I strongly suspect that the Admin of Funnyjunk would know that he'd get a harsh reaction from fans of the oatmeal. I haven't been on funnyjunk in about 6 years but I visited out of curiosity and now I'm wondering how many people will be doing the same. How many more hits has FJ got because of this? The admin must have known that the oatmeal would never give into blackmail.
That powerful video uses music from Mass Effect 3. It works a lot better in this video than it did in the game, although considering that the plot of the game is that all space faring races are being systematically wiped out, I'm not sure it sends the right message.
It's not a right, it's a simple business practice called Price elasticity of Demand. In a nutshell, the lower the price of something the more demand there will be. It's not necessarily a linear graph (i.e. 10 people will pay $100 but 100 people will pay $10) and it varies depending on the product, what time of year it is, the market in general etc. but the principal is always the same.
In this case, all people want is the ability to pay for just the standalone service that they want rather than having to buy bundles of crap they don't need. I'm not even from the US, I can't get "HBO" and I support this philosophy - I have 165 TV channels due to my provider's "packages" and I find myself switching between about the same 10 or 15 in the average week, some of which are free to air anyway.
To make matters worse, with my current provider there is absolutely no way I can watch Game of Thrones, no matter how much money I throw at them - they don't have the channel that shows it, only one provider does and its exclusive to them and only them (for those wonder, I live in the UK, use Virgin Media for their broadband and Sky Atlantic is the Channel that shows Game of Thrones, which Sky refuses to share with Virgin).
To use an analogy, you want to buy a music track. That music track is part of an album of 12 other songs, most of which are terrible and 1 or 2 are maybe "listenable". Not only this, but there's only one music service that sells this album and it's not compatible with your current MP3 player. You COULD buy a new mp3 player, switch to the new music service (or carry multiple devices) and spend 5x more than the one song is actually worth OR just download the MP3 of the song illegally.
Perhaps, but how many times can you really afford to shell out $99? Theoretically (lol, theory and all that) it should be no more difficult to revoke these UEFI certificates than any other certificate system. I strongly suspect it'll get sent via the likes of Windows update. So say you release your $99-signed malware and it infects a bunch of machines, suddenly the machines get updated and your malware is rendered inert and all future installations are stopped dead (aside from those who don't update, but they're a lost cause). Poof, you've just wasted your $99. Now you have to go buy another cert and do it all over again. Unless you're going to make $99 per "release", it won't be worth your time and that's all the point there is.
Why are people constantly quoting the GPL? Android is NOT GPL, it uses the Apache license. The linux Kernel is GPL, of course, but this isn't about a linux improvement, it's about an Android improvement. Android code means Intel doesn't have to release anything, ever.
Considering that Intel is very much the underdog when it comes to Android (So far there's been one Intel powered Android phone on the market and it's very much a budget offering - a good one, but it's not going to take on the legions of ARM devices any time soon), pushing code that gives their competitors an advantage doesn't make a lot of business sense, at least not until they've established a good foothold.
I think you underestimate the number of people that visit slashdot. Law of averages and all that.
There'll always be another Assange or Manning waiting to stand up and shout loudly, be it for legitimate or self-gratifying reasons (admittedly mostly self-gratifying). People like (the frankly idiotic) Anonymous will make enough of a fuss that it'll get news coverage all over the place and by that point, you can't contain it without making it worse. All they can (and probably will) do is hunker down and deny it all.
This is true and I completely agree that it's wrong in every way. Then again, it's no different to current Windows Mobile devices which is why Microsoft will probably get away with it.
To me, it's not much different to HTC locking their bootloaders either, but most Android manufacturers at least offer a way to unlock them.
This is a good point and I would also like to know how it works. Keep in mind though, UEFI and BIOS are two separate things and many of the limitations of BIOS don't apply. There's no reason why your OS shouldn't be able to add or revoke certificates while running, in much the same way that a good UEFI motherboard lets you overclock and adjust settings on the fly, in Windows (And possibly other OS', I cannot comment on that).
If that's the case, then a leaked certificate is no worse than it is today - your OS just updates the certificate store.
Who said UEFI was a magic bullet that protected you from all kinds of malware? Nobody did, nobody is dumb enough these days to say that their security is unbreakable. The point is to make it harder, the harder you make it then the less likely someone will break it. There will always be one person smart enough to get around it, (or someone dumb enough to let them in) but the alternative is just giving up.
As for the CA's, be thankful of all the recent exploits of them because now that we know they're the weak link, we can regulate the shit out of them. Don't do your job right? We'll shut you down and give your authority to someone else. I'm not saying that's what's going to happen, merely that it's what should happen.
Nothing to do with slashdot, more that thousands and thousands of people have already seen it. If whoever asks the question suddenly disappears, there's plenty of other people that will line up and ask two questions. Plenty of people on slashdot aren't afraid of the government - any government. Like I said, it would be an interesting test in court. I highly doubt it'll ever get to that stage.
It's all over slashdot now, they can't "contain" it much longer. All they can do is deny, deny, deny. Deny doing it, deny access, deny the whole thing. It'd be a hell of an interesting test for the GPL in court, though.
For users performing local customization, they will have the ability to self-register their own trusted keys on their own systems at no cost.
The $99 license is for if you want to distribute yours to other machines. The point is that it's a price that hits a line between "too expensive and will put vendors out of business" and "So cheap any asshat can get one". What it boils down to is the CA correctly authenticating the buyer, if malware vendors get a key signed by them it's the CA's fault.
Now someone who buys a key and recklessly leaves it lying around an insecure place, on the other hand, is a different matter....
I don't think this statement has any bearing on their linux driver support. Linux driver support from both nvidia and AMD could be a lot better than it currently is, but I don't see how it's going to make support any worse.
AMD says that they're moving from a monthly release cycle to a release-when-needed cycle and someone decides to write this piece of trash about it? It's not a bad thing, it makes sense to do it like this. As the summary points out, AMD currently releases out-of-band updates for when a high-profile title has an issue or launch day performance increases, so it doesn't make sense to make another release that month that doesn't change much. It's just confusing and frankly unnecessary. Doing it "as needed" just means that when a driver release comes out, it's worth updating to. If that means I only have to update my drivers once every few months, I'm fine with that - even if it occasionally means there's 2 or 3 updates in the space of a month because a lot of games happened to come out then. Overall, it's better for everyone.
Article is a big load of FUD and should be ignored.
Disclaimer: I've currently got a Geforce 560 Ti in my desktop and my laptop uses a Geforce 555M chipset - frankly, I'm an nvidia fanboy and this article still disgusts me.
I wonder if anyone can answer this, though - how far away, is that star system? I ask because we've only been using radio waves ourselves for about what, the past 150 years or so? So that means other planets looking for us would have to be less than 150 light years away* in order for them to detect our broadcasts. Basically what I'm saying is, is that doesn't listening to that star system only prove that intelligent life that used radio waves didn't exist x amount of years ago, with x being how far away the planets are?
On that point, doesn't it make sense to point the telescopes towards areas of the galaxy that formed before ours and if so, is that where this system is located?
* This is my basic understanding of light speed and radio waves - if it's wrong, please let me know and correct me as to why.
Actually, that's easy - to prove evolution false, all we have to do is find a modern creature preserved in a pit that dates back to long before they should have existed. That has never happened. The further back we go, the more distant the ancestors we find. The fact that we can witness evolution happening in real time with bacteria cultures also proves it exists, for it to prove otherwise then the bacteria would have to not change at all. We even have ideas and theories as to why this happens - genetic mutations that happen all the time.
Since this was directed specifically at me, I feel compelled to respond, so I will.
I disagree about science not answering "the question" - I presume the question you're referring to is that of "Why are we here?" or "Where did we all come from?". What came before the big bang? What caused the big bang? etc.
While it's true that Evolution doesn't disprove an intelligent creator, it's false to assume that evolution has anything to do with the origin of life. Evolution is the origin of species, the diversity of life. Evolution doesn't actually have anything to do with where life came from, rather it deals with the way life changes and diversifies as time goes on. The origin of life is a different field of science called Abiogenesis. This is a really common misconception, but I won't belittle your point by pretending that you're somehow ignorant of all this, I just wanted to make it clear what we're actually discussing.
While science doesn't disprove God, it doesn't aim to. No notable scientist has ever set out to deliberately disprove something but rather prove something. Science is all about coming up with ideas, theories and proving them somehow. We have a theory that there's a particle called the higgs hidden somewhere within the fabric of existence - all the maths points to its existence, but we still haven't proved it - which is why we spent billions building the LHC and smash billions of particles together trying to find it.
Science, by its literal definition, is knowledge. It's not opinion, it's not conjecture, it's raw fact that can be proven again and again. Sure, some things are harder to prove than others and the way we prove them isn't always fantastic, but the beauty of the scientific community is the sheer scepticism within it. If a scientist claims to have found something brilliant, the first thing the rest of the community does is look at their work, pick it apart at the finest detail and then get them to prove it if they can. Sometimes proving it takes decades, some things accepted still haven't been out and out proven by the literal observation of the effect in action, but we do the maths and we poke the theory apart until we can find no reason not to believe it. There's evidence there, perhaps not enough evidence, but enough to say "Hey this seems to be on the mark, lets run with it and see what we can find out".
The problem with religious points of view is that it's pretty much impossible to do any of this. People can read the bible and interpret it a million different ways - all of which can be seen as "Right" or "wrong". The very existance of God cannot be proven by any measurable means and its impossible to "disprove" it as much as it is to "prove" it. It's not possible to be sceptical and a believer at the same time. The two are simply incompatible.
Slashdot Mirror
Sadly, slashdot doesn't have a +1 stating the obvious.
I strongly suspect that the Admin of Funnyjunk would know that he'd get a harsh reaction from fans of the oatmeal. I haven't been on funnyjunk in about 6 years but I visited out of curiosity and now I'm wondering how many people will be doing the same. How many more hits has FJ got because of this?
The admin must have known that the oatmeal would never give into blackmail.
Can you be bothered with all that fuss, all that trouble? Having to click an arbitrary button at an arbitrary time. Can you really be bothered?
ICANN.
That powerful video uses music from Mass Effect 3. It works a lot better in this video than it did in the game, although considering that the plot of the game is that all space faring races are being systematically wiped out, I'm not sure it sends the right message.
Indeed, that has its own term as well: Veblen Goods.
It's not a right, it's a simple business practice called Price elasticity of Demand.
In a nutshell, the lower the price of something the more demand there will be. It's not necessarily a linear graph (i.e. 10 people will pay $100 but 100 people will pay $10) and it varies depending on the product, what time of year it is, the market in general etc. but the principal is always the same.
In this case, all people want is the ability to pay for just the standalone service that they want rather than having to buy bundles of crap they don't need.
I'm not even from the US, I can't get "HBO" and I support this philosophy - I have 165 TV channels due to my provider's "packages" and I find myself switching between about the same 10 or 15 in the average week, some of which are free to air anyway.
To make matters worse, with my current provider there is absolutely no way I can watch Game of Thrones, no matter how much money I throw at them - they don't have the channel that shows it, only one provider does and its exclusive to them and only them (for those wonder, I live in the UK, use Virgin Media for their broadband and Sky Atlantic is the Channel that shows Game of Thrones, which Sky refuses to share with Virgin).
To use an analogy, you want to buy a music track. That music track is part of an album of 12 other songs, most of which are terrible and 1 or 2 are maybe "listenable". Not only this, but there's only one music service that sells this album and it's not compatible with your current MP3 player.
You COULD buy a new mp3 player, switch to the new music service (or carry multiple devices) and spend 5x more than the one song is actually worth OR just download the MP3 of the song illegally.
Perhaps, but how many times can you really afford to shell out $99? Theoretically (lol, theory and all that) it should be no more difficult to revoke these UEFI certificates than any other certificate system. I strongly suspect it'll get sent via the likes of Windows update. So say you release your $99-signed malware and it infects a bunch of machines, suddenly the machines get updated and your malware is rendered inert and all future installations are stopped dead (aside from those who don't update, but they're a lost cause). Poof, you've just wasted your $99. Now you have to go buy another cert and do it all over again. Unless you're going to make $99 per "release", it won't be worth your time and that's all the point there is.
That was true when people only used it once a year.
Android is not GPL, it's Apache:
http://source.android.com/source/licenses.html
The linux Kernel is a different matter but this is an Android code change, not a Linux one. Intel doesn't have to release anything, ever.
Why are people constantly quoting the GPL? Android is NOT GPL, it uses the Apache license. The linux Kernel is GPL, of course, but this isn't about a linux improvement, it's about an Android improvement. Android code means Intel doesn't have to release anything, ever.
Considering that Intel is very much the underdog when it comes to Android (So far there's been one Intel powered Android phone on the market and it's very much a budget offering - a good one, but it's not going to take on the legions of ARM devices any time soon), pushing code that gives their competitors an advantage doesn't make a lot of business sense, at least not until they've established a good foothold.
I just want to clarify one point above - you don't give your $99 to Microsoft, you give it to a CA (I think it's verisign?).
Parent post:
My response:
You're right, reading comprehension is a wonderful thing.
I think you underestimate the number of people that visit slashdot. Law of averages and all that.
There'll always be another Assange or Manning waiting to stand up and shout loudly, be it for legitimate or self-gratifying reasons (admittedly mostly self-gratifying). People like (the frankly idiotic) Anonymous will make enough of a fuss that it'll get news coverage all over the place and by that point, you can't contain it without making it worse. All they can (and probably will) do is hunker down and deny it all.
This is true and I completely agree that it's wrong in every way. Then again, it's no different to current Windows Mobile devices which is why Microsoft will probably get away with it.
To me, it's not much different to HTC locking their bootloaders either, but most Android manufacturers at least offer a way to unlock them.
This is a good point and I would also like to know how it works. Keep in mind though, UEFI and BIOS are two separate things and many of the limitations of BIOS don't apply. There's no reason why your OS shouldn't be able to add or revoke certificates while running, in much the same way that a good UEFI motherboard lets you overclock and adjust settings on the fly, in Windows (And possibly other OS', I cannot comment on that).
If that's the case, then a leaked certificate is no worse than it is today - your OS just updates the certificate store.
Who said UEFI was a magic bullet that protected you from all kinds of malware? Nobody did, nobody is dumb enough these days to say that their security is unbreakable. The point is to make it harder, the harder you make it then the less likely someone will break it. There will always be one person smart enough to get around it, (or someone dumb enough to let them in) but the alternative is just giving up.
As for the CA's, be thankful of all the recent exploits of them because now that we know they're the weak link, we can regulate the shit out of them. Don't do your job right? We'll shut you down and give your authority to someone else. I'm not saying that's what's going to happen, merely that it's what should happen.
I never said that they'd be scared, all I said was that they couldn't contain it by "removing" a few people.
Nothing to do with slashdot, more that thousands and thousands of people have already seen it. If whoever asks the question suddenly disappears, there's plenty of other people that will line up and ask two questions. Plenty of people on slashdot aren't afraid of the government - any government.
Like I said, it would be an interesting test in court. I highly doubt it'll ever get to that stage.
It's all over slashdot now, they can't "contain" it much longer. All they can do is deny, deny, deny. Deny doing it, deny access, deny the whole thing.
It'd be a hell of an interesting test for the GPL in court, though.
Not quite, summary:
The $99 license is for if you want to distribute yours to other machines. The point is that it's a price that hits a line between "too expensive and will put vendors out of business" and "So cheap any asshat can get one". What it boils down to is the CA correctly authenticating the buyer, if malware vendors get a key signed by them it's the CA's fault.
Now someone who buys a key and recklessly leaves it lying around an insecure place, on the other hand, is a different matter....
I don't think this statement has any bearing on their linux driver support. Linux driver support from both nvidia and AMD could be a lot better than it currently is, but I don't see how it's going to make support any worse.
AMD says that they're moving from a monthly release cycle to a release-when-needed cycle and someone decides to write this piece of trash about it?
It's not a bad thing, it makes sense to do it like this. As the summary points out, AMD currently releases out-of-band updates for when a high-profile title has an issue or launch day performance increases, so it doesn't make sense to make another release that month that doesn't change much. It's just confusing and frankly unnecessary. Doing it "as needed" just means that when a driver release comes out, it's worth updating to. If that means I only have to update my drivers once every few months, I'm fine with that - even if it occasionally means there's 2 or 3 updates in the space of a month because a lot of games happened to come out then. Overall, it's better for everyone.
Article is a big load of FUD and should be ignored.
Disclaimer: I've currently got a Geforce 560 Ti in my desktop and my laptop uses a Geforce 555M chipset - frankly, I'm an nvidia fanboy and this article still disgusts me.
I wonder if anyone can answer this, though - how far away, is that star system? I ask because we've only been using radio waves ourselves for about what, the past 150 years or so? So that means other planets looking for us would have to be less than 150 light years away* in order for them to detect our broadcasts. Basically what I'm saying is, is that doesn't listening to that star system only prove that intelligent life that used radio waves didn't exist x amount of years ago, with x being how far away the planets are?
On that point, doesn't it make sense to point the telescopes towards areas of the galaxy that formed before ours and if so, is that where this system is located?
* This is my basic understanding of light speed and radio waves - if it's wrong, please let me know and correct me as to why.
Actually, that's easy - to prove evolution false, all we have to do is find a modern creature preserved in a pit that dates back to long before they should have existed. That has never happened. The further back we go, the more distant the ancestors we find. The fact that we can witness evolution happening in real time with bacteria cultures also proves it exists, for it to prove otherwise then the bacteria would have to not change at all. We even have ideas and theories as to why this happens - genetic mutations that happen all the time.
Since this was directed specifically at me, I feel compelled to respond, so I will.
I disagree about science not answering "the question" - I presume the question you're referring to is that of "Why are we here?" or "Where did we all come from?". What came before the big bang? What caused the big bang? etc.
While it's true that Evolution doesn't disprove an intelligent creator, it's false to assume that evolution has anything to do with the origin of life. Evolution is the origin of species, the diversity of life. Evolution doesn't actually have anything to do with where life came from, rather it deals with the way life changes and diversifies as time goes on. The origin of life is a different field of science called Abiogenesis. This is a really common misconception, but I won't belittle your point by pretending that you're somehow ignorant of all this, I just wanted to make it clear what we're actually discussing.
While science doesn't disprove God, it doesn't aim to. No notable scientist has ever set out to deliberately disprove something but rather prove something. Science is all about coming up with ideas, theories and proving them somehow. We have a theory that there's a particle called the higgs hidden somewhere within the fabric of existence - all the maths points to its existence, but we still haven't proved it - which is why we spent billions building the LHC and smash billions of particles together trying to find it.
Science, by its literal definition, is knowledge. It's not opinion, it's not conjecture, it's raw fact that can be proven again and again. Sure, some things are harder to prove than others and the way we prove them isn't always fantastic, but the beauty of the scientific community is the sheer scepticism within it. If a scientist claims to have found something brilliant, the first thing the rest of the community does is look at their work, pick it apart at the finest detail and then get them to prove it if they can. Sometimes proving it takes decades, some things accepted still haven't been out and out proven by the literal observation of the effect in action, but we do the maths and we poke the theory apart until we can find no reason not to believe it. There's evidence there, perhaps not enough evidence, but enough to say "Hey this seems to be on the mark, lets run with it and see what we can find out".
The problem with religious points of view is that it's pretty much impossible to do any of this. People can read the bible and interpret it a million different ways - all of which can be seen as "Right" or "wrong". The very existance of God cannot be proven by any measurable means and its impossible to "disprove" it as much as it is to "prove" it. It's not possible to be sceptical and a believer at the same time. The two are simply incompatible.