He also thinks that a DVD player being able to play CDs is some sort of valid argument against the parent post's point.
The parents post comparing a VCR to a DVD player while claiming no backwards compatibility was silly.
Yes, I -get- the point the parent attempted to make with respect to DVD vs VHS in terms of video formats. But to actually rant about DVD backwards compatibility when one of the selling features of the things were that you could in fact play all your audio CDs in them (aka backwards compatibility) completely undermines his argument.
Especially since any halfwit can see why DVD players couldn't play VHS tapes.
Doubtful that he's been laid in a while unless it was gay sex.
Lol, well gay sex was apparently at least on one of our minds today.
Then why do you have PS3 games that you would use with backward compatibility?
Because if I were to consider buying a PS4, then being able to play the large PS3 library would be a compelling factor, precisely because I never had a PS3.
When I bought a Wii, the ability to pick up the top rated Gamecube titles (at very reasonable prices due to being used / last gen / etc) was a real bonus, and really propped up the thin Wii launch library.
Don't you already have a PS3 you can play your PS3 games on?
No. I don't have a PS3. So right there that argument flies out the window.
But even if I did have a PS3 I would want backwards compatibility. Less clutter in my living room for one thing, the ability to sell the PS3 to help fund the PS4 would be nice, or the ability to give it away. My parents have my old Wii now that we have a Wii-U. I can still play the Wii games at home, and now the kids can play them with grandma too.
When DVDs came out, I didn't bitch that they weren't backwards compatible with what I already had.
Yes they were. CD's play just fine in them.
Promising backwards compatibility and then removing it is a shitty thing to do to your customers
Not half as shitty as promising a feature, delivering the feature, and then removing it from the devices people already had as a condition of continuing to use it to play multiplayer games. That's not 'shitty' that's criminal.
Being up front about the lack of a feature that's barely useful is doing things right for a change.
Being up front is a good change. And the substantial architectural changes between PS3 and PS4 with respect to CPU probably makes back-comp a pain in the ass to implement, so I get why they aren't doing it. I don't really care though, they set down that course of action when they gambled on the Cell in the first place. I thought it was a bad idea then, and it continues to have lasting repercussions of suck today.
Then again I've only bought Nintendo consoles since the PS1. I get enough of the so-called mature console style games on my PC, and now have one attached to my TV, with an xbox controller, and tons of games picked up on steam and gog and elsewhere for a fraction of the price, better mod options, and a host of other stuff.
I didn't have a PS3 and don't miss it. I'm not likely to buy a PS4 either. But I bought a Wii-U even though launch game support was weak because Nintendo delivers a different gaming experience, and quite frankly we're happy with it. It does a lot of stuff my PC box can't do well. The new tablet controler is pretty sweet, and my kids love to be able to play skylanders and other games even when the TV is tied up with something else. Its a feature I didn't give much value to when I bought it, but its amazing how much it gets used.
The backwards compatibility with Wii is a nice bonus too, and is much more than a "barely useful feature", particularly given the weak Wii-U launch title line up.
The term was adopted by vitriolic anti-Christians as literally "Christianity without Christ" and is extremely offensive to anybody that knows that.
I suppose it would be extremely offensive to anybody that ~thinks~ that. But those people are idiots.
X doesn't mean "without Christ". Its literally an abbreviation FOR Christ, in that X is the first letter of Christ in Greek. It was used in Christian art hundreds of years ago. Ancient bible manuscripts going back 1000 years even use the abbreviation Xc for Jesus Christ in the New Testament.
. If you're actually looking to have intelligent discourse, [...]
That doesn't change the fact that Canonical is encouraging you to be on the more rapid release cycle. The LTS is there for those that can't / won't do that, but it IS where Canonical wants people.
People routinely OK everything and authenticate anything and everything in windows.
Yes, that applies to some people.
And many more are reasonably good about not opening random things from the web, and don't visit the darker parts of the web and they don't click "I agree" to UAC to view naked pictures of a celebrity or whatever.
When they do get infected its usually some sort of drive-by exploit on some legitimate site via a malicious ad.
Between default secureboot, default automatic windows updates, default automatic antivirus updates, and an innocent by not completely idiotic user has a fighting chance of staying clean. But it all has to be on by default, out of the box. They don't know enough about security to make informed decisions about security configuration.
If it makes you feel better, how about just making sure the root key in the system is a system specific key that then signs the MS key IF the user requests secureboot setup. Or perhaps uefi should have a setup to walk them through that process.
None of that makes an ounce of sense. The last thing anyone normal wants to do when they buy a new computer is navigate a UEFI wizard.
Under no circumstance should MS hold the keys to other people's castles.
They don't. I don't know why you think that they do. On any x86 anyone who WANTS to can go into UEFI and delete the MS keys, and install their own or any others whenever they want.
Yes, ARM is different, and we can all agree there is a problem on ARM, but now we're talking tablets and surface RT... and iPads for that matter.
The only discernible difference is a little green LED.
That little green LED tells me whether or not I'm potentially being recorded. If its on, and I'm not in a video call, something is wrong and I'm very suspicious.
With an always on camera trained on you, an LED would be meaningless -- if it existed it's always on. So you will never know if you are being recorded or not.
If those assumptions are true, then secureboot won't help them anyway since they'll run as admin at all times and set no password.
Which starting with Vista is a regular user account unless they escalate.
If they are somehow talked into at least setting a password, they'll dutifully enter it whenever the nice people in wherethefuckisthatistan (or Sony) say they need to.
These are the people who don't update flash or acrobat or Windows. Why would they enter it for some random popup they know even less about?
All secureboot could possibly do for them is lock them out one day.
Are you really advocating that we prefer users to get infected?
Between default secureboot, default automatic windows updates, default automatic antivirus updates, and a clueless user has a fighting chance of staying clean.
If the infection can't get much deeper than the the user account, then the user has a shot of the antivirus detecting and removing it, even if takes a couple days for the maware to get added to the definitions.
If the infection tries to go full rootkit, trips secureboot, and the pc won't boot up. Good. Their PC is broken, and they should get it fixed. Becoming part of the local botnet is not a better outcome.
I never suggested they should. I was just clarifying what the telco was doing, as some of the commentary made it sound like the telco was logging everyone's text messages, when that really isn't quite accurate.
That's like shipping it with antivirus disabled and relying on the average user to do something quite complicated to turn it on.
If the user wants to secure the boot, he/she can go through a procedure to generate a key and sign the bootloader (or sign the OS vender's key and add it as a secondary key).
Gee, that sounds like work, average user will just press skip and run without it. Just like they don't do windows updates or anything else unless they are done automatically, even if they nag constantly.
How many of us have looked at a users pc with Java, Acrobat, Flash, Windows Update, and their antivirus icons all lit up asking for permission to update and the user just dutifully minimizes them each morning?
You really want to put the task of enabling secure boot onto them? Get real.
Secure boot is a feature that might act to better secure a system for a security conscious user
Except we'd like to better secure systems for regular users who are not security conscious and can't even be relied upon to run even the most trivial updates.
Otherwise, it's just a roadblock to installing another OS
The people who want to install other OSes will be sufficiently skilled and motivated to figure it out. We shouldn't reduce the security of average users who will run the OS it came with until it dies just to make it easier for power users to install different operating systems.
and provides no benefit to the owner of the device.
Except some security against being the victim of a rootkit. That's the whole point.
My understanding is that this particular telco was storing the texts.
According to the ruling, they stored the texts 'breifly'. It sounded like the police needed a daily capture of the data in order to get everything.
Its not like these were long term logs.
I would guess it was an implementation of the SMS queue where when you send a text that's undeliverable because the destination phone is unreachable it hold its it for a while to attempt to deliver it later. It probably just put all messages into the queue, marked delivered messages when they were delivered, and then purged them daily.
Off course a pre-installed computer should come with UEFI secure boot enabled.
Right. So if it comes pre-installed with windows, then UEFI secure boot will be enabled and the signing key for windows will be loaded.
If I want to reinstall windows, uefi isn't going to interfere or be a factor at all.
If I want to install any other operating system, then its going to be extra effort, im going to have to load a signing key for the OS I want to install, and that means "extra fiddling".
It is absurd to suggest otherwise.
But it should not be a hindrance like we see now to later or right away install the OS of choice.
There is no real hindrance now on x86 systems.
Even when keys are a necessity they should still be available to the rightful owner of the hardware, not some outsider like Microsoft.
Yes, the ability to go into UEFI and load whatever keys one likes absolutely should be the right of the rightful owner of the hardware.
However Microsoft doesn't control the keys, so I don't know what you are talking about. The end user can load whatever keys they want on x86 hardware.
The current mess is NOT because I can't avoid using microsoft's keys to use linux, or that there is a dependency on Microsoft.
The current mess is because some linuxes, as a convenience to their users are signing their systems with microsoft keys because those keys are already loaded, so users don't have to go through the trouble of loading a key. But that doesn't give MS control.
You can even sign a distro with your own key, and load that key into UEFI. No dependency on Microsoft. No dependency even on the distro. But its a bit more extra fiddling for you.
You bought a computer with secure boot, disabling it is the wrong option.
I agree, but in general the ability to boot random live CDs, something you compiled yourself from source, and what have you will be simpler if you can turn secure boot off rather than having to sign it and load the key first.
That's just absurd. If I buy a computer with an operating system pre-installed then I expect any relevant UEFI configuration done when I get it.
If I want to install something else, then disabling UEFI secure boot or installing approriate keys for my alternate choice should be on me.
And if I buy a boxed motherboard at retail, the selection of preinstalled keys should just be another differentiating factor between models and vendors. I am fully prepared for a real world where everything ships with the microsoft bit already installed and that I need to do some extra work if I want something else.
But the GP is right, I the end user should have the right to disable secure boot and/or install my own keys on any hardware I buy.
And not just on on computers, but also on tablets and phones, even consoles. But some of those battles are maybe for another day.
If you run a red light, you potentially can kill someone. Yet when you run a red light you are issued a fine, and some points on your license.
The end result matters.
but the end result is, if he had blinded the pilot, that plane wouldn't have come back down in a single peice.
Except that's not what the end result was. It could have been. But it wasn't.
but if I run over someone by mistake in my Car, i'm still charged with killing that person. Same should apply here.
If he had crashed the plane, then yes, absolutely. But he didn't.
We don't generally charge people for what might have been the worst possible outcome of their action. We charge them for what they actually did do, or for what they intended to do.
But not what they might have unintentionally done.
If we think he was trying to crash the plane that's one thing. But we need some evidence of intent. Otherwise its just some guy being an idiot -- and we can charge him with assault, since what he actually did was distract and annoy a pilot, and that's probably all he intended to do as well.
But if he was intending on crashing a plane or permanently blinding someone (even though that didn't happen) then yes, charge him with something appropriately SERIOUS.... but there better be evidence of that intention.
Then, in the Google Glass case, several people have pointed out that if used sensibly as a HUD it could actually improve safety.
But it won't be. People will read the news, watch youtube videos, surf the web for porn, compose email, update their facebook relationship status and anything else.
And the police won't be able to touch them as long as they are cruising in their lane.
Then they fail to stop at a cross walk and run over someone two blocks later because they were busy retweeting something.
Even the 'good guys' would have to remember to put it into 'driving mode' every single time they get behind the wheel. Otherwise their 'sensible' driving assist features will be mooted by SMS alerts, email notifications, and whatever else it will be able to do.
Finally, if you just put a simplistic blanket ban on phones then you invite a lot of soft-targetting by cops.
Agreed. But your example is somewhat mooted by the existence of handsfree kits which are legal and encouraged. And the whole 'ker-ching' side of things can be addressed via appropriate policy and public feedback. Some police forces are out playing the 'revenue game' like that, but despite our high awareness of instances where its happened, most police forces don't.
Making gadget usage just part of the evidence for dangerous driving and you avoid that.
The fundamental problem with this is that its like driving drunk.
A lot of people can drive impaired without it being catastrophically obvious that they're impaired. Their lane control can be fine, but they are less aware of their surroundings and their reaction time is lower. So they can drive past the cop at the intersection just fine and he won't see anyting overtly dangerous about their driving, and then two blocks further they run over a kid in the crosswalk that they didn't notice.
The same applies to distracted driving.
I remember making and taking calls on my phone when it was legal, and my lane control was generally perfectly fine. I won't dispute that my overall awareness was likely reduced and that my reaction time was potentially effected, but its not like dialing a phone sent me careening into oncoming traffic.
If we want people not to drive while using cellphones and other gadgets then we do need to ban them. If we rely on the catchall of dangerous driving -- then we have to demonstrate that they were driving dangerously. And most of the time, that's not obvious. Its usually not until something unexpected happens that someone driving impaired or inattentively is caught out. Its only the most extreme cases where they are weaving around like lunatics even just when trying to go with traffic flow.
look into the Thinkpads they sell to the medical industry, they have some pretty kick ass displays and you still have Ethernet plus DVD drive.
Like which models exactly? I don't see anything obvious that's over 1080p?
Although I'll be honest, I've never much cared for Thinkpads even when they were by IBM.
As a lefty I greatly prefer Apple's large trackpads with 1-finger single click and 2-finger doubleclick over small trackpads with physical buttons that aren't ergonomically placed for left handed operation.) There are PCs out there with nice large multi-touch trackpads, but they've been slower hit the market and are far from everywhere.
The trackpoint was never something I cared for, and I found the thinkpad trackpad to be among the least usable in the industry.
The Thinkpad X1 Carbon looks like solid steps in the right direction... the trackpad looks downright great in the pics, and the keyboard looks good too. If those design elements are being carried through the whole line, and they match it up with a high res screen and an ethernet port... I will definitely look at them when buying the next laptop.
Why are they using DVDs still? USB sticks are faster, more convenient, offer more storage and are not all that much more expensive.
"more storage" -- yeah, and when someone needs to give me 15 to 20 GB of data they use flash, but a lot of the stuff is 4GB and under.
"faster" -- yes!
"more convenient" is arguable -- a spindle of DVDs is a lot easier to manage than a drawer full of flash drives, especially on the receiving end.
"not all that much more expensive" for ~4GB, its at least triple the cost and that's if you buy them in bulk online direct from China. For 1/3rd the price you can get a spindle of DVDs at any walmart.
DVDs are also more convenient to replicate; if you need to hand out a bunch of copies.
Don't get me wrong, we use flash drives too, and we use various dropbox type things too. A lot. And together they've dramatically reduced the number DVDs floating around... but i don't see it eliminating them this year. I still need to read them.
No, "production" is what people use in live environments. Lots of people use Firefox and Chrome on the regular release schedule in "production" and they get updated weekly now. Similarly lots of people use Ubuntu on the regular release cycle in production.
They can use LTS if they want to, but most people don't.
"It won't happen because why would anyone ever do that?". Solid reasoning there.
Due to the transaction fees it wouldn't be economical.
Well, if I'd want to DDoS the VISA, I'd try that.
With Visa no *merchant* would let you run hundreds of thousands of 1 cent transactions and credits, due to the transaction fees. You wouldn't get to DDoS VISA because the merchants wouldn't let you process the transactions in the first place.
With bitcoin, you in a sense -are- the merchant, so the fees would be directly on you. Your attempt to DDoS bitcoin would last until you ran out of money. I'm betting you run out of money long before bitcoin's ability to operate is seriously impacted.
This is the song that never ends yes it goes on and on my friend Some people started singing it, not knowing what it was and they'll continue singing it forever just because
This is the song that never ends, yes it goes on and on my friend....
But no one wants to talk about situations like these, because the world would rather practice confirmation bias that Americans are evil imperialists.
The point remains that the interventions are inconsistent and do not appear to be linked to 'millions of people suffering'.
After WWI, the Treaty of Versailles forbid Germany from re-arming.
Every country violates treaties when it suits them, when it decides they aren't fair, or when it simply things it can get away with it. The US plays fast and loose with its obligations all the time too. Its not a reason, by itself to go to war.
And the sort of treaties that are signed after a war is lost tend to be among the least balanced. The terms of the Treaty of Versailles it could be argued actually incited some of the discontent that led to WWII.
11 years of failed sanctions? Starve the people more?
Severe sanctions breed discontent. Its pretty easy to stir up unrest and discontent in a country that can point at its neighbors who are literally oppressing them.
I don't claim to know the right answer for each situation but I can recognize these were the wrong answers.
Other than the fact that he already attempted genocide on the Kurds
Again, we're inconsistent. We don't involve ourselves in most genocides. You can argue that we should, but until we do we can't point at genocide and say "that's why we need to go there".
Other than the fact that he funded terrorism against Israel?
Yet the 2003 US-led coalition of nations to topple the Iraqi government didn't include Israel.
Surely, there is a moral argument to prevent someone from obtaining WMD when they've already attempted genocide once.
That's a fair point. Whether or not its our obligation is a separate question, and again there is the consistency element. Why Saddam? Why Iraq. There are other leaders who are as bad or worse.
And if Saddam were removed, would we change our policy on them developing WMD? After all, your argument is that Saddam tried using them, if he is gone, can Iraq have weapons like any other country.
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He doesn't know.
See above.
He also thinks that a DVD player being able to play CDs is some sort of valid argument against the parent post's point.
The parents post comparing a VCR to a DVD player while claiming no backwards compatibility was silly.
Yes, I -get- the point the parent attempted to make with respect to DVD vs VHS in terms of video formats. But to actually rant about DVD backwards compatibility when one of the selling features of the things were that you could in fact play all your audio CDs in them (aka backwards compatibility) completely undermines his argument.
Especially since any halfwit can see why DVD players couldn't play VHS tapes.
Doubtful that he's been laid in a while unless it was gay sex.
Lol, well gay sex was apparently at least on one of our minds today.
Then why do you have PS3 games that you would use with backward compatibility?
Because if I were to consider buying a PS4, then being able to play the large PS3 library would be a compelling factor, precisely because I never had a PS3.
When I bought a Wii, the ability to pick up the top rated Gamecube titles (at very reasonable prices due to being used / last gen / etc) was a real bonus, and really propped up the thin Wii launch library.
Don't you already have a PS3 you can play your PS3 games on?
No. I don't have a PS3. So right there that argument flies out the window.
But even if I did have a PS3 I would want backwards compatibility. Less clutter in my living room for one thing, the ability to sell the PS3 to help fund the PS4 would be nice, or the ability to give it away. My parents have my old Wii now that we have a Wii-U. I can still play the Wii games at home, and now the kids can play them with grandma too.
When DVDs came out, I didn't bitch that they weren't backwards compatible with what I already had.
Yes they were. CD's play just fine in them.
Promising backwards compatibility and then removing it is a shitty thing to do to your customers
Not half as shitty as promising a feature, delivering the feature, and then removing it from the devices people already had as a condition of continuing to use it to play multiplayer games. That's not 'shitty' that's criminal.
Being up front about the lack of a feature that's barely useful is doing things right for a change.
Being up front is a good change. And the substantial architectural changes between PS3 and PS4 with respect to CPU probably makes back-comp a pain in the ass to implement, so I get why they aren't doing it. I don't really care though, they set down that course of action when they gambled on the Cell in the first place. I thought it was a bad idea then, and it continues to have lasting repercussions of suck today.
Then again I've only bought Nintendo consoles since the PS1. I get enough of the so-called mature console style games on my PC, and now have one attached to my TV, with an xbox controller, and tons of games picked up on steam and gog and elsewhere for a fraction of the price, better mod options, and a host of other stuff.
I didn't have a PS3 and don't miss it. I'm not likely to buy a PS4 either. But I bought a Wii-U even though launch game support was weak because Nintendo delivers a different gaming experience, and quite frankly we're happy with it. It does a lot of stuff my PC box can't do well. The new tablet controler is pretty sweet, and my kids love to be able to play skylanders and other games even when the TV is tied up with something else. Its a feature I didn't give much value to when I bought it, but its amazing how much it gets used.
The backwards compatibility with Wii is a nice bonus too, and is much more than a "barely useful feature", particularly given the weak Wii-U launch title line up.
The term was adopted by vitriolic anti-Christians as literally "Christianity without Christ" and is extremely offensive to anybody that knows that.
I suppose it would be extremely offensive to anybody that ~thinks~ that. But those people are idiots.
X doesn't mean "without Christ". Its literally an abbreviation FOR Christ, in that X is the first letter of Christ in Greek. It was used in Christian art hundreds of years ago. Ancient bible manuscripts going back 1000 years even use the abbreviation Xc for Jesus Christ in the New Testament.
. If you're actually looking to have intelligent discourse, [...]
I should probably talk to someone else?
That doesn't change the fact that Canonical is encouraging you to be on the more rapid release cycle. The LTS is there for those that can't / won't do that, but it IS where Canonical wants people.
People routinely OK everything and authenticate anything and everything in windows.
Yes, that applies to some people.
And many more are reasonably good about not opening random things from the web, and don't visit the darker parts of the web and they don't click "I agree" to UAC to view naked pictures of a celebrity or whatever.
When they do get infected its usually some sort of drive-by exploit on some legitimate site via a malicious ad.
Between default secureboot, default automatic windows updates, default automatic antivirus updates, and an innocent by not completely idiotic user has a fighting chance of staying clean. But it all has to be on by default, out of the box. They don't know enough about security to make informed decisions about security configuration.
If it makes you feel better, how about just making sure the root key in the system is a system specific key that then signs the MS key IF the user requests secureboot setup. Or perhaps uefi should have a setup to walk them through that process.
None of that makes an ounce of sense. The last thing anyone normal wants to do when they buy a new computer is navigate a UEFI wizard.
Under no circumstance should MS hold the keys to other people's castles.
They don't. I don't know why you think that they do. On any x86 anyone who WANTS to can go into UEFI and delete the MS keys, and install their own or any others whenever they want.
Yes, ARM is different, and we can all agree there is a problem on ARM, but now we're talking tablets and surface RT ... and iPads for that matter.
The only discernible difference is a little green LED.
That little green LED tells me whether or not I'm potentially being recorded. If its on, and I'm not in a video call, something is wrong and I'm very suspicious.
With an always on camera trained on you, an LED would be meaningless -- if it existed it's always on. So you will never know if you are being recorded or not.
Interesting. Thanks. That's not the impression I had gotten from the original article or even the court ruling.
Virtually every laptop sold in the country has a built-in camera. What's the distinction of this?
It's not normally on. As soon as you make the camera an always on input method, then well.. its always on.
If those assumptions are true, then secureboot won't help them anyway since they'll run as admin at all times and set no password.
Which starting with Vista is a regular user account unless they escalate.
If they are somehow talked into at least setting a password, they'll dutifully enter it whenever the nice people in wherethefuckisthatistan (or Sony) say they need to.
These are the people who don't update flash or acrobat or Windows. Why would they enter it for some random popup they know even less about?
All secureboot could possibly do for them is lock them out one day.
Are you really advocating that we prefer users to get infected?
Between default secureboot, default automatic windows updates, default automatic antivirus updates, and a clueless user has a fighting chance of staying clean.
If the infection can't get much deeper than the the user account, then the user has a shot of the antivirus detecting and removing it, even if takes a couple days for the maware to get added to the definitions.
If the infection tries to go full rootkit, trips secureboot, and the pc won't boot up. Good. Their PC is broken, and they should get it fixed. Becoming part of the local botnet is not a better outcome.
I never suggested they should. I was just clarifying what the telco was doing, as some of the commentary made it sound like the telco was logging everyone's text messages, when that really isn't quite accurate.
So configure it with secure boot OFF.
That's like shipping it with antivirus disabled and relying on the average user to do something quite complicated to turn it on.
If the user wants to secure the boot, he/she can go through a procedure to generate a key and sign the bootloader (or sign the OS vender's key and add it as a secondary key).
Gee, that sounds like work, average user will just press skip and run without it. Just like they don't do windows updates or anything else unless they are done automatically, even if they nag constantly.
How many of us have looked at a users pc with Java, Acrobat, Flash, Windows Update, and their antivirus icons all lit up asking for permission to update and the user just dutifully minimizes them each morning?
You really want to put the task of enabling secure boot onto them? Get real.
Secure boot is a feature that might act to better secure a system for a security conscious user
Except we'd like to better secure systems for regular users who are not security conscious and can't even be relied upon to run even the most trivial updates.
Otherwise, it's just a roadblock to installing another OS
The people who want to install other OSes will be sufficiently skilled and motivated to figure it out. We shouldn't reduce the security of average users who will run the OS it came with until it dies just to make it easier for power users to install different operating systems.
and provides no benefit to the owner of the device.
Except some security against being the victim of a rootkit. That's the whole point.
How many boot sector viruses have there been in the last 10 years? This is a solution in search of a problem.
No, the problem is "rootkits". And Secureboot provides a mechanism for preventing / detecting them.
This covers a good part of the process:
http://blog.hansenpartnership.com/owning-your-windows-8-uefi-platform/
My understanding is that this particular telco was storing the texts.
According to the ruling, they stored the texts 'breifly'. It sounded like the police needed a daily capture of the data in order to get everything.
Its not like these were long term logs.
I would guess it was an implementation of the SMS queue where when you send a text that's undeliverable because the destination phone is unreachable it hold its it for a while to attempt to deliver it later. It probably just put all messages into the queue, marked delivered messages when they were delivered, and then purged them daily.
At least that's what it sounded like to me.
Off course a pre-installed computer should come with UEFI secure boot enabled.
Right. So if it comes pre-installed with windows, then UEFI secure boot will be enabled and the signing key for windows will be loaded.
If I want to reinstall windows, uefi isn't going to interfere or be a factor at all.
If I want to install any other operating system, then its going to be extra effort, im going to have to load a signing key for the OS I want to install, and that means "extra fiddling".
It is absurd to suggest otherwise.
But it should not be a hindrance like we see now to later or right away install the OS of choice.
There is no real hindrance now on x86 systems.
Even when keys are a necessity they should still be available to the rightful owner of the hardware, not some outsider like Microsoft.
Yes, the ability to go into UEFI and load whatever keys one likes absolutely should be the right of the rightful owner of the hardware.
However Microsoft doesn't control the keys, so I don't know what you are talking about. The end user can load whatever keys they want on x86 hardware.
The current mess is NOT because I can't avoid using microsoft's keys to use linux, or that there is a dependency on Microsoft.
The current mess is because some linuxes, as a convenience to their users are signing their systems with microsoft keys because those keys are already loaded, so users don't have to go through the trouble of loading a key. But that doesn't give MS control.
You can even sign a distro with your own key, and load that key into UEFI. No dependency on Microsoft. No dependency even on the distro. But its a bit more extra fiddling for you.
You bought a computer with secure boot, disabling it is the wrong option.
I agree, but in general the ability to boot random live CDs, something you compiled yourself from source, and what have you will be simpler if you can turn secure boot off rather than having to sign it and load the key first.
That's just absurd. If I buy a computer with an operating system pre-installed then I expect any relevant UEFI configuration done when I get it.
If I want to install something else, then disabling UEFI secure boot or installing approriate keys for my alternate choice should be on me.
And if I buy a boxed motherboard at retail, the selection of preinstalled keys should just be another differentiating factor between models and vendors. I am fully prepared for a real world where everything ships with the microsoft bit already installed and that I need to do some extra work if I want something else.
But the GP is right, I the end user should have the right to disable secure boot and/or install my own keys on any hardware I buy.
And not just on on computers, but also on tablets and phones, even consoles. But some of those battles are maybe for another day.
If you run a red light, you potentially can kill someone. Yet when you run a red light you are issued a fine, and some points on your license.
The end result matters.
but the end result is, if he had blinded the pilot, that plane wouldn't have come back down in a single peice.
Except that's not what the end result was. It could have been. But it wasn't.
but if I run over someone by mistake in my Car, i'm still charged with killing that person. Same should apply here.
If he had crashed the plane, then yes, absolutely. But he didn't.
We don't generally charge people for what might have been the worst possible outcome of their action. We charge them for what they actually did do, or for what they intended to do.
But not what they might have unintentionally done.
If we think he was trying to crash the plane that's one thing. But we need some evidence of intent. Otherwise its just some guy being an idiot -- and we can charge him with assault, since what he actually did was distract and annoy a pilot, and that's probably all he intended to do as well.
But if he was intending on crashing a plane or permanently blinding someone (even though that didn't happen) then yes, charge him with something appropriately SERIOUS.... but there better be evidence of that intention.
Then, in the Google Glass case, several people have pointed out that if used sensibly as a HUD it could actually improve safety.
But it won't be. People will read the news, watch youtube videos, surf the web for porn, compose email, update their facebook relationship status and anything else.
And the police won't be able to touch them as long as they are cruising in their lane.
Then they fail to stop at a cross walk and run over someone two blocks later because they were busy retweeting something.
Even the 'good guys' would have to remember to put it into 'driving mode' every single time they get behind the wheel. Otherwise their 'sensible' driving assist features will be mooted by SMS alerts, email notifications, and whatever else it will be able to do.
Finally, if you just put a simplistic blanket ban on phones then you invite a lot of soft-targetting by cops.
Agreed. But your example is somewhat mooted by the existence of handsfree kits which are legal and encouraged. And the whole 'ker-ching' side of things can be addressed via appropriate policy and public feedback. Some police forces are out playing the 'revenue game' like that, but despite our high awareness of instances where its happened, most police forces don't.
Making gadget usage just part of the evidence for dangerous driving and you avoid that.
The fundamental problem with this is that its like driving drunk.
A lot of people can drive impaired without it being catastrophically obvious that they're impaired. Their lane control can be fine, but they are less aware of their surroundings and their reaction time is lower. So they can drive past the cop at the intersection just fine and he won't see anyting overtly dangerous about their driving, and then two blocks further they run over a kid in the crosswalk that they didn't notice.
The same applies to distracted driving.
I remember making and taking calls on my phone when it was legal, and my lane control was generally perfectly fine. I won't dispute that my overall awareness was likely reduced and that my reaction time was potentially effected, but its not like dialing a phone sent me careening into oncoming traffic.
If we want people not to drive while using cellphones and other gadgets then we do need to ban them. If we rely on the catchall of dangerous driving -- then we have to demonstrate that they were driving dangerously. And most of the time, that's not obvious. Its usually not until something unexpected happens that someone driving impaired or inattentively is caught out. Its only the most extreme cases where they are weaving around like lunatics even just when trying to go with traffic flow.
look into the Thinkpads they sell to the medical industry, they have some pretty kick ass displays and you still have Ethernet plus DVD drive.
Like which models exactly? I don't see anything obvious that's over 1080p?
Although I'll be honest, I've never much cared for Thinkpads even when they were by IBM.
As a lefty I greatly prefer Apple's large trackpads with 1-finger single click and 2-finger doubleclick over small trackpads with physical buttons that aren't ergonomically placed for left handed operation.) There are PCs out there with nice large multi-touch trackpads, but they've been slower hit the market and are far from everywhere.
The trackpoint was never something I cared for, and I found the thinkpad trackpad to be among the least usable in the industry.
The Thinkpad X1 Carbon looks like solid steps in the right direction... the trackpad looks downright great in the pics, and the keyboard looks good too. If those design elements are being carried through the whole line, and they match it up with a high res screen and an ethernet port ... I will definitely look at them when buying the next laptop.
Why are they using DVDs still? USB sticks are faster, more convenient, offer more storage and are not all that much more expensive.
"more storage" -- yeah, and when someone needs to give me 15 to 20 GB of data they use flash, but a lot of the stuff is 4GB and under.
"faster" -- yes!
"more convenient" is arguable -- a spindle of DVDs is a lot easier to manage than a drawer full of flash drives, especially on the receiving end.
"not all that much more expensive" for ~4GB, its at least triple the cost and that's if you buy them in bulk online direct from China. For 1/3rd the price you can get a spindle of DVDs at any walmart.
DVDs are also more convenient to replicate; if you need to hand out a bunch of copies.
Don't get me wrong, we use flash drives too, and we use various dropbox type things too. A lot. And together they've dramatically reduced the number DVDs floating around... but i don't see it eliminating them this year. I still need to read them.
AKA production
No, "production" is what people use in live environments. Lots of people use Firefox and Chrome on the regular release schedule in "production" and they get updated weekly now. Similarly lots of people use Ubuntu on the regular release cycle in production.
They can use LTS if they want to, but most people don't.
"It won't happen because why would anyone ever do that?". Solid reasoning there.
Due to the transaction fees it wouldn't be economical.
Well, if I'd want to DDoS the VISA, I'd try that.
With Visa no *merchant* would let you run hundreds of thousands of 1 cent transactions and credits, due to the transaction fees. You wouldn't get to DDoS VISA because the merchants wouldn't let you process the transactions in the first place.
With bitcoin, you in a sense -are- the merchant, so the fees would be directly on you. Your attempt to DDoS bitcoin would last until you ran out of money. I'm betting you run out of money long before bitcoin's ability to operate is seriously impacted.
This is the song that never ends
yes it goes on and on my friend
Some people started singing it, not knowing what it was
and they'll continue singing it forever just because
This is the song that never ends, yes it goes on and on my friend. ...
But no one wants to talk about situations like these, because the world would rather practice confirmation bias that Americans are evil imperialists.
The point remains that the interventions are inconsistent and do not appear to be linked to 'millions of people suffering'.
After WWI, the Treaty of Versailles forbid Germany from re-arming.
Every country violates treaties when it suits them, when it decides they aren't fair, or when it simply things it can get away with it. The US plays fast and loose with its obligations all the time too. Its not a reason, by itself to go to war.
And the sort of treaties that are signed after a war is lost tend to be among the least balanced. The terms of the Treaty of Versailles it could be argued actually incited some of the discontent that led to WWII.
11 years of failed sanctions? Starve the people more?
Severe sanctions breed discontent. Its pretty easy to stir up unrest and discontent in a country that can point at its neighbors who are literally oppressing them.
I don't claim to know the right answer for each situation but I can recognize these were the wrong answers.
Other than the fact that he already attempted genocide on the Kurds
Again, we're inconsistent. We don't involve ourselves in most genocides. You can argue that we should, but until we do we can't point at genocide and say "that's why we need to go there".
Other than the fact that he funded terrorism against Israel?
Yet the 2003 US-led coalition of nations to topple the Iraqi government didn't include Israel.
Surely, there is a moral argument to prevent someone from obtaining WMD when they've already attempted genocide once.
That's a fair point. Whether or not its our obligation is a separate question, and again there is the consistency element. Why Saddam? Why Iraq. There are other leaders who are as bad or worse.
And if Saddam were removed, would we change our policy on them developing WMD? After all, your argument is that Saddam tried using them, if he is gone, can Iraq have weapons like any other country.