I'm curious how far back those flashbacks are. Because honestly, Filemaker Pro scripting back in versions 3-6 was probably appropriate given the rest of the database relatively limited capabilities. It really was a fairly well balanced environment. Easy to get a simple attactive database going even for relative amateurs.
Starting in version 7 though, and added to incrementally through 13, the system has grown immensely more expressive, with new script steps and options, variables, parameters, event handling, script debugger with watch window, call stack, and breakpoints, etc. Its evolved into a much more powerful system, but its still got essentially the same point and click script editor, and it just no longer fits. The rest of the system has outgrown it in sophistication, it desperately needs to be able to go back and forth between "point and click script editor" and "plain text script editing".
There are all kinds of 3rd party bits to fill in the gaps... one to search scripts by regex to find matches, one to diff scripts, etc... all stuff that would be trivial (and free) with a plaintext format.
Well, my new macbook has an HDMI port, which i've never used...
Which new macbook would that be? All the new macbooks I've looked at have mini-displayport, which requires an adapter to go to hdmi.
For the vast majority of users, no ethernet or hdmi represents a small cost saving without losing any functionality they will actually use. For those few who need it, the option is available quite cheaply.
For a significant number of users, they use ethernet at work, because wfi hasn't been deployed, and installing your own access point would be "frowned upon".
As a more technical type myself, I use ethernet quite regularly -- to setup access points that don't have wifi on by default, to flash firmware of network devices, to configure access points that don't have management turned on for wifi, to test ethernet connectivity, to create an adhoc access point, to create an ad hoc bridge, and when tranferring large data sets.
No hdmi bites people who want to connect to a projector, especially somebody elses projector.
For the vast majority of users, no ethernet or hdmi represents a small cost saving
You think apple lowered the price because they didn't give you those ports? Yeah, that's plausible./sarcasm
without losing any functionality they will actually use. For those few who need it, the option is available quite cheaply.
From apple its $60-$90 bucks for the pair of adapters. Sure you can get non-apple accessories but that's beside the point. Cost is only half the problem with adapters, the other half is the hassle of carrying them around with you.
I can't tell you how many times I"ve been in meetings where the guy with the apple doesn't have his bag of adapters and can't connect to the projector or big screen. Which these days generally has VGA and HDMI.
I suspect that the keyboard was initially not included to (a) make the cost of ownership seem less than it would later prove to be, and (b) give people the impression that Windows 8 could be used in some reasonable fashion entirely via touch.
Its honestly actually perfectly fine as a pure tablet.
But the big feature of RT is MS office. And Office benefits immensely from a keyboard.
You may be right about not including it to bring the perceived cost down. Much like new macs not including adapters to attach it to obscure devices like hdmi or ethernet.;)
Right, that's more or less what i was thinking, but isn't android and in particular the the google nexus stuff reasonably open already? Surely it wouldn't be that much to defeat the DRM. Its just a 3rd party app after all, so it shouldn't have deep hooks beneath the regular OS like the software that runs the actual cellular radio etc.
And if so, it shouldn't be THAT hard to put the droid netflix code into a wrapper?
I wonder if the existing android emulators can play netflix? I'll have to look into that... and looks like No. But it could be related to ARM hardware emulation issues -- which I hadn't considered. IMO that's probably why they went with WINE+silverlight. Even if they could defeat the hardware validation (and I expect they could), they'd still be running a video coden in full on hardware emulation (not just virtualization).
Are there any non-microsoft/non-silverlight implementations of the netflix app on x86?
Playstation 4.. lol... too bad that's going to be a DRM clusterfuck.
I was under the impression that Bluray players and smart TVs (especially samsung) run an embedded linux. How are they able to stream netflix?
Netflix supports and has supported for a while now, non-Silverlight enabled playback. It even supports Windows 8.1 on IE11 via HTML5 rather than silverlight. I expect the Windows 8 modern UI netflix app also has no dependancy on silverlight.
But you raise an interesting question, rather than attacking linux playback by way of a Wine+Silverlight 'pipeline', would it not be more straightforward to pipe it through whatever is happening with a chromebook or android device??
That just because you can't have something, it's somehow virtuous not to want it.
Virtuous to not want it? Or just a pointless waste of time to express that you do want it, before getting around to suggesting a "compromise" option that is at least plausibly consistent with the physics of the known universe, and has a reasonable probability of actually happening.
I intend to be living a fantastic life and raising hell for another decade or three yet. Deal with it.
So... your magic number isn't 60, but possibly 85 or 90. Ok, that's fine. I am more than happy to let you define how long you think your quality of life is good. So what happens after that?
I've one great-great-uncle who lived to be 106. (They found him one evening leaned up against a fencepost, where he'd evidently stopped to take a little break whilst making his daily walk around his farm. Nothing wrong with him, the doctor said, except that he finally just wore out.)
Yeah, and I've got an 80+ year old great uncle in-law or something who's been bedridden for years now. Adult-onset type 2 diabetes. The diabetes so far has caused blindness, and has led to the amputation of both legs. It could happen to anyone, even you. 51 is a long way from 70.
My own grandfather developed Alzheimer's, and although he remained perfectly healthy in body until the end, that was probably the most horrifying and heart wrenching thing to undergo. He was terrified at least for as long as knew what was happening, and it wasn't much better for those around him.
We all wish to age gracefully, die in our sleep peacefully, and while I agree arbitrarily committing suicide on your 60th birthday is nuts... committing suicide when the circumstances of your final days are rapidly becoming apparent is pretty rational in my books.
So they correspond to bounding boxes defined by GPS coordinates. And addresses are like wise definable in terms of GPS coordinates, and this is rapidly taking place. I'd be surprised if 80%
Determining whether an address is inside or outside of the bounding box is very doable in an automated way.
Hell, two halves of the same house can be in different regions with different sales tax rates - try handling that in a sensible way.
Assuming this is actually a real issue, its still a non-issue. Either the GPS tag for the address places it inside the tax region or it doesn't. As somone who sells things online, I'm not the least bit worried that dumbfuck county, USA is going to come after me for tax evasion because some guy ordered something from me while sitting in kitchen which is technically in tax region A, instead of his living room in region B.
If they feel the GPS coordinates are wrong, they can submit the correction, and the database can be updated. But I'm not going to worry about it.
Just as I don't worry that a ZIP or postal code in the databases I use now are incorrect. Which happens. All the time. Espeically as new addresses and postal codes are being issued all the time and its not unusual to run into one that isn't in the database yet. But its not the end of the world.
It's completely insane, and they missed out on getting a new COO because a decade ago the guy worked there & just gave a standard 2 weeks... And it wasn't discovered until they'd made the decision to hire him...
If neither party wishes to enforce that clause of the contract, and they both agree to ignore it, what would stop them from proceeding with the hire?
Absolutely nothing.
The fact is the company wished to enforce that clause more than they wanted to hire him. The contract did NOT force their hand, it was entirely their choice. Bottom line: the company your buddy works for is managed by idiots.
Places my wife has worked just have a blanket policy that they won't re-hire someone.
That's mostly a statement that:
"Look, if you leave, we're not your safety net while you look for a better job, we'll find someone else who is looking to stay with us."
This is fairly common, especially at, I'll call them less desirable "tier 2" employers that get used like safety nets by the employees. The employee gets a job, works for a while, finds a better job at a "tier 1" company, loses it a few months later, and then retreats back to their original employer. A few months later they do it again. And its not just one employee doing it, but a chunk of their work force.
In reality, the policy is selectively enforced. If they really want someone, they'll hire them, policy or no.
This is without a doubt the big weakness in the android and windows phone markets.
I'm not sure that the Apple or Blackberry markets are all that much better. You could buy an iphone 3GS less than a year ago, and Apple has already announced that security vulnerabilities in ios6 aren't going to be patched. And the devices will not be eligible to upgrade to io7.
We're talking several millions of the devices in active use, many of them less than a year old.
Yes, that's not QUITE as bad as Android 2.x devices sitting on a shelf today. But its not exactly GOOD either, especially given how many iphone 3GS are out there.
Yeah, if your CEO is saying something like this...
"Oh crap, this free product is going to eat our lunch and we'll be bankrupt by 2018, unless we can figure out how to make our product substantially more compelling real quick. And to be honest, we haven't got the faintest idea how to do that at this point."
There's spyware out there that turns on your webcam (without turning on the indicator light, incidentally)
Not of the LED for the camera is on the power circuit for the camera. I don't dispute that there are some (many?) really terrible hardware implementations out there though, but a good design cannot be defeated by spyware.
Hell, there's been stories about such spyware right here on Slashdot; laptops and iPads that were issued to students and then used to spy on them in their bedrooms, for example.
And in those cases they snapped pictures, and the camera light flicked on briefly when it happened which is part of the reason they got found out.
Just because it doesn't wake up when you wave at it doesn't mean it *isn't* watching you...
Fair enough, but you are speculating on the theoretically possibility that a large number of factors all have to line up just so for the vulnerability to be useful. You need a user using suitable hardware, with his laptop left open, facing of value, and you have to get the spyware onto it. All of this is potentially doable with a cooperative enough target, but it sets the bar relatively high.
The xbox by contrast is standardized hardware that the end user will setup in his living room for you, and that the end user expects to be always on and always connected to the internet.
It's the difference between speculating that you could murder someone if you could hack someones remote starter, and they happened to leave the vulnerable car in the garage, with the door closed, and they happened to sleep in a room that wasn't well ventilated attached to the garage. Sure you could do that. And that's what the 'laptop' scenario amounts to.
The xbox scenario amounts to the end user loading a shotgun pointed at his bed, with string attached to the trigger dangling out the window. All you have to do is pull.
On the other hand, I already have that concern about my phone. I can't stop it from acting as a tracker (tower triangulation) short of disabling the cellular radio, and it doesn't even have indicator lights for when the cameras or mic are in use.
All true. However, phones without cameras are available, and there are camera removal / disabling services available. ($20-$50 bucks for a tech to open it, cut the wire/remove the lens...) The phone doesn't require a camera to operate. The military and other security conscious environments have mandated this. You can also buy an iphone 4S without a camera (with some effort).
For the rest of us who are less drastic there are plenty of cases with physical lens covers. Not to mention the battery life would suffer dramatically if someone remotely enabled the camera and streamed the video.
The microphone obviously is more problematic.
But again, it all ties back to the default mode of operation. For the NSA to 'hack my phone' they'd actually have to put some effort into it. I don't beleive, at this point that there is some built in function the NSA can flip to turn on camera and mic and start recording me. I'm sure if they went to enough to trouble they could pass my phone some targeted malware update to do this, etc, etc. But they'd need to develop that malware for my device, coordinate with the ISP to get it onto my device, etc. There'd -probably- be some sort of warrant/ oversight etc. I'm distrustful of the government, but I'm not full on tin-foil hat.
The xbox one and smart TV security monitoring functionality on the other hand, would already be setup to capture and stream everything always on, always connected, 24x7. The NSA doesn't have to do squat except contact whoever that data is already being sent to, and ask for a copy. This is already something they can do. =Data sent to 3rd parties is extremely weakly protected legally.
Millions of xbox one owners, standardized platform, end users do all the setup, all streaming to the same place... no hacks required. All they have to do is ask for it.
Oh, and the city receives no payroll tax for those employees,
Does the city normally receive payroll taxes? Where I live virtually all municipal revenues are either in the form of service fees levied against each address (garbage collection, sewer, water,...) or property taxes. And the occasional usage fees for various services (business licenses, various permit applications, inspections, etc)
The city is also relatively unaffected by local spending except insofar as a thriving local economy means higher property values, which means higher property taxes. And in your example of SF, you indicated rents are being driven up -- so here that would actually translate to higher city revenue as again high rent means higher property values.
Sales and payroll taxes at the municipal level seems crazy to me.
There are a lot of IT admins not taking security seriously and if you couple that with inexperienced home admins the threat is real.
The "threat"? The threat of what exactly?
You do realize botnets are already a very real thing. What on earth would be made "worse" if a handful of savvy customers were also running their blog on a private webserver in their basement?
This makes it different from any mainstream desktop (and most laptops) with a webcam from any point in the past decade...
1) When my computer is off, the camera and microphone are off. Yelling at it or waving at it won't turn it on. Your welcome to try if you like.
2) The camera and microphone are not usually on even when the computer is on, and is certainly not a standard mandatory requirement for anything except recording/transmitting audio-video. I'm certainly not required to have the microphone and camera on to use my computer. And I am confident that when the camera light isn't on, the camera isn't on, which is most of the time. Contrast that to a camera that's on 24x7.
3) When they are off the network is off too. There is no network traffic. The DHCP leases expire. The unit does not respond over the network.
4) I have a lot more control over the software that runs on my computer in general than one does over an xbox. Sure its incomplete. But its also not designed and purpose built to be installed in my living room running 24x7.
5) My laptop is usually shut when in not in use making illicit video capture pretty worthless outside of when im using it. And when I'm using it, it tends to see me from the chest up and the back of my couch or chair, vs having a permanent unobstructed view of my entire living area.
They just aren't the same thing.
Seriously, this whole "Kinect is spying on you for the NSA!" meme is, and I will not mince words, idiotic.
I agree with you here. I don't think its happening. I'm sadly not at all confident it will remain that way. And here is why -- and its not because I think the NSA is pressuring microsoft to do it.
Lets take a look at some of the new SmartTVs. These are a security and privacy nightmare. Like the xbox one they are cameras / mics in the TV in your living room, connected to the internet, and always on.
What do we know about them: -- They are always on. --They are ALREADY sending all kinds of audio/video data to the internet: -- for innocuous reasons: such as usage trends for product development, product improvement, etc -- video calls etc which is fine -- for other value added features (home security / monitoring in particular ) *
And in the case of Microsoft, they have already boasted that it will be also be using the data captured by camera for advertising / customer profiling features.
So do I think the NSA is in bed with microsoft recording everyone through kinect? No. I really don't.
But do I think we're a baby step away from the NSA handing Microsoft or the smarttv vendors a secret warrant to watch people through their own TV or xbox on the thinnest of pretenses? Yeah, I do. In fact I would be surprised if it isn't happening already.
*Especially with the home-security stuff. I don't think xbox one has actually advertised the ability to use it as a home security system, but i think its inevitable. I mean, its already further ahead than anything else. There's even a documented use-case where the the console will scan a room with facial recognition and ask anyone it doesn't recognize to identify themselves so it can create a user profile for them. This was in the context of gaming / user (advertising) profiles.
But anyone who doesn't see an xbox one security monitoring app coming that combines always on/always connected, facial recognition, and cloud access to audio/images/stored and live video has their head deep deep in the sand.
We already know we have no legal expectation of privacy on anything we send to a 3rd party via the internet. So we shouldn't be surprised if the NSA is watching.
To paraphrase you, Not to mince words, but only an IDIOT would think the NSA wouldn't be able to put their hands on that feed if they had the slightest desire to.
And hell, given the security record of the smart TV makers, the neighbors kids could watch you through your TV too, never mind requiring the deep pockets and boundless authority of the US government security apparatus.
The only reason I don't care much about smartTVs as the xbox, is that I personally don't have any need to attach it to the internet in the first place. Whereas an xbox all but requires it to do anything useful.
Moser didn't come up with shit. He just built a modern iteration of technology that has been around for thousands of years.
He came up with a modern iteration that can be widely and immediately deployed in the poorest parts of the world using freely available ubiquitous components and readily available installation skillsets?
I'm curious where you've set the bar before you give someone credit for coming up with something.
You say that now. You already realize that the xbox is technically able to send everything it hears AND sees out to the internet, and worse that its on 24x7 even when the unit is 'off'.
So the only thing separating an xbox from the screens of 1984 is trusting Microsoft and the government not to do it.
Then there is the side issue of it being hacked. Remember, you have an always on camera and microphone hooked up to the internet in whatever room you have this in / or that it can 'see into'. You have a small 700 sqft condo with the TV at one end in the living room... the kinect can everything but the bedroom and the bathroom. Or maybe your daughter has an xbox one in her room?
There is an undeniable potential for truly horrific levels of abuse.
Question: Who would voluntarily setup a camera and microphone in their house, turn it on 24x7, hook it up to the internet, enabling it to transmitting to parties not under their control, who one may or may not trust, with unknown encryption if any at all.
Answer: People who can't remember where they put the remote control.
The closest physical analogy to sending an (unencrypted) email is sending a post card.
No. The closest analogy to sending an unencrypted email is making a regular phone call.
As a society we do have the expectation that the phone call is private, and that others aren't listening in. We know that its very possible for the carrier to tap a line though, should they choose to do so, or be ordered to so by the government. That is why we have laws requiring them to get a warrant.
And when I make a phone call, I do have an expectation of privacy. Not an absolute guarantee, but an expectation.
I have an expectation that unless someones has a very good reason to be listening to my phone calls, and that someone got a judge to agree to a warrant based on that reason, then there should be nobody listening into the call.
This should not be considered 'naive'.
. If you wouldn't send the information on a post card you probably shouldn't send it on an email either.
I wouldn't send my credit card information on a post card, but I order things over the phone regularly.
Email in general has rather little in the way of privacy rights and until it does have such legal backing you should behave accordingly.
Pretty much this. But the problem is that people rightfully expect email to be treated like a phone call. And instead legally its treated with less respect than a post card.
This represents a massive failure of congress. They are supposed to represent us. They know what we want. They just don't care.
I want my gaming device to be an appliance (that displays on my TV set and uses a gamepad instead of keyboard/mouse)
Which is pretty much what a PC with steam big picture mode and an xbox controller is.
Mega bonus points if it's a platform supported by GameFly.
"Sorry, rental and subscription services are available in the U.S only. " So Gamefly's pretty much worthless to me, but I can see it being worth something to others. Its going to be worth increasingly less though as the publishers are actively undermining the ability to rent through tying games to accounts, single-use DLC, etc.
I've never been one to rent games though; I used to buy them used at steep discounts pretty regularly. But I stopped when all the local video rental places went under.
How do you like the Ouya? I can't see getting one myself, since I think I've already got access to everything in its library via the PC, but it is a neat concept.
Slashdot Mirror
I'm curious how far back those flashbacks are. Because honestly, Filemaker Pro scripting back in versions 3-6 was probably appropriate given the rest of the database relatively limited capabilities. It really was a fairly well balanced environment. Easy to get a simple attactive database going even for relative amateurs.
Starting in version 7 though, and added to incrementally through 13, the system has grown immensely more expressive, with new script steps and options, variables, parameters, event handling, script debugger with watch window, call stack, and breakpoints, etc. Its evolved into a much more powerful system, but its still got essentially the same point and click script editor, and it just no longer fits. The rest of the system has outgrown it in sophistication, it desperately needs to be able to go back and forth between "point and click script editor" and "plain text script editing".
There are all kinds of 3rd party bits to fill in the gaps... one to search scripts by regex to find matches, one to diff scripts, etc... all stuff that would be trivial (and free) with a plaintext format.
Well, my new macbook has an HDMI port, which i've never used...
Which new macbook would that be? All the new macbooks I've looked at have mini-displayport, which requires an adapter to go to hdmi.
For the vast majority of users, no ethernet or hdmi represents a small cost saving without losing any functionality they will actually use. For those few who need it, the option is available quite cheaply.
For a significant number of users, they use ethernet at work, because wfi hasn't been deployed, and installing your own access point would be "frowned upon".
As a more technical type myself, I use ethernet quite regularly -- to setup access points that don't have wifi on by default, to flash firmware of network devices, to configure access points that don't have management turned on for wifi, to test ethernet connectivity, to create an adhoc access point, to create an ad hoc bridge, and when tranferring large data sets.
No hdmi bites people who want to connect to a projector, especially somebody elses projector.
For the vast majority of users, no ethernet or hdmi represents a small cost saving
You think apple lowered the price because they didn't give you those ports? Yeah, that's plausible. /sarcasm
without losing any functionality they will actually use. For those few who need it, the option is available quite cheaply.
From apple its $60-$90 bucks for the pair of adapters. Sure you can get non-apple accessories but that's beside the point. Cost is only half the problem with adapters, the other half is the hassle of carrying them around with you.
I can't tell you how many times I"ve been in meetings where the guy with the apple doesn't have his bag of adapters and can't connect to the projector or big screen. Which these days generally has VGA and HDMI.
I suspect that the keyboard was initially not included to (a) make the cost of ownership seem less than it would later prove to be, and (b) give people the impression that Windows 8 could be used in some reasonable fashion entirely via touch.
Its honestly actually perfectly fine as a pure tablet.
But the big feature of RT is MS office. And Office benefits immensely from a keyboard.
You may be right about not including it to bring the perceived cost down. Much like new macs not including adapters to attach it to obscure devices like hdmi or ethernet. ;)
Right, that's more or less what i was thinking, but isn't android and in particular the the google nexus stuff reasonably open already? Surely it wouldn't be that much to defeat the DRM. Its just a 3rd party app after all, so it shouldn't have deep hooks beneath the regular OS like the software that runs the actual cellular radio etc.
And if so, it shouldn't be THAT hard to put the droid netflix code into a wrapper?
I wonder if the existing android emulators can play netflix? I'll have to look into that... and looks like No. But it could be related to ARM hardware emulation issues -- which I hadn't considered. IMO that's probably why they went with WINE+silverlight. Even if they could defeat the hardware validation (and I expect they could), they'd still be running a video coden in full on hardware emulation (not just virtualization).
Are there any non-microsoft/non-silverlight implementations of the netflix app on x86?
Playstation 4.. lol ... too bad that's going to be a DRM clusterfuck.
Honestly, it's more than likely the content holders' fault that the DRM binary has to be Windows only.
Yes, the DRM is windows only.
And Macs.
And iphones.
And xboxes
And playstation 3
And Wii
And Roku
And chromebooks.
And android tablets and phones.
Really its mostly a joke that there isn't a better linux solution at this point.
I was under the impression that Bluray players and smart TVs (especially samsung) run an embedded linux. How are they able to stream netflix?
Netflix supports and has supported for a while now, non-Silverlight enabled playback. It even supports Windows 8.1 on IE11 via HTML5 rather than silverlight. I expect the Windows 8 modern UI netflix app also has no dependancy on silverlight.
But you raise an interesting question, rather than attacking linux playback by way of a Wine+Silverlight 'pipeline', would it not be more straightforward to pipe it through whatever is happening with a chromebook or android device??
The next point release of Silverlight? Don't hold your breath.
IMO, the way things look right now, Netflix is morely likely to switch off of Silverlight than Microsoft is to release a new version of Silverlight.
That just because you can't have something, it's somehow virtuous not to want it.
Virtuous to not want it? Or just a pointless waste of time to express that you do want it, before getting around to suggesting a "compromise" option that is at least plausibly consistent with the physics of the known universe, and has a reasonable probability of actually happening.
You know, to save us all time.
I intend to be living a fantastic life and raising hell for another decade or three yet. Deal with it.
So... your magic number isn't 60, but possibly 85 or 90. Ok, that's fine. I am more than happy to let you define how long you think your quality of life is good. So what happens after that?
I've one great-great-uncle who lived to be 106. (They found him one evening leaned up against a fencepost, where he'd evidently stopped to take a little break whilst making his daily walk around his farm. Nothing wrong with him, the doctor said, except that he finally just wore out.)
Yeah, and I've got an 80+ year old great uncle in-law or something who's been bedridden for years now. Adult-onset type 2 diabetes. The diabetes so far has caused blindness, and has led to the amputation of both legs. It could happen to anyone, even you. 51 is a long way from 70.
My own grandfather developed Alzheimer's, and although he remained perfectly healthy in body until the end, that was probably the most horrifying and heart wrenching thing to undergo. He was terrified at least for as long as knew what was happening, and it wasn't much better for those around him.
We all wish to age gracefully, die in our sleep peacefully, and while I agree arbitrarily committing suicide on your 60th birthday is nuts... committing suicide when the circumstances of your final days are rapidly becoming apparent is pretty rational in my books.
Wrong. It still has an EULA that states you are getting a license to play the game and you do not own it.
However, you are PURCHASING the license. The license once purchased, does in point of fact, belong to you.
Sales tax regions are geographical constructs
So they correspond to bounding boxes defined by GPS coordinates. And addresses are like wise definable in terms of GPS coordinates, and this is rapidly taking place. I'd be surprised if 80%
Determining whether an address is inside or outside of the bounding box is very doable in an automated way.
Hell, two halves of the same house can be in different regions with different sales tax rates - try handling that in a sensible way.
Assuming this is actually a real issue, its still a non-issue. Either the GPS tag for the address places it inside the tax region or it doesn't. As somone who sells things online, I'm not the least bit worried that dumbfuck county, USA is going to come after me for tax evasion because some guy ordered something from me while sitting in kitchen which is technically in tax region A, instead of his living room in region B.
If they feel the GPS coordinates are wrong, they can submit the correction, and the database can be updated. But I'm not going to worry about it.
Just as I don't worry that a ZIP or postal code in the databases I use now are incorrect. Which happens. All the time. Espeically as new addresses and postal codes are being issued all the time and its not unusual to run into one that isn't in the database yet. But its not the end of the world.
It's completely insane, and they missed out on getting a new COO because a decade ago the guy worked there & just gave a standard 2 weeks... And it wasn't discovered until they'd made the decision to hire him...
If neither party wishes to enforce that clause of the contract, and they both agree to ignore it, what would stop them from proceeding with the hire?
Absolutely nothing.
The fact is the company wished to enforce that clause more than they wanted to hire him. The contract did NOT force their hand, it was entirely their choice. Bottom line: the company your buddy works for is managed by idiots.
Places my wife has worked just have a blanket policy that they won't re-hire someone.
That's mostly a statement that:
"Look, if you leave, we're not your safety net while you look for a better job, we'll find someone else who is looking to stay with us."
This is fairly common, especially at, I'll call them less desirable "tier 2" employers that get used like safety nets by the employees. The employee gets a job, works for a while, finds a better job at a "tier 1" company, loses it a few months later, and then retreats back to their original employer. A few months later they do it again. And its not just one employee doing it, but a chunk of their work force.
In reality, the policy is selectively enforced. If they really want someone, they'll hire them, policy or no.
This is without a doubt the big weakness in the android and windows phone markets.
I'm not sure that the Apple or Blackberry markets are all that much better. You could buy an iphone 3GS less than a year ago, and Apple has already announced that security vulnerabilities in ios6 aren't going to be patched. And the devices will not be eligible to upgrade to io7.
We're talking several millions of the devices in active use, many of them less than a year old.
Yes, that's not QUITE as bad as Android 2.x devices sitting on a shelf today. But its not exactly GOOD either, especially given how many iphone 3GS are out there.
I'm skeptical Blackberry is much better.
Yeah, if your CEO is saying something like this...
"Oh crap, this free product is going to eat our lunch and we'll be bankrupt by 2018, unless we can figure out how to make our product substantially more compelling real quick. And to be honest, we haven't got the faintest idea how to do that at this point."
you probably need a new CEO.
if NASA copies my Kerbal designs
Aren't those the six words words you never say at NASA?
http://xkcd.com/1244/
There's spyware out there that turns on your webcam (without turning on the indicator light, incidentally)
Not of the LED for the camera is on the power circuit for the camera. I don't dispute that there are some (many?) really terrible hardware implementations out there though, but a good design cannot be defeated by spyware.
Hell, there's been stories about such spyware right here on Slashdot; laptops and iPads that were issued to students and then used to spy on them in their bedrooms, for example.
And in those cases they snapped pictures, and the camera light flicked on briefly when it happened which is part of the reason they got found out.
Just because it doesn't wake up when you wave at it doesn't mean it *isn't* watching you...
Fair enough, but you are speculating on the theoretically possibility that a large number of factors all have to line up just so for the vulnerability to be useful. You need a user using suitable hardware, with his laptop left open, facing of value, and you have to get the spyware onto it. All of this is potentially doable with a cooperative enough target, but it sets the bar relatively high.
The xbox by contrast is standardized hardware that the end user will setup in his living room for you, and that the end user expects to be always on and always connected to the internet.
It's the difference between speculating that you could murder someone if you could hack someones remote starter, and they happened to leave the vulnerable car in the garage, with the door closed, and they happened to sleep in a room that wasn't well ventilated attached to the garage. Sure you could do that. And that's what the 'laptop' scenario amounts to.
The xbox scenario amounts to the end user loading a shotgun pointed at his bed, with string attached to the trigger dangling out the window. All you have to do is pull.
On the other hand, I already have that concern about my phone. I can't stop it from acting as a tracker (tower triangulation) short of disabling the cellular radio, and it doesn't even have indicator lights for when the cameras or mic are in use.
All true. However, phones without cameras are available, and there are camera removal / disabling services available. ($20-$50 bucks for a tech to open it, cut the wire/remove the lens...) The phone doesn't require a camera to operate. The military and other security conscious environments have mandated this. You can also buy an iphone 4S without a camera (with some effort).
For the rest of us who are less drastic there are plenty of cases with physical lens covers. Not to mention the battery life would suffer dramatically if someone remotely enabled the camera and streamed the video.
The microphone obviously is more problematic.
But again, it all ties back to the default mode of operation. For the NSA to 'hack my phone' they'd actually have to put some effort into it. I don't beleive, at this point that there is some built in function the NSA can flip to turn on camera and mic and start recording me. I'm sure if they went to enough to trouble they could pass my phone some targeted malware update to do this, etc, etc. But they'd need to develop that malware for my device, coordinate with the ISP to get it onto my device, etc. There'd -probably- be some sort of warrant/ oversight etc. I'm distrustful of the government, but I'm not full on tin-foil hat.
The xbox one and smart TV security monitoring functionality on the other hand, would already be setup to capture and stream everything always on, always connected, 24x7. The NSA doesn't have to do squat except contact whoever that data is already being sent to, and ask for a copy. This is already something they can do. =Data sent to 3rd parties is extremely weakly protected legally.
Millions of xbox one owners, standardized platform, end users do all the setup, all streaming to the same place... no hacks required. All they have to do is ask for it.
Its a spy agencies wet dream.
You haven't been hoarding yours like the rest of us?
Oh, and the city receives no payroll tax for those employees,
Does the city normally receive payroll taxes? Where I live virtually all municipal revenues are either in the form of service fees levied against each address (garbage collection, sewer, water, ...) or property taxes. And the occasional usage fees for various services (business licenses, various permit applications, inspections, etc)
The city is also relatively unaffected by local spending except insofar as a thriving local economy means higher property values, which means higher property taxes. And in your example of SF, you indicated rents are being driven up -- so here that would actually translate to higher city revenue as again high rent means higher property values.
Sales and payroll taxes at the municipal level seems crazy to me.
Its actually kind of boggling that
Why rabbits?
How many dairy cows could you fit into the same space?
Makes sense to experiment on the rabbits first. You'll need a small ranch to start experimenting on cows.
There are a lot of IT admins not taking security seriously and if you couple that with inexperienced home admins the threat is real.
The "threat"? The threat of what exactly?
You do realize botnets are already a very real thing. What on earth would be made "worse" if a handful of savvy customers were also running their blog on a private webserver in their basement?
This makes it different from any mainstream desktop (and most laptops) with a webcam from any point in the past decade...
1) When my computer is off, the camera and microphone are off. Yelling at it or waving at it won't turn it on. Your welcome to try if you like.
2) The camera and microphone are not usually on even when the computer is on, and is certainly not a standard mandatory requirement for anything except recording/transmitting audio-video. I'm certainly not required to have the microphone and camera on to use my computer. And I am confident that when the camera light isn't on, the camera isn't on, which is most of the time. Contrast that to a camera that's on 24x7.
3) When they are off the network is off too. There is no network traffic. The DHCP leases expire. The unit does not respond over the network.
4) I have a lot more control over the software that runs on my computer in general than one does over an xbox. Sure its incomplete. But its also not designed and purpose built to be installed in my living room running 24x7.
5) My laptop is usually shut when in not in use making illicit video capture pretty worthless outside of when im using it. And when I'm using it, it tends to see me from the chest up and the back of my couch or chair, vs having a permanent unobstructed view of my entire living area.
They just aren't the same thing.
Seriously, this whole "Kinect is spying on you for the NSA!" meme is, and I will not mince words, idiotic.
I agree with you here. I don't think its happening. I'm sadly not at all confident it will remain that way. And here is why -- and its not because I think the NSA is pressuring microsoft to do it.
Lets take a look at some of the new SmartTVs. These are a security and privacy nightmare. Like the xbox one they are cameras / mics in the TV in your living room, connected to the internet, and always on.
What do we know about them:
-- They are always on.
--They are ALREADY sending all kinds of audio/video data to the internet:
-- for innocuous reasons: such as usage trends for product development, product improvement, etc
-- video calls etc which is fine
-- for other value added features (home security / monitoring in particular ) *
And in the case of Microsoft, they have already boasted that it will be also be using the data captured by camera for advertising / customer profiling features.
So do I think the NSA is in bed with microsoft recording everyone through kinect? No. I really don't.
But do I think we're a baby step away from the NSA handing Microsoft or the smarttv vendors a secret warrant to watch people through their own TV or xbox on the thinnest of pretenses? Yeah, I do. In fact I would be surprised if it isn't happening already.
*Especially with the home-security stuff. I don't think xbox one has actually advertised the ability to use it as a home security system, but i think its inevitable. I mean, its already further ahead than anything else. There's even a documented use-case where the the console will scan a room with facial recognition and ask anyone it doesn't recognize to identify themselves so it can create a user profile for them. This was in the context of gaming / user (advertising) profiles.
But anyone who doesn't see an xbox one security monitoring app coming that combines always on/always connected, facial recognition, and cloud access to audio/images/stored and live video has their head deep deep in the sand.
We already know we have no legal expectation of privacy on anything we send to a 3rd party via the internet. So we shouldn't be surprised if the NSA is watching.
To paraphrase you, Not to mince words, but only an IDIOT would think the NSA wouldn't be able to put their hands on that feed if they had the slightest desire to.
And hell, given the security record of the smart TV makers, the neighbors kids could watch you through your TV too, never mind requiring the deep pockets and boundless authority of the US government security apparatus.
The only reason I don't care much about smartTVs as the xbox, is that I personally don't have any need to attach it to the internet in the first place. Whereas an xbox all but requires it to do anything useful.
Moser didn't come up with shit. He just built a modern iteration of technology that has been around for thousands of years.
He came up with a modern iteration that can be widely and immediately deployed in the poorest parts of the world using freely available ubiquitous components and readily available installation skillsets?
I'm curious where you've set the bar before you give someone credit for coming up with something.
You say that now. You already realize that the xbox is technically able to send everything it hears AND sees out to the internet, and worse that its on 24x7 even when the unit is 'off'.
So the only thing separating an xbox from the screens of 1984 is trusting Microsoft and the government not to do it.
Then there is the side issue of it being hacked. Remember, you have an always on camera and microphone hooked up to the internet in whatever room you have this in / or that it can 'see into'. You have a small 700 sqft condo with the TV at one end in the living room... the kinect can everything but the bedroom and the bathroom. Or maybe your daughter has an xbox one in her room?
There is an undeniable potential for truly horrific levels of abuse.
Question:
Who would voluntarily setup a camera and microphone in their house, turn it on 24x7, hook it up to the internet, enabling it to transmitting to parties not under their control, who one may or may not trust, with unknown encryption if any at all.
Answer:
People who can't remember where they put the remote control.
The closest physical analogy to sending an (unencrypted) email is sending a post card.
No. The closest analogy to sending an unencrypted email is making a regular phone call.
As a society we do have the expectation that the phone call is private, and that others aren't listening in. We know that its very possible for the carrier to tap a line though, should they choose to do so, or be ordered to so by the government. That is why we have laws requiring them to get a warrant.
And when I make a phone call, I do have an expectation of privacy. Not an absolute guarantee, but an expectation.
I have an expectation that unless someones has a very good reason to be listening to my phone calls, and that someone got a judge to agree to a warrant based on that reason, then there should be nobody listening into the call.
This should not be considered 'naive'.
. If you wouldn't send the information on a post card you probably shouldn't send it on an email either.
I wouldn't send my credit card information on a post card, but I order things over the phone regularly.
Email in general has rather little in the way of privacy rights and until it does have such legal backing you should behave accordingly.
Pretty much this. But the problem is that people rightfully expect email to be treated like a phone call. And instead legally its treated with less respect than a post card.
This represents a massive failure of congress. They are supposed to represent us. They know what we want. They just don't care.
I want my gaming device to be an appliance (that displays on my TV set and uses a gamepad instead of keyboard/mouse)
Which is pretty much what a PC with steam big picture mode and an xbox controller is.
Mega bonus points if it's a platform supported by GameFly.
"Sorry, rental and subscription services are available in the U.S only. " So Gamefly's pretty much worthless to me, but I can see it being worth something to others. Its going to be worth increasingly less though as the publishers are actively undermining the ability to rent through tying games to accounts, single-use DLC, etc.
I've never been one to rent games though; I used to buy them used at steep discounts pretty regularly. But I stopped when all the local video rental places went under.
How do you like the Ouya? I can't see getting one myself, since I think I've already got access to everything in its library via the PC, but it is a neat concept.