I suspect this has to do with personalities that tend to favor order, logic, and organization, something that's obviously beneficial to programming or engineering, but could be a hindrance when dealing with messy and unpredictable human interpersonal relationships. As a programmer myself, seeing typos and grammatical errors tends to trigger something in my brain that screams "that's not correct - it needs fixing!" in the same way a crookedly hung painting will irritate people who strive to create a sense of order in their environment.
Of course, general social awareness prevents me from reacting too negatively to things like simple typos, but there are some people who simply don't have those sort of brain-to-mouth social filters. If you've never worked with someone like that, you know how awkward or unpleasant it can be unless you've got an *extremely* tolerant personality - which I'd admit I probably don't have.
I'd imagine our brains have evolved to recognize patterns and draw our attention to things that break those patterns, because in nature such a thing has a high probability of being either be interesting or dangerous. I think this could theoretically explain why bugs on streaming videos (logos overlaid in the corner of the video screen) tend to bother me more than most people - my brain recognizes it as something "different" and so it constantly draws my attention away from the content of the video.
Dang, looks like you're right. I did a bit of searching, and couldn't find any credible references to verify my claim - just random forum posts putting this theory out there. Thanks for setting the record straight.
Well, it's a good thing it's not up to you then. That's precisely what IBM is refusing to do, because that gives these slimes a precedent and an opportunity to go after potentially softer targets. Good on IBM for not taking the easy way out.
You're over-thinking this. This is absolutely still about money. It's just lawyers on contingent (meaning no one is paying them) just putting in a minimal amount of effort and expenses to file a few more court documents, hoping for a big miracle payday. Sure, the odds are low, but when the potential payout is massive, why not?
I'm sure it's just authenticating locally on your client and sending login and authentication challenge responses across the net, not the raw biometric data. MS is a lot of things, but I'd have to think that their programmers are not quite that stupid.
I don't think that will necessarily be the case. This is different, because this is part of a strategic initiative to push the same Universal Windows OS core to all MS supported devices. Microsoft has every incentive to keep this program around to generate additional developer interest, especially since they're in the #2 console slot at the moment.
In Sony's case, the "Other OS" was mostly likely a gimmick to avoid paying additional taxes in the EU (so it could be classified as a computer instead of a console). And once that didn't pan out (laws were re-written to prevent this tax dodge), they had little incentive to keep that feature around.
I already stated: "I have no problems with law enforcing requesting assistance in accessing encrypted data". In particular, is it acceptable to demand cooperation through the courts? Sure: that's at the heart of the All Writs Act. But I feel that in this case Apple was within its right to argue with the court that this was too far a stretch for existing legal precedent, for reasons I already stated.
I don't believe for a minute that Apple is some saint (I don't even own an iPhone), but that doesn't mean they're not right in this case. Nor should the relationship China has with its citizens and relevant laws thereof affect our relationship with our own government. There are plenty of oppressive regimes around the world, after all. If anything, I believe it serves as a prudent warning as to what could easily happen when a government gains too much power over its citizenry. Perhaps Apple understands that better than most, having dealt with the Chinese government first-hand.
As for two cases of high-profile government-related data breaches, let's just go with the two big ones: 1) Disclosure of NSA's national surveillance program in the US, thanks to Edward Snowden's leaks. Had he wished, he could have leaked much more damaging information to US interests, but has chosen not to. 2) Massive data breach at the Office of Personnel Management. Over 21 million people's personal data was compromised, including biometric data, security clearances, logins and passwords, etc.
The "San Bernardino" case was different because the FBI was trying to compel Apple to write new software to assist them in breaking their own phone. Apple had been cooperating with the FBI up until that point, including providing them with a copy of the phone's backed up data from several weeks prior. I don't believe the government should be able to compel someone to write code against their will.
Generally speaking, I have no problems with law enforcing requesting assistance in accessing encrypted data, but keep in mind this whole push for encryption on consumer devices and on the web in general partly came about because the government was caught spying on its citizens. As such, I take a pretty dim view of this same government and their rumblings about wanting to require a back door (and they just *hate* that term) in all encrypted products, because they've demonstrated they can't be trusted with that sort of responsibility. Not only have they demonstrated an absolute willingness to snoop on absolutely everyone, they also have a pretty poor track record in keeping secret data secure. How many breaches shall I cite? How long before foreign governments *cough China* has access to those universal keys as well?
Congratulations. You're the only Slashdot poster so far who has come to the correct conclusion as stated in the TFA. This move is targeted for developers and for sysadmins who manage Window systems that want to run a Ubuntu docker container natively rather inside a VM manager like Virtualbox. I'd say you post deserves a +insightful mod, but apparently the Slashdot nabobs of negativism are having too much fun getting their hate on..
What's funny is that I did read about the first half of the article, and then posted. When I went back and read the rest of TFA, I had a head-slapping moment, as it was exactly as they indicated there. I'm not really sure "insightful" is deserved for simply repeating what the article already indicated, but I suppose I'm glad I guessed correctly.
It does sort of sound like an April Fool's Day joke though, doesn't it? Ten years ago, would anyone have seriously predicted that Windows would be "infected" with Linux? Ballmer must be spinning in his chair right about now.
I suppose one thing I could think of is for ease of porting/cross-platform development. If you have a Windows developer who needs to either write or port an application to support Linux systems, then this might be a convenient solution. I can't imagine that this is really targeted at anyone other than developers. I mean, if a user was interested in running Ubuntu, then as you indicated, they'd just run that OS directly rather than on top of Windows 10.
Keep in mind that Microsoft is focused on cloud and services now, but they also want to keep Windows relevant as a development platform, because that's needed to ensure that developers can easily integrate Microsoft cloud services into their products. That's why they've gone to great lengths to give Visual Studio multi-platform capabilities. You've also seen them take steps in the same direction but with a different tact - porting their own libraries and apps to different platforms.
So, I don't believe the primary point of this is to keep Windows 10 relevant. Windows already has a virtually unbreakable lock on the desktop OS market. If anything, this slightly weakens Windows by providing easy access to a competing OS. My feeling is that this is a move to keep Visual Studio and the Microsoft Azure cloud ecosystem relevant by giving developers an easy way to create and test cross-platform applications using Microsoft-provided tools.
Git stash (just looked it up) sounds similar to Mercurial/Perforce shelve feature. I don't necessarily understand why you'd want that to be logged, as by definition it's a temporary operation. I agree that I'd like Mercurial to be able to drop unneeded history more easily. Making history immutable sounds good in theory, but it seems a little inflexible in actual practice.
Permissions comes in handy when you've got large cross-discipline teams in a commercial environment, like when I worked on a very large MMO. There's no reason for an artist or designer to have access to the authentication server source code, for example, even though everyone needs access to the same repository. Security-wise, it's best to keep things segmented and only grant permissions on an as-needed basis. That way, if one of your artist's machines gets compromised, your source code isn't compromised as well.
From a more pragmatic standpoint, it's also infeasible for very large projects to store a full history of all binary art assets - you'd need an absurd amount of storage on each client machine, especially if you've got several branches. It just wouldn't work. A lot of devs also tended to exclude types of binary files that they don't work with directly, as it just fills up their local client machine's drives. It's really only important to have a few weeks of history in order to be able to do emergency rollbacks as needed.
Game developers tend to have some oddball use cases like this. Nothing against Git or Mercurial, but those would have been a terrible fit at my last job.
Is there actually much practical difference between Mercurial and Git? As far as I can see, the two products are very similar in general concept and execution, although I'd characterize Mercurial as being more user-friendly with better cross-platform compatibility, and Git as being more powerful/flexible, and a bit more arcane to use.
Git is certainly the clear "winner" in terms of popular support, and honestly, that does come with some real advantages. Even so, I use Mercurial at home since I do cross-platform work. Maybe Git cross-platform support has improved recently, but four years ago when I was choosing my repository, it looked like Mercurial was the best choice for me.
I've also used Perforce in commercial environments (specifically, game development) where, interestingly enough, it has some distinct advantage over Git and Mercurial. In game development, we're working with huge numbers of very large binary assets that must be managed with the source, and Perforce is much better at managing those, doing partial syncs, limited histories, permissions, etc.
The probable answer is that these devices are all painstakingly hand-made. I'd imagine there ARE no economies of scale with hand-made items of this size and complexity, at least, not enough to be significant, and not at such low counts. See: Space Shuttle.
Also, consider this: if we had made five Hubbles, we would have screwed up all five of them with the same mistakes we made on the first one, and would never have been able to repair them all. It cuts both ways. We could barely pull together rescue and repair missions to repair the one craft.
You'll note that this was NOT his personal communication device. This was his work phone, which he left behind whole. He destroyed his own personal phone, whose secrets he obviously cared about. Note also that the FBI had already gotten a backup of the data on this phone from a number of weeks prior to the attack. Given all that, it's highly probable that there's nothing incriminating on that phone at all.
You still think this was just about getting access to that phone for intelligence reasons? Are you telling me the FBI didn't even know about this Israeli security firm that could unlock iPhones? Because they obviously didn't even bother asking them before going to the courts.
Please. They backed off because they saw the wind wasn't blowing in their direction. The *last* thing they wanted to do was to lose this case and set a negative precedent.
I have a media server with a fairly large library of DVDs and Blu-rays I've ripped. I've found that the simple convenience and affordability of streaming services makes them more attractive than collecting movies myself in most cases. Of course, there are always some that aren't available on the services I subscribe to, so it would be nice to have a reasonably priced rental option.
I'm certainly not incapable of torrenting a movie for free. I'm just choosing to try to find a way to obtain it legally first. Oh, and the only thing my ISP sees from me is pseudo-random noise.
Seriously, though, the article is right that $1.50-$2.00 or so is the right price for a rental. Most streaming services currently charge a relatively high price for a rental, and it tends to put me off. For instance, right now on Amazon, they're charging $6.00 to rent "The Martian", a movie I'd much like to see (read the book and loved it). That price makes me hesitate, thinking "for about 2 1/2 times that price, I could own it". So far, I've purchased neither option, largely because I'm already paying for streaming services that have many other shows and movies to watch, and those only cost about $10 per month.
A couple bucks per rental is in the "I don't even have to think about it" price range.
I don't think it's "hate" so much as feelings ranging from "indifference" to "disdain" coming from the geek crowd. How to describe... I think these days Yahoo is sort of the Wal-Mart of the online world, except it works better if you imagine them as a sort of incompetent, once-successful-but-now-failing Wal-Mart. I'd be sort of embarrassed to have a yahoo.com e-mail address, because it announces to the world that you're not at least savvy enough to get a free gmail account.
I'm curious, why did you switch if Yahoo mail was "fine"? I'm betting if you think back, there was probably a good reason. When gmail was announced, most free online mail services were utter crap, with tiny storage capacities and attachment limits, unreliable spam filters, clunky interfaces, etc. Just like with search, it was actually Google that raised the bar tremendously. Personally, I'd never use a Yahoo e-mail simply for fear of their notoriously shaky security practices. E-mail is typically used to validate online accounts of all sorts, so from a security perspective, it's almost as important as my banking credentials.
I'd say the exception is watches designed with fitness and health related features in mind. That actually makes sense to me, and those devices seem to be doing reasonably well. For everyone else, if it's a fashion accessory that can also be used for a few practical things, then that's a bonus, but I'd agree it's certainly a much smaller percentage of people that really want that.
I could have sworn you were talking about Bill Clinton just then. Let's see... polarizing, charismatic, entertaining, slightly smarmy, any able to shrug off or even gain traction from any minor controversy, to the delight of his supporters and constant irritation of his opponents. I disagree that they don't have an ideology, as Bill Clinton definitely views the world from the left just as Trump comes from a right-leaning position, but they're much more centrist / pragmatic than people (on either side) tend to admit. And obviously, Bill Clinton knew how to play the political game extremely well, being a lifetime politician, where part of Trump's appeal is that he doesn't give a fuck about political games, and the political establishment is still trying to wrap their heads around that.
So... yeah, the Republicans have their own Bill Clinton now, odd as that sounds in this race. What about Hillary? She's basically Bill Clinton, except a lot more devious and without any of the charm.
Of course it's chump change, since even most individuals could actually afford that payment if they really needed to. What they're considering is either the negative publicity paying off criminals would have on their organization, or perhaps the moral implications of paying off criminals.
Well, I probably contributed in some small way when talking with my brother on the phone a few nights ago. We were talking about the Apple case, NSA surveillance, etc, and I mentioned how just by saying "allahu akbar!" we'd probably set off a flag and get our conversation flagged for automatic transcription and further analysis.
No, it really wasn't. I was there. The internet was a smattering of academic, government, and large corporate sites which was generally only useful to other in similar fields, and certainly nothing which your average person could find or use. In fact, it was actually a rather exclusive club.
Do you know what it has now? Github. Stack Overflow. Wikipedia. Online API documentation, programmimg tutorials and example of nearly *everything*. Help forums for both end users and experts alike. Streaming audio and video. MMOs. Downloadable videogames. Awesome stuff that I use every day, both professionally and for entertainment purposes. Okay, it has Facebook, Comcast, and cyber-criminals as well, but you take the bad with the good.
Sorry, but this mythical "golden age of the Internet" was never there. It was really only even *close* to being true if you happened to be a university employee or student (grad student or higher) with direct access to the net through the major university backbones, and even then it was really only a promise of things to come. While I'm sure it was awesome having the internet more or less as a personal playground, I'll take the internet today, warts and all, a thousand times over.
Since when was the internet supposed to be "peer-to-peer, with all peers being equal"? It was NEVER designed or intended that way. Those words mean things, and I don't think they mean what you think they mean. You're confusing the Internet with a Lantastic network.
And on what planet do you think unpopular messages have ever been broadcast as loudly as mainstream ones, in any forum, at any time? If anything, setting up a personal blog and getting your voice heard is easier than its ever been in history. Even so, the freedom of speech the internet affords us means while you have a right to say what you want to say, no one is obliged to listen to you. If you were expecting the internet to be any different, than simply put, you were a massive fool for expecting the impossible.
Slashdot Mirror
I suspect this has to do with personalities that tend to favor order, logic, and organization, something that's obviously beneficial to programming or engineering, but could be a hindrance when dealing with messy and unpredictable human interpersonal relationships. As a programmer myself, seeing typos and grammatical errors tends to trigger something in my brain that screams "that's not correct - it needs fixing!" in the same way a crookedly hung painting will irritate people who strive to create a sense of order in their environment.
Of course, general social awareness prevents me from reacting too negatively to things like simple typos, but there are some people who simply don't have those sort of brain-to-mouth social filters. If you've never worked with someone like that, you know how awkward or unpleasant it can be unless you've got an *extremely* tolerant personality - which I'd admit I probably don't have.
I'd imagine our brains have evolved to recognize patterns and draw our attention to things that break those patterns, because in nature such a thing has a high probability of being either be interesting or dangerous. I think this could theoretically explain why bugs on streaming videos (logos overlaid in the corner of the video screen) tend to bother me more than most people - my brain recognizes it as something "different" and so it constantly draws my attention away from the content of the video.
Since we're apparently being pedantic here, they're not going to go away for $500 either.
The point I'm making is that it's not a good idea to settle, because that just encourages more of the same behavior.
Dang, looks like you're right. I did a bit of searching, and couldn't find any credible references to verify my claim - just random forum posts putting this theory out there. Thanks for setting the record straight.
I'll give SCO $500 just to go away.
Well, it's a good thing it's not up to you then. That's precisely what IBM is refusing to do, because that gives these slimes a precedent and an opportunity to go after potentially softer targets. Good on IBM for not taking the easy way out.
You're over-thinking this. This is absolutely still about money. It's just lawyers on contingent (meaning no one is paying them) just putting in a minimal amount of effort and expenses to file a few more court documents, hoping for a big miracle payday. Sure, the odds are low, but when the potential payout is massive, why not?
I'm sure it's just authenticating locally on your client and sending login and authentication challenge responses across the net, not the raw biometric data. MS is a lot of things, but I'd have to think that their programmers are not quite that stupid.
I don't think that will necessarily be the case. This is different, because this is part of a strategic initiative to push the same Universal Windows OS core to all MS supported devices. Microsoft has every incentive to keep this program around to generate additional developer interest, especially since they're in the #2 console slot at the moment.
In Sony's case, the "Other OS" was mostly likely a gimmick to avoid paying additional taxes in the EU (so it could be classified as a computer instead of a console). And once that didn't pan out (laws were re-written to prevent this tax dodge), they had little incentive to keep that feature around.
I already stated: "I have no problems with law enforcing requesting assistance in accessing encrypted data". In particular, is it acceptable to demand cooperation through the courts? Sure: that's at the heart of the All Writs Act. But I feel that in this case Apple was within its right to argue with the court that this was too far a stretch for existing legal precedent, for reasons I already stated.
I don't believe for a minute that Apple is some saint (I don't even own an iPhone), but that doesn't mean they're not right in this case. Nor should the relationship China has with its citizens and relevant laws thereof affect our relationship with our own government. There are plenty of oppressive regimes around the world, after all. If anything, I believe it serves as a prudent warning as to what could easily happen when a government gains too much power over its citizenry. Perhaps Apple understands that better than most, having dealt with the Chinese government first-hand.
As for two cases of high-profile government-related data breaches, let's just go with the two big ones:
1) Disclosure of NSA's national surveillance program in the US, thanks to Edward Snowden's leaks. Had he wished, he could have leaked much more damaging information to US interests, but has chosen not to.
2) Massive data breach at the Office of Personnel Management. Over 21 million people's personal data was compromised, including biometric data, security clearances, logins and passwords, etc.
The "San Bernardino" case was different because the FBI was trying to compel Apple to write new software to assist them in breaking their own phone. Apple had been cooperating with the FBI up until that point, including providing them with a copy of the phone's backed up data from several weeks prior. I don't believe the government should be able to compel someone to write code against their will.
Generally speaking, I have no problems with law enforcing requesting assistance in accessing encrypted data, but keep in mind this whole push for encryption on consumer devices and on the web in general partly came about because the government was caught spying on its citizens. As such, I take a pretty dim view of this same government and their rumblings about wanting to require a back door (and they just *hate* that term) in all encrypted products, because they've demonstrated they can't be trusted with that sort of responsibility. Not only have they demonstrated an absolute willingness to snoop on absolutely everyone, they also have a pretty poor track record in keeping secret data secure. How many breaches shall I cite? How long before foreign governments *cough China* has access to those universal keys as well?
Congratulations. You're the only Slashdot poster so far who has come to the correct conclusion as stated in the TFA. This move is targeted for developers and for sysadmins who manage Window systems that want to run a Ubuntu docker container natively rather inside a VM manager like Virtualbox. I'd say you post deserves a +insightful mod, but apparently the Slashdot nabobs of negativism are having too much fun getting their hate on..
What's funny is that I did read about the first half of the article, and then posted. When I went back and read the rest of TFA, I had a head-slapping moment, as it was exactly as they indicated there. I'm not really sure "insightful" is deserved for simply repeating what the article already indicated, but I suppose I'm glad I guessed correctly.
It does sort of sound like an April Fool's Day joke though, doesn't it? Ten years ago, would anyone have seriously predicted that Windows would be "infected" with Linux? Ballmer must be spinning in his chair right about now.
I suppose one thing I could think of is for ease of porting/cross-platform development. If you have a Windows developer who needs to either write or port an application to support Linux systems, then this might be a convenient solution. I can't imagine that this is really targeted at anyone other than developers. I mean, if a user was interested in running Ubuntu, then as you indicated, they'd just run that OS directly rather than on top of Windows 10.
Keep in mind that Microsoft is focused on cloud and services now, but they also want to keep Windows relevant as a development platform, because that's needed to ensure that developers can easily integrate Microsoft cloud services into their products. That's why they've gone to great lengths to give Visual Studio multi-platform capabilities. You've also seen them take steps in the same direction but with a different tact - porting their own libraries and apps to different platforms.
So, I don't believe the primary point of this is to keep Windows 10 relevant. Windows already has a virtually unbreakable lock on the desktop OS market. If anything, this slightly weakens Windows by providing easy access to a competing OS. My feeling is that this is a move to keep Visual Studio and the Microsoft Azure cloud ecosystem relevant by giving developers an easy way to create and test cross-platform applications using Microsoft-provided tools.
Git stash (just looked it up) sounds similar to Mercurial/Perforce shelve feature. I don't necessarily understand why you'd want that to be logged, as by definition it's a temporary operation. I agree that I'd like Mercurial to be able to drop unneeded history more easily. Making history immutable sounds good in theory, but it seems a little inflexible in actual practice.
Permissions comes in handy when you've got large cross-discipline teams in a commercial environment, like when I worked on a very large MMO. There's no reason for an artist or designer to have access to the authentication server source code, for example, even though everyone needs access to the same repository. Security-wise, it's best to keep things segmented and only grant permissions on an as-needed basis. That way, if one of your artist's machines gets compromised, your source code isn't compromised as well.
From a more pragmatic standpoint, it's also infeasible for very large projects to store a full history of all binary art assets - you'd need an absurd amount of storage on each client machine, especially if you've got several branches. It just wouldn't work. A lot of devs also tended to exclude types of binary files that they don't work with directly, as it just fills up their local client machine's drives. It's really only important to have a few weeks of history in order to be able to do emergency rollbacks as needed.
Game developers tend to have some oddball use cases like this. Nothing against Git or Mercurial, but those would have been a terrible fit at my last job.
Is there actually much practical difference between Mercurial and Git? As far as I can see, the two products are very similar in general concept and execution, although I'd characterize Mercurial as being more user-friendly with better cross-platform compatibility, and Git as being more powerful/flexible, and a bit more arcane to use.
Git is certainly the clear "winner" in terms of popular support, and honestly, that does come with some real advantages. Even so, I use Mercurial at home since I do cross-platform work. Maybe Git cross-platform support has improved recently, but four years ago when I was choosing my repository, it looked like Mercurial was the best choice for me.
I've also used Perforce in commercial environments (specifically, game development) where, interestingly enough, it has some distinct advantage over Git and Mercurial. In game development, we're working with huge numbers of very large binary assets that must be managed with the source, and Perforce is much better at managing those, doing partial syncs, limited histories, permissions, etc.
The summary is happy to draw a conclusion for us though, it seems. No need to think for ourselves.
did you just brake the law?
Woah... Slow down there cowboy!
The probable answer is that these devices are all painstakingly hand-made. I'd imagine there ARE no economies of scale with hand-made items of this size and complexity, at least, not enough to be significant, and not at such low counts. See: Space Shuttle.
Also, consider this: if we had made five Hubbles, we would have screwed up all five of them with the same mistakes we made on the first one, and would never have been able to repair them all. It cuts both ways. We could barely pull together rescue and repair missions to repair the one craft.
You'll note that this was NOT his personal communication device. This was his work phone, which he left behind whole. He destroyed his own personal phone, whose secrets he obviously cared about. Note also that the FBI had already gotten a backup of the data on this phone from a number of weeks prior to the attack. Given all that, it's highly probable that there's nothing incriminating on that phone at all.
You still think this was just about getting access to that phone for intelligence reasons? Are you telling me the FBI didn't even know about this Israeli security firm that could unlock iPhones? Because they obviously didn't even bother asking them before going to the courts.
Please. They backed off because they saw the wind wasn't blowing in their direction. The *last* thing they wanted to do was to lose this case and set a negative precedent.
I have a media server with a fairly large library of DVDs and Blu-rays I've ripped. I've found that the simple convenience and affordability of streaming services makes them more attractive than collecting movies myself in most cases. Of course, there are always some that aren't available on the services I subscribe to, so it would be nice to have a reasonably priced rental option.
I'm certainly not incapable of torrenting a movie for free. I'm just choosing to try to find a way to obtain it legally first. Oh, and the only thing my ISP sees from me is pseudo-random noise.
What, you haven't seen their LP rentals?
Seriously, though, the article is right that $1.50-$2.00 or so is the right price for a rental. Most streaming services currently charge a relatively high price for a rental, and it tends to put me off. For instance, right now on Amazon, they're charging $6.00 to rent "The Martian", a movie I'd much like to see (read the book and loved it). That price makes me hesitate, thinking "for about 2 1/2 times that price, I could own it". So far, I've purchased neither option, largely because I'm already paying for streaming services that have many other shows and movies to watch, and those only cost about $10 per month.
A couple bucks per rental is in the "I don't even have to think about it" price range.
I don't think it's "hate" so much as feelings ranging from "indifference" to "disdain" coming from the geek crowd. How to describe... I think these days Yahoo is sort of the Wal-Mart of the online world, except it works better if you imagine them as a sort of incompetent, once-successful-but-now-failing Wal-Mart. I'd be sort of embarrassed to have a yahoo.com e-mail address, because it announces to the world that you're not at least savvy enough to get a free gmail account.
I'm curious, why did you switch if Yahoo mail was "fine"? I'm betting if you think back, there was probably a good reason. When gmail was announced, most free online mail services were utter crap, with tiny storage capacities and attachment limits, unreliable spam filters, clunky interfaces, etc. Just like with search, it was actually Google that raised the bar tremendously. Personally, I'd never use a Yahoo e-mail simply for fear of their notoriously shaky security practices. E-mail is typically used to validate online accounts of all sorts, so from a security perspective, it's almost as important as my banking credentials.
I'd say the exception is watches designed with fitness and health related features in mind. That actually makes sense to me, and those devices seem to be doing reasonably well. For everyone else, if it's a fashion accessory that can also be used for a few practical things, then that's a bonus, but I'd agree it's certainly a much smaller percentage of people that really want that.
I could have sworn you were talking about Bill Clinton just then. Let's see... polarizing, charismatic, entertaining, slightly smarmy, any able to shrug off or even gain traction from any minor controversy, to the delight of his supporters and constant irritation of his opponents. I disagree that they don't have an ideology, as Bill Clinton definitely views the world from the left just as Trump comes from a right-leaning position, but they're much more centrist / pragmatic than people (on either side) tend to admit. And obviously, Bill Clinton knew how to play the political game extremely well, being a lifetime politician, where part of Trump's appeal is that he doesn't give a fuck about political games, and the political establishment is still trying to wrap their heads around that.
So... yeah, the Republicans have their own Bill Clinton now, odd as that sounds in this race. What about Hillary? She's basically Bill Clinton, except a lot more devious and without any of the charm.
Of course it's chump change, since even most individuals could actually afford that payment if they really needed to. What they're considering is either the negative publicity paying off criminals would have on their organization, or perhaps the moral implications of paying off criminals.
Well, I probably contributed in some small way when talking with my brother on the phone a few nights ago. We were talking about the Apple case, NSA surveillance, etc, and I mentioned how just by saying "allahu akbar!" we'd probably set off a flag and get our conversation flagged for automatic transcription and further analysis.
No, it really wasn't. I was there. The internet was a smattering of academic, government, and large corporate sites which was generally only useful to other in similar fields, and certainly nothing which your average person could find or use. In fact, it was actually a rather exclusive club.
Do you know what it has now? Github. Stack Overflow. Wikipedia. Online API documentation, programmimg tutorials and example of nearly *everything*. Help forums for both end users and experts alike. Streaming audio and video. MMOs. Downloadable videogames. Awesome stuff that I use every day, both professionally and for entertainment purposes. Okay, it has Facebook, Comcast, and cyber-criminals as well, but you take the bad with the good.
Sorry, but this mythical "golden age of the Internet" was never there. It was really only even *close* to being true if you happened to be a university employee or student (grad student or higher) with direct access to the net through the major university backbones, and even then it was really only a promise of things to come. While I'm sure it was awesome having the internet more or less as a personal playground, I'll take the internet today, warts and all, a thousand times over.
Since when was the internet supposed to be "peer-to-peer, with all peers being equal"? It was NEVER designed or intended that way. Those words mean things, and I don't think they mean what you think they mean. You're confusing the Internet with a Lantastic network.
And on what planet do you think unpopular messages have ever been broadcast as loudly as mainstream ones, in any forum, at any time? If anything, setting up a personal blog and getting your voice heard is easier than its ever been in history. Even so, the freedom of speech the internet affords us means while you have a right to say what you want to say, no one is obliged to listen to you. If you were expecting the internet to be any different, than simply put, you were a massive fool for expecting the impossible.
Oh, and lighten up, Francis.