I actually think they meant the ProcessorId, not the serial number.
In a Windows command prompt, type:
wmic cpu get ProcessorId
You can get it for RAM wmic memorychip get serialnumber
This information and others are exposed in APIs and is available to whoever wants to use it.
There are similar capabilities in most OSes. They're actually useful informational commands to have, but certainly you don't want to just start throwing them around the Internet.
It is definitely different in the scope of what is being collected. It is important to make a distinction even if they are both intrusive to some degree.
Some advances drive new applications when people can see the potential. I'm quite certain we can find a use for 200 Gbps if the everyday use of the technology is sufficiently practical.
Yes, this was incidentally why ballistic missiles launched from subs off the coast of the US were a huge concern. By the time you knew they were coming, you had about ten minutes or less to react. And there wasn't really anything short of other nuclear missiles that could shoot down an ballistic missile until recently, and nothing that could probably be activated on that sort of a notice even now.
A meteor would probably come in as fast as a ballistic missile, and we wouldn't even have the advantage of knowing where the launch sites are and monitoring them.
The big advantage over ICBMs is that they generally come from farther away and so there is more time to see them coming, but that assumes that you get lucky and find it before it enters the atmosphere. If you didn't see it coming, there's going to be zero chance of tracking it long enough to do anything about it, if you even saw it coming. At that point, even if you hit it with something, unless you atomized it the debris are going to impact and do a similar amount of damage.
The dot-com bubble was evident to anyone, like me, who sat in a presentation by some doofus who was hired as VP of Finance and who informed us that we needed to grow by sixteen times, every year, to make our market valuation what it needed to be to stay afloat. So let's get out there and sell!
Oddly enough, that was the only business I made a substantial amount on stock options on. Not very oddly, it also had an IPO and promptly crashed a year or two later.
The housing bubble was also evident to me when they were building houses which sold for $800k which would have been big townhouses if they were just a meter closer to one another. Needless to say, people who bought those laughable properties have been underwater ever since. They might climb out of it if they stay there for 20 years and wait for inflation to bring the prices back up.
No, many people *knew* there was a bubble. I'm hardly an oracle of finance and I knew it. What they really believed is that they could take their money and run fast enough so it wouldn't pop while they were exposed. Some people made a ton of money, some people like me made a modest amount of money, and many others got burned.
I was responding to the previous comment which called them out specifically. And Republican lawmakers do tend to be law and order, which is one reason for me to actually like them, even if I don't like the current overreach in the name of law and order.
I know there are authoritarian Dems out there who would be happy to force Apple to comply. They just tend to be a little more carrot and a little less stick about it publicly. The end is the same, government overreach.
The problem with anyone who wins on that platform is that they become in charge of the DOJ. So it ends up being their own people, and even if some radical candidate ended the DOJ (as such), he'd create a Department of Liberty or something, and they'd end up doing the same thing.
But he could end up throwing the old team in Gitmo, which might still be entertaining, at least.
Maybe they could put a track in at Gitmo and make them do a Death Race or something for PPV.
How would a government agency "own" Congresspeople, considering Congress sets their budgets? Perhaps the police unions are contributing to them, but frankly, I think this is all on the Republican legislators.
So, it isn't that the police own the Republicans, it is that the Republicans run on a "law and order" platform, and they have been convinced that perhaps their efforts in support of these agencies fits that platform. Backing FBI or police positions helps them with that, and certainly the cops have a sympathetic ear if they make a convincing case that people will be "safer" with these precedents, but the dog actually is wagging the tail, and not vice versa.
There was some poll that said about half of the US was actually in favor of the government's efforts to unlock the phones. That's significant enough for a legislator to take note of. We may generally be against this in a tech forum, but our reasoning is not always so obvious to the general population.
Submissions are made by users. The users are submitting the links.
Yes, Slashdot has editors, but technically there is no editorial policy that certain links will not be accepted. Perhaps that is what is required.
However, it may be odd for an ad-supported site to come out strongly against what is technically within the right of the other sites to do; that is to block access to their sites unless their own ads are viewed. I suppose the new administration has to weigh the two considerations and determine what is in their best interests.
The other third were kiddies, or they were taking other means than TOR to protect themselves.
In fact, I'd almost be more worried about the people who didn't use TOR, because TOR itself is probably not trusted by the best people. You'll trace some of the non TOR logins back and find some grandmother who has had her PC thoroughly hacked and under the remote control of someone else using a "proprietary" channel.
Yup, I know, which is why I pointed that out. I know a few clearance holders who definitely do not want to hear the details for the same reason.
However, that is not the majority of the population, and ultimately, they will not be able to make that the reason for some sort of secret trial. There will be things we can't see publicly, but that can be handled in a normal court.
The question is whether the US government will bother making those assurances. Even money is on them not bothering. They don't care if he comes back, he's already in exile in Russia. Russia isn't the Soviet Union anymore, but I don't think I'd want to settle there permanently. It's sort of like jail without having to pay for him. And many exiles do come back eventually without so much as a deal with the government once they tire of being out in the cold for so long.
If I was President, I'd probably shrug and leave the usual channels open for extradition, but in the end, I'd ignore him. He's already done what damage he's going to do. What kind of deal do I have to make with him? He comes home for his trial unconditionally, or he can feel free to stay in Russia.
Also, he needs to remember to file his Income Tax return.
Having said that, I think the government might have difficulty trying him under a process which is not transparent. It's not like they can state that the material that he purloined is still actually a secret.
Admittedly, the US Government tells its clearance holders that they are not permitted to look at classified material, even if it is leaked to the public, but I don't think that sort of dickery will pass in a civilian court.
I'm not 100% with what Snowden did, but I will become very upset with the government in a way that I was not upset before if they try and run this in any way but a full public jury trial. Yes, there will be parts that will be classified, but in the end, it should not and most likely will not, happen in a Star Chamber.
And the US Government has something to gain from this too. Did Snowden adequately make use of the internal methods for redress that he had instead of extruding this data illegally? It's easy to assume the government would ignore him and retaliate against him, but since he never actually did anything like that, we can't know. The government has the chance to make the case to those people who are listening, that the internal whistleblower protection is there and it can be demonstrated to actually work. They can argue that he was told of how he could address these concerns legally and where he could do that.
Of course, the government may not have those methods at all. And then, I think Snowden may get his satisfaction, if not his freedom. As long as he didn't simply decide he couldn't trust the government, but instead, acted out on his own, he has a chance of making his case, and I will be watching that line of argument very closely. I do not believe that he had a right to just release that material, but I can be convinced that he felt he had no choice after exploring the actual options.
This is, at heart, the only actual defense that Snowden has; that he had a constitutional duty to expose this, and he couldn't do so without violating the trust granted to him by his clearance.
What the government will have no problem doing is proving damage to the country. The damage to the US is actually quite evident, and I personally deal with it every day when I work with EU customers. A false dichotomy has been set up between the US and its intelligence services, and every other country and its intelligence services. It's like lifting only one rock, but knowing there are ants and things under both. Unless you're a company actively competing with a US company in certain sectors, your data is probably as safe in the hands of a US company as it is in anyone else's. Perhaps cold comfort, but I would like to see the EU's Edward Snowden, because I am quite certain that his or her revelations would be similarly interesting.
Of course, if they had posted the correct link, then a significant portion of the people would not have been able to read it without unblocking Forbes, which is probably not going to happen due to the perceived abuse of the Forbes site and its ads.
However, if you got enough interest to get it posted, you probably should have had your story posted with the proper link, and ignored the naysayers.
For the record, I ad block Forbes myself, which is too bad really, and I do find them a bit obnoxious (while entirely within their rights) when they block those who block their ads. If they would commit to not having abusive ads, they'd probably do better.
Best compromise, your link and the other link for those who are Forbes challenged. After all, it seems that it was a free service to dig up another link.
Hitler did not have religious faith. Full stop. There is zero indication that he was any sort of fervent Christian believer. He was a cradle Catholic from a country where Catholicism was the state religion. That's it. Walk around and quiz a group of cradle Catholics in the US on the theology of the Catholic Church. Be prepared to hear people who don't know what Christianity or Catholicism actually believes unless it is featured on the TV news.
Hitler believed he was the main character in a Wagner epic opera. He did not believe the German people answered to anyone except themselves and more importantly, to himself. Calling himself Christian, treating with some bishops, or pretending to espouse certain Christian positions doesn't make him any more a Christian than a Buddhist who also thinks the Golden Rule is a good idea. Or a PR person who is trying to sell fish to Catholics during Lent.
Do not confuse his dislike for the Jews with the previous progroms against Jews. Most of the persecution of Jews, even by actual Christians, was more of a persecution of people who were different, insular, and who had attained wealth through a means considered "beneath" Christians. Certainly Hitler would occasionally trundle out the same excuses, "Jews killed Jesus", etc. but why wouldn't he? It's not like he was against lying or appropriating things he didn't believe in.
Also, I don't believe the Catholic Church allows for astrology or magic. I think they just assume that most of that is just entertainment and slight of hand and don't care. If you were really doing ritual magic, then you're crossing the line, because the Christian God is pretty clearly not on the other end of that ritual. You're not permitted to join Freemasonry to this day due to the belief that it has certain secret rituals.
Would you be more or less likely to buy from LadiesComputerShop2016 than MensComputerShop2016?
More to the point, ComputerShop2015 is a neutral sounding name, not strictly male at all. I wonder if "male-sounding" is merely seen as "neutral" rather than "male".
I might well shop at LadiesComputerShop2016, if I was aware that it wasn't a specialty store only for women, but at first glance, I'd think they were a specialty store catering to females (and probably charging more money for the privilege of providing "female-friendly" stuff).
On the other hand, I'm not really likely to shop at MensComputerShop2016 either because I'm assuming that they want to sell me laptops with camo covers, or with backgrounds and screensavers with strippers. And they will charge me for the privilege of asserting my manliness there too.
At ComputerShop2015 I'm more likely to get the reasonably priced beige mid-tower case I truly desire. I can add the strippers later myself.
In this case, quantifying the harm is much harder. The harm is to their rights and constitutional liberties, but the actual day-to-day harm is a lot less simple to quantify than if the data was stolen by people who might steal their money. Unless the governments are using this information to make purchases on Amazon, it would be hard to show that this data is having a monetary cost to the users. So, you have less information to use to set damages. You either set them too low and people think they are pointless, or you set them extremely high, but now you have to somehow prove that the theoretical losses due to rights violation justifies a number like that.
Also bear in mind that the government is operated on tax money. They're not punishing the government with damages, they're *punishing taxpayers*. It's not like you can get a billion dollar settlement out of any single government employee, and allowing the government jobs to possibly bankrupt you while you were arguably just doing your job is going to make going into government as a career significantly less palatable for good candidates. So the scorched earth approach to damages is not a panacea for this sort of thing.
Features take time to write, QA, and roll out. Apple probably feels that it has provided sufficient capability with their existing options.
They may also assume someone will write an app for that. After all, having a developer ecosystem does free them from having to think of everything themselves.
There is that, but I would remind you that there are always people like this.
Trump does frighten me a little bit, because he is hitting some of the same notes. I don't think he's going to win even the primary, however.
The Right will come around eventually when they realize that the government does not have to reflect their own personal beliefs.
However, the "progressives" need to remain careful that they do not attempt to force the government to truly cause those people to do things against their conscience. I know it is considered somewhat rustic to not be in love with things like abortion on demand, for instance, but this is a very serious thing for people who have trouble accepting that a fetus or embryo is not a person.
As for gay marriage, if you want to say that the State has every right to define something like Civil Marriage, then I think you're on very solid ground constitutionally. If it starts moving towards forcing people to have to be happy about it... it starts to become more like the state telling you what to believe. And if the state goes down that road too fast, you could empower someone like Trump, or someone worse.
Conservatives are not marked necessarily by wanting to not progress, they're marked by requiring a more deliberate pace. As long as we understand that pacing, we should be able to move forward without insurrection.
They're not interchangeable as religions, but I don't believe that religion really is the impetus for their attacks, any more than we fought the Crusades for Jesus.
Yeah, Islam probably makes it less of a complete contradiction of their values for them to engage in this type of activity, but the actual things that these supposedly "Islamic" fighters are fighting for matches ethnic and tribal customs and later add-ons more than anything Islam said.
I am not a Muslim, and I have no intention of becoming one, and much of that is because I don't believe it is as much of a true religion of peace as Christianity is with someone like Mohammad at its heart who created an empire at the end of the sword.
However, I am less concerned with pointing that out than I am with finding an actual solution and cause for something like ISIS. If this is really something that happens because you're a Muslim, full stop, then fine, but I don't believe the evidence shows that. You're merely pointing out how Islam doesn't completely forbid killing under certain circumstances, but that is a far cry from it being the cause and rulebook for something like ISIS.
A group like ISIS might be doing less selective reading from the Quran than the Crusaders did from the Bible, but there is still selective reading going on.
And just as importantly, if you're going to antagonize a billion people through a broad stroke like that, you'd damn well better be completely right, or you're falling right into the hands of ISIS. They *want* World War III and if you stop and think about it for a few minutes, you should realize that WWIII with the Muslims is exactly what you should *not* want. A reckoning of this sort is only going to destroy civilization and feed the shit that ISIS is spewing.
We need to target ISIS and go after what is really powering it, hard and fast. I don't think we should be overly sensitive or politically correct in all our actions, but we need to understand that we should not be turning away allies that can just as easily run into the heart of the beast if we decide to treat them like they are equivalent to these thugs.
Ever wonder how seemingly normal people were able to become Nazis and commit such atrocities?
They were just trying to make Germany great again.
Actually, for many, this sort of hits it right on the head. The "Backstab" legend and the targeting of communists and other groups perceived to be fifth columnists like Jews, was a major popular idea about how Germany lost a war that they seemed to not be losing in 1918. Having gone from the military power that flattened France and Austria-Hungary a few decades past, to a power that somehow lost the war without it reaching German soil was incomprehensible to the German population and the people involved in the German Armed Forces in particular.
(In defense of the people who didn't like communists, the Communists actually were trying to take over after the war, although it is hard to say who were the bigger assholes: the Communists or the Freikorps.)
So there is a parallel, although I'd point out that the US may not be perfect right now, but we're still the world's lone superpower, so it's not like we're not currently "great". Embattled, yes, but in the same place as Weimar Germany? Absolutely not.
Of course, facts don't always matter as much as they should. If you could somehow convince Americans, despite the evidence, that we are not great, and that we should be great again, you could generate a movement like this again.
Slashdot Mirror
I actually think they meant the ProcessorId, not the serial number.
In a Windows command prompt, type:
wmic cpu get ProcessorId
You can get it for RAM
wmic memorychip get serialnumber
This information and others are exposed in APIs and is available to whoever wants to use it.
There are similar capabilities in most OSes. They're actually useful informational commands to have, but certainly you don't want to just start throwing them around the Internet.
Yes. You should not instantly mistrust it because it sounds Asian. That would be wrong.
You should mistrust it because this is Baidu you're talking about here.
It is definitely different in the scope of what is being collected. It is important to make a distinction even if they are both intrusive to some degree.
Some advances drive new applications when people can see the potential. I'm quite certain we can find a use for 200 Gbps if the everyday use of the technology is sufficiently practical.
The Internet has quite reliable sources of news. You just have to figure out which ones they are. Otherwise, it is sort of a crapshoot.
Hint: The decent ones usually, but not always, make you pay to look at them, and people will actually pay money to read them.
Yes, this was incidentally why ballistic missiles launched from subs off the coast of the US were a huge concern. By the time you knew they were coming, you had about ten minutes or less to react. And there wasn't really anything short of other nuclear missiles that could shoot down an ballistic missile until recently, and nothing that could probably be activated on that sort of a notice even now.
A meteor would probably come in as fast as a ballistic missile, and we wouldn't even have the advantage of knowing where the launch sites are and monitoring them.
The big advantage over ICBMs is that they generally come from farther away and so there is more time to see them coming, but that assumes that you get lucky and find it before it enters the atmosphere. If you didn't see it coming, there's going to be zero chance of tracking it long enough to do anything about it, if you even saw it coming. At that point, even if you hit it with something, unless you atomized it the debris are going to impact and do a similar amount of damage.
The dot-com bubble was evident to anyone, like me, who sat in a presentation by some doofus who was hired as VP of Finance and who informed us that we needed to grow by sixteen times, every year, to make our market valuation what it needed to be to stay afloat. So let's get out there and sell!
Oddly enough, that was the only business I made a substantial amount on stock options on. Not very oddly, it also had an IPO and promptly crashed a year or two later.
The housing bubble was also evident to me when they were building houses which sold for $800k which would have been big townhouses if they were just a meter closer to one another. Needless to say, people who bought those laughable properties have been underwater ever since. They might climb out of it if they stay there for 20 years and wait for inflation to bring the prices back up.
No, many people *knew* there was a bubble. I'm hardly an oracle of finance and I knew it. What they really believed is that they could take their money and run fast enough so it wouldn't pop while they were exposed. Some people made a ton of money, some people like me made a modest amount of money, and many others got burned.
I was responding to the previous comment which called them out specifically. And Republican lawmakers do tend to be law and order, which is one reason for me to actually like them, even if I don't like the current overreach in the name of law and order.
I know there are authoritarian Dems out there who would be happy to force Apple to comply. They just tend to be a little more carrot and a little less stick about it publicly. The end is the same, government overreach.
The problem with anyone who wins on that platform is that they become in charge of the DOJ. So it ends up being their own people, and even if some radical candidate ended the DOJ (as such), he'd create a Department of Liberty or something, and they'd end up doing the same thing.
But he could end up throwing the old team in Gitmo, which might still be entertaining, at least.
Maybe they could put a track in at Gitmo and make them do a Death Race or something for PPV.
How would a government agency "own" Congresspeople, considering Congress sets their budgets? Perhaps the police unions are contributing to them, but frankly, I think this is all on the Republican legislators.
So, it isn't that the police own the Republicans, it is that the Republicans run on a "law and order" platform, and they have been convinced that perhaps their efforts in support of these agencies fits that platform. Backing FBI or police positions helps them with that, and certainly the cops have a sympathetic ear if they make a convincing case that people will be "safer" with these precedents, but the dog actually is wagging the tail, and not vice versa.
There was some poll that said about half of the US was actually in favor of the government's efforts to unlock the phones. That's significant enough for a legislator to take note of. We may generally be against this in a tech forum, but our reasoning is not always so obvious to the general population.
Submissions are made by users. The users are submitting the links.
Yes, Slashdot has editors, but technically there is no editorial policy that certain links will not be accepted. Perhaps that is what is required.
However, it may be odd for an ad-supported site to come out strongly against what is technically within the right of the other sites to do; that is to block access to their sites unless their own ads are viewed. I suppose the new administration has to weigh the two considerations and determine what is in their best interests.
If for no other reason than this, this man deserves to be remembered. :-P
Yes, with the emphasis on the fact that they kept re-hiring him. That or MIT administration was particularly flaky with firings like that.
If you think a taxi driver would have necessarily had better vetting, I invite you to watch a classic of cinema:
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt00...
The other third were kiddies, or they were taking other means than TOR to protect themselves.
In fact, I'd almost be more worried about the people who didn't use TOR, because TOR itself is probably not trusted by the best people. You'll trace some of the non TOR logins back and find some grandmother who has had her PC thoroughly hacked and under the remote control of someone else using a "proprietary" channel.
Yup, I know, which is why I pointed that out. I know a few clearance holders who definitely do not want to hear the details for the same reason.
However, that is not the majority of the population, and ultimately, they will not be able to make that the reason for some sort of secret trial. There will be things we can't see publicly, but that can be handled in a normal court.
The question is whether the US government will bother making those assurances. Even money is on them not bothering. They don't care if he comes back, he's already in exile in Russia. Russia isn't the Soviet Union anymore, but I don't think I'd want to settle there permanently. It's sort of like jail without having to pay for him. And many exiles do come back eventually without so much as a deal with the government once they tire of being out in the cold for so long.
If I was President, I'd probably shrug and leave the usual channels open for extradition, but in the end, I'd ignore him. He's already done what damage he's going to do. What kind of deal do I have to make with him? He comes home for his trial unconditionally, or he can feel free to stay in Russia.
Also, he needs to remember to file his Income Tax return.
Having said that, I think the government might have difficulty trying him under a process which is not transparent. It's not like they can state that the material that he purloined is still actually a secret.
Admittedly, the US Government tells its clearance holders that they are not permitted to look at classified material, even if it is leaked to the public, but I don't think that sort of dickery will pass in a civilian court.
I'm not 100% with what Snowden did, but I will become very upset with the government in a way that I was not upset before if they try and run this in any way but a full public jury trial. Yes, there will be parts that will be classified, but in the end, it should not and most likely will not, happen in a Star Chamber.
And the US Government has something to gain from this too. Did Snowden adequately make use of the internal methods for redress that he had instead of extruding this data illegally? It's easy to assume the government would ignore him and retaliate against him, but since he never actually did anything like that, we can't know. The government has the chance to make the case to those people who are listening, that the internal whistleblower protection is there and it can be demonstrated to actually work. They can argue that he was told of how he could address these concerns legally and where he could do that.
Of course, the government may not have those methods at all. And then, I think Snowden may get his satisfaction, if not his freedom. As long as he didn't simply decide he couldn't trust the government, but instead, acted out on his own, he has a chance of making his case, and I will be watching that line of argument very closely. I do not believe that he had a right to just release that material, but I can be convinced that he felt he had no choice after exploring the actual options.
This is, at heart, the only actual defense that Snowden has; that he had a constitutional duty to expose this, and he couldn't do so without violating the trust granted to him by his clearance.
What the government will have no problem doing is proving damage to the country. The damage to the US is actually quite evident, and I personally deal with it every day when I work with EU customers. A false dichotomy has been set up between the US and its intelligence services, and every other country and its intelligence services. It's like lifting only one rock, but knowing there are ants and things under both. Unless you're a company actively competing with a US company in certain sectors, your data is probably as safe in the hands of a US company as it is in anyone else's. Perhaps cold comfort, but I would like to see the EU's Edward Snowden, because I am quite certain that his or her revelations would be similarly interesting.
Interesting.
Of course, if they had posted the correct link, then a significant portion of the people would not have been able to read it without unblocking Forbes, which is probably not going to happen due to the perceived abuse of the Forbes site and its ads.
However, if you got enough interest to get it posted, you probably should have had your story posted with the proper link, and ignored the naysayers.
For the record, I ad block Forbes myself, which is too bad really, and I do find them a bit obnoxious (while entirely within their rights) when they block those who block their ads. If they would commit to not having abusive ads, they'd probably do better.
Best compromise, your link and the other link for those who are Forbes challenged. After all, it seems that it was a free service to dig up another link.
Hitler did not have religious faith. Full stop. There is zero indication that he was any sort of fervent Christian believer. He was a cradle Catholic from a country where Catholicism was the state religion. That's it. Walk around and quiz a group of cradle Catholics in the US on the theology of the Catholic Church. Be prepared to hear people who don't know what Christianity or Catholicism actually believes unless it is featured on the TV news.
Hitler believed he was the main character in a Wagner epic opera. He did not believe the German people answered to anyone except themselves and more importantly, to himself. Calling himself Christian, treating with some bishops, or pretending to espouse certain Christian positions doesn't make him any more a Christian than a Buddhist who also thinks the Golden Rule is a good idea. Or a PR person who is trying to sell fish to Catholics during Lent.
Do not confuse his dislike for the Jews with the previous progroms against Jews. Most of the persecution of Jews, even by actual Christians, was more of a persecution of people who were different, insular, and who had attained wealth through a means considered "beneath" Christians. Certainly Hitler would occasionally trundle out the same excuses, "Jews killed Jesus", etc. but why wouldn't he? It's not like he was against lying or appropriating things he didn't believe in.
Also, I don't believe the Catholic Church allows for astrology or magic. I think they just assume that most of that is just entertainment and slight of hand and don't care. If you were really doing ritual magic, then you're crossing the line, because the Christian God is pretty clearly not on the other end of that ritual. You're not permitted to join Freemasonry to this day due to the belief that it has certain secret rituals.
Would you be more or less likely to buy from LadiesComputerShop2016 than MensComputerShop2016?
More to the point, ComputerShop2015 is a neutral sounding name, not strictly male at all. I wonder if "male-sounding" is merely seen as "neutral" rather than "male".
I might well shop at LadiesComputerShop2016, if I was aware that it wasn't a specialty store only for women, but at first glance, I'd think they were a specialty store catering to females (and probably charging more money for the privilege of providing "female-friendly" stuff).
On the other hand, I'm not really likely to shop at MensComputerShop2016 either because I'm assuming that they want to sell me laptops with camo covers, or with backgrounds and screensavers with strippers. And they will charge me for the privilege of asserting my manliness there too.
At ComputerShop2015 I'm more likely to get the reasonably priced beige mid-tower case I truly desire. I can add the strippers later myself.
In this case, quantifying the harm is much harder. The harm is to their rights and constitutional liberties, but the actual day-to-day harm is a lot less simple to quantify than if the data was stolen by people who might steal their money. Unless the governments are using this information to make purchases on Amazon, it would be hard to show that this data is having a monetary cost to the users. So, you have less information to use to set damages. You either set them too low and people think they are pointless, or you set them extremely high, but now you have to somehow prove that the theoretical losses due to rights violation justifies a number like that.
Also bear in mind that the government is operated on tax money. They're not punishing the government with damages, they're *punishing taxpayers*. It's not like you can get a billion dollar settlement out of any single government employee, and allowing the government jobs to possibly bankrupt you while you were arguably just doing your job is going to make going into government as a career significantly less palatable for good candidates. So the scorched earth approach to damages is not a panacea for this sort of thing.
Features take time to write, QA, and roll out. Apple probably feels that it has provided sufficient capability with their existing options.
They may also assume someone will write an app for that. After all, having a developer ecosystem does free them from having to think of everything themselves.
He was being facetious.
There is that, but I would remind you that there are always people like this.
Trump does frighten me a little bit, because he is hitting some of the same notes. I don't think he's going to win even the primary, however.
The Right will come around eventually when they realize that the government does not have to reflect their own personal beliefs.
However, the "progressives" need to remain careful that they do not attempt to force the government to truly cause those people to do things against their conscience. I know it is considered somewhat rustic to not be in love with things like abortion on demand, for instance, but this is a very serious thing for people who have trouble accepting that a fetus or embryo is not a person.
As for gay marriage, if you want to say that the State has every right to define something like Civil Marriage, then I think you're on very solid ground constitutionally. If it starts moving towards forcing people to have to be happy about it... it starts to become more like the state telling you what to believe. And if the state goes down that road too fast, you could empower someone like Trump, or someone worse.
Conservatives are not marked necessarily by wanting to not progress, they're marked by requiring a more deliberate pace. As long as we understand that pacing, we should be able to move forward without insurrection.
You missed the point.
They're not interchangeable as religions, but I don't believe that religion really is the impetus for their attacks, any more than we fought the Crusades for Jesus.
Yeah, Islam probably makes it less of a complete contradiction of their values for them to engage in this type of activity, but the actual things that these supposedly "Islamic" fighters are fighting for matches ethnic and tribal customs and later add-ons more than anything Islam said.
I am not a Muslim, and I have no intention of becoming one, and much of that is because I don't believe it is as much of a true religion of peace as Christianity is with someone like Mohammad at its heart who created an empire at the end of the sword.
However, I am less concerned with pointing that out than I am with finding an actual solution and cause for something like ISIS. If this is really something that happens because you're a Muslim, full stop, then fine, but I don't believe the evidence shows that. You're merely pointing out how Islam doesn't completely forbid killing under certain circumstances, but that is a far cry from it being the cause and rulebook for something like ISIS.
A group like ISIS might be doing less selective reading from the Quran than the Crusaders did from the Bible, but there is still selective reading going on.
And just as importantly, if you're going to antagonize a billion people through a broad stroke like that, you'd damn well better be completely right, or you're falling right into the hands of ISIS. They *want* World War III and if you stop and think about it for a few minutes, you should realize that WWIII with the Muslims is exactly what you should *not* want. A reckoning of this sort is only going to destroy civilization and feed the shit that ISIS is spewing.
We need to target ISIS and go after what is really powering it, hard and fast. I don't think we should be overly sensitive or politically correct in all our actions, but we need to understand that we should not be turning away allies that can just as easily run into the heart of the beast if we decide to treat them like they are equivalent to these thugs.
Ever wonder how seemingly normal people were able to become Nazis and commit such atrocities?
They were just trying to make Germany great again.
Actually, for many, this sort of hits it right on the head. The "Backstab" legend and the targeting of communists and other groups perceived to be fifth columnists like Jews, was a major popular idea about how Germany lost a war that they seemed to not be losing in 1918. Having gone from the military power that flattened France and Austria-Hungary a few decades past, to a power that somehow lost the war without it reaching German soil was incomprehensible to the German population and the people involved in the German Armed Forces in particular.
(In defense of the people who didn't like communists, the Communists actually were trying to take over after the war, although it is hard to say who were the bigger assholes: the Communists or the Freikorps.)
So there is a parallel, although I'd point out that the US may not be perfect right now, but we're still the world's lone superpower, so it's not like we're not currently "great". Embattled, yes, but in the same place as Weimar Germany? Absolutely not.
Of course, facts don't always matter as much as they should. If you could somehow convince Americans, despite the evidence, that we are not great, and that we should be great again, you could generate a movement like this again.