Not necessarily. As I say some information is external, and knowable without knowledge of the system - i.e. my example of an e-mail address stored for a configuration of Outlook.
You can often tell if somewhere is running exchange simply by connecting to the mail server, and if the e-mail address is known then as I say you could simply build the key to read the local installation settings of an Outlook install to see if it's configured locally for that account, and if it is, you likely have that account's computer.
Also as with my other example, they could be targetting machines with industrial control equipment on like Stuxnet did which narrows down the targets quite a bit, especially if it's narrowed down based on specific configurations. In this respect it could somewhat be an "inside" job though not in the way you're suggesting - it could be that if it's targetted as say Iran, that whoever wrote Stuxnet using the knowledge they gained last time from their previous attack to try and re-attack with this new method. Even if it's not another attack against Iran, you get the idea - if someone has had access before, but lost access, it could be an attempt to use that knowledge to get back in.
It all depends really on what data is being used. If it is stuff like the mac address or other hardware information you may be right. I can think of a number of ways how this sort of attack might be useful though for people who don't have access right now, or may never have even had access to the existing machines.
No, the key isn't in there. The algorithm to generate the key from specific information on the host system is in there, but the key can only be correctly generated from the host system having the right information for which the algorithm can properly derive the correct key.
Don't quote me on this, but judging from what the summary is saying, the key is derived from a piece or combination of information on the host machine. That is, the key itself could be derived from for example, the currently logged in user, combined with their MAC address, combined with some identifier from the motherboard or whatever.
As such yes, the computer has the key, but you need to know what computer. Presumably you can figure out what the malware is building the key from so you know what information it's extracting from it's host and how it's building a candidate key from that, but you can't figure out the actual key unless your system provides it with the information to generate a candidate key that is actually the correct key. It may be that the malware is reading the logged in user's username and using that as a key such that it only decrypts succesfully if the user is logged in as mahmadinejad or whatever.
It's quite clever really, because it means you can make a targetted virus that only unloads the payload if it detects some parameters that you know about the target user or system (i.e. their e-mail address, and that they use Outlook (e.g. read their e-mail address setting for Outlook from the registry)) and remain harmless for everyone else and as is demonstrated here, no one else even if they find the virus will be able to figure out easily what is actually in the payload.
It sounds like a targetted virus has been uncovered, but all clues as to who or what it is targetting are hidden away in the encrypted payload. It'd be nice to know what the malware is using as the key as that narrows it down somewhat i.e. if it's trying to read something from the registry you know it's targetting Windows PCs which narrows it down to 90% of computers, if it also then tries to combine that with whether the system has a specific piece of software installed (like centrifugre control software;)) then it narrows it down further and so on, but it's still probably a large search space to find the correct target(s).
The rest of the world doesn't grant as much weight to software patents, and so effectively all that would happen is that the American cell phone market would be just like it was before the iPhone came along - backwards relative to the rest of the world.
"it sold 37,000 tablets relevant to the court case. It could be that almost all of their sales were international and/or not-relevant (such as Windows tablets), but it is hard to reconcile those numbers nonetheless. The most likely explanation is that IDC really sucks at estimating tablet sales. Maybe they are dramatically better at phones?"
Actually no, the most likely explanation is that Samsung doesn't have many of the "infringing" tablets left in their inventory and that the absolute vast majority of their sales over the last few months have been the non-infringing version of the Android tablet, not that they've been selling MS tablets.
The mistake you've made is in assuming that the only Android tablet they produce is infringing, that's simply not the case, it was merely one version, of one model that was accused as such. Later versions of that model, and later models removed the potential for infringements.
Sadly, Apple fanboys are jumping on this as something that it's simply not.
"The burden of proof is on you, not them, under UK law, provided they can prove you ever had access to the password."
Just to clarify (and I can't be arsed to go dig it out and quote it again - I've done it so many times on Slashdot before already) the section of RIPA that covers handing over passwords or face a jail term of up to 5 years if you don't hand it over explicitly states that the burden is on the police to prove beyond reasonable doubt that you know the passphrase.
So there's no sillyness of needing to record all passphrases you use or anything like that, that's just paranoid hysteria. Life goes on, the only time RIPA is a problem is if the police can prove, to the same "beyond reasonable doubt" standard of evidence that any other criminal prosecution requires that you know the passphrase.
I'm not defending RIPA, but the threat of that clause of it is completely overblown. The police have to be able to provide the same standard of evidence that you know the key as we use to convict murderers and so forth. This means that unless you've done something stupid like admit under the pressure of questioning and simultaneously left a massive trail of evidence that you have used the encrypted system, or contents of the system recently then the "I don't know the login, and other people use the computer so it may be theirs" excuse is still perfectly valid in the UK. It's still upto the police to prove otherwise, and again, prove with a very high standard of evidence.
This is the fundamental problem with anti-Google FUD, despite all the claims of "Google collects this", and "Google collects that", the claims that it's a privacy nightmare have yet to materialise. Google has a lot of information on me and has for over 10 years, but I've never ever seen it end up in the hands of other companies I'm not happy with or used in ways I was not expecting.
Compare this to Facebook, Microsoft, Monster.com who have all also had data on me and have managed to pass it to companies I did not give them permissions to leak it to which is a breach of the Data Protection Act in the UK. I know for a fact it was these companies as only these companies held such data. For example, I had a friend who my only connection to was via MS Messenger and who none of my other friends knew. This friend was later recommended, to me as a contact on both LinkedIn and Facebook so it's pretty clear Microsoft sold/leaked my contact information to these companies. Similarly I've had spam to e-mail addresses uniquely used for each of these companies. Google? Never had any such thing.
This is why Google is constantly being probed over privacy, which is no bad thing - companies should be held accountable to privacy laws - but there is a gross disparity between what Google gets investigated for and what Microsoft, Facebook et. al. do not. It doesn't take much to put two and two together and see why when Microsoft is pouring so much into trolling Google with lobbyists in various governments and parliaments across the globe.
Personally I prefer to stick to the facts, maybe one day the fanboys will be proven right and Google will spread every single bit of data they hold on me far and wide across the internet and use my information to steal all my money and fit me up for a murder I did not commit or whatever the fanboys and trolls predict will happen to anyone that uses Google's services, but right now there's no sign of any such thing with Google and again, in contrast, there is with companies like Microsoft and Facebook. Hell, even Amazon managed to fuck up one of my orders once and ended up sending my book, the packing receipt with my name, address, e-mail and so forth on to some random person, whilst sending me someone elses details and their order in a box with my address on which is still worse than anything Google has done.
I give my consent for some companies to hold some of my data, and whilst Slashdot has more than it's fair share of "off-the-grid" fantasists I'd wager none of them actually genuinely practice that ideology and that pretty much everyone here hands some private data over to private companies - possibly even against their will as government mandated data collection is passed to 3rd parties to store/process. The companies I respect are the ones who keep that data safe and do not abuse that data, Google is one of those who for over a decade now, has not let me down in this respect, which is more than can be said for 90% of other tech companies I've dealt with. There's a massive divide between what it's claimed Google could do with your data, and what it has ever actually done with it in practice. I'm under no illusion that it uses it to improve it's ad service and so forth, but that's the price I pay for using their services, what it doesn't do is sell or pass my data on to others, at which point it is much more out of my control as to what it's used for, and that's what matters to me.
(Non-)interesting trivia: Cacti are differentiated from other spiked plants by the fact they are pretty much unique in the plant world in actually having spines, rather than thorns, and that the spines on cacti are believed to have, in the case of more thickly spined species, evolved just as much for protection of their epidermis from the strong sunlight in the climates they inhabit as much as to protect them from would be hungry (and thirsty) mouths.
Ah yes, extrapolation, what fun. Obviously by the same measure, because America now decided everyone should have healthcare, it'll be communist by 2018.
It sounds like your beef is that you feel you should be free to be openly homophobic, but this is identical to suggesting you should be free to be openly racist, be free to be openly anti-semitic. That's fine if you believe that, but you're a far right minority, and your viewpoint isn't one shared by the vast majority of the population.
Note that every country outlaws some speech, some do it explicitly (like Germany and nazism, China and Tianamen square), some do it implicitly (like America bankrupting the Phelps, going after Assange/JÃnsdÃttir, abducting foreign Islamic preachers to guantanamo, ICE DNS seizures etc.). Ultimately America censors much like everyone else, it just has to pussy foot around it because it has to pretend it still cares about the constitution absolutely, whilst everyone else doesn't have this rather obscure situation, so they just explicitly state it instead.
In the UK we outlaw hate speech that is offensive based on race, disability, and interestingly, religion. It only makes sense therefore that homosexuality is equally protected, as it is, like race and disability, extremely natural, and certainly not something someone chooses like religion (which is why plenty of people change their religion without problem, but no one genuinely manages to change their sexual desires). For what it's worth homosexuality doesn't have the same degree of protection in the UK as religion, but it hopefully will soon as homosexuality is simply the latest fight for equal rights, just as there was a fight for gender and race equality beforehand.
For what it's worth regarding your original question "Perhaps Europe is just leftist?" the answer is no, because when you also look at countries like China, India, Japan etc. it's most certainly the US that is far to the right compared to Europe and the rest of the world, than Europe being far left compared to the US and the rest of the world. You can effectively use other nations as your point of reference and the idea that America is far right is the only thing that makes sense using a global frame of reference. Europe being much more leftist doesn't really make any sense, as where would that leave the genuinely leftist nations like Argentina and Venezuela, or the far left like Cuba and North Korea? In contrast, there aren't many nations that are particularly more right wing than the US nowadays, and certainly not to the degree that say Argentina and Venezuela are to the left compared to Europe.
It'd probably work fine for the design phase, where you can make progressive changes, but obviously not for the whole project. If you use it for design, and then pass it over to engineering to ensure it's actually a structurally sound solution, say, at the end of each sprint, then you could probably benefit. Just make sure that you end the Agile portion of the project and check one last time that it's structurally sound before you pass it off to the builders.
Look, I'm not particularly a fan of the US, but the evidence against Iran is now pretty damning that even the IAEA agrees there's a lot of evidence suggesting a military dimension to Iran's activities. See the IAEA report and get it directly from the horses mouth if you wish:
"40. The Annex to the Director Generalâ(TM)s November 2011 report (GOV/2011/65) provided a detailed analysis of the information available to the Agency indicating that Iran has carried out activities that are relevant to the development of a nuclear explosive device. This information, which comes from a wide variety of independent sources, including from a number of Member States, from the Agencyâ(TM)s own efforts and from information provided by Iran itself, is assessed by the Agency to be, overall, credible. The information indicates that, prior to the end of 2003 the activities took place under a structured programme; that some continued after 2003; and that some may still be ongoing."
Perhaps the reason Israel has been making this claim for 20 years is because it's actually true? Making a bomb isn't exactly a quick process so the argument that accusations have been going on for 20 years doesn't in any way discredit the suggestion. Note also that the 20 years figure doesn't mean they were putting anywhere near the resources into it that they may have in recent years - a poorly funded, poorly staffed nuclear project wont get anywhere even in 10 years. Iran also has space militarisation and ballistic missile ambitions too, their scientists can only be spread so thin - even America has trouble resourcing a lot of space missions now despite having far more well and far more clever people at their disposal.
"Iranians aren't stupid or uneducated or technologically backward. Why would it take them more than a few years to replicate a relatively simple piece of technology?"
Well, ignoring the fact that it's not actually that simple, especially when you recognise that if they are trying to do so, they're trying to do so on an independent level - i.e. by enriching their own nuclear materials, there are other reasons why it may take so long:
- Nations like Israel have been killing key members of their nuclear programme
- A number of embargos make it difficult for them to get the components they need
- If you haven't noticed, their systems have been crippled a number of times by cyber attacks
It's only a simple process if you have all the equipment you need, don't suffer any supply chain issues, your scientists with key knowledge can work on the project without having their lives cut short, you can afford it, and most importantly, you've done it before. You cite the original bombs as examples, but why do you think the British headed to America to embark upon the project over there with them? It's a lot easier to do in mainland America than it is Britain which was at the time being bombarded day in and day out and was riddled with spies and sabboteurs.
"The most plausible explanation to my mind is that they are not working on building one. "
That's great, but thankfully we can ignore your mind and listen to folks who actually know what they're on about, like the IAEA.
"None of this makes much sense, unless Iran is not working on building a bomb."
On the contrary, it all makes sense if Iran has been working on a military nuclear programme. What doesn't make sense if Iran is not working on a bomb as you propose is why the Iranian's wont simply let inspectors visit the full range of sites they've requested to access, and allow them to view the full range of paperwork they've requested to view if you have nothing to hide? What, you think Iran has some magical nuclear technology that is so advanced they don't want the West to steal it with their clai
Thank you for this highly scientific analysis with an immensly useful dataset that was large enough to be statistically significant.
Personally I'd be happy if I could even get Linux to a point where I could play games without it crashing due to the fact it still to this day has shit drivers for many pieces of consumer hardware. This is in contrast to Windows that at least "just works" nowadays and has done for some years.
"Six of one, half-dozen of the other. iOS is like a gated community, Android is more like Bartertown. Both can be a PITA to deal with, for different reasons. But since I'm using a tablet to actually Get Things Done, I'd rather have the smooth, predictable, curated experience of an iOS device than the essentially lawless "hope this is gonna work!" chaos of the current Android ecosystem."
That's what one of our clients said, they even bought a ton of iPads in preparation for using them to author documents via their shiny new web based CMS.
So imagine their horror, when a key feature of what they needed to do - the ability to perform content uploads via a standard file upload element was actually impossible because the iPad doesn't support this very basic web page form element due to it conflicting with it's locked down filesystem.
Apple's response? create an app to do the file uploads.
Clients response? Cancel all iPad orders and just buy Android ones in future. It was going to be cheaper to just replace the iPads they already had in the long run and leave them unused in a cupboard than it was to pay to have an app developed, have the CMS modified to support this new clunky upload process, to train people on how to go on this awkward little journey just to upload content and then how to locate it in the CMS, and for all the time wasted having to do that for each file they want to upload.
Honestly, the iPad only lets you "get things done" if the things you want to do are on Apple's list of authorised things you are allowed to do. Otherwise no, the iPad actually acts as a barrier to getting things done. Unfortunately many things businesses do day to day are not actually on this list. Apparently they're fixing this particular issue in iOS6 but it's way too late now to be implementing what is basic web browser functionality.
You may well be right, I'd be cautious in taking anything away from this particular article though, as Valve have made it quite clear now that they have a vested interest in seeing Windows fall as they see Windows 8 as a genuine threat to their existence if people start buying games directly from the Windows Marketplace rather than Steam. When they referring to Windows 8 as a general "Catastrophe" which is probably a bit of a stretch, even if it maybe is for them, then it's hard to see them as objective on this issue.
Not that this is likely to be an unpopular move here, nor is it necessarily a bad thing if a company like Valve is helping Windows fall a peg or two, but now Valve has a clear political motivation to attacking windows, it's hard to see anything anti-Windows they mention as necessarily objective. It's also quite possible that Valve's Windows engine actually just isn't well optimised, and that now that they're moving it to another platform it's given them chance to rewrite components that were long overdue for a rewrite. I believe at least some of the foundations and design of the Source engine actually stem all the way back to the Quake 1 codebase for example.
I'll be honest, despite them being such a massive firm, and having heard about them many hundreds of times on Slashdot, I've never actually seen a peice of Huawei kit here in the UK.
Are they just not particularly prominent in the UK market? or are they one of those firms who let others rebrand their kit?
The reason I ask is because I don't want to inadvertantly use their kit - if it's been rebranded to something else I want to avoid it. If it doesn't get rebranded then I guess I'm okay, because encountering Huawei kit seems to be an uncommon thing here in the UK anyway, though if they do have a decent prescence in our market, I'd be intrigued to know where (e.g. do certain ISPs provide Huawei routers?, or do certain industry sectors use their other networking kit more than others?).
If I hand you a bunch of memory chips and a screen and you can tell me exactly what the finished product will look like having never seen it before then I believe the military would love to enroll you in a phsycic warfare programme.
When I say Samsung produced the parts, I don't mean all the parts, just certain components. They wont have produced for example the casing, buttons etc., just some of the chips, the screen and such.
How do you think Apple's marketing department will respond? Marketing is far and away Apple's strongest department, so it'll simply be spun as Samsung being sore losers. I'm not sure why the judge would necessarily care either, some just simply don't. Look at The Pirate Bay trial for example, the judge was part of a music industry lobby group, was exposed as such, but simply didn't give a shit and carried on.
Unless it stops her getting her paycheck, which it wont, then she has no reason to care or change course.
It's quite possible that it's tied in to some kind of WP7 deal, such that Microsoft will ignore Android patents for Samsung, providing Samsung continues to manufacture WP7 phones, and may have WP7 license fees waved or some such thing.
Samsung's Windows Phones probably make them so little money that it wouldn't even be worth doing relative to the massive success of their Android phones unless there was some kind of incentive. Their time would probably be better spent just focussing 100% on Android for their smartphone business normally.
Of course, I'm just speculating, but this wouldn't be the first time Microsoft has struck this kind of deal and spun it as something it isn't, nor would it be unusual for companies in general.
Slashdot Mirror
Not necessarily. As I say some information is external, and knowable without knowledge of the system - i.e. my example of an e-mail address stored for a configuration of Outlook.
You can often tell if somewhere is running exchange simply by connecting to the mail server, and if the e-mail address is known then as I say you could simply build the key to read the local installation settings of an Outlook install to see if it's configured locally for that account, and if it is, you likely have that account's computer.
Also as with my other example, they could be targetting machines with industrial control equipment on like Stuxnet did which narrows down the targets quite a bit, especially if it's narrowed down based on specific configurations. In this respect it could somewhat be an "inside" job though not in the way you're suggesting - it could be that if it's targetted as say Iran, that whoever wrote Stuxnet using the knowledge they gained last time from their previous attack to try and re-attack with this new method. Even if it's not another attack against Iran, you get the idea - if someone has had access before, but lost access, it could be an attempt to use that knowledge to get back in.
It all depends really on what data is being used. If it is stuff like the mac address or other hardware information you may be right. I can think of a number of ways how this sort of attack might be useful though for people who don't have access right now, or may never have even had access to the existing machines.
No, the key isn't in there. The algorithm to generate the key from specific information on the host system is in there, but the key can only be correctly generated from the host system having the right information for which the algorithm can properly derive the correct key.
I think the answer is in the summary.
Don't quote me on this, but judging from what the summary is saying, the key is derived from a piece or combination of information on the host machine. That is, the key itself could be derived from for example, the currently logged in user, combined with their MAC address, combined with some identifier from the motherboard or whatever.
As such yes, the computer has the key, but you need to know what computer. Presumably you can figure out what the malware is building the key from so you know what information it's extracting from it's host and how it's building a candidate key from that, but you can't figure out the actual key unless your system provides it with the information to generate a candidate key that is actually the correct key. It may be that the malware is reading the logged in user's username and using that as a key such that it only decrypts succesfully if the user is logged in as mahmadinejad or whatever.
It's quite clever really, because it means you can make a targetted virus that only unloads the payload if it detects some parameters that you know about the target user or system (i.e. their e-mail address, and that they use Outlook (e.g. read their e-mail address setting for Outlook from the registry)) and remain harmless for everyone else and as is demonstrated here, no one else even if they find the virus will be able to figure out easily what is actually in the payload.
It sounds like a targetted virus has been uncovered, but all clues as to who or what it is targetting are hidden away in the encrypted payload. It'd be nice to know what the malware is using as the key as that narrows it down somewhat i.e. if it's trying to read something from the registry you know it's targetting Windows PCs which narrows it down to 90% of computers, if it also then tries to combine that with whether the system has a specific piece of software installed (like centrifugre control software ;)) then it narrows it down further and so on, but it's still probably a large search space to find the correct target(s).
This is how it would be in America.
The rest of the world doesn't grant as much weight to software patents, and so effectively all that would happen is that the American cell phone market would be just like it was before the iPhone came along - backwards relative to the rest of the world.
"it sold 37,000 tablets relevant to the court case. It could be that almost all of their sales were international and/or not-relevant (such as Windows tablets), but it is hard to reconcile those numbers nonetheless. The most likely explanation is that IDC really sucks at estimating tablet sales. Maybe they are dramatically better at phones?"
Actually no, the most likely explanation is that Samsung doesn't have many of the "infringing" tablets left in their inventory and that the absolute vast majority of their sales over the last few months have been the non-infringing version of the Android tablet, not that they've been selling MS tablets.
The mistake you've made is in assuming that the only Android tablet they produce is infringing, that's simply not the case, it was merely one version, of one model that was accused as such. Later versions of that model, and later models removed the potential for infringements.
Sadly, Apple fanboys are jumping on this as something that it's simply not.
"The burden of proof is on you, not them, under UK law, provided they can prove you ever had access to the password."
Just to clarify (and I can't be arsed to go dig it out and quote it again - I've done it so many times on Slashdot before already) the section of RIPA that covers handing over passwords or face a jail term of up to 5 years if you don't hand it over explicitly states that the burden is on the police to prove beyond reasonable doubt that you know the passphrase.
So there's no sillyness of needing to record all passphrases you use or anything like that, that's just paranoid hysteria. Life goes on, the only time RIPA is a problem is if the police can prove, to the same "beyond reasonable doubt" standard of evidence that any other criminal prosecution requires that you know the passphrase.
I'm not defending RIPA, but the threat of that clause of it is completely overblown. The police have to be able to provide the same standard of evidence that you know the key as we use to convict murderers and so forth. This means that unless you've done something stupid like admit under the pressure of questioning and simultaneously left a massive trail of evidence that you have used the encrypted system, or contents of the system recently then the "I don't know the login, and other people use the computer so it may be theirs" excuse is still perfectly valid in the UK. It's still upto the police to prove otherwise, and again, prove with a very high standard of evidence.
This is the fundamental problem with anti-Google FUD, despite all the claims of "Google collects this", and "Google collects that", the claims that it's a privacy nightmare have yet to materialise. Google has a lot of information on me and has for over 10 years, but I've never ever seen it end up in the hands of other companies I'm not happy with or used in ways I was not expecting.
Compare this to Facebook, Microsoft, Monster.com who have all also had data on me and have managed to pass it to companies I did not give them permissions to leak it to which is a breach of the Data Protection Act in the UK. I know for a fact it was these companies as only these companies held such data. For example, I had a friend who my only connection to was via MS Messenger and who none of my other friends knew. This friend was later recommended, to me as a contact on both LinkedIn and Facebook so it's pretty clear Microsoft sold/leaked my contact information to these companies. Similarly I've had spam to e-mail addresses uniquely used for each of these companies. Google? Never had any such thing.
But it's all part of this sort of thing:
http://falkvinge.net/2012/03/02/how-microsoft-pays-big-money-to-smear-google-audaciously/
This is why Google is constantly being probed over privacy, which is no bad thing - companies should be held accountable to privacy laws - but there is a gross disparity between what Google gets investigated for and what Microsoft, Facebook et. al. do not. It doesn't take much to put two and two together and see why when Microsoft is pouring so much into trolling Google with lobbyists in various governments and parliaments across the globe.
Personally I prefer to stick to the facts, maybe one day the fanboys will be proven right and Google will spread every single bit of data they hold on me far and wide across the internet and use my information to steal all my money and fit me up for a murder I did not commit or whatever the fanboys and trolls predict will happen to anyone that uses Google's services, but right now there's no sign of any such thing with Google and again, in contrast, there is with companies like Microsoft and Facebook. Hell, even Amazon managed to fuck up one of my orders once and ended up sending my book, the packing receipt with my name, address, e-mail and so forth on to some random person, whilst sending me someone elses details and their order in a box with my address on which is still worse than anything Google has done.
I give my consent for some companies to hold some of my data, and whilst Slashdot has more than it's fair share of "off-the-grid" fantasists I'd wager none of them actually genuinely practice that ideology and that pretty much everyone here hands some private data over to private companies - possibly even against their will as government mandated data collection is passed to 3rd parties to store/process. The companies I respect are the ones who keep that data safe and do not abuse that data, Google is one of those who for over a decade now, has not let me down in this respect, which is more than can be said for 90% of other tech companies I've dealt with. There's a massive divide between what it's claimed Google could do with your data, and what it has ever actually done with it in practice. I'm under no illusion that it uses it to improve it's ad service and so forth, but that's the price I pay for using their services, what it doesn't do is sell or pass my data on to others, at which point it is much more out of my control as to what it's used for, and that's what matters to me.
(Non-)interesting trivia: Cacti are differentiated from other spiked plants by the fact they are pretty much unique in the plant world in actually having spines, rather than thorns, and that the spines on cacti are believed to have, in the case of more thickly spined species, evolved just as much for protection of their epidermis from the strong sunlight in the climates they inhabit as much as to protect them from would be hungry (and thirsty) mouths.
I wish I was either of these as it would then mean I lived in a climate more to my tastes, rather than shitty rainy England.
Many Nokia phones have offered pretty much everything on your list since 2001 or so with the release of the Nokia 7650.
All my houseplants are Cacti.
Ah yes, extrapolation, what fun. Obviously by the same measure, because America now decided everyone should have healthcare, it'll be communist by 2018.
It sounds like your beef is that you feel you should be free to be openly homophobic, but this is identical to suggesting you should be free to be openly racist, be free to be openly anti-semitic. That's fine if you believe that, but you're a far right minority, and your viewpoint isn't one shared by the vast majority of the population.
Note that every country outlaws some speech, some do it explicitly (like Germany and nazism, China and Tianamen square), some do it implicitly (like America bankrupting the Phelps, going after Assange/JÃnsdÃttir, abducting foreign Islamic preachers to guantanamo, ICE DNS seizures etc.). Ultimately America censors much like everyone else, it just has to pussy foot around it because it has to pretend it still cares about the constitution absolutely, whilst everyone else doesn't have this rather obscure situation, so they just explicitly state it instead.
In the UK we outlaw hate speech that is offensive based on race, disability, and interestingly, religion. It only makes sense therefore that homosexuality is equally protected, as it is, like race and disability, extremely natural, and certainly not something someone chooses like religion (which is why plenty of people change their religion without problem, but no one genuinely manages to change their sexual desires). For what it's worth homosexuality doesn't have the same degree of protection in the UK as religion, but it hopefully will soon as homosexuality is simply the latest fight for equal rights, just as there was a fight for gender and race equality beforehand.
For what it's worth regarding your original question "Perhaps Europe is just leftist?" the answer is no, because when you also look at countries like China, India, Japan etc. it's most certainly the US that is far to the right compared to Europe and the rest of the world, than Europe being far left compared to the US and the rest of the world. You can effectively use other nations as your point of reference and the idea that America is far right is the only thing that makes sense using a global frame of reference. Europe being much more leftist doesn't really make any sense, as where would that leave the genuinely leftist nations like Argentina and Venezuela, or the far left like Cuba and North Korea? In contrast, there aren't many nations that are particularly more right wing than the US nowadays, and certainly not to the degree that say Argentina and Venezuela are to the left compared to Europe.
Yes, the NHS in the UK has used it for a number of projects for many years.
It'd probably work fine for the design phase, where you can make progressive changes, but obviously not for the whole project. If you use it for design, and then pass it over to engineering to ensure it's actually a structurally sound solution, say, at the end of each sprint, then you could probably benefit. Just make sure that you end the Agile portion of the project and check one last time that it's structurally sound before you pass it off to the builders.
Actually I think the British Army is now the official police force of the olympic games. Previously it was G4S, but they failed miserably.
Blah, blah, blah, US, Israel, blah, blah, blah.
Look, I'm not particularly a fan of the US, but the evidence against Iran is now pretty damning that even the IAEA agrees there's a lot of evidence suggesting a military dimension to Iran's activities. See the IAEA report and get it directly from the horses mouth if you wish:
http://www.iaea.org/Publications/Documents/Board/2012/gov2012-23.pdf
Specifically:
"40. The Annex to the Director Generalâ(TM)s November 2011 report (GOV/2011/65) provided a detailed analysis of the information available to the Agency indicating that Iran has carried out activities that are relevant to the development of a nuclear explosive device. This information, which comes from a wide
variety of independent sources, including from a number of Member States, from the Agencyâ(TM)s own efforts and from information provided by Iran itself, is assessed by the Agency to be, overall, credible. The information indicates that, prior to the end of 2003 the activities took place under a structured programme; that some continued after 2003; and that some may still be ongoing."
Perhaps the reason Israel has been making this claim for 20 years is because it's actually true? Making a bomb isn't exactly a quick process so the argument that accusations have been going on for 20 years doesn't in any way discredit the suggestion. Note also that the 20 years figure doesn't mean they were putting anywhere near the resources into it that they may have in recent years - a poorly funded, poorly staffed nuclear project wont get anywhere even in 10 years. Iran also has space militarisation and ballistic missile ambitions too, their scientists can only be spread so thin - even America has trouble resourcing a lot of space missions now despite having far more well and far more clever people at their disposal.
"Iranians aren't stupid or uneducated or technologically backward. Why would it take them more than a few years to replicate a relatively simple piece of technology?"
Well, ignoring the fact that it's not actually that simple, especially when you recognise that if they are trying to do so, they're trying to do so on an independent level - i.e. by enriching their own nuclear materials, there are other reasons why it may take so long:
- Nations like Israel have been killing key members of their nuclear programme
- A number of embargos make it difficult for them to get the components they need
- If you haven't noticed, their systems have been crippled a number of times by cyber attacks
It's only a simple process if you have all the equipment you need, don't suffer any supply chain issues, your scientists with key knowledge can work on the project without having their lives cut short, you can afford it, and most importantly, you've done it before. You cite the original bombs as examples, but why do you think the British headed to America to embark upon the project over there with them? It's a lot easier to do in mainland America than it is Britain which was at the time being bombarded day in and day out and was riddled with spies and sabboteurs.
"The most plausible explanation to my mind is that they are not working on building one. "
That's great, but thankfully we can ignore your mind and listen to folks who actually know what they're on about, like the IAEA.
"None of this makes much sense, unless Iran is not working on building a bomb."
On the contrary, it all makes sense if Iran has been working on a military nuclear programme. What doesn't make sense if Iran is not working on a bomb as you propose is why the Iranian's wont simply let inspectors visit the full range of sites they've requested to access, and allow them to view the full range of paperwork they've requested to view if you have nothing to hide? What, you think Iran has some magical nuclear technology that is so advanced they don't want the West to steal it with their clai
Thank you for this highly scientific analysis with an immensly useful dataset that was large enough to be statistically significant.
Personally I'd be happy if I could even get Linux to a point where I could play games without it crashing due to the fact it still to this day has shit drivers for many pieces of consumer hardware. This is in contrast to Windows that at least "just works" nowadays and has done for some years.
"Six of one, half-dozen of the other. iOS is like a gated community, Android is more like Bartertown. Both can be a PITA to deal with, for different reasons. But since I'm using a tablet to actually Get Things Done, I'd rather have the smooth, predictable, curated experience of an iOS device than the essentially lawless "hope this is gonna work!" chaos of the current Android ecosystem."
That's what one of our clients said, they even bought a ton of iPads in preparation for using them to author documents via their shiny new web based CMS.
So imagine their horror, when a key feature of what they needed to do - the ability to perform content uploads via a standard file upload element was actually impossible because the iPad doesn't support this very basic web page form element due to it conflicting with it's locked down filesystem.
Apple's response? create an app to do the file uploads.
Clients response? Cancel all iPad orders and just buy Android ones in future. It was going to be cheaper to just replace the iPads they already had in the long run and leave them unused in a cupboard than it was to pay to have an app developed, have the CMS modified to support this new clunky upload process, to train people on how to go on this awkward little journey just to upload content and then how to locate it in the CMS, and for all the time wasted having to do that for each file they want to upload.
Honestly, the iPad only lets you "get things done" if the things you want to do are on Apple's list of authorised things you are allowed to do. Otherwise no, the iPad actually acts as a barrier to getting things done. Unfortunately many things businesses do day to day are not actually on this list. Apparently they're fixing this particular issue in iOS6 but it's way too late now to be implementing what is basic web browser functionality.
You may well be right, I'd be cautious in taking anything away from this particular article though, as Valve have made it quite clear now that they have a vested interest in seeing Windows fall as they see Windows 8 as a genuine threat to their existence if people start buying games directly from the Windows Marketplace rather than Steam. When they referring to Windows 8 as a general "Catastrophe" which is probably a bit of a stretch, even if it maybe is for them, then it's hard to see them as objective on this issue.
Not that this is likely to be an unpopular move here, nor is it necessarily a bad thing if a company like Valve is helping Windows fall a peg or two, but now Valve has a clear political motivation to attacking windows, it's hard to see anything anti-Windows they mention as necessarily objective. It's also quite possible that Valve's Windows engine actually just isn't well optimised, and that now that they're moving it to another platform it's given them chance to rewrite components that were long overdue for a rewrite. I believe at least some of the foundations and design of the Source engine actually stem all the way back to the Quake 1 codebase for example.
I'll be honest, despite them being such a massive firm, and having heard about them many hundreds of times on Slashdot, I've never actually seen a peice of Huawei kit here in the UK.
Are they just not particularly prominent in the UK market? or are they one of those firms who let others rebrand their kit?
The reason I ask is because I don't want to inadvertantly use their kit - if it's been rebranded to something else I want to avoid it. If it doesn't get rebranded then I guess I'm okay, because encountering Huawei kit seems to be an uncommon thing here in the UK anyway, though if they do have a decent prescence in our market, I'd be intrigued to know where (e.g. do certain ISPs provide Huawei routers?, or do certain industry sectors use their other networking kit more than others?).
If I hand you a bunch of memory chips and a screen and you can tell me exactly what the finished product will look like having never seen it before then I believe the military would love to enroll you in a phsycic warfare programme.
When I say Samsung produced the parts, I don't mean all the parts, just certain components. They wont have produced for example the casing, buttons etc., just some of the chips, the screen and such.
I don't think Samsung manufactured any of the iPhones, they just sold Apple the constituent parts.
How do you think Apple's marketing department will respond? Marketing is far and away Apple's strongest department, so it'll simply be spun as Samsung being sore losers. I'm not sure why the judge would necessarily care either, some just simply don't. Look at The Pirate Bay trial for example, the judge was part of a music industry lobby group, was exposed as such, but simply didn't give a shit and carried on.
Unless it stops her getting her paycheck, which it wont, then she has no reason to care or change course.
Sure but my point was she at least has that, whereas in contrast, Nikki Minaj doesn't but is still thrust upon our radios for some reason.
Even if they can sing it's something, but most of them can't even do that now.
It's quite possible that it's tied in to some kind of WP7 deal, such that Microsoft will ignore Android patents for Samsung, providing Samsung continues to manufacture WP7 phones, and may have WP7 license fees waved or some such thing.
Samsung's Windows Phones probably make them so little money that it wouldn't even be worth doing relative to the massive success of their Android phones unless there was some kind of incentive. Their time would probably be better spent just focussing 100% on Android for their smartphone business normally.
Of course, I'm just speculating, but this wouldn't be the first time Microsoft has struck this kind of deal and spun it as something it isn't, nor would it be unusual for companies in general.