Why would you buy a flat with the intention of refurbishing it ?
Why would you vote for a politician and then lobby to get some of his decisions overturned ?
You try to second guess a bit too aggressively why the guy wakes up in the morning to do his job. Should a paleontologist be upset because he was inspired by scientifically inaccurate childhood stories, or because he still secretly hope to become a celebrity despite the overwhelming amount of evidence that that will not happen ? The real problem is that somehow, he needs to explain it and use his reputation to try to change the mentality in a country that shamed itself by giving too much political clouts and credibility to what should have been an extremist minority.
In the first world, "Reconciling" religion and science seems to be mainly a US-centric problem. Except for a few touch point (abortion,...), other countries don't even seem to see the problem at all. Having the guy making an interview on/. is sad, really.
You are looking at book writing as a business. For a lot of book writer, being read is what matters. Making a living out of it, while very important is balanced by their desire of recognition. I know quite a few artists, the balance is generally once they have broken even on the costs and get a bit of money in advance for their next work.
Telling stories is not the same business as selling words. Starbuck is a prime example, while they have maximized coffee selling rentability, they have only averaged coffee drinking experience. Similarly copyright are supposed to exist for the betterment of humanity, not the profit maximization of art. The difference is subtle when you take the example of a starving artist just one DRM away of breaking even, but that is just a wood for trees distraction (regardless how harshly are author rights protected, there will always be somebody on the edge of success) from what has become movie and music industry in general.
As I see it around here, the elite (i.e. the ones best placed on the political game) are the one that get fancy apple hardware (plebs get cheapo Dell and keep it for 6 years - getting a company Blackberry instead of continuing to use your iPhone is a sure sign of disgrace). There are maybe few of them, but when something wrong happens to them, all the work stop suddenly with everybody put into crisis meeting with additional status meeting 4 times a day.
Right after graduating, the USPTO equivalent here was trying to get people to go work there without much success.
Simply put, it is a boring job. Even worse, it is still a government job (although extremely well paid, it was like double the starting salary of the other well paid job), with all the office politic, policies and general slowness. What they would need is to hire successful professionals, people that have had to actively solve problems, that are continuously learning,... i.e. the exact same people that everybody wants to hire. (and if the salary is huge for a new starter, the difference is inverted later in your career, as with most government job)
Overall BlackBerry have done quite a good job. They manage to have a distinct style, an OS with both familiarity and feature that set it apart both for home and office. As for the polish, the phone comes with loads of app (android port), complete line of accessories, and an OS that seems on par feature-wise with the competition. They also don't turn their back on their core market, the business,
I don't see how BB could have done a better launch, and if the phones deliver on the promises during the first round of reviews, they are in as best place as they could have been.
Obviously they have a loooong way to go and the odds are against them big time. But for the time being, well done BB engineers !
If you look at the scale of the universe, anything humanity is doing is moot. Even talking about civilization is a joke, until humanity something has lasted a few billion of years across billion of galaxies, we do not really qualify as civilization at that scale.
We could use the same logic to charge a hunter hunting without hunting license with the first degree multiple murders. After all he could have use the same blatant disregard of the law to shoot every one he could. Currently it is a misdemeanour with a pathetic 1 year in prison plus fine. Worse, those psychopathic serial killers are generally only fined.
Most student generally trust their college authority to work for their own good (especially in countries less sceptical against authority like in Europe/Canada). When I was 20 years old, afraid of failing, afraid of the consequence of just being labelled a hacker on my career, with the enormous amount of money at risk to be lost AND trusting that the guy in front of me was actually doing me a favour, I could have been strong armed into signing.
The College has moral authority on the student and abused it. That's exactly why duress laws have been created.
Well, that's the usual "cover your asses or be ready to hire a lawyer" that brought you the stupid safety labels. Apple handle 20 billions download per years now, I guess the risk of losing client over the missing games is much lower than risk of getting sued by an upset association or worse be banned in some market altogether.
You should not rely on private companies to defend your rights, you have the government for that. The government in this case can force certain term to Apple in exchange for the proper safe harbor. Or more realistically since you will not convince anybody in the US to create new regulation, give unconditional safe-harbor (and regret later the golden loophole you just created)
Most people in the street in Europe are in the street because want to work, if possible with more than a minimum wage salary (because it has been a long time since minimum wage is far lower than subsistance wage in a lot of countries. Unless you can teleport from city to country side for free twice a day) They are also in the street because they don't think that it is the best investment of their taxpayer money to spend trillions saving the bank while leaving people in the street having their house repossessed AND still be in debt.
You may have a biased view living in consumerist society but accumulating physical stuff does not make you more alive. It especially ironic that valuing experience over physical possession is considered robotic. Do you really consider people that goes on holiday in family, read book, watch movie with friends are only alive if they have the physical proof like a dvd, a paper book, a plastic eiffel tower lying around in a bookshelf ?
There is maybe nothing wrong with the prototype-based object models and I agree. However, javascript has a lot of awful hack everywhere that make the langage a bad langage (this, scope, ===/==, type consistency,...). The only way to have fun with javascript is to avoid the minefield of half-broken feature and concentrate on the good part (there is even a book called that way).
Another problem of javascript, is that until ECMA-5, the support for prototype-based object model was very poor. You needed to write load of low level plumbing operation even if you just wanted to stick with javascript native oo design.
Javascript is a beta-version language, it should have been through several refinement cycles before being made public.
Well he should. The common theme for futurist vision is how people move toward little space on their own. It should not be surprising that at some point, compactness is going to become a bigger and bigger natural selection criteria of tech.
Maybe you don't live in a big city, or maybe you are just rich enough. But space in a city is at premium already, everything that enters my flat need to justify its size. Books are banned (as many other things, like gadget, vacation souvenir,...), my wife still buy them, but we have to sell the old one when she buys new one. In that respect, the control of the giant corps is a bit of a moot point: sure they can ban me from the content I bought, but it is a content that I would not have been able to keep in physical format anyway. (note: that personally, I make sure to have a DRM-free backup of the book I bought, but I can see how Joe User may not see much difference between indirect control of corps vs very direct limitation of personal space)
Well that means that if you make an Android derivative, you cannot simply adapt the SDK for it. Indeed in practice, it should not be a problem, however it is still a worrying development. If you intent your platform to be really open, what is the point of tightening control on the SDK ?
There have been systematic failing of the church in handling/hiding those cases. So while this is still the individual fault, the church has its share of responsibilities, especially considering the moral value the church pretend it stands for.
BUT that being said, the Church is not the one accused here. Also especially in western Europe, talking about the influence of the Church as a major problem is laughable. They are losing influence every year, and the recent affair have only amplified their image problem - in a lot of countries, traditional catholic parties are removing "Catholic" from their name (and that was before the molestation case)
Does not work for gun, since there are other benefit of stealing one (no link to you). However, that works quite well with about everything else. Car, jewellery, tv,... all of those things that are stolen because they are expensive (and the company selling them is making a profit, which somehow in the article logic make it worse)
You are looking at the problem the wrong way. Step 1 really is "Does the US needs all American to have fiber-optic access". That is a political decision that is first strategic as it may be crucial for US competitivity in the future. But also societal/cultural: should the US become a society that is more connected (get the work to you) or a society that is more mobile (go to the work).
You do not really need patent free format. Just a guarantee that your stuff will be migrated, just like your phone number. While we are at it, that would be cool if we could have some service guarantee, like that your account will not be abruptly closed with no explanation (like you post some idiotic video on youtube and Google wipes everything you own with them - a few instances have made the news here with Google, but I'm sure that's a problem with Amazon, Apple, Facebook,...)
Note that you assume that there is a free market behind. Which is probably fair enough for the auto industry but is not exactly the case everywhere. Let's see for example rare earth. Well, it could have been useful to bail out the mines considering that the competition was using state sponsored dumping. Also there are strategic sector. The world is not quite happy poney world yet and you cannot rely on other countries for stuff like food and anything that would prevent you maintaining the infrastructure and military of your country. At least, you want to hedge your bets and that requires assisting some industries from time to time.
With regard to the union and auto-industry, there is a question of social stability involved. You cannot afford to have whole region shutdown entirely, you would just create a refugee situation within your own border. Union are easy scapegoat when looking at the industry today, but it really started sinking a decade or more ago, and you have to look for problem at that time (hint: the US get their ass kicked by Japan and Germany, not exactly third world hell-hole with slaves at 1$/day)
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There are cases where it is actually genuine. I have a hell of a hard time understanding French (my mother tongue) with accent I'm not used to. Now that I live in a foreign country, I even get nervous when people try to speak to me in French because I'm afraid I won't understand them although I should.
That must be some overspecialisation of my French ear because for example, I have no problem handling accent, even strong one in English.
How often do you need to have your tin-foil hat refitted?
Preventing/controlling government secrets leaks and acquiring other government one is like the mandate of the CIA and all other intelligence service in the world. That means that their job is to look for people that have secret document from the government and plan to leak (to China or Wikileaks, it does not matter).
To take an analogy, it is not paranoia to think that police will try to get you/trap you if you plan to rob a bank / set up a drug dealing network / assassinate somebody / ...
BTW, that makes the original XKCD comic irrelevant. You would need 5 or 6 words instead of 4 if you need to defeat a system that can process several order of magnitude faster than 1000/s.
The password you choose is just a security against somebody that specifically targets *you* and I would say that your weakest link in that scenario is probably your mobile phone. Other non-targeted attack will use vulnerabilities or what not, YOUR password strength is a small element of the problem. The backend system can fuck up in a number of ways like simply not encrypting/hashing the password at all. Obviously it is still a good advice to choose a strong password, but that's no silver bullet either.
why someone would buy an iPhone in the first place with the intent on jailbreaking it is a mystery to me
That's called expectations clash with real life. Other examples:
Why would you buy an Android phone with the intention of installing cyanogen on it ?
Why would you buy a Windows computer with the intention of installing Linux ?
Why would you get your internet connection from an ISP and access content from censured source using VPN ?
Why would you buy a flat with the intention of refurbishing it ?
Why would you vote for a politician and then lobby to get some of his decisions overturned ?
You try to second guess a bit too aggressively why the guy wakes up in the morning to do his job. Should a paleontologist be upset because he was inspired by scientifically inaccurate childhood stories, or because he still secretly hope to become a celebrity despite the overwhelming amount of evidence that that will not happen ? The real problem is that somehow, he needs to explain it and use his reputation to try to change the mentality in a country that shamed itself by giving too much political clouts and credibility to what should have been an extremist minority.
In the first world, "Reconciling" religion and science seems to be mainly a US-centric problem. Except for a few touch point (abortion, ...), other countries don't even seem to see the problem at all. Having the guy making an interview on /. is sad, really.
You are looking at book writing as a business. For a lot of book writer, being read is what matters. Making a living out of it, while very important is balanced by their desire of recognition. I know quite a few artists, the balance is generally once they have broken even on the costs and get a bit of money in advance for their next work.
Telling stories is not the same business as selling words. Starbuck is a prime example, while they have maximized coffee selling rentability, they have only averaged coffee drinking experience. Similarly copyright are supposed to exist for the betterment of humanity, not the profit maximization of art. The difference is subtle when you take the example of a starving artist just one DRM away of breaking even, but that is just a wood for trees distraction (regardless how harshly are author rights protected, there will always be somebody on the edge of success) from what has become movie and music industry in general.
As I see it around here, the elite (i.e. the ones best placed on the political game) are the one that get fancy apple hardware (plebs get cheapo Dell and keep it for 6 years - getting a company Blackberry instead of continuing to use your iPhone is a sure sign of disgrace). There are maybe few of them, but when something wrong happens to them, all the work stop suddenly with everybody put into crisis meeting with additional status meeting 4 times a day.
Right after graduating, the USPTO equivalent here was trying to get people to go work there without much success.
Simply put, it is a boring job. Even worse, it is still a government job (although extremely well paid, it was like double the starting salary of the other well paid job), with all the office politic, policies and general slowness. What they would need is to hire successful professionals, people that have had to actively solve problems, that are continuously learning, ... i.e. the exact same people that everybody wants to hire. (and if the salary is huge for a new starter, the difference is inverted later in your career, as with most government job)
Overall BlackBerry have done quite a good job. They manage to have a distinct style, an OS with both familiarity and feature that set it apart both for home and office. As for the polish, the phone comes with loads of app (android port), complete line of accessories, and an OS that seems on par feature-wise with the competition. They also don't turn their back on their core market, the business,
I don't see how BB could have done a better launch, and if the phones deliver on the promises during the first round of reviews, they are in as best place as they could have been.
Obviously they have a loooong way to go and the odds are against them big time. But for the time being, well done BB engineers !
If you look at the scale of the universe, anything humanity is doing is moot. Even talking about civilization is a joke, until humanity something has lasted a few billion of years across billion of galaxies, we do not really qualify as civilization at that scale.
We could use the same logic to charge a hunter hunting without hunting license with the first degree multiple murders. After all he could have use the same blatant disregard of the law to shoot every one he could. Currently it is a misdemeanour with a pathetic 1 year in prison plus fine. Worse, those psychopathic serial killers are generally only fined.
Most student generally trust their college authority to work for their own good (especially in countries less sceptical against authority like in Europe/Canada). When I was 20 years old, afraid of failing, afraid of the consequence of just being labelled a hacker on my career, with the enormous amount of money at risk to be lost AND trusting that the guy in front of me was actually doing me a favour, I could have been strong armed into signing.
The College has moral authority on the student and abused it. That's exactly why duress laws have been created.
Well, that's the usual "cover your asses or be ready to hire a lawyer" that brought you the stupid safety labels. Apple handle 20 billions download per years now, I guess the risk of losing client over the missing games is much lower than risk of getting sued by an upset association or worse be banned in some market altogether.
You should not rely on private companies to defend your rights, you have the government for that. The government in this case can force certain term to Apple in exchange for the proper safe harbor. Or more realistically since you will not convince anybody in the US to create new regulation, give unconditional safe-harbor (and regret later the golden loophole you just created)
Most people in the street in Europe are in the street because want to work, if possible with more than a minimum wage salary (because it has been a long time since minimum wage is far lower than subsistance wage in a lot of countries. Unless you can teleport from city to country side for free twice a day) They are also in the street because they don't think that it is the best investment of their taxpayer money to spend trillions saving the bank while leaving people in the street having their house repossessed AND still be in debt.
You may have a biased view living in consumerist society but accumulating physical stuff does not make you more alive. It especially ironic that valuing experience over physical possession is considered robotic. Do you really consider people that goes on holiday in family, read book, watch movie with friends are only alive if they have the physical proof like a dvd, a paper book, a plastic eiffel tower lying around in a bookshelf ?
There is maybe nothing wrong with the prototype-based object models and I agree. However, javascript has a lot of awful hack everywhere that make the langage a bad langage (this, scope, ===/==, type consistency, ...). The only way to have fun with javascript is to avoid the minefield of half-broken feature and concentrate on the good part (there is even a book called that way).
Another problem of javascript, is that until ECMA-5, the support for prototype-based object model was very poor. You needed to write load of low level plumbing operation even if you just wanted to stick with javascript native oo design.
Javascript is a beta-version language, it should have been through several refinement cycles before being made public.
Well he should. The common theme for futurist vision is how people move toward little space on their own. It should not be surprising that at some point, compactness is going to become a bigger and bigger natural selection criteria of tech.
Maybe you don't live in a big city, or maybe you are just rich enough. But space in a city is at premium already, everything that enters my flat need to justify its size. Books are banned (as many other things, like gadget, vacation souvenir, ...), my wife still buy them, but we have to sell the old one when she buys new one. In that respect, the control of the giant corps is a bit of a moot point: sure they can ban me from the content I bought, but it is a content that I would not have been able to keep in physical format anyway. (note: that personally, I make sure to have a DRM-free backup of the book I bought, but I can see how Joe User may not see much difference between indirect control of corps vs very direct limitation of personal space)
Well that means that if you make an Android derivative, you cannot simply adapt the SDK for it. Indeed in practice, it should not be a problem, however it is still a worrying development. If you intent your platform to be really open, what is the point of tightening control on the SDK ?
False dilemma.
There have been systematic failing of the church in handling/hiding those cases. So while this is still the individual fault, the church has its share of responsibilities, especially considering the moral value the church pretend it stands for.
BUT that being said, the Church is not the one accused here. Also especially in western Europe, talking about the influence of the Church as a major problem is laughable. They are losing influence every year, and the recent affair have only amplified their image problem - in a lot of countries, traditional catholic parties are removing "Catholic" from their name (and that was before the molestation case)
Does not work for gun, since there are other benefit of stealing one (no link to you). However, that works quite well with about everything else. Car, jewellery, tv, ... all of those things that are stolen because they are expensive (and the company selling them is making a profit, which somehow in the article logic make it worse)
You are looking at the problem the wrong way. Step 1 really is "Does the US needs all American to have fiber-optic access". That is a political decision that is first strategic as it may be crucial for US competitivity in the future. But also societal/cultural: should the US become a society that is more connected (get the work to you) or a society that is more mobile (go to the work).
He is a dodgy man living in a dodgy country in latina america. You need to take any news from either the government or McAfee with a spoonful of salt.
You do not really need patent free format. Just a guarantee that your stuff will be migrated, just like your phone number. While we are at it, that would be cool if we could have some service guarantee, like that your account will not be abruptly closed with no explanation (like you post some idiotic video on youtube and Google wipes everything you own with them - a few instances have made the news here with Google, but I'm sure that's a problem with Amazon, Apple, Facebook, ...)
Note that you assume that there is a free market behind. Which is probably fair enough for the auto industry but is not exactly the case everywhere. Let's see for example rare earth. Well, it could have been useful to bail out the mines considering that the competition was using state sponsored dumping. Also there are strategic sector. The world is not quite happy poney world yet and you cannot rely on other countries for stuff like food and anything that would prevent you maintaining the infrastructure and military of your country. At least, you want to hedge your bets and that requires assisting some industries from time to time.
With regard to the union and auto-industry, there is a question of social stability involved. You cannot afford to have whole region shutdown entirely, you would just create a refugee situation within your own border. Union are easy scapegoat when looking at the industry today, but it really started sinking a decade or more ago, and you have to look for problem at that time (hint: the US get their ass kicked by Japan and Germany, not exactly third world hell-hole with slaves at 1$/day)