So what? After all, we've hit peak oil and the population bomb has already gone off. We are literally lifting people in frontloaders out of the way and Soylent Green is people. This is just a drop in the bucket with all the disasters that have already befallen us that were correctly predicted in the 1970s. It doesn't seem like there will be a humanity left to even care by the time Earth has turned into Venus.
Now, excuse me, I need to go out in my gas mask and radiation gear to go salvage vacuum tubes from the ruins of civilization so I can keep my mainframe working in this post-apocalyptic world.
I don't care if they have a Ph.D in physics, they're ignorant. You cannot argue that someone who fails to understand the value of life, both of others and their own, is not grossly ignorant.
If they execute these sorts of action and are not ignorant, then they are insane, and I have seen little evidence of their actual insanity. Ignorance is the only thing that remains. There is no action or cause that justifies random attacks on innocent civilians, especially if the cause they supposedly espouse is the ending of attacks on their own innocent compatriots.
I mention the following to everyone who talks about how "charitable" they think they are when they ask for taxes to be raised.
If you have money that you think can be used to support the nation, and you really want to give it, then the government will be happy to take your check. They do take donations.
When you ask for tax increases, you aren't being charitable. You aren't giving of yourself. You are specifically voting to make everyone else have to do so.
Any one of these folks demanding a tax increase can give a huge donation to the government. Indeed *anyone* can do so. Do the math, figure out your budget to see what you can spare, and then do it. You'll save money and time just in the collection efforts.
Now, I am not saying that increasing taxes has no place. Certainly, you have to pay for things, and to meet your commitments, you need revenue. But it seems odd that these folks can't figure out how to give money to the government without the taxman coming for them.
In some cases, I think it may be altruism that has not been thought out very well, but in others, I sense a desire to not lose ground to the rest of their class.
In the medieval period, the rich and the aristocracy used to demonstrate their virtue by giving money away freely and without tax write-offs. Their goal? Giving is better than receiving, although many were probably hoping to buy their way into heaven. Of course, with moving certain religious ideas out of the center of our society, we have lost some of the good with the bad. You no longer demonstrate your virtue by dumping money on people and competing to be the one who gives away the most while maintaining their lifestyle. Now, you try to give away enough to be a benefactor, but without losing your place on the list of billionaires.
I would tell every person on that list. Take the money you'd pay in taxes and donate it now and set aside money into the future to do so, from your own personal fortunes. Take the hit and help a brother out. Create a culture of giving for your class, and you will have done more with that gesture than any tax increase would ever do.
It is hard for the government, who everyone likes to turn to for solutions, to admit that the best solution is to mostly do nothing at all, aside from some common sense actions. It doesn't get people elected. It doesn't get big budget approved.
Ultimately, terrorists are hard to nab, especially radicalized first timers. To actually have a decent success rate requires expenditure or mobilization that costs a significant amount of money.
The government is best when it can dissuade attacks by threatening force or other sanctions. Unfortunately, these people don't care if they die, so it is hard to see what sort of sanction you could come up with, short of executing their families or something else they care about. Even then, these people are so messed up that they would think they are earning martyrdom for their families by getting them killed in such a way.
Of course, that said, the nice thing is that there aren't really that many suicidal bombers out there. They are a force to be reckoned with, but most humans, even radicals, are not *that* radical.
You know how to stop terrorism? Stop talking about it. Terrorist acts won't be stopped, but they will be rendered considerably less effective. Terrorism is useful because it causes fear and overreaction. That overreaction can radicalize people and wear down resistance to their aims. By themselves, the terrorists have killed a few thousand people and blown up a few buildings. That's peanuts in a country of 300 million people, so the only way they become powerful is when the media becomes their force multiplier.
There are thousands of people who die every day in the United States to gun violence due to gang killing, some of that is collateral damage where innocents get killed, so it isn't just "thugs".
We don't walk around really thinking about that too much, and consequently most of us don't live in fear of it unless we live up close to it. And why is that? Because it gets ignored in the media. We fear a once in every so-often elementary school shooting more than we fear something that happens multiple times every day, by organized criminal figures with teams of professional or semi-professional killers on their staff.
The catch is this... terrorists will kill people, but if you keep your measured responses targeted at the most effective programs that are aiming at things like education, outreach, and probably a few targeted teams of intelligence types, you decrease the odds of a terrorism death considerably, and without the rights violations. But it does require us to admit that *we cannot stop terrorists from killing some of us*, but also to understand that your risk of death is higher from just getting in a car to drive to work. You're just as likely to be accidentally killed by an gang war as collateral damage.
They are ignorant savages. They're just not consistently ignorant about everything.
An important thing to remember about your adversaries. They may be simplistic philosophically, but that doesn't prevent them from knowing how to use basic operational security measures using technology which has been designed to be easy to use and portable. Especially when trained and veteran terrorists are making terrorism guides available on a plethora of sites created specifically for the purpose of making effective terrorists out of civilians for one big attack.
Terrorist attacks are hard to stop before they go off, particularly if you don't know who might actually execute one. So a first-time terrorist has a huge advantage if they have kept a relatively low profile. Even a person who is known to be radicalized by locals isn't going to come to the attention of a law enforcement agency unless the locals blow them in. And since most "locals" don't want to get involved, or may even be close to the terrorists or their families, they may be very disinclined, hoping that their friend or relative "would never do such a thing."
To some degree, economizing and efficiency can be better for the environment. The more you can recycle, the less you're dumping. The less waste you have, especially some of the stuff like heavy metals, it's going to be a good thing.
I'm under no illusion that this sort of efficiency will be anything close to a dedicated, large scale program to clean up industry. By itself, this is a drop in the bucket.
However, if all manufacturers started their process with designing in small, but an increasing number of improvements to waste reduction which happen to coincide with with supply chain efficiency, after awhile it will have a real effect on the whole industry by changing the way things are done slowly.
There's two things you have to do in order to have a better environmental future: the big cleanups, and the small, but continuous process refinements that consolidate any gains into the future. No one is going to stop making gadgets like iPhones, so it is important for Apple and others to think this way. We just need to make sure they keep it up.
My point is valid because Apple is being fought to give the FBI a specific right to break encryption.
This is not the same thing as most IoT devices being insecure.
The FBI will be pleased with a capacity that they will have, but no one else will. That's fine to them.
What they will not be happy with is the ability for just anyone to break into US homes with a vulnerability that is not limited to themselves.
It is important to understand the distinctions, and also to understand that, as hard for it may be to believe that the FBI or NSA does anything but spy on its own citizens, it actually has another, actual stated job of protecting the US and its citizens.
Perhaps not every person in those organizations takes that task seriously, but there are many, if not most, who do. In fact, if these agencies have an original sin, it is that they think they have to own everything in order to protect us from ourselves. The idea that they are purely out for themselves as sort of a shadow state is a conspiracy theorist wank job.
Understand that I do realize that there are serious dangers from agencies that are trying to protect ourselves from ourselves by being able to spy on us, but you will fail to understand why these agencies have the power that they do unless you understand that they are not mustache twirling villains either.
Maybe not. Yes, the ability to spy on people might be useful for them, however, they're frequently charged with the protection of US citizens as well.
If IoT is vulnerable, it is not just vulnerable to the NSA or FBI, it is vulnerable to Russia, Iran, North Korea, China, and anyone else who wants to try a hand at it. That's not a situation that would have everyone at the FBI (for instance) uncorking a bottle of champagne.
Yes, forgive me, I was specifically talking about their incorporation into United Kingdom of Great Britain. The English and others had certainly invaded before, and there was even a period were a great deal of lowland Scotland was under English domination, but Scotland had not been ever rendered permanently defunct as a country by military conquest.
However, the actual incorporation of Scotland into the UK started as a personal union of England and Scotland under King James (the first of England and the Sixth of Scotland) and his descendants the Houses of Stuart and Hannover. It was finalized with the Act of Union in 1707 which was a purely legislative process.
So you could sort of say that the Scottish actually acquired England, rather than vice-versa.
It is a little more difficult build a successful commercial car than to stop the use of film, however.
Yes, Kodak completely screwed up because film itself became a thing of the past with digital and they refused to give up their film business.
However, making cars automated or even autonomous doesn't make cars obsolete. And car companies do a lot of things to get and keep their cars on the road.
Partnering with a software company that will make use of their expertise and infrastructure to build the initial cars, could eventually lead to the software company wanting to cut costs by changing their "hardware" to some sort of Made in China manufacturer.
How could that happen? If the software becomes more important than the car itself, car companies are out of business. And who needs 500 hp if they are all in electric, self-driving pods anyway? All they will care about is that they can play AAA games in the auto pod while they wait for it to get them to work.
I think car companies are learning that they need to get into this business while they can still control the conversation about what cars *are*, and merely being the hardware maker is not going to let them do that all by itself. Software isn't tied to their platform unless they own the platform and the software. Note how Apple is able to make its money. Car companies want to be Apple, not Nokia.
A BlackBerry was *not* good enough for the President. A one-off highly modified, custom device that looks and mostly works like BlackBerry was.
I think the NSA was like: "We hated doing this, but if the President gets this, we can at least get away with saying it is a one-off. If we give it to Clinton, every cabinet member and every person who thinks they are as important as a cabinet member is going to want one. Also, the President is our boss and we have to kiss his ass. She's not our boss, so fuck her entitled ass."
Secure equipment is no joke. It's understandable that no one wants a shitty, overpriced Windows CE phone, but it would be even more expensive to just ignore the program and give everyone what they want, creating one-offs for whoever. These are supposed to be civil *servants*.
Except that Apple does not have to make the change. The FBI has asked that if Apple does not want to do it, they can hand over their keys and the FBI will do it.
If Apple makes a system where patches are automatically accepted, they have created an expectation that they are like a landlord in some respects.
A landlord often has a key to carry out necessary maintenance on their property. Apple has keys to deliver patches and applications to their phones. Apple can provide the keys and access to the FBI and step away.
Either way, Apple has not installed those impossible doors with no locks. They have the pass key right there. Apple *may* be able to refuse the necessary technical expertise to the FBI, but if the FBI has people who have sufficient expertise, they can do it. The only reason Apple would actually do the work is so Apple can ensure that they keys stay in their possession so they can be sure the FBI won't use their keys to do whatever the hell they want in the future.
So the FBI is saying, open the one door or give us the key and we'll open it, but you won't know if we made a copy of it. But the lock is there to be used, irrespective of the argument, and that is on Apple.
And whatever you do, make sure it does not work on Windows XP or they'll be able to use it to break into shit until approximately the date of the heat death of the Universe.
Is this where I post the XKCD with the guy being interrogated with the $5 pipe wrench for his keys?
Technical solutions are not perfect, if you want something safe, you need to make sure that everyone agrees that they won't touch it. For the FBI or NSA, you want legislation to back up your tech. That way, it's not even legal for them to try to break into it.
Actually, as much as I hate to say this, I think I kind of agree with what is being said. The FBI is merely demanding that someone help them execute a legal warrant, and Apple is refusing to do so. For good reasons, I might add, but I could see how the FBI might have a valid argument there.
However, the real story here is not that Apple could be forced to do this, it is that Apple *can* be forced to do this because they can force a download of an OS to a customer device. In other words, Apple has the master key to the apartment, because they made it that way. The FBI is merely demanding that they use it.
There is no question of *changing* iOS to allow the FBI to do this. iOS already allows this by *design*. It's just a matter of changing the payload.
In the context of the Constitution, speech was considered important for its effect on governance, we shouldn't lose sight of that. That's what the revolutionaries fought for, a voice in their own governance and taxation. They weren't fighting for your ability to merely say obnoxious things. They were expecting people's speech to drive debates and influence policy. If it had been adopted today, I don't see the First Amendment having been limited to simply being able to go outside and say things. If you couldn't have a voice to say something that would be heard, your speech is free but easily controlled, a scenario which I just don't see being the one that was intended.
Also, note that even a lot of money today does not guarantee you a mass audience if the Rubio ghost town on Florida primary day was any indication, or the complete failure of Jeb Bush, despite his large bankroll, shows. It merely makes mass audiences possible. And that is an important distinction. You're not *buying* the audience, you're buying the ability to say something to them which will resonate with them. Donald Trump could spend his entire fortune on spewing what he is spewing at me, and I will still never vote for him because he has communicated his ideas to me, but they are crap.
Note, though, that Trump is bringing out *new* voters. That means the money is reaching people, but it is his message of anger and fear is what is resonating with all of those people. As much as we might dislike it, people don't vote for people because they had a lot of money, they vote for people who say things they like. That means that it is incredibly important today for us to understand that there is a bedrock requirement of money to get *any* idea on to the Federal or even state stage, and to me, that means that to have Speech in government, you must have means.
I understand the dislike of corporate money going into ad campaigns and I'd like to reduce that influence, although I want to remain aware that sometimes corporations do have important things to say that should at least be heard, even if no one agrees with them.
In this environment, you have a huge government over hundreds of millions of people. Speech is no longer who can get up on a soapbox and say what they want and be heard, and it hasn't been that way for decades, if not well over a century.
The concern is that the corporate money, being concentrated into just a few hands, keeps citizens with non-corporate approved positions out of sight. That is certainly a problem, if not really a new problem. The real solution is to guarantee people the ability to be heard irrespective of money. How to do that appropriately is something that I feel bears study, but I can tell you one thing, it will definitely require resources to make it happen which will compare with those being expended by PACs to reach voters. Money is very much in the question for Speech concerns.
I'd have to disagree. Money is definitely speech in a situation today where you don't get a voice unless you can pay for ad time. Certainly, I agree that you could strictly define it as having the ability to say what you like, but it is pretty clear from the specific freedom of the press being mentioned that paid speech, like journalists usually provide, was considered just as protected.
That is why some J. Random Guy can't just stand up in East Podunk and run for President. No one would ever hear him who mattered.
Now, I can get behind the idea that corporations are not somehow full citizens or speaking for actual citizens, but that is a separate issue. Of course, I would include all corporate bodies, such as businesses, Super PACs, churches AND organized labor in that.
It is appropriate to refer to a person in print in the first instance by their full title, but afterwards as Mr. or Ms. X.
Just like if you met Queen Elizabeth and had more than a few words with her, you'd start with "Your Majesty", but afterwards you'd just refer to her as "Ma'am". Trundling out the whole honorific is just a waste of print/breath after that point.
They're not ignoring their constitutional duties. It is in their set of powers to get to decide when to hold hearings or even *if* to hold hearings. The Constitution makes no reference to a time limit or timetable for getting these things done.
Now, I am *not* saying that it is the right thing to do, but it is a valid political decision. And by handing the advice and consent to the Senate, the authors quite consciously handed them discretion over that political choice. They certainly knew how to be specific if they wanted to be. They actually defined the crime of treason in the document, down to the number of eyewitnesses that were required. If they wanted the Senate to act in a certain time, they certainly could have written it in there.
Having said all of that, given that the next president is probably Clinton, and the second choices are Trump or Sanders, there is no freaking way the GOP is getting a better candidate out of the next president unless God smites all of them with individual bolts of lightning. I suppose they are pinning their hopes on Cruz now, who I admit is most likely to carry out a ritual sacrifice so he can resurrect Scalia and put him back on the bench. But, Cruz just isn't someone who is getting elected in a general campaign. He'd be lucky to get as close as Romney or McCain did.
So... they need to stop pretending that somehow the next president will magically be better than Obama. They should seriously take the practical victory that Obama gave them by not nominating an arch-liberal to the court and go with the moderate.
That's sort of like saying we can't hold a murderer accountable because Bush started a war that got more people killed.
Of course we can. These kids fucked up. Now, if there is a punishment, it should certainly fit the crime, to be sure. 20 years in prison doesn't seem like it would be fair, but it shouldn't be a slap on the hand either.
I am definitely a little iffy on people hiring "retired" black hat hackers for their Red Team, if only because that tends to encourage hackers to black hat as a career path. When serving time is simply considered your stepping stone to a better non-criminal job, there's something wrong going on.
Note, he's not doing it to atone or because he cares if he screwed anyone. He's doing it so he can take credit so everyone knows he's a well-known hacker. Which then *improves* his resume. Would Bush admitting that he ran an impressive scam to start a war mean that he'd get kudos and a job offer because he clearly knows how to get things done? I wouldn't think so.
That's almost exactly what it is like. Like a rapist, these folks have documented proof, courtesy of the criminal justice system, that they have done penetrations.
I agree that the non-obtrusive ads, like Google's, are generally safer almost by definition.
However, there is a reason there has been a rush to completely shit up content with flashing, in your face, Javascript and Flash ads. There's a lot of money in text advertising (a fact that Google has taken to the bank), but there's a lot of money being left on the table without ads that catch the eye better.
I tend to think of the "acceptable" ads campaigns like the ad blockers are doing is sort of like the Washington Naval Treaty. Everyone knows it will cripple your site to keep in an arms race, but there are still people chomping at the bit to engage in that arms race because they think they will win. So they do everything they can to get around being even slowed down in their attempt to get ads in your face.
In the end, I hope content providers are looking towards a world where everyone blocks ads. They need to find a new solution because incidents like this are only going to increase ad blocking. Even people who are okay with tolerating ads to support their favorite sites are becoming scared of what the ads are loading on their computers.
People really didn't wise up to AOL, AOL failed to bring customers a broadband experience to match what they had been able to provide under dialup. The iPhone walled garden shows that there is nothing dead about a walled garden model... as long as the experience matches the expectations of the users.
Honestly, its good to be able to get out to the Internet, but a lot of people prefer the simplicity and functionality of a curated model. There are certainly "meta-dangers" to having a closed ecosystem, but that sort of model does excel at certain things, like maintaining a consistent experience and level of quality that you won't find on the general Internet (of course).
For my part, I hate the FB browser. Just navigating with it on my phone pisses me off, forget all of the other evil BS that they are doing.
I agree that they should play up the security aspect as much as they can, but ultimately I think they are best staying out of the morass of "security" products out there. They are picked by users because they block ads. People hate ads. They hated them before they realized that they were sending malware to their computers. Now they simply hate them even more.
I think the brand that ad blockers have is their biggest asset right now, actually. But they would definitely benefit by adding security as a big bullet point in their features, even running a campaign to highlight that customers aren't just blocking annoying ads, but also protecting themselves.
Slashdot Mirror
So what? After all, we've hit peak oil and the population bomb has already gone off. We are literally lifting people in frontloaders out of the way and Soylent Green is people. This is just a drop in the bucket with all the disasters that have already befallen us that were correctly predicted in the 1970s. It doesn't seem like there will be a humanity left to even care by the time Earth has turned into Venus.
Now, excuse me, I need to go out in my gas mask and radiation gear to go salvage vacuum tubes from the ruins of civilization so I can keep my mainframe working in this post-apocalyptic world.
I don't care if they have a Ph.D in physics, they're ignorant. You cannot argue that someone who fails to understand the value of life, both of others and their own, is not grossly ignorant.
If they execute these sorts of action and are not ignorant, then they are insane, and I have seen little evidence of their actual insanity. Ignorance is the only thing that remains. There is no action or cause that justifies random attacks on innocent civilians, especially if the cause they supposedly espouse is the ending of attacks on their own innocent compatriots.
I mention the following to everyone who talks about how "charitable" they think they are when they ask for taxes to be raised.
If you have money that you think can be used to support the nation, and you really want to give it, then the government will be happy to take your check. They do take donations.
When you ask for tax increases, you aren't being charitable. You aren't giving of yourself. You are specifically voting to make everyone else have to do so.
Any one of these folks demanding a tax increase can give a huge donation to the government. Indeed *anyone* can do so. Do the math, figure out your budget to see what you can spare, and then do it. You'll save money and time just in the collection efforts.
Now, I am not saying that increasing taxes has no place. Certainly, you have to pay for things, and to meet your commitments, you need revenue. But it seems odd that these folks can't figure out how to give money to the government without the taxman coming for them.
In some cases, I think it may be altruism that has not been thought out very well, but in others, I sense a desire to not lose ground to the rest of their class.
In the medieval period, the rich and the aristocracy used to demonstrate their virtue by giving money away freely and without tax write-offs. Their goal? Giving is better than receiving, although many were probably hoping to buy their way into heaven. Of course, with moving certain religious ideas out of the center of our society, we have lost some of the good with the bad. You no longer demonstrate your virtue by dumping money on people and competing to be the one who gives away the most while maintaining their lifestyle. Now, you try to give away enough to be a benefactor, but without losing your place on the list of billionaires.
I would tell every person on that list. Take the money you'd pay in taxes and donate it now and set aside money into the future to do so, from your own personal fortunes. Take the hit and help a brother out. Create a culture of giving for your class, and you will have done more with that gesture than any tax increase would ever do.
It is hard for the government, who everyone likes to turn to for solutions, to admit that the best solution is to mostly do nothing at all, aside from some common sense actions. It doesn't get people elected. It doesn't get big budget approved.
Ultimately, terrorists are hard to nab, especially radicalized first timers. To actually have a decent success rate requires expenditure or mobilization that costs a significant amount of money.
The government is best when it can dissuade attacks by threatening force or other sanctions. Unfortunately, these people don't care if they die, so it is hard to see what sort of sanction you could come up with, short of executing their families or something else they care about. Even then, these people are so messed up that they would think they are earning martyrdom for their families by getting them killed in such a way.
Of course, that said, the nice thing is that there aren't really that many suicidal bombers out there. They are a force to be reckoned with, but most humans, even radicals, are not *that* radical.
You know how to stop terrorism? Stop talking about it. Terrorist acts won't be stopped, but they will be rendered considerably less effective. Terrorism is useful because it causes fear and overreaction. That overreaction can radicalize people and wear down resistance to their aims. By themselves, the terrorists have killed a few thousand people and blown up a few buildings. That's peanuts in a country of 300 million people, so the only way they become powerful is when the media becomes their force multiplier.
There are thousands of people who die every day in the United States to gun violence due to gang killing, some of that is collateral damage where innocents get killed, so it isn't just "thugs".
We don't walk around really thinking about that too much, and consequently most of us don't live in fear of it unless we live up close to it. And why is that? Because it gets ignored in the media. We fear a once in every so-often elementary school shooting more than we fear something that happens multiple times every day, by organized criminal figures with teams of professional or semi-professional killers on their staff.
The catch is this... terrorists will kill people, but if you keep your measured responses targeted at the most effective programs that are aiming at things like education, outreach, and probably a few targeted teams of intelligence types, you decrease the odds of a terrorism death considerably, and without the rights violations. But it does require us to admit that *we cannot stop terrorists from killing some of us*, but also to understand that your risk of death is higher from just getting in a car to drive to work. You're just as likely to be accidentally killed by an gang war as collateral damage.
They are ignorant savages. They're just not consistently ignorant about everything.
An important thing to remember about your adversaries. They may be simplistic philosophically, but that doesn't prevent them from knowing how to use basic operational security measures using technology which has been designed to be easy to use and portable. Especially when trained and veteran terrorists are making terrorism guides available on a plethora of sites created specifically for the purpose of making effective terrorists out of civilians for one big attack.
Terrorist attacks are hard to stop before they go off, particularly if you don't know who might actually execute one. So a first-time terrorist has a huge advantage if they have kept a relatively low profile. Even a person who is known to be radicalized by locals isn't going to come to the attention of a law enforcement agency unless the locals blow them in. And since most "locals" don't want to get involved, or may even be close to the terrorists or their families, they may be very disinclined, hoping that their friend or relative "would never do such a thing."
To some degree, economizing and efficiency can be better for the environment. The more you can recycle, the less you're dumping. The less waste you have, especially some of the stuff like heavy metals, it's going to be a good thing.
I'm under no illusion that this sort of efficiency will be anything close to a dedicated, large scale program to clean up industry. By itself, this is a drop in the bucket.
However, if all manufacturers started their process with designing in small, but an increasing number of improvements to waste reduction which happen to coincide with with supply chain efficiency, after awhile it will have a real effect on the whole industry by changing the way things are done slowly.
There's two things you have to do in order to have a better environmental future: the big cleanups, and the small, but continuous process refinements that consolidate any gains into the future. No one is going to stop making gadgets like iPhones, so it is important for Apple and others to think this way. We just need to make sure they keep it up.
My point is valid because Apple is being fought to give the FBI a specific right to break encryption.
This is not the same thing as most IoT devices being insecure.
The FBI will be pleased with a capacity that they will have, but no one else will. That's fine to them.
What they will not be happy with is the ability for just anyone to break into US homes with a vulnerability that is not limited to themselves.
It is important to understand the distinctions, and also to understand that, as hard for it may be to believe that the FBI or NSA does anything but spy on its own citizens, it actually has another, actual stated job of protecting the US and its citizens.
Perhaps not every person in those organizations takes that task seriously, but there are many, if not most, who do. In fact, if these agencies have an original sin, it is that they think they have to own everything in order to protect us from ourselves. The idea that they are purely out for themselves as sort of a shadow state is a conspiracy theorist wank job.
Understand that I do realize that there are serious dangers from agencies that are trying to protect ourselves from ourselves by being able to spy on us, but you will fail to understand why these agencies have the power that they do unless you understand that they are not mustache twirling villains either.
is every Three Letter Agency's wet dream.
Maybe not. Yes, the ability to spy on people might be useful for them, however, they're frequently charged with the protection of US citizens as well.
If IoT is vulnerable, it is not just vulnerable to the NSA or FBI, it is vulnerable to Russia, Iran, North Korea, China, and anyone else who wants to try a hand at it. That's not a situation that would have everyone at the FBI (for instance) uncorking a bottle of champagne.
Yes, forgive me, I was specifically talking about their incorporation into United Kingdom of Great Britain. The English and others had certainly invaded before, and there was even a period were a great deal of lowland Scotland was under English domination, but Scotland had not been ever rendered permanently defunct as a country by military conquest.
However, the actual incorporation of Scotland into the UK started as a personal union of England and Scotland under King James (the first of England and the Sixth of Scotland) and his descendants the Houses of Stuart and Hannover. It was finalized with the Act of Union in 1707 which was a purely legislative process.
So you could sort of say that the Scottish actually acquired England, rather than vice-versa.
Scotland wasn't conquered. The rest of them, okay. Although one or two of the others were uninhabited or inhabited solely by British colonists.
It is a little more difficult build a successful commercial car than to stop the use of film, however.
Yes, Kodak completely screwed up because film itself became a thing of the past with digital and they refused to give up their film business.
However, making cars automated or even autonomous doesn't make cars obsolete. And car companies do a lot of things to get and keep their cars on the road.
Partnering with a software company that will make use of their expertise and infrastructure to build the initial cars, could eventually lead to the software company wanting to cut costs by changing their "hardware" to some sort of Made in China manufacturer.
How could that happen? If the software becomes more important than the car itself, car companies are out of business. And who needs 500 hp if they are all in electric, self-driving pods anyway? All they will care about is that they can play AAA games in the auto pod while they wait for it to get them to work.
I think car companies are learning that they need to get into this business while they can still control the conversation about what cars *are*, and merely being the hardware maker is not going to let them do that all by itself. Software isn't tied to their platform unless they own the platform and the software. Note how Apple is able to make its money. Car companies want to be Apple, not Nokia.
A BlackBerry was *not* good enough for the President. A one-off highly modified, custom device that looks and mostly works like BlackBerry was.
I think the NSA was like: "We hated doing this, but if the President gets this, we can at least get away with saying it is a one-off. If we give it to Clinton, every cabinet member and every person who thinks they are as important as a cabinet member is going to want one. Also, the President is our boss and we have to kiss his ass. She's not our boss, so fuck her entitled ass."
Secure equipment is no joke. It's understandable that no one wants a shitty, overpriced Windows CE phone, but it would be even more expensive to just ignore the program and give everyone what they want, creating one-offs for whoever. These are supposed to be civil *servants*.
Except that Apple does not have to make the change. The FBI has asked that if Apple does not want to do it, they can hand over their keys and the FBI will do it.
If Apple makes a system where patches are automatically accepted, they have created an expectation that they are like a landlord in some respects.
A landlord often has a key to carry out necessary maintenance on their property. Apple has keys to deliver patches and applications to their phones. Apple can provide the keys and access to the FBI and step away.
Either way, Apple has not installed those impossible doors with no locks. They have the pass key right there. Apple *may* be able to refuse the necessary technical expertise to the FBI, but if the FBI has people who have sufficient expertise, they can do it. The only reason Apple would actually do the work is so Apple can ensure that they keys stay in their possession so they can be sure the FBI won't use their keys to do whatever the hell they want in the future.
So the FBI is saying, open the one door or give us the key and we'll open it, but you won't know if we made a copy of it. But the lock is there to be used, irrespective of the argument, and that is on Apple.
And whatever you do, make sure it does not work on Windows XP or they'll be able to use it to break into shit until approximately the date of the heat death of the Universe.
Is this where I post the XKCD with the guy being interrogated with the $5 pipe wrench for his keys?
Technical solutions are not perfect, if you want something safe, you need to make sure that everyone agrees that they won't touch it. For the FBI or NSA, you want legislation to back up your tech. That way, it's not even legal for them to try to break into it.
Actually, as much as I hate to say this, I think I kind of agree with what is being said. The FBI is merely demanding that someone help them execute a legal warrant, and Apple is refusing to do so. For good reasons, I might add, but I could see how the FBI might have a valid argument there.
However, the real story here is not that Apple could be forced to do this, it is that Apple *can* be forced to do this because they can force a download of an OS to a customer device. In other words, Apple has the master key to the apartment, because they made it that way. The FBI is merely demanding that they use it.
There is no question of *changing* iOS to allow the FBI to do this. iOS already allows this by *design*. It's just a matter of changing the payload.
In the context of the Constitution, speech was considered important for its effect on governance, we shouldn't lose sight of that. That's what the revolutionaries fought for, a voice in their own governance and taxation. They weren't fighting for your ability to merely say obnoxious things. They were expecting people's speech to drive debates and influence policy. If it had been adopted today, I don't see the First Amendment having been limited to simply being able to go outside and say things. If you couldn't have a voice to say something that would be heard, your speech is free but easily controlled, a scenario which I just don't see being the one that was intended.
Also, note that even a lot of money today does not guarantee you a mass audience if the Rubio ghost town on Florida primary day was any indication, or the complete failure of Jeb Bush, despite his large bankroll, shows. It merely makes mass audiences possible. And that is an important distinction. You're not *buying* the audience, you're buying the ability to say something to them which will resonate with them. Donald Trump could spend his entire fortune on spewing what he is spewing at me, and I will still never vote for him because he has communicated his ideas to me, but they are crap.
Note, though, that Trump is bringing out *new* voters. That means the money is reaching people, but it is his message of anger and fear is what is resonating with all of those people. As much as we might dislike it, people don't vote for people because they had a lot of money, they vote for people who say things they like. That means that it is incredibly important today for us to understand that there is a bedrock requirement of money to get *any* idea on to the Federal or even state stage, and to me, that means that to have Speech in government, you must have means.
I understand the dislike of corporate money going into ad campaigns and I'd like to reduce that influence, although I want to remain aware that sometimes corporations do have important things to say that should at least be heard, even if no one agrees with them.
In this environment, you have a huge government over hundreds of millions of people. Speech is no longer who can get up on a soapbox and say what they want and be heard, and it hasn't been that way for decades, if not well over a century.
The concern is that the corporate money, being concentrated into just a few hands, keeps citizens with non-corporate approved positions out of sight. That is certainly a problem, if not really a new problem. The real solution is to guarantee people the ability to be heard irrespective of money. How to do that appropriately is something that I feel bears study, but I can tell you one thing, it will definitely require resources to make it happen which will compare with those being expended by PACs to reach voters. Money is very much in the question for Speech concerns.
I'd have to disagree. Money is definitely speech in a situation today where you don't get a voice unless you can pay for ad time. Certainly, I agree that you could strictly define it as having the ability to say what you like, but it is pretty clear from the specific freedom of the press being mentioned that paid speech, like journalists usually provide, was considered just as protected.
That is why some J. Random Guy can't just stand up in East Podunk and run for President. No one would ever hear him who mattered.
Now, I can get behind the idea that corporations are not somehow full citizens or speaking for actual citizens, but that is a separate issue. Of course, I would include all corporate bodies, such as businesses, Super PACs, churches AND organized labor in that.
It is appropriate to refer to a person in print in the first instance by their full title, but afterwards as Mr. or Ms. X.
Just like if you met Queen Elizabeth and had more than a few words with her, you'd start with "Your Majesty", but afterwards you'd just refer to her as "Ma'am". Trundling out the whole honorific is just a waste of print/breath after that point.
They're not ignoring their constitutional duties. It is in their set of powers to get to decide when to hold hearings or even *if* to hold hearings. The Constitution makes no reference to a time limit or timetable for getting these things done.
Now, I am *not* saying that it is the right thing to do, but it is a valid political decision. And by handing the advice and consent to the Senate, the authors quite consciously handed them discretion over that political choice. They certainly knew how to be specific if they wanted to be. They actually defined the crime of treason in the document, down to the number of eyewitnesses that were required. If they wanted the Senate to act in a certain time, they certainly could have written it in there.
Having said all of that, given that the next president is probably Clinton, and the second choices are Trump or Sanders, there is no freaking way the GOP is getting a better candidate out of the next president unless God smites all of them with individual bolts of lightning. I suppose they are pinning their hopes on Cruz now, who I admit is most likely to carry out a ritual sacrifice so he can resurrect Scalia and put him back on the bench. But, Cruz just isn't someone who is getting elected in a general campaign. He'd be lucky to get as close as Romney or McCain did.
So... they need to stop pretending that somehow the next president will magically be better than Obama. They should seriously take the practical victory that Obama gave them by not nominating an arch-liberal to the court and go with the moderate.
That's sort of like saying we can't hold a murderer accountable because Bush started a war that got more people killed.
Of course we can. These kids fucked up. Now, if there is a punishment, it should certainly fit the crime, to be sure. 20 years in prison doesn't seem like it would be fair, but it shouldn't be a slap on the hand either.
I am definitely a little iffy on people hiring "retired" black hat hackers for their Red Team, if only because that tends to encourage hackers to black hat as a career path. When serving time is simply considered your stepping stone to a better non-criminal job, there's something wrong going on.
Note, he's not doing it to atone or because he cares if he screwed anyone. He's doing it so he can take credit so everyone knows he's a well-known hacker. Which then *improves* his resume. Would Bush admitting that he ran an impressive scam to start a war mean that he'd get kudos and a job offer because he clearly knows how to get things done? I wouldn't think so.
That's almost exactly what it is like. Like a rapist, these folks have documented proof, courtesy of the criminal justice system, that they have done penetrations.
I agree that the non-obtrusive ads, like Google's, are generally safer almost by definition.
However, there is a reason there has been a rush to completely shit up content with flashing, in your face, Javascript and Flash ads. There's a lot of money in text advertising (a fact that Google has taken to the bank), but there's a lot of money being left on the table without ads that catch the eye better.
I tend to think of the "acceptable" ads campaigns like the ad blockers are doing is sort of like the Washington Naval Treaty. Everyone knows it will cripple your site to keep in an arms race, but there are still people chomping at the bit to engage in that arms race because they think they will win. So they do everything they can to get around being even slowed down in their attempt to get ads in your face.
In the end, I hope content providers are looking towards a world where everyone blocks ads. They need to find a new solution because incidents like this are only going to increase ad blocking. Even people who are okay with tolerating ads to support their favorite sites are becoming scared of what the ads are loading on their computers.
People really didn't wise up to AOL, AOL failed to bring customers a broadband experience to match what they had been able to provide under dialup. The iPhone walled garden shows that there is nothing dead about a walled garden model... as long as the experience matches the expectations of the users.
Honestly, its good to be able to get out to the Internet, but a lot of people prefer the simplicity and functionality of a curated model. There are certainly "meta-dangers" to having a closed ecosystem, but that sort of model does excel at certain things, like maintaining a consistent experience and level of quality that you won't find on the general Internet (of course).
For my part, I hate the FB browser. Just navigating with it on my phone pisses me off, forget all of the other evil BS that they are doing.
I agree that they should play up the security aspect as much as they can, but ultimately I think they are best staying out of the morass of "security" products out there. They are picked by users because they block ads. People hate ads. They hated them before they realized that they were sending malware to their computers. Now they simply hate them even more.
I think the brand that ad blockers have is their biggest asset right now, actually. But they would definitely benefit by adding security as a big bullet point in their features, even running a campaign to highlight that customers aren't just blocking annoying ads, but also protecting themselves.