22 minutes isn't bad compared to average (I've read 15 minutes is the average for many males) but women are capable of (and often need!) so much more than that.
Not necessarily intercourse, though. Many women get sore and uncomfortable after more than 10-15 minutes of that. And of course, since this is Slashdot, how many of us men are in good enough shape to go for that long, anway?
The trick is to realize that the clock starts as soon as you go down on her. 25 minutes of oral + 5 minutes of intercourse counts as a 30 minute session.
Multiple accounts can be added to a device for email and contact synchronization, including Exchange accounts. (Handset manufacturers can choose whether to include Exchange support in their devices.)
Oh I see, so you were merely speculating and putting forth that speculation as fact? There are plenty of console gamers who would disagree with you.
I was doing what you did when you claimed "if you give it a chance and get used to the controller just like you had to with mouse and keyboard originally then there is absolutely no issue". Were you speculating, or were you extrapolating from your own experience and the experience of others? As you know, there are plenty of gamers who disagree with you too.
That's not how wifi works, it doesn't just randomly drop or become unstable unless the hardware itself is fault in which case yes, you would get disconnected.
When a connection becomes weak it doesn't send any less data back and forth to the client, what changes is the proportion of usable data to the proportion of redundant data for error checking and correcting, this has the effect of making the wifi connection speed appear slower, so for example if you have a wifi connection of 54mbps that means you're transmitting/receiving say, 54mbps of usable data along with 6mbps of data for error checking/correcting, when you move away from the access point and your speed drops to 10mbps you're still receiving 60mbps or whatever of data overall, but 50mbps of that is for error checking/correcting.
Er, that's not really how wifi works... it steps down to different transmission schemes when the signal/noise ratio gets too low.
But that's beside the point, because the console and the Live service don't care about the physical details of your connection. What they notice is that when your connection is interrupted (say, you turn on the microwave), packets start getting lost. Packet loss has the effect, at the TCP level, of making the connection slower, but that's because the sender's buffer fills up while it's retransmitting the old packets that were dropped. Xbox Live can't tell whether you've put your router on standby for a few seconds, or whether you're experiencing radio interference that causes all of Live's packets to be dropped for a few seconds, or whether some router anywhere in between is temporarily overloaded.
In fact, I just tried it myself: after pressing the standby button, it took 2-3 minutes before I was signed out of Live.
It's absolutely not possible to read/write the memory of modern consoles unless you get access to an execution environment where you can execute your own code (outside the limited sandbox of say, XNA).
So it's a good thing consoles are never vulnerable to buffer overflows and other expoits that let you run your own code, right? Oh wait, they are. That's how the Xbox, PSP, and Wii softmods work.
Maybe the 360 isn't vulnerable, but all we can really say is that none have been found yet.
This is why despite the console having been out since 2005, no such hack has yet been successful- all hacks have depended on detectable modifications to DVD drive firmwares and similar.
There's no inherent reason why a firmware mod would have to be detectable. The console can only check the drive's firmware by going through the drive. If the drive has been modified to lie about the contents of its own firmware, what's the console going to do about that?
CoD: MW2 certainly doesn't [have auto-aim in multiplayer] and I'm pretty sure MW and CoD5 didn't either.
COD 4 did, and from what I can tell, so do World at War and Modern Warfare 2. Maybe it's subtle enough that you don't notice it, but it's helping you nonetheless.
This is another straw man argument, pretty much everyone had an SDTV before HDTV came along
I'm not sure you know the difference between strawman and analogy.
How did a faulty power supply cause an RROD when the power supply is external and RROD represents an internal hardware fault?
RROD indicates a "general hardware failure". After several weeks,
I'll admit I never played on the original XBox, maybe it was that console that's the issue. Have you tried playing since on the 360?
Sure have. I haven't noticed any difference in the controls. Halo 3, TF2, and L4D/L4D2 are as awkward on the 360 as Halo 1 and 2 were on the Xbox. Of those, TF2 is the worst because it has no aim assistance: Valve realized the mistake and added it in for the L4D games.
This is really a non-issue because the host is randomly selected with no way to game that as it's decided by a central server and not by the players.
That doesn't make it a non-issue, it just means you can't cheat in every match.
Never played a console game online where this is possible, it certainly doesn't work on the 360 because if you do that your Live connection will drop and you'll get booted out the game yourself.
Well, it certainly was possible on Halo 2. As for the 360, I doubt they'll drop you if your connection goes down for just a few seconds at a time (which is how the cheat works) - otherwise the game would be unplayable on wifi or any other connection that isn't 100% reliable.
Even VAC is defeatable. On the PC you have access to read/write areas of memory as you wish, even if network transport is encrypted it has to be decrypted by the client for it to work with it so no matter what VAC does it is defeatable, it can at best make it harder to cheat, or catch old cheats when it gets updated, but it can do nothing in the long run to prevent cheating.
The same is true of console games, of course. In the long run, the game maker has no control over what people do at home with their own hardware. What matters is how easily and commonly exploited the games are in practice, and so far, the only cheating I've seen in VAC games has been in-game exploits.
You do realise most online console shooters don't even have any aiming assistance in multiplayer right? It's primarily used in single player and even then can be disabled.
I don't know about "most" games, but the Halo, COD, and L4D games certainly do have aiming assistance in multiplayer.
Regarding Shadowrun, the IGN comments don't make sense
IGN is hardly the only source for those opinions. Even the developers confirmed that the PC controls were tweaked for balance against the 360. For instance, the reticle blur during quick turns mainly affects PC users, who are used to being able to aim quickly without being punished for it. Whether that falls into the category of "they nerfed the PC controls" or "the game isn't about quick aiming" is arguable, but either way, the game is specifically designed to erase the disadvantage of using a gamepad.
The issue is that the majority of online gamers now actually play with a gamepad
The majority of television watchers use standard-definition TV sets. Does that mean HDTV isn't better quality?
most arguments against the gamepad and console playing as you've mentioned in this post and previous posts are simply not even true
Er.. just because you deny them doesn't make them not true.;)
so it strongly suggests those holding out against console gaming are doing so not because they couldn't get used to it but because they have some pre-defined hate for console gaming.
Well, I hope you now realize that assumption is false. If I had some pre-defined hate for console gaming, I wouldn't have spent hundreds of dollars on an Xbox, Xbox 360, and Xbox Live subscription, and I wouldn't have bothered sending my 360 back four times when it got the RROD.
(Turns out it was the power supply, not the console. Once they figured that out, they didn't want to ship a new power supply until I paid to ship the old one back, even though they shipped the console back and forth and paid f
It is still about the rights of the original copright owner
Maybe for you it is. It seems that you see preserving copyright holders' supposed rights as a goal in itself. But the "majority of slashdotters" you're complaining about don't: they see copyright as a means to an end, which can be used for good (promoting sharing) or evil (prohibiting sharing).
Personally, I wouldn't mind at all if the GPL lost its legal teeth because copyright were abolished. I see the GPL as mainly giving back the rights that copyright took away; in a world where anything could be freely copied, cloned, disassembled, modified, and redistributed, I don't think it would be very important to require people to distribute source along with binaries anyway.
Uh... Descent started out on PC. This isn't a PC vs. console issue. Look at the popular console FPSes: they're about soldiers walking around in realistic environments with gravity, just like the popular PC FPSes. Not because they're being held down by The PC Man (most console games are not available on PC), but because that's what people want to play.
What handicap? The difficulty of games isn't any less on a console, multiplayer isn't any less competitive even when put up against PC players, the game isn't any less fun or playable.
Sorry - I meant "handicap" in the other sense. Console players are handicapped with sluggish and inaccurate controls.
As for console games not being any less fun or playable... well, as I said, I beg to differ. I found Halo to be fun on PC, and not fun on Xbox. I found Halo 2 to be mostly fun on an Xbox when I was able to play with keyboad and mouse, not fun when I had to use the gamepad. And like I said, that wasn't due to a lack of time spent getting used to the controls.
Maybe if I had pressed on for much, much longer than it took me to get used to a mouse and keyboard, I would've reached the same level of comfort that you seem to have. But you know, life is short. It didn't take me more than a few weeks to get the hang of using a mouse and keyboard; why should I invest months or years in practicing with a gamepad, when all the games I want are on PC anyway (and when they're cross-platform, like TF2, the PC versions are always better)?
Your earlier point about games being hosted on peoples consoles making them more vulnerable shows a complete lack of understanding about how the most serious of cheats work, the difference between using cheats on the closed architecture of consoles vs. the open architecture of PCs and in fact a lack of understanding about client/server computing in general- hint: aimbots, wallhacks, radar, model hacks are all client side cheats, who the host is is entirely irrelevant.
Meanwhile, you ignore the problems of peer-hosted games: the host has zero lag, which gives him an advantage whether he's trying to cheat or not, and the host can push his router's standby button to freeze all the other players while he runs around and slaughters them. (And of course, if he has a modded console, he can do much worse things.)
I've actually seen that happen. I have not, however, seen anyone use these PC hacks you complain about. Maybe it's because I only play on VAC servers.
Regarding Shadowrun, pretty much everything you said was bs so I wont waste time covering it in detail, but basically the PC controls were no different to any other PC FPS
"IGN AU: Let's start off with the issues we had with the PC controls. We play a lot of online PC shooters, and the biggest issue we found with the PC Shadowrun controls is that they feel fairly sloppy and imprecise compared to other PC shooters. This is due to the larger crosshair size and wide bullet spread. Obviously this is a way to counteract the inaccuracy of the 360 control pad relative to a mouse and keyboard. Is there a better solution that you can think of that would give the PC controls the same tight feeling found in other PC shooters?"
and your comments about aiming assistance and aiming being unimportant run completely contradictory to each other.
Er, no. Without aiming assistance, you'd never hit anyone because it's hard to actually get the crosshair where you want it with a gamepad. Even with assistance, you don't have the same precision that you do with a mouse - the game nudges your crosshair toward the spot where you probably want it to go, but you still don't have the same degree of control. That lack of control is less of a problem in Shadowrun because Shadowrun explicitly does not rely as much on accurate aiming (see quote below).
Shadowrun had no less shooting emphasis than most other FPS games over the last 15 years.
"Mitch Gitelman: There's two things to think of. One is the whole 360 vs PC control balance thing - that's only one part of it. The other is that weapon accuracy is like that so that you can do some of the other things in Shadowrun that are so much fun.
If you tighten up the controls and that accuracy, combat
Why this doesn't seem to bother most PC gamers is beyond me. All I can think of is, maybe, they all use aimbots and hacks like a bunch of "daddy, don't take off my training wheels" assholes.
Speaking only for myself, aimbots and hacks don't bother me because I only on VAC servers.
You say that as if I wasn't a PC gamer who knows first hand that if you give it a chance and get used to the controller just like you had to with mouse and keyboard originally then there is absolutely no issue.
Believe me, I've spent as much time with the gamepad as it took me to get used to the mouse and keyboard, and I'm not alone. The gamepad still feels like playing in quicksand.
Maybe you're an exception. Or maybe you were just never very good with the mouse and keyboard, so you don't notice a difference.
This is mirrored by the fact there are so many console players playing online now, enough to dwarf the PC playing population in just about every dual platform multiplayer game- because it's just not a problem, or at very least not enough of a problem to be unable to outweigh the rampant cheating issue on the PC.
The reason it's "just not a problem" is that they all have the same handicap.
And don't kid yourself about "rampant cheating". Few people choose consoles because of cheating; they do it because they want to play from the couch, or save a few bucks, or play with their console-owning friends, or avoid the hassle of drivers and OS upgrades. Personally, I've seen more cheating on console games than PC games, thanks to the fact that they're hosted on other players' consoles instead of impartial third-party servers.
But then, games like Shadowrun that had PC vs. XBox multiplayer worked fine and XBox players were certainly at no disadvantage, you really couldn't tell if you were playing against another XBox or a PC player from the XBox and vice versa.
I suppose you think that had nothing to do with the weak PC controls, the gamepad aiming assistance, and the fact that Shadowrun de-emphasizes quick aiming in favor of other skills anyway?
Contrary to popular belief amongst PC gamers, FPS and even RTS games are just as fun with console controls
You say that as if PC gamers hold those beliefs mistakenly and have never actually tried it.
I have. It isn't fun. For instance, Halo 2 only became fun for me after I bought a SmartJoy Frag (keyboard+mouse adapter for Xbox), and even then, it wasn't as fun as Halo 1 was on PC.
In terms of RTS games I complete C&C3 and RA3 on hardest difficulty on the 360 no problem and find no issue playing online either.
Playing online against other console players, right?
Ever wonder why games that are released on both console and PC rarely have cross-platform multiplayer?
Yes, that's how primitive* PC trends are destroying good console gaming for some time.
*walking, inherently a 2D thing, in a 3D game?
How primitive indeed! Ever since I realized we live in a 3D universe, I've only traveled by jet pack and pogo stick. Why let that third dimension go to waste by walking or driving around in 2D?
Nineteen Eighty-Four will not enter the US public domain until 2044,[13] and in the European Union until 2020, although it is in the public domain in Canada,[14] Russia,[15] and Australia.[16]
Now, this is no worse off than if the GPL code had never been written in the first place, true, but it goes against the idea of everyone working towards a common goal (creating open source software for users) - since the result is waste of time duplicating code under different licenses.
That's because everyone isn't working towards a common goal. Open source is a means to an end, but that end is different for different people.
Some people just have the goal of creating software that others can freely incorporate into their own projects (providing freedom for developers and quality software for end users). BSD is fine for them.
Other people have the goal of creating software that will always be free for its end users to examine and modify (providing freedom for developers, quality software for end users, and freedom for end users). BSD is no good for them, they need the GPL.
No, you didn't. You said that a copy of information was more like the concept of that information, than it was a copy of the information.
Look, my posts are right here in this thread. If I had actually said that, you'd be able to easily copy and paste my exact words and link to the post where I said them. So either cite the exact quote, or admit you're lying.
You obviously have no understanding of copyright law. The copyright owner is not claiming rights over the "concept of arranging bits in sequence," they are claiming rights over a particular creative work.
I'm not the one who's having trouble understanding this.
The "creative work" they claim rights over is the concept of arranging bits in a particular sequence. To continue the credit card metaphor, they're claiming ownership of the number 1234567890123456 -- i.e. the concept of arranging those digits in that sequence -- not a piece of plastic with that number embossed on it.
No, someone who holds a patent claims rights over a certain arrangement of parts to make a particular working device. They don't claim the concept of putting parts together to make a working device.
Again: those are the same thing.
Suppose I patented a mousetrap, consisting of a piece of wood, a spring, and a metal bar. I would be claiming ownership over the concept of arranging wood + spring + bar in that particular way, and attempting to prevent anyone else from using my concept (arranging those parts in that fashion) unless they paid me for the right to use it.
No, I'm talking about the information itself, not "the concept of information" or the physical medium it is stored on, but the information itself.
That makes no sense. 1234567890123456 exists as either a concept (the idea of arranging those digits in that order) or as an aspect of a physical object (a piece of plastic with those digits embossed on it). It has no existence outside of those two things.
When you talk about "the information itself" (like a song), you're talking about the concept. When you talk about a copy (like a CD), you're talking about a physical thing.
That's OK, but it makes you either insane or stupid. Information actually exists. It is not the same as the concept of information, or the medium it is stored on.
What makes you insane or stupid is believing information has some magical third kind of existence that's independent from the concept and the physical embodiment.
You clearly did. You equated an exact copy of information with the general concept of information.
No, I said they were different. That's the opposite of equating them.
You realize the earlier comments in this thread are still visible, right? You won't fool anyone by claiming I wrote something I didn't.
I was never talking about concepts of information, that was a red herring you introduced into the discussion.
Earlier, you wrote: "Software is not a product of nature. It is the fruit of human labor and intellect. It must be written, you don't just discover it. Furthermore, it is non-obvious. Ask 10 programmers to write a video compression routine, and you'll get 10 different routines. There's almost unlimited scope for creativity and innovation. There isn't just one true way of compressing video that's obvious - new techniques continue to be invented and evolved."
What you're talking about there is not copies of information. You don't download a copy of Ubuntu onto your hard drive by writing it or applying non-obvious human labor and intellect -- you get it by copying some bits from somewhere else. The labor and intellect went into figuring out what those bits should be in the first place: the concept of arranging bits in that particular order.
Someone who holds the copyright on a piece of software claims to own the concept of arranging bits in the sequence that makes up that program, and they use the law to prevent anyone else from arranging bits in that same order. Someone who holds a patent claims to own the concept of putting parts together in a certain arrangement to make a working device, and they use the law to prevent anyone else from arranging those parts in that way. You know that.
What the fuck are you talking about? This was never about ideas versus physical objects. Where would physical objects even enter into this discussion?
Here (abstract invention vs. physical machines) and here (a copy of software on physical storage vs. the abstract information that makes up that software).
It makes no sense to claim that you're not talking about concepts of information and that you're not talking about physical objects. If you're talking about information at all, you must either be talking about the abstract concept of that information (the number 1234567890123456) or a physical copy of it (a card with that number printed on it). There is no third state of information!
No, a specific number is a number, not a concept. The idea of numbers is a concept.
I'd say concepts and numbers are both information. I don't see the distinction you're trying to draw. Perhaps you could explain what you think the difference is.
I'm not sure why you think that a copy of information becomes a generalized concept of that information.
I'm not sure why you think I think that. I certainly never said any such thing.
The "generalized concept" of some information, and a physical copy of that information, are two different things. One does not become the other. Just like a red wagon doesn't become the color red, or vice versa.
I'm sorry if that's too much for you to understand. Maybe you shouldn't get into discussions about abstract things like information if you can't distinguish between ideas and physical objects.
I don't think you even realize what you are saying.
The problem is that you don't realize what I'm saying. You've completely failed to understand my point, and now you're attacking your own ridiculous misinterpretation.
If I were to copy your credit card number, would it cease to be your credit card number, and suddenly become a general concept of "a credit card number"?
Of course not. What a stupid thing to ask.
A number is already a "general concept". I might own a piece of plastic with the number 1234567890123456 embossed on it, but the number 1234567890123456 itself is not owned by anyone. The piece of plastic is not the same thing as the number.
Again, if you can't grasp that difference, you're in way over your head here.
The same way a red wagon is not the color red. The same way three cookies are not the number 3. The same way a yardstick is not a yard. The same way a CD is not a song.
But now you're talking about owning concepts, not information. A very different thing.
No, they're the same thing. The color of a wagon, the length of a stick, the sequence of words in a book: all intangible concepts. All information.
Instead of personal habits, what about financial data about a company? Some Wall Street pundit might guess the rough figures, but that's not as valuable as the actual data. Does a company not own its own confidential financial data?
Indeed, a company does not own its confidential financial data. The fact "Company X lost $5 million in FY 2008" is no more subject to ownership than the fact "the Declaration of Independence was signed in 1776", or any other.
That doesn't mean we can't have laws against sharing financial data, of course (or other personal info: medical records, etc.). But laws like that are simply restrictions on speech, unrelated to ownership.
How would anybody know who guessed correctly, without access to the actual data?
You, the supposed "owner" of that data, would know. Wouldn't you? I mean, you own it, it's yours, right? Why wouldn't you know who has your property?
Why have you changed the topic of debate from "information is not subject to ownership" to "what is the definition of ownership"?
Actually, you were the one who started arguing about what ownership is, but that's beside the point. In order to discuss "X is Y", we must agree on what "X" and "Y" mean. Apparently we don't, which is why we're now discussing what "Y" means.
If information is not subject to ownership, why have there been so many successful court cases that have decided in favor of those who have had information stolen?
If pollution isn't rape and Mother Earth isn't a real woman, why have there been so many successful court cases decided against those who raped the Earth with their pollution? Because metaphor is not reality.
Information is not literally "stolen" any more than the environment is literally "raped". People can be sued for copyright infringement, unlawful access to a computer system, etc. but those aren't the same as stealing property.
If you were to steal confidential information from a company's servers, you would probably be punished more severely than if you stole the actual servers.
Thanks for proving my point. What you call "stealing" information is a completely different crime from stealing property, which is why the punishment could be more severe.
If your reasoning were correct, and the information inside the server were owned in the same sense that the server is owned, that wouldn't happen. It'd be like punishing someone more severely for stealing a $50 DVD player out of a semi truck than for stealing the whole truck: stealing more property leads to more punishment, not less.
You yourself said in an earlier post that one could own information:
I said no such thing. You seem to believe that "information" is the same thing as a particular physical embodiment (a copy) of that information, and that belief is causing you to misinterpret what I wrote.
Information is not the same as a physical thing that embodies a copy of that information. You can own a red wagon, but you can't own the color red. You can own a yardstick, but you can't own the length of a yard. You can own a book, but you can't own the story.
Even copyright law recognizes this distinction. The owner of a copy of a work has a different set of rights from the copyright holder.
But what about information that isn't about externally verifiable constants? For example, I masturbate into the toilet at 11:34am. Nobody else witnesses this event. How can anybody else discover this later, unless I tell them?
They can guess it. There are only 1440 minutes in a day, and only so many places a person can masturbate. If a few thousand people decided to speculate about your personal habits, it's likely that one of them would get it right (although he wouldn't know it, unless you told him).
Now, if you truly "owned" that fact, then you would be able to stop the guy who guessed correctly from sharing it with anyone else... because it would be yours, not his. But that would be ridiculous.
You are using an extreme definition of ownership, where common usage of ownership is much more varied.
Then please, let's see some citations of other people talking about "owning" information who aren't claiming control of all copies. I suspect that for every example you cite, I can find multiple examples to support the standard definition I've been using.
You don't become the owner, but you become an owner.
Can we at least agree that the meaning of "owner" you're using here is different from the meaning that a copyright holder uses when he claims to "own" a song, movie, program, etc.?
The "service" you speak of is called "selling" - therefore, the information is sold to you.
No, that service is called telling. You were off by only one letter, but it's a big difference.
Once again, you continue to twist common words whose meaning is quite settled and well understood.
There you go again, talking about yourself in the second person.
if I was the only person in the world in possession of a certain piece of information, wouldn't that make me the owner, as I have exclusive control over it? I don't see how you could argue otherwise
Watch and learn, my son.
Having sole possession of a piece of information doesn't make you the owner because the information can still be discovered and used independently.
Suppose I'm the first person to measure the speed of light, and I don't tell anyone that number. I'm the only one who has it, right? But anyone else can still do their own experiments and arrive at the same number. If I "owned" that number, then I'd have the right and the ability to prevent them from using it or telling it to someone else -- but I don't.
A person who claims to own some information is claiming control over all copies of that information, including copies that are made in the future. A musician who claims to own a song isn't just claiming the right to control what he does with the copies in his possession, but also what I do with the copy in my possession, and what I do with any copies I might make on my own (even though he clearly has no control over that, and even though giving him control would serve no legitimate purpose).
I have no problem with collective ownership of ideas and information. What I was doing there was arguing rhetorically against idiotic hardline libertarian/capitalist ideals.
I didnt say that android made all the same data available, I said they both cache the same things in comparable places.
You said they were both equally insecure because of that. What you ignored, and what you're still dancing around, is the fact that iPhone grants access to that data, without notifying the user, and Android doesn't. That has real security implications.
And yes, I did break open android for as long as it took to realize that you can't write for it in C or anything like it.
Actually, these days, you can. The NDK was released months ago, and people were unofficially writing native code even before then. (You still need to write some Java code, but e.g. emulators can do all the heavy lifting in C.)
If you're not interested in Android, then you have no obligation to check it out. But you're doing us all a disservice by pretending to know things about it that aren't actually true.
(you'll probably think here that since they have similar syntax I don't know what I'm talking about, but I challenge you to think it through for five seconds)
You're right, I do think you don't know what you're talking about, but that's because of the falsehoods you've actually written in this thread.
If your programming is anything like your reasoning, it's become pretty clear why you've ultimately chosen java over C. (++/Obj)
There you go again, making a fool out of yourself with your fanboy assumptions. I've been writing C code for 15 years -- but of course that has no relevance to Apple's security holes, now, does it? I don't work for them.
(On the other hand, if you work for Apple, that might explain why they have these security holes...)
It is a fact that "Little-Linux-Variation" (android) is precisely as insecure and for all the same reasons as "Little-BSD-Variation" (iphoneos). They both cache all the same things and in comparable places, and data in both is protected either by virtue of being in a binary database, or by virtue of POSIX style permissions.
That's an interesting theory, but maybe instead of speculating based on how you think the two systems work, you should learn how they actually do work. Android does not make all the same data available to every application that the iPhone OS does.
Apple does its best to scrub the malware out of the app store, and the open source community does its best to scrub the malware out of the android lexicon. Traditionally, both approaches have just about the same affect: the vast majority of binaries for both platforms are safe, but a few arent.
The difference is that as soon as you install an Android application, you know which potentially harmful features it has access to: if it doesn't request permission to read your contacts, then you know it won't read your contacts.
With an iPhone application, you can only assume it has access to everything on your phone.
All of that said, I prefer the iphone. It's an aesthetic choice and has nothing to do with security or functionality, since they're both really pretty much the same logical device.
That's fine. You can use whatever device you want. You can even pretend there's no difference in security or functionality if you want, but please don't mislead others into thinking there's no difference.
How exactly are the permissions enforced? Did Google implement some kind of filesystem with application-specific ACLs?
Each app gets its own user ID and has no read access to files owned by other apps. To obtain data from another app, you have to go through the system-wide content provider interface. The other app has to actively support that, and it can enforce permission checks on the caller in code and/or in its manifest.
Was there a serious effort to close the backdoors, such as updating another apps shared libraries or reading GPS coordinates from system logs?
Yes. One app can't overwrite files belonging to another app, and system logs aren't world readable.
Are applications prevented from taking over the whole screen and mimicking another app's interface to trick users into entering their passwords?
Not exactly -- apps always take up the whole screen, and the system can't stop you from making your app look like someone else's -- but it's hard to see how this would be exploited in practice. Users will (hopefully) be suspicious if they see their favorite app suddenly appear, unrequested, and ask them for a password they've already entered. The malicious app would still need internet permission in order to send that password anywhere, and it may need other permissions to get itself in a position to (e.g. start at boot) mimic another app.
Unless a comprehensive solution is implemented, this is just a security theater in that only legit apps will ask for permissions.
The designers weren't stupid. I suggest you read up on Android security, starting with the link I gave earlier. An app that doesn't request permission for a sensitive operation will be unable to perform that operation.
Perhaps someday such a system will become viable with much more powerful mobile hardware and better thought out security system that allows more functional legitimate apps
It's already here, and it's called Android. When you install an app, it tells you what permissions the app is requesting, and you can cancel if you're suspicious. Most operations that you'd consider potentially harmful or privacy-violating (reading various types of personal data, accessing the internet, making phone calls, preventing the phone from sleeping, etc.) can only be performed if the app listed the relevant permissions in its manifest.
It's not perfect... you know what the app is capable of doing, but not what it actually will do. Without looking at the code, you can't tell if the app that requests "read GPS position" and "access the internet" is going to send your GPS position to someone over the internet, or if the two features are unrelated. But it does prevent surprises like the ones in TFA.
Slashdot Mirror
22 minutes isn't bad compared to average (I've read 15 minutes is the average for many males) but women are capable of (and often need!) so much more than that.
Not necessarily intercourse, though. Many women get sore and uncomfortable after more than 10-15 minutes of that. And of course, since this is Slashdot, how many of us men are in good enough shape to go for that long, anway?
The trick is to realize that the clock starts as soon as you go down on her. 25 minutes of oral + 5 minutes of intercourse counts as a 30 minute session.
Android 2.0 Highlights
The Droid was the first Android 2.0 device.
Oh I see, so you were merely speculating and putting forth that speculation as fact? There are plenty of console gamers who would disagree with you.
I was doing what you did when you claimed "if you give it a chance and get used to the controller just like you had to with mouse and keyboard originally then there is absolutely no issue". Were you speculating, or were you extrapolating from your own experience and the experience of others? As you know, there are plenty of gamers who disagree with you too.
That's not how wifi works, it doesn't just randomly drop or become unstable unless the hardware itself is fault in which case yes, you would get disconnected.
I guess you don't own a microwave oven. ;)
When a connection becomes weak it doesn't send any less data back and forth to the client, what changes is the proportion of usable data to the proportion of redundant data for error checking and correcting, this has the effect of making the wifi connection speed appear slower, so for example if you have a wifi connection of 54mbps that means you're transmitting/receiving say, 54mbps of usable data along with 6mbps of data for error checking/correcting, when you move away from the access point and your speed drops to 10mbps you're still receiving 60mbps or whatever of data overall, but 50mbps of that is for error checking/correcting.
Er, that's not really how wifi works... it steps down to different transmission schemes when the signal/noise ratio gets too low.
But that's beside the point, because the console and the Live service don't care about the physical details of your connection. What they notice is that when your connection is interrupted (say, you turn on the microwave), packets start getting lost. Packet loss has the effect, at the TCP level, of making the connection slower, but that's because the sender's buffer fills up while it's retransmitting the old packets that were dropped. Xbox Live can't tell whether you've put your router on standby for a few seconds, or whether you're experiencing radio interference that causes all of Live's packets to be dropped for a few seconds, or whether some router anywhere in between is temporarily overloaded.
In fact, I just tried it myself: after pressing the standby button, it took 2-3 minutes before I was signed out of Live.
It's absolutely not possible to read/write the memory of modern consoles unless you get access to an execution environment where you can execute your own code (outside the limited sandbox of say, XNA).
So it's a good thing consoles are never vulnerable to buffer overflows and other expoits that let you run your own code, right? Oh wait, they are. That's how the Xbox, PSP, and Wii softmods work.
Maybe the 360 isn't vulnerable, but all we can really say is that none have been found yet.
This is why despite the console having been out since 2005, no such hack has yet been successful- all hacks have depended on detectable modifications to DVD drive firmwares and similar.
There's no inherent reason why a firmware mod would have to be detectable. The console can only check the drive's firmware by going through the drive. If the drive has been modified to lie about the contents of its own firmware, what's the console going to do about that?
CoD: MW2 certainly doesn't [have auto-aim in multiplayer] and I'm pretty sure MW and CoD5 didn't either.
COD 4 did, and from what I can tell, so do World at War and Modern Warfare 2. Maybe it's subtle enough that you don't notice it, but it's helping you nonetheless.
This is another straw man argument, pretty much everyone had an SDTV before HDTV came along
I'm not sure you know the difference between strawman and analogy.
How did a faulty power supply cause an RROD when the power supply is external and RROD represents an internal hardware fault?
RROD indicates a "general hardware failure". After several weeks,
I'll admit I never played on the original XBox, maybe it was that console that's the issue. Have you tried playing since on the 360?
Sure have. I haven't noticed any difference in the controls. Halo 3, TF2, and L4D/L4D2 are as awkward on the 360 as Halo 1 and 2 were on the Xbox. Of those, TF2 is the worst because it has no aim assistance: Valve realized the mistake and added it in for the L4D games.
This is really a non-issue because the host is randomly selected with no way to game that as it's decided by a central server and not by the players.
That doesn't make it a non-issue, it just means you can't cheat in every match.
Never played a console game online where this is possible, it certainly doesn't work on the 360 because if you do that your Live connection will drop and you'll get booted out the game yourself.
Well, it certainly was possible on Halo 2. As for the 360, I doubt they'll drop you if your connection goes down for just a few seconds at a time (which is how the cheat works) - otherwise the game would be unplayable on wifi or any other connection that isn't 100% reliable.
Even VAC is defeatable. On the PC you have access to read/write areas of memory as you wish, even if network transport is encrypted it has to be decrypted by the client for it to work with it so no matter what VAC does it is defeatable, it can at best make it harder to cheat, or catch old cheats when it gets updated, but it can do nothing in the long run to prevent cheating.
The same is true of console games, of course. In the long run, the game maker has no control over what people do at home with their own hardware. What matters is how easily and commonly exploited the games are in practice, and so far, the only cheating I've seen in VAC games has been in-game exploits.
You do realise most online console shooters don't even have any aiming assistance in multiplayer right? It's primarily used in single player and even then can be disabled.
I don't know about "most" games, but the Halo, COD, and L4D games certainly do have aiming assistance in multiplayer.
Regarding Shadowrun, the IGN comments don't make sense
IGN is hardly the only source for those opinions. Even the developers confirmed that the PC controls were tweaked for balance against the 360. For instance, the reticle blur during quick turns mainly affects PC users, who are used to being able to aim quickly without being punished for it. Whether that falls into the category of "they nerfed the PC controls" or "the game isn't about quick aiming" is arguable, but either way, the game is specifically designed to erase the disadvantage of using a gamepad.
The issue is that the majority of online gamers now actually play with a gamepad
The majority of television watchers use standard-definition TV sets. Does that mean HDTV isn't better quality?
most arguments against the gamepad and console playing as you've mentioned in this post and previous posts are simply not even true
Er.. just because you deny them doesn't make them not true. ;)
so it strongly suggests those holding out against console gaming are doing so not because they couldn't get used to it but because they have some pre-defined hate for console gaming.
Well, I hope you now realize that assumption is false. If I had some pre-defined hate for console gaming, I wouldn't have spent hundreds of dollars on an Xbox, Xbox 360, and Xbox Live subscription, and I wouldn't have bothered sending my 360 back four times when it got the RROD.
(Turns out it was the power supply, not the console. Once they figured that out, they didn't want to ship a new power supply until I paid to ship the old one back, even though they shipped the console back and forth and paid f
It is still about the rights of the original copright owner
Maybe for you it is. It seems that you see preserving copyright holders' supposed rights as a goal in itself. But the "majority of slashdotters" you're complaining about don't: they see copyright as a means to an end, which can be used for good (promoting sharing) or evil (prohibiting sharing).
Personally, I wouldn't mind at all if the GPL lost its legal teeth because copyright were abolished. I see the GPL as mainly giving back the rights that copyright took away; in a world where anything could be freely copied, cloned, disassembled, modified, and redistributed, I don't think it would be very important to require people to distribute source along with binaries anyway.
Uh... Descent started out on PC. This isn't a PC vs. console issue. Look at the popular console FPSes: they're about soldiers walking around in realistic environments with gravity, just like the popular PC FPSes. Not because they're being held down by The PC Man (most console games are not available on PC), but because that's what people want to play.
What handicap? The difficulty of games isn't any less on a console, multiplayer isn't any less competitive even when put up against PC players, the game isn't any less fun or playable.
Sorry - I meant "handicap" in the other sense. Console players are handicapped with sluggish and inaccurate controls.
As for console games not being any less fun or playable... well, as I said, I beg to differ. I found Halo to be fun on PC, and not fun on Xbox. I found Halo 2 to be mostly fun on an Xbox when I was able to play with keyboad and mouse, not fun when I had to use the gamepad. And like I said, that wasn't due to a lack of time spent getting used to the controls.
Maybe if I had pressed on for much, much longer than it took me to get used to a mouse and keyboard, I would've reached the same level of comfort that you seem to have. But you know, life is short. It didn't take me more than a few weeks to get the hang of using a mouse and keyboard; why should I invest months or years in practicing with a gamepad, when all the games I want are on PC anyway (and when they're cross-platform, like TF2, the PC versions are always better)?
Your earlier point about games being hosted on peoples consoles making them more vulnerable shows a complete lack of understanding about how the most serious of cheats work, the difference between using cheats on the closed architecture of consoles vs. the open architecture of PCs and in fact a lack of understanding about client/server computing in general- hint: aimbots, wallhacks, radar, model hacks are all client side cheats, who the host is is entirely irrelevant.
Meanwhile, you ignore the problems of peer-hosted games: the host has zero lag, which gives him an advantage whether he's trying to cheat or not, and the host can push his router's standby button to freeze all the other players while he runs around and slaughters them. (And of course, if he has a modded console, he can do much worse things.)
I've actually seen that happen. I have not, however, seen anyone use these PC hacks you complain about. Maybe it's because I only play on VAC servers.
Regarding Shadowrun, pretty much everything you said was bs so I wont waste time covering it in detail, but basically the PC controls were no different to any other PC FPS
"IGN AU: Let's start off with the issues we had with the PC controls. We play a lot of online PC shooters, and the biggest issue we found with the PC Shadowrun controls is that they feel fairly sloppy and imprecise compared to other PC shooters. This is due to the larger crosshair size and wide bullet spread. Obviously this is a way to counteract the inaccuracy of the 360 control pad relative to a mouse and keyboard. Is there a better solution that you can think of that would give the PC controls the same tight feeling found in other PC shooters?"
and your comments about aiming assistance and aiming being unimportant run completely contradictory to each other.
Er, no. Without aiming assistance, you'd never hit anyone because it's hard to actually get the crosshair where you want it with a gamepad. Even with assistance, you don't have the same precision that you do with a mouse - the game nudges your crosshair toward the spot where you probably want it to go, but you still don't have the same degree of control. That lack of control is less of a problem in Shadowrun because Shadowrun explicitly does not rely as much on accurate aiming (see quote below).
Shadowrun had no less shooting emphasis than most other FPS games over the last 15 years.
"Mitch Gitelman: There's two things to think of. One is the whole 360 vs PC control balance thing - that's only one part of it. The other is that weapon accuracy is like that so that you can do some of the other things in Shadowrun that are so much fun.
If you tighten up the controls and that accuracy, combat
Why this doesn't seem to bother most PC gamers is beyond me. All I can think of is, maybe, they all use aimbots and hacks like a bunch of "daddy, don't take off my training wheels" assholes.
Speaking only for myself, aimbots and hacks don't bother me because I only on VAC servers.
You say that as if I wasn't a PC gamer who knows first hand that if you give it a chance and get used to the controller just like you had to with mouse and keyboard originally then there is absolutely no issue.
Believe me, I've spent as much time with the gamepad as it took me to get used to the mouse and keyboard, and I'm not alone. The gamepad still feels like playing in quicksand.
Maybe you're an exception. Or maybe you were just never very good with the mouse and keyboard, so you don't notice a difference.
This is mirrored by the fact there are so many console players playing online now, enough to dwarf the PC playing population in just about every dual platform multiplayer game- because it's just not a problem, or at very least not enough of a problem to be unable to outweigh the rampant cheating issue on the PC.
The reason it's "just not a problem" is that they all have the same handicap.
And don't kid yourself about "rampant cheating". Few people choose consoles because of cheating; they do it because they want to play from the couch, or save a few bucks, or play with their console-owning friends, or avoid the hassle of drivers and OS upgrades. Personally, I've seen more cheating on console games than PC games, thanks to the fact that they're hosted on other players' consoles instead of impartial third-party servers.
But then, games like Shadowrun that had PC vs. XBox multiplayer worked fine and XBox players were certainly at no disadvantage, you really couldn't tell if you were playing against another XBox or a PC player from the XBox and vice versa.
I suppose you think that had nothing to do with the weak PC controls, the gamepad aiming assistance, and the fact that Shadowrun de-emphasizes quick aiming in favor of other skills anyway?
Contrary to popular belief amongst PC gamers, FPS and even RTS games are just as fun with console controls
You say that as if PC gamers hold those beliefs mistakenly and have never actually tried it.
I have. It isn't fun. For instance, Halo 2 only became fun for me after I bought a SmartJoy Frag (keyboard+mouse adapter for Xbox), and even then, it wasn't as fun as Halo 1 was on PC.
In terms of RTS games I complete C&C3 and RA3 on hardest difficulty on the 360 no problem and find no issue playing online either.
Playing online against other console players, right?
Ever wonder why games that are released on both console and PC rarely have cross-platform multiplayer?
Yes, that's how primitive* PC trends are destroying good console gaming for some time.
*walking, inherently a 2D thing, in a 3D game?
How primitive indeed! Ever since I realized we live in a 3D universe, I've only traveled by jet pack and pogo stick. Why let that third dimension go to waste by walking or driving around in 2D?
Wow, I sure wish the majority of slashdotters would come to this conclusion when software, movie, and music piracy is discussed.
The obvious difference is that GPL violations lead to less sharing, while piracy leads to more sharing.
Are you sure? Wikipedia disagrees:
Now, this is no worse off than if the GPL code had never been written in the first place, true, but it goes against the idea of everyone working towards a common goal (creating open source software for users) - since the result is waste of time duplicating code under different licenses.
That's because everyone isn't working towards a common goal. Open source is a means to an end, but that end is different for different people.
Some people just have the goal of creating software that others can freely incorporate into their own projects (providing freedom for developers and quality software for end users). BSD is fine for them.
Other people have the goal of creating software that will always be free for its end users to examine and modify (providing freedom for developers, quality software for end users, and freedom for end users). BSD is no good for them, they need the GPL.
No, you didn't. You said that a copy of information was more like the concept of that information, than it was a copy of the information.
Look, my posts are right here in this thread. If I had actually said that, you'd be able to easily copy and paste my exact words and link to the post where I said them. So either cite the exact quote, or admit you're lying.
You obviously have no understanding of copyright law. The copyright owner is not claiming rights over the "concept of arranging bits in sequence," they are claiming rights over a particular creative work.
I'm not the one who's having trouble understanding this.
The "creative work" they claim rights over is the concept of arranging bits in a particular sequence. To continue the credit card metaphor, they're claiming ownership of the number 1234567890123456 -- i.e. the concept of arranging those digits in that sequence -- not a piece of plastic with that number embossed on it.
No, someone who holds a patent claims rights over a certain arrangement of parts to make a particular working device. They don't claim the concept of putting parts together to make a working device.
Again: those are the same thing.
Suppose I patented a mousetrap, consisting of a piece of wood, a spring, and a metal bar. I would be claiming ownership over the concept of arranging wood + spring + bar in that particular way, and attempting to prevent anyone else from using my concept (arranging those parts in that fashion) unless they paid me for the right to use it.
No, I'm talking about the information itself, not "the concept of information" or the physical medium it is stored on, but the information itself.
That makes no sense. 1234567890123456 exists as either a concept (the idea of arranging those digits in that order) or as an aspect of a physical object (a piece of plastic with those digits embossed on it). It has no existence outside of those two things.
When you talk about "the information itself" (like a song), you're talking about the concept. When you talk about a copy (like a CD), you're talking about a physical thing.
That's OK, but it makes you either insane or stupid. Information actually exists. It is not the same as the concept of information, or the medium it is stored on.
What makes you insane or stupid is believing information has some magical third kind of existence that's independent from the concept and the physical embodiment.
You clearly did. You equated an exact copy of information with the general concept of information.
No, I said they were different. That's the opposite of equating them.
You realize the earlier comments in this thread are still visible, right? You won't fool anyone by claiming I wrote something I didn't.
I was never talking about concepts of information, that was a red herring you introduced into the discussion.
Earlier, you wrote: "Software is not a product of nature. It is the fruit of human labor and intellect. It must be written, you don't just discover it. Furthermore, it is non-obvious. Ask 10 programmers to write a video compression routine, and you'll get 10 different routines. There's almost unlimited scope for creativity and innovation. There isn't just one true way of compressing video that's obvious - new techniques continue to be invented and evolved."
What you're talking about there is not copies of information. You don't download a copy of Ubuntu onto your hard drive by writing it or applying non-obvious human labor and intellect -- you get it by copying some bits from somewhere else. The labor and intellect went into figuring out what those bits should be in the first place: the concept of arranging bits in that particular order.
Someone who holds the copyright on a piece of software claims to own the concept of arranging bits in the sequence that makes up that program, and they use the law to prevent anyone else from arranging bits in that same order. Someone who holds a patent claims to own the concept of putting parts together in a certain arrangement to make a working device, and they use the law to prevent anyone else from arranging those parts in that way. You know that.
What the fuck are you talking about? This was never about ideas versus physical objects. Where would physical objects even enter into this discussion?
Here (abstract invention vs. physical machines) and here (a copy of software on physical storage vs. the abstract information that makes up that software).
It makes no sense to claim that you're not talking about concepts of information and that you're not talking about physical objects. If you're talking about information at all, you must either be talking about the abstract concept of that information (the number 1234567890123456) or a physical copy of it (a card with that number printed on it). There is no third state of information!
No, a specific number is a number, not a concept. The idea of numbers is a concept.
I'd say concepts and numbers are both information. I don't see the distinction you're trying to draw. Perhaps you could explain what you think the difference is.
I'm not sure why you think that a copy of information becomes a generalized concept of that information.
I'm not sure why you think I think that. I certainly never said any such thing.
The "generalized concept" of some information, and a physical copy of that information, are two different things. One does not become the other. Just like a red wagon doesn't become the color red, or vice versa.
I'm sorry if that's too much for you to understand. Maybe you shouldn't get into discussions about abstract things like information if you can't distinguish between ideas and physical objects.
I don't think you even realize what you are saying.
The problem is that you don't realize what I'm saying. You've completely failed to understand my point, and now you're attacking your own ridiculous misinterpretation.
If I were to copy your credit card number, would it cease to be your credit card number, and suddenly become a general concept of "a credit card number"?
Of course not. What a stupid thing to ask.
A number is already a "general concept". I might own a piece of plastic with the number 1234567890123456 embossed on it, but the number 1234567890123456 itself is not owned by anyone. The piece of plastic is not the same thing as the number.
Again, if you can't grasp that difference, you're in way over your head here.
How is a copy of information not information?
The same way a red wagon is not the color red. The same way three cookies are not the number 3. The same way a yardstick is not a yard. The same way a CD is not a song.
But now you're talking about owning concepts, not information. A very different thing.
No, they're the same thing. The color of a wagon, the length of a stick, the sequence of words in a book: all intangible concepts. All information.
Instead of personal habits, what about financial data about a company? Some Wall Street pundit might guess the rough figures, but that's not as valuable as the actual data. Does a company not own its own confidential financial data?
Indeed, a company does not own its confidential financial data. The fact "Company X lost $5 million in FY 2008" is no more subject to ownership than the fact "the Declaration of Independence was signed in 1776", or any other.
That doesn't mean we can't have laws against sharing financial data, of course (or other personal info: medical records, etc.). But laws like that are simply restrictions on speech, unrelated to ownership.
How would anybody know who guessed correctly, without access to the actual data?
You, the supposed "owner" of that data, would know. Wouldn't you? I mean, you own it, it's yours, right? Why wouldn't you know who has your property?
Why have you changed the topic of debate from "information is not subject to ownership" to "what is the definition of ownership"?
Actually, you were the one who started arguing about what ownership is, but that's beside the point. In order to discuss "X is Y", we must agree on what "X" and "Y" mean. Apparently we don't, which is why we're now discussing what "Y" means.
If information is not subject to ownership, why have there been so many successful court cases that have decided in favor of those who have had information stolen?
If pollution isn't rape and Mother Earth isn't a real woman, why have there been so many successful court cases decided against those who raped the Earth with their pollution? Because metaphor is not reality.
Information is not literally "stolen" any more than the environment is literally "raped". People can be sued for copyright infringement, unlawful access to a computer system, etc. but those aren't the same as stealing property.
If you were to steal confidential information from a company's servers, you would probably be punished more severely than if you stole the actual servers.
Thanks for proving my point. What you call "stealing" information is a completely different crime from stealing property, which is why the punishment could be more severe.
If your reasoning were correct, and the information inside the server were owned in the same sense that the server is owned, that wouldn't happen. It'd be like punishing someone more severely for stealing a $50 DVD player out of a semi truck than for stealing the whole truck: stealing more property leads to more punishment, not less.
You yourself said in an earlier post that one could own information:
I said no such thing. You seem to believe that "information" is the same thing as a particular physical embodiment (a copy) of that information, and that belief is causing you to misinterpret what I wrote.
Information is not the same as a physical thing that embodies a copy of that information. You can own a red wagon, but you can't own the color red. You can own a yardstick, but you can't own the length of a yard. You can own a book, but you can't own the story.
Even copyright law recognizes this distinction. The owner of a copy of a work has a different set of rights from the copyright holder.
But what about information that isn't about externally verifiable constants? For example, I masturbate into the toilet at 11:34am. Nobody else witnesses this event. How can anybody else discover this later, unless I tell them?
They can guess it. There are only 1440 minutes in a day, and only so many places a person can masturbate. If a few thousand people decided to speculate about your personal habits, it's likely that one of them would get it right (although he wouldn't know it, unless you told him).
Now, if you truly "owned" that fact, then you would be able to stop the guy who guessed correctly from sharing it with anyone else... because it would be yours, not his. But that would be ridiculous.
You are using an extreme definition of ownership, where common usage of ownership is much more varied.
Then please, let's see some citations of other people talking about "owning" information who aren't claiming control of all copies. I suspect that for every example you cite, I can find multiple examples to support the standard definition I've been using.
You don't become the owner, but you become an owner.
Can we at least agree that the meaning of "owner" you're using here is different from the meaning that a copyright holder uses when he claims to "own" a song, movie, program, etc.?
The "service" you speak of is called "selling" - therefore, the information is sold to you.
No, that service is called telling. You were off by only one letter, but it's a big difference.
Once again, you continue to twist common words whose meaning is quite settled and well understood.
There you go again, talking about yourself in the second person.
if I was the only person in the world in possession of a certain piece of information, wouldn't that make me the owner, as I have exclusive control over it? I don't see how you could argue otherwise
Watch and learn, my son.
Having sole possession of a piece of information doesn't make you the owner because the information can still be discovered and used independently.
Suppose I'm the first person to measure the speed of light, and I don't tell anyone that number. I'm the only one who has it, right? But anyone else can still do their own experiments and arrive at the same number. If I "owned" that number, then I'd have the right and the ability to prevent them from using it or telling it to someone else -- but I don't.
A person who claims to own some information is claiming control over all copies of that information, including copies that are made in the future. A musician who claims to own a song isn't just claiming the right to control what he does with the copies in his possession, but also what I do with the copy in my possession, and what I do with any copies I might make on my own (even though he clearly has no control over that, and even though giving him control would serve no legitimate purpose).
I have no problem with collective ownership of ideas and information. What I was doing there was arguing rhetorically against idiotic hardline libertarian/capitalist ideals.
Fair enough.
I didnt say that android made all the same data available, I said they both cache the same things in comparable places.
You said they were both equally insecure because of that. What you ignored, and what you're still dancing around, is the fact that iPhone grants access to that data, without notifying the user, and Android doesn't. That has real security implications.
And yes, I did break open android for as long as it took to realize that you can't write for it in C or anything like it.
Actually, these days, you can. The NDK was released months ago, and people were unofficially writing native code even before then. (You still need to write some Java code, but e.g. emulators can do all the heavy lifting in C.)
If you're not interested in Android, then you have no obligation to check it out. But you're doing us all a disservice by pretending to know things about it that aren't actually true.
(you'll probably think here that since they have similar syntax I don't know what I'm talking about, but I challenge you to think it through for five seconds)
You're right, I do think you don't know what you're talking about, but that's because of the falsehoods you've actually written in this thread.
If your programming is anything like your reasoning, it's become pretty clear why you've ultimately chosen java over C. (++/Obj)
There you go again, making a fool out of yourself with your fanboy assumptions. I've been writing C code for 15 years -- but of course that has no relevance to Apple's security holes, now, does it? I don't work for them.
(On the other hand, if you work for Apple, that might explain why they have these security holes...)
It is a fact that "Little-Linux-Variation" (android) is precisely as insecure and for all the same reasons as "Little-BSD-Variation" (iphoneos). They both cache all the same things and in comparable places, and data in both is protected either by virtue of being in a binary database, or by virtue of POSIX style permissions.
That's an interesting theory, but maybe instead of speculating based on how you think the two systems work, you should learn how they actually do work. Android does not make all the same data available to every application that the iPhone OS does.
Apple does its best to scrub the malware out of the app store, and the open source community does its best to scrub the malware out of the android lexicon. Traditionally, both approaches have just about the same affect: the vast majority of binaries for both platforms are safe, but a few arent.
The difference is that as soon as you install an Android application, you know which potentially harmful features it has access to: if it doesn't request permission to read your contacts, then you know it won't read your contacts.
With an iPhone application, you can only assume it has access to everything on your phone.
All of that said, I prefer the iphone. It's an aesthetic choice and has nothing to do with security or functionality, since they're both really pretty much the same logical device.
That's fine. You can use whatever device you want. You can even pretend there's no difference in security or functionality if you want, but please don't mislead others into thinking there's no difference.
How exactly are the permissions enforced? Did Google implement some kind of filesystem with application-specific ACLs?
Each app gets its own user ID and has no read access to files owned by other apps. To obtain data from another app, you have to go through the system-wide content provider interface. The other app has to actively support that, and it can enforce permission checks on the caller in code and/or in its manifest.
Was there a serious effort to close the backdoors, such as updating another apps shared libraries or reading GPS coordinates from system logs?
Yes. One app can't overwrite files belonging to another app, and system logs aren't world readable.
Are applications prevented from taking over the whole screen and mimicking another app's interface to trick users into entering their passwords?
Not exactly -- apps always take up the whole screen, and the system can't stop you from making your app look like someone else's -- but it's hard to see how this would be exploited in practice. Users will (hopefully) be suspicious if they see their favorite app suddenly appear, unrequested, and ask them for a password they've already entered. The malicious app would still need internet permission in order to send that password anywhere, and it may need other permissions to get itself in a position to (e.g. start at boot) mimic another app.
Unless a comprehensive solution is implemented, this is just a security theater in that only legit apps will ask for permissions.
The designers weren't stupid. I suggest you read up on Android security, starting with the link I gave earlier. An app that doesn't request permission for a sensitive operation will be unable to perform that operation.
Perhaps someday such a system will become viable with much more powerful mobile hardware and better thought out security system that allows more functional legitimate apps
It's already here, and it's called Android. When you install an app, it tells you what permissions the app is requesting, and you can cancel if you're suspicious. Most operations that you'd consider potentially harmful or privacy-violating (reading various types of personal data, accessing the internet, making phone calls, preventing the phone from sleeping, etc.) can only be performed if the app listed the relevant permissions in its manifest.
It's not perfect... you know what the app is capable of doing, but not what it actually will do. Without looking at the code, you can't tell if the app that requests "read GPS position" and "access the internet" is going to send your GPS position to someone over the internet, or if the two features are unrelated. But it does prevent surprises like the ones in TFA.