"The fuckups. These are the ones who needlessly make a mess of things by not following basic best practices. They're better suited for desktop support roles or development"
Yes, because if there's one thing development needs it's people who make a mess of things, can't follow best practice and can't even do a simple job like running a network.
Is that the one where last time I visited there was some kind of nerdy war about ownership going on and overshadowing the actual tech news I went there looking for?
I can put your finger on it for you - the stats in the main diagram are dodgy as fuck.
There are a few metrics being used on that page - actual sales to date, shipped (but not necessarily sold) to date, US subscribers, and arbitrary measurements based on browsing.
The least trustworthy of these is the arbitrary measurements based on browsing, because they're arbitrary. To measure what browser someone is using to view your page from the server side you're relying on the device telling you, there are numerous problems with this:
- iOS isn't as configurable, meaning if you use a browser on iOS you'll pretty much always end up seeing that Safari user agent string
- Android is highly configurable, there's no guarantee the browser people use will even tell you it's Android
- The server side tracking software has to reliably detect every user agent and know what OS it belongs to - this is easy when you have a small selection of strings with iOS, but hard where you have a massive range of strings with Android that may or may not include the text "Android" in them
But it's worse than that, some browsers pre-fetch pages you may never even visit just in case you visit them to try and speed up the appearance of page loading (because it already loaded it) if you do visit it. Some browsers have an option to route all your requests through secure servers to make sure all your web browsing is done in a way snooping eyes can't see. Does the stat tracking method treat all the accesses from this set of secure servers as one device? How do you determine unique devices? IP address? Do you just count page impressions?
Also, just because people aren't browsing the web doesn't mean they're not using the tablet - maybe people use the web less on one tablet because it has a better range of apps to do the things they need for example.
The final problem is that basically none of the methods of measurement are even auditable or transparent. The companies behind them could quite literally be getting paid to just make the numbers up.
The fact all this is true is verifiable simply by the fact that browsing stats on that page are grossly contradictory, the gross contradictions show what an entirely arbitrary and meaningless measure it is.
Units shipped is slightly more reliable because it's based on a cold hard figure, which companies could be sued for if grossly misleading, but then there's units sold, which is highly reliable because it's similarly got legal backing behind it - if a company lies about units sold then they'll get in deep legal shit for misleading the stock market. You'll probably notice that these vastly less arbitrary, and much more firmly backed numbers all favour Android by a range of 74.4% to 81.3%. This in itself is a far smaller spread (6.9% vs. 21.64%) than the user browsing methods and greater agreement implies there's likely a far lower error margin in the method which in itself could be explained almost entirely by shipped vs. sold and fluctuations through time.
For what it's worth if you do a meta analysis of the numbers and take the mean of them all you get 59% for Android, 31% for iOS. Take what you will from that, but I'd wager it's a far safer figure than the cherry picked NetApplications (who have a horrendous track record of fiddling figures FWIW) browsing figures used for the graph - whoever cherry picked that as the stat to graph has a clear agenda on that wiki page.
Long story short, the most trustworthy stats on the page indicate Android has a big lead (as high as 67.9%), the least trustworthy that are being cherry picked by the fanboy above suggest opposite. A meta analysis which goes some way to eliminate bias when you have competing figures still gives Android a 28% lead.
If I was a gambling man I know where I'd put my money on who has the largest usage share and it definitely wouldn't be iOS unless I was the sort of guy who also believed the Iraqi information minister when he said US troops were nowhere near Baghdad as he was stood in Baghdad with a convoy of US troops rolling past him in the background.
"But since it's roughly 50/50 in the USA why aren't the attacks in the USA also not 50/50?"
How do you know it's not? You seem to be cherry picking market breakdown figures for OS when it suits and then extrapolating an opinion about malware based on global figures.
You can't have it both ways, either compare global to global, or local to local.
Given that malware is rarely written for one specific country though, you'll have a hard time breaking down malware figures to those specifically targetting the US, hence why it makes more sense to just compare global figures to global figures rather than cherry picking stats like you're doing.
Long story short, you're not comparing like for like. If mobile malware is developed for a global market then it's a nonsense to compare against local statistics and try and draw a conclusion. It's not that the US is of no interest to malware writers, it's that the global market is of even greater interest and there's no reason to specifically target the US. In other words you're building a straw man, malware writers don't have to choose what countries to target when they write malware when by default they can just target the globe (and it's more lucrative to do so).
Well for me the point is that I may not like Chrome's UI but if I'm going to be forced to get used to a different UI then I may as well do so on a browser that doesn't lose tabs like Firefox does every once in a while, that doens't keel over with certain addons like Firebug and such.
I don't want to get used to a different UI, I like the UI I'm used to, but if the writing us on the wall for the sort of UI I'm used to I might as well also make the jump somewhere that's more professional, competent, better performing, and reliable - and perhaps most importantly, doesn't have quite such a flagrant disregard for their users. Maybe such a browser vendor doesn't exist, but even if they can satisfy even one of those criteria then I'm still going to be in a better place if I'm to be forced to accept a new UI in the end anyway no?
A computer is going to serve a purpose, whether that's to be connected directly to the launch systems of a nuclear weapon, whether it's to simply calculate inputs needed to define the weapons trajectories, whether it's to give the order to launch, or whether it's simply to provide a list of who is and isn't allowed to enter the site - it's going to be there for a reason.
The idea that nothing could therefore happen on such a system of any harm is silly. It could trigger a launch, give false trajectories, give permission of access to someone it shouldn't, give a false launch order. Anything.
You hit on the point yourself - a scheduled task. This could even be at hardware level, when the system clock hits a certain count and so on and so forth.
In a security sensitive place like a nuclear launch facility you need absolutely everything to be verifiable, everything.
I want to thank you for this, it makes Firefox 29 usable again.
But part of me wonders if I'm missing the point, if they're so intent on breaking it then might I as well just move browsers now? If I'm having to rely on addons to make a browser work then am I not just sat precariously one step away from Mozilla deciding that addon is unacceptable and cancelling it anyway?
Perhaps it's time for a browser move regardless of the fact this exists, but again, thank you all the same, at least it buys me time to figure out whether I really want to continue to bother with Firefox anymore at all.
"You object to the stereotype that the wealthy aim for "good taste""
Oh don't be so stupid, ignoring the fact that good taste is in the eye of the beholder and a meaningless term anyway I was object to your "good breeding" bullshit, your implication that anyone wealthy believes there of some kind of superior breeding which is complete fucking nonsense. I used Paris Hilton as an example of the type of shallow person you're describing over and over implying that's how all wealthy people are, which is also bullshit.
"smartphones did not replace anything that previously existed"
Are you actually fucking serious? You're on a web site devoted to technology news and you weren't aware that dumphones and semi-smart phones and PDAs existed before smartphones and were what smartphones replaced? I guess at this point I should bow out of the conversation, you shouldn't even be on this site, it's not for you.
"You still have no evidence that people who bought expensive watches for jewellery reasons will stop doing so."
I have a far better understanding of these people than you at least, is that evidence? no, but knowing this people gives me a far better understanding of the types of things they enjoy than your nonsense stereotyping which you're basing on absolutely nothing other than personal jealousy, bitterness, and petty class warfare type arguments.
"There will need to be some kind of revolution in what can be done usefully with a screen of that size."
Again, you're on a tech site and you're apparently completely devoid of understanding of the difference between the new smartwatch focussed version of Android and crap like the galaxy smartwatch? Why do you bother frequenting a tech site when you apparently have no interest in tech news given your complete ignorance of it?
Try Googling them and you might have a better idea as to why people will be attracted to them. Right now you're just spouting opinion based on not a shred of personal knowledge about the people, the watches, the move to smartphones, or anything in the discussion at all really.
And what will those marines do exactly if the malware was already present when it was put down there in the first place?
Unless you can be sure the software and hardware was free from existing vulnerability in the first place, and that no marines or other people allowed near have introduced anything since then the marines simply do not mean jack shit.
According to the video... great, well, I just updated and tried it. Turns out my tabs now have a dark grey background with black text which is completely and utterly unreadable. I managed to get my title and menu bar back, but my status bar appears to have permanently fucked off. I'd like to imagine given that we have a great big ad here on Slashdot about how awesomely customisable it is that I can do something about the horrendously shit dark grey background that is too close to the black of the tab text, but I'll be damned if I can see any option whatsoever to actually do that.
But here's a better question, why rather than a browser update working for me, making things better, does it instead mean I have to dick around figuring out how to make it work like it's always worked and like I want it to work? Why do I have to fear updates wondering what the fuck they've broken now, or what the hell I'm going to have to get used to this time?
"Then why do the exceptionally wealthy choose mechanical and hand made watches instead of quartz ones that are more accurate?"
Because they're not sufficiently more interesting, in fact, on the face of it most people couldn't even tell one apart. You can't say the same of a smart watch, it's a distinctly different wrist piece with distinctly different features.
"The snob value issue, is not so much about having just what their friends have, as having what no-one in the lower orders could possibly have."
Right but in saying this you're showing that you don't understand the mindset of the ultra wealthy. When you're in the hundreds of millions or billions bracket then all insecurity about needing to show off your wealth goes out the window. It's the sort of nonsense that insecure not-quite-millionaires, or just-about-millionaires engage in.
"You seem to be claiming that for some reason the category of thing on your wrist will change from this is where I show my good taste and breeding"
This stereotype is so comically far off base that you're just further illustrating what an ignorant fantasy view you have of most of these people. I get it I really do - your understanding of the average high end millionaire or billionaire is watching the outlier ditzy tart like Paris Hilton on TV or whatever. I'll give you a hint - most of them are absolutely nothing like that.
All you're doing is illustrating a complete ignorance of the ultra wealthy whilst showing a not particular subtle jealousy towards them by telling yourself they're defective self-obsessed human beings as if you want to believe you're glad you don't have that much money and you're not like that.
Mostly they only even hang around together in circles comprised of other ultra-wealthy people because it's the only way to socialise without having someone less wealthy and extremely jealous like you trying to lick their arse in the hope that it'll net you financial gain. They hang around together precisely because they prefer the company of people who are wealthy enough to not care about how wealthy they are.
Don't confuse the spoilt attention whore brat child of the ultra-wealthy with all of the ultra-wealthy. Most of them are, on a personality level, no different to you or I, and enjoy the latest gadgets just like you or I do.
You're missing the point. What if they've already been compromised with a timed exploit when they were originally set up at the facility? what if the hardware already had a timed exploit before it even reached the facility?
Guards can sit their with their guns all they want, it's still going to be going off behind them and there wouldn't be shit they could do. They probably wouldn't even know until it was too late.
I don't think that's true, how long would it take you to ensure no backdoor had been slipped into even the Windows 95 binaries you're installing on the machine compared to auditing the source code and compilation process of even say an early version of DOS? let alone something even more simplistic again.
The fact is more code = more chance of missing malicious code. Older hardware and software almost always means smaller codebases, more simplicity, and less scope for malicious code.
Actually I'd argue that's not entirely true. It's far easier to verify there's no back door in vastly simpler hardware and software from back then than there is in the vastly more complex hardware and operating systems of today.
That was a time before I believe we even had computers automatically attempting to optimise circuitry - it was all hand done and the reasons for designs were entirely understandable and known by humans.
Back then processors did exactly what you told them to, nothing more, and nothing less, with none of that fancy optimisation shit!
I think there's a lot to be said for that by way of security, it's far harder to slip something subtle and subversive in when there's far less complexity.
What you describe is similar to the issue we had in the UK. In the UK we had the problem that BT was previously publicly owned and ran the whole UK telephone network before being privatised. That meant we had a single telco with a monopoly on all the copper and fibre in the country. To a large extent this is still somewhat the same (though there are actual infrastructure competitors now in some areas) but it's not too much of a problem because our competition overseer enforced the following:
- Forced BT to run their ISP as a separate company to their infrastructure business, and force BT to treat their ISP business no different to any other ISP business
- Forced BT's infrastructure business to open up it's cabinets and backbone to 3rd party companies so that they could install their own equipment on BT's network whilst also setting a maximum price BT could charge for said access and use of their network
We've still got a long way to go in the UK but we have such a plurality of ISPs all operating on an identical network that the ISPs have to compete on their merits and this alone eliminates some of the issues I've seen described here by Americans. You've touched upon many similar ideas.
"The moment the government starts owning significant pieces, they will be subject to lobbying by special interest groups and start passing laws to regulate and control usage of it or insert web filtering to protect the children."
FWIW this happened in the UK even with complete private ownership and broader plurality of ISPs than the US has. If this happens it'll happen regardless of whether your telcos/ISPs are private or publicly owned so that's a false argument really. Private ownership doesn't magically stop government from legislating for such stupid ideas.
What? 99% of people never use mathematics in their adult life?
How do people manage their money? how do people buy things? how do people do DIY? how do people do their tax returns? how do people understand who won the latest election?
I'm pretty sure that near enough 100% of people use mathematics in their adult life.
FWIW pretty much all your arguments can also be applied to people who use cars. Do you also advocate that everyone should become a fully qualified auto-mechanic by the time they leave school? Similarly, we can make the same argument about training everyone to be a doctor, a plumber, a builder, a lawyer, and so on.
Fact is there isn't enough time to teach everyone everything, we learn what we can or what we want and we pay others who have learnt the rest to do the rest so we can focus on what we're interested in and/or skilled at.
MS does do a lot of research, there's no doubt about that, but it's not fruitful, or at least, they often have no idea how to put it in a real actual product.
The difference seems to be that Google finds difficult problems and tries to solve them, whilst Microsoft just researches whatever the researchers feel like researching and hopes it'll somehow be useful.
I don't think the Microsoft way is useless or without merit, but I think Google's approach is more fruitful in moving towards new products. Google is working on solutions for real actual problems, Microsoft is working on solutions in search of a problem.
"My evidence that they will choose "jewellery" and "tradition" and "timeless quality" is that this is what they do already."
That's not evidence, there is no mature smart item to replace any existing jewellery out there. It's a whole different ball game when smart watches are mature enough to be cool (like the recently advertised, but not yet available batch of Android smartwatches). Evidence is the fact they preferred flashy but relatively cheap interface iPhones over the various gold plated diamond encrusted dumb phones that were available from a number of companies. If these people were wholly about just showing off their wealth and had no interest in the gadget factor then they would go for those ultra-expensive dumb phones.
I think you overestimate the importance of what you call "snob value" to these people, as I say, above all else they're just big kids. To them a £8,000 watch (actually that's way to cheap compared to what they wear) is just something they've always had but really quite boring - everyone else in their social circle wears these things anyway so there isn't really snob value, these guys don't really play keeping up with the Joneses in the way you're implying - when they play that game they do it by buying mega-yachts and islands.
It's because it's all relative. Because of their large wealth, a £50,000 or more timepiece to a billionaire is little different to a £50 one to your average middle income earner - decent, but not something you overly think of as showing off how awesome you are.
You're making assumptions about these people, but have clearly had no interaction with them as what you say is merely theoretical stereotype than actual fact.
Your theory is slightly more applicable to the low end millionaires, especially those fresh to their wealth (i.e. recent lottery winners), and the odd ultra-vain celebrity (probably like Miley Cyrus) but that's about it.
Well that wasn't really the crux of the point, the point was that there's no disputing these kind of guys absolutely fucking love their digital toys. I think they're probably quite content enough to let their tailored Savile row suits and Bentley's say enough about their wealth to let the old watch go in exchange for another toy on their wrist. Again, you really can't understate how much these guys fucking love such gadgets and how competitive they are with each other about having the latest and greatest.
Most people wearing the most fancy watches where the real profit is are business types, and in my experience the high end business types are some of the quickest to be drawn by fads.
I saw it with iPhones. Just wait until one guy who wants to be ahead of his business mates turns up at a quarterly investor briefing in London with a smartwatch and starts showing off it's flashy features. The rest of them will ditch their Rolexs as quick as they dumped their Blackberrys when the same guy turned up with an iPhone back in 2008.
I speak from experience of being dragged along to such a meeting to show off a new system I was working on to investors (and potential investors) shortly after the iPhone came out.
Honestly, it's hard to understate how much high end executives actually resemble big kids over gadgety shit like this, getting hardons over the sort of things the average geeks would roll their eyes at and say "That's so last year.". Stick a bunch of CEOs in a room with the latest and greatest gadgets and you'll think you've stumbled into a bunch of kids let loose in a sweet shop. They'll all buy them and all tradition about having a solid gold diamond encrusted Rolex will go out the window for OMG MY WATCH TELLS ME I HAVE AN EMAIL. No respectable CEO is going to be the only one in the room whose watch doesn't tell them they have an e-mail. Yes. Really. It's exactly like school all over again.
Mark my words, if they want to retain the most wealthy people in the world as their watch wearers, the likes of Rolex are going to have to produce a high end smartwatch, and if they don't, someone else will and will steal their most wealthy clientÃle.
"She was his girlfriend and spent millions of Google's money to justify her existence, then she hired her own PR team to get her a new bigger job...she didn't do *shit*...her title was "main page designer"...are you laughing? do you remember google.com's main page for about a decade? yeah just a logo, search field and two buttons"
Yet she's the first CEO at Yahoo in about a decade that actually seems to be turning the company around and raising it's share price.
"3. Glass, Google+, Google Wave, and maps redesign...it's clear now that Google has no idea how to make new products people want to use"
Except glass, maps and such are the most used products in their category because they still blow the competition out the water.
"why??? b/c of...idk...it's the most egregious copyright violation in computing...."
Because you don't know? because you can't see how making the entire history of human knowledge searchable might be a useful thing? The problem here definitely seems to be you. I think to most people it's quite obvious why that might be a good and useful thing. Sure it's a violation of copyright, but the implication of that statement is that we should not do something that would be a massive advancement for human knowledge because of copyright. How retardedly stupid. Copyright needs to die in it's present form for precisely this reason, good on Google for flagrantly violating it in this way for the sake of trying to do something far more important.
"Page is a good engineer...Brin is an airhead....they stopped sticking to the knitting long, long ago"
Yes, you're right, they're currently the only tech company actually demonstrating that they're getting somewhere producing anything new and interesting right now, from glass, to a decent OS for smartwatches, to self-driving vehicles, to robotics research, to AI research. Fact is, no other tech companies are doing so much varied and fruitful research at the moment. Or what, you think all tech companies should be like Microsoft? has-beens that rarely actually do anything new anymore? You seem to think it's a bad thing that a tech company diversify away from one thing, Search, it's not. On the contrary, that's how you grow a business - by diversifying into other markets, possibly even creating new markets. You probably think Apple shouldn't have made the iPod, iPad and iPhone too and should've just stuck to desktop computers right?
I can't talk for the NSA, but certainly jobs for GCHQ are far from lucrative. £40k a year to live in a part of the country where nothing ever happens and where there's nothing to do? The max they pay for developers, mathematicians, and architects alike is £46k at the top end. There are exceptions for the best of the best, but even then why bother pratting around fighting their red tape for a higher salary when you can just go into private sector in a more interesting part of the country (London, Cambridge, etc.) and get paid double that without question?
In the UK, for GCHQ, the only reason you do it in the first place is because you want to.
They're just not competitive on salary and benefits for the quality of person they want. I suspect this is why we end up with mass surveillance in the first place, rather than intelligent targetted surveillance systems that are actually useful - because mass surveillance is the only thing the dregs they end up with are capable of implementing.
So I suspect this guy's cry will fall on deaf ears in the UK. The only people doing it are already stupid enough to believe they're doing the right thing, or desperate enough to take the job because they've got no other options so wont be swayed by his argument regardless. Everyone else is just taking the private sector option which is better in just about every way anyway.
Slashdot Mirror
"The fuckups. These are the ones who needlessly make a mess of things by not following basic best practices. They're better suited for desktop support roles or development"
Yes, because if there's one thing development needs it's people who make a mess of things, can't follow best practice and can't even do a simple job like running a network.
What the fuck?
Is that the one where last time I visited there was some kind of nerdy war about ownership going on and overshadowing the actual tech news I went there looking for?
If so then no thanks.
I can put your finger on it for you - the stats in the main diagram are dodgy as fuck.
There are a few metrics being used on that page - actual sales to date, shipped (but not necessarily sold) to date, US subscribers, and arbitrary measurements based on browsing.
The least trustworthy of these is the arbitrary measurements based on browsing, because they're arbitrary. To measure what browser someone is using to view your page from the server side you're relying on the device telling you, there are numerous problems with this:
- iOS isn't as configurable, meaning if you use a browser on iOS you'll pretty much always end up seeing that Safari user agent string
- Android is highly configurable, there's no guarantee the browser people use will even tell you it's Android
- The server side tracking software has to reliably detect every user agent and know what OS it belongs to - this is easy when you have a small selection of strings with iOS, but hard where you have a massive range of strings with Android that may or may not include the text "Android" in them
But it's worse than that, some browsers pre-fetch pages you may never even visit just in case you visit them to try and speed up the appearance of page loading (because it already loaded it) if you do visit it. Some browsers have an option to route all your requests through secure servers to make sure all your web browsing is done in a way snooping eyes can't see. Does the stat tracking method treat all the accesses from this set of secure servers as one device? How do you determine unique devices? IP address? Do you just count page impressions?
Also, just because people aren't browsing the web doesn't mean they're not using the tablet - maybe people use the web less on one tablet because it has a better range of apps to do the things they need for example.
The final problem is that basically none of the methods of measurement are even auditable or transparent. The companies behind them could quite literally be getting paid to just make the numbers up.
The fact all this is true is verifiable simply by the fact that browsing stats on that page are grossly contradictory, the gross contradictions show what an entirely arbitrary and meaningless measure it is.
Units shipped is slightly more reliable because it's based on a cold hard figure, which companies could be sued for if grossly misleading, but then there's units sold, which is highly reliable because it's similarly got legal backing behind it - if a company lies about units sold then they'll get in deep legal shit for misleading the stock market. You'll probably notice that these vastly less arbitrary, and much more firmly backed numbers all favour Android by a range of 74.4% to 81.3%. This in itself is a far smaller spread (6.9% vs. 21.64%) than the user browsing methods and greater agreement implies there's likely a far lower error margin in the method which in itself could be explained almost entirely by shipped vs. sold and fluctuations through time.
For what it's worth if you do a meta analysis of the numbers and take the mean of them all you get 59% for Android, 31% for iOS. Take what you will from that, but I'd wager it's a far safer figure than the cherry picked NetApplications (who have a horrendous track record of fiddling figures FWIW) browsing figures used for the graph - whoever cherry picked that as the stat to graph has a clear agenda on that wiki page.
Long story short, the most trustworthy stats on the page indicate Android has a big lead (as high as 67.9%), the least trustworthy that are being cherry picked by the fanboy above suggest opposite. A meta analysis which goes some way to eliminate bias when you have competing figures still gives Android a 28% lead.
If I was a gambling man I know where I'd put my money on who has the largest usage share and it definitely wouldn't be iOS unless I was the sort of guy who also believed the Iraqi information minister when he said US troops were nowhere near Baghdad as he was stood in Baghdad with a convoy of US troops rolling past him in the background.
"But since it's roughly 50/50 in the USA why aren't the attacks in the USA also not 50/50?"
How do you know it's not? You seem to be cherry picking market breakdown figures for OS when it suits and then extrapolating an opinion about malware based on global figures.
You can't have it both ways, either compare global to global, or local to local.
Given that malware is rarely written for one specific country though, you'll have a hard time breaking down malware figures to those specifically targetting the US, hence why it makes more sense to just compare global figures to global figures rather than cherry picking stats like you're doing.
Long story short, you're not comparing like for like. If mobile malware is developed for a global market then it's a nonsense to compare against local statistics and try and draw a conclusion. It's not that the US is of no interest to malware writers, it's that the global market is of even greater interest and there's no reason to specifically target the US. In other words you're building a straw man, malware writers don't have to choose what countries to target when they write malware when by default they can just target the globe (and it's more lucrative to do so).
Well for me the point is that I may not like Chrome's UI but if I'm going to be forced to get used to a different UI then I may as well do so on a browser that doesn't lose tabs like Firefox does every once in a while, that doens't keel over with certain addons like Firebug and such.
I don't want to get used to a different UI, I like the UI I'm used to, but if the writing us on the wall for the sort of UI I'm used to I might as well also make the jump somewhere that's more professional, competent, better performing, and reliable - and perhaps most importantly, doesn't have quite such a flagrant disregard for their users. Maybe such a browser vendor doesn't exist, but even if they can satisfy even one of those criteria then I'm still going to be in a better place if I'm to be forced to accept a new UI in the end anyway no?
A computer is going to serve a purpose, whether that's to be connected directly to the launch systems of a nuclear weapon, whether it's to simply calculate inputs needed to define the weapons trajectories, whether it's to give the order to launch, or whether it's simply to provide a list of who is and isn't allowed to enter the site - it's going to be there for a reason.
The idea that nothing could therefore happen on such a system of any harm is silly. It could trigger a launch, give false trajectories, give permission of access to someone it shouldn't, give a false launch order. Anything.
You hit on the point yourself - a scheduled task. This could even be at hardware level, when the system clock hits a certain count and so on and so forth.
In a security sensitive place like a nuclear launch facility you need absolutely everything to be verifiable, everything.
I want to thank you for this, it makes Firefox 29 usable again.
But part of me wonders if I'm missing the point, if they're so intent on breaking it then might I as well just move browsers now? If I'm having to rely on addons to make a browser work then am I not just sat precariously one step away from Mozilla deciding that addon is unacceptable and cancelling it anyway?
Perhaps it's time for a browser move regardless of the fact this exists, but again, thank you all the same, at least it buys me time to figure out whether I really want to continue to bother with Firefox anymore at all.
"You object to the stereotype that the wealthy aim for "good taste""
Oh don't be so stupid, ignoring the fact that good taste is in the eye of the beholder and a meaningless term anyway I was object to your "good breeding" bullshit, your implication that anyone wealthy believes there of some kind of superior breeding which is complete fucking nonsense. I used Paris Hilton as an example of the type of shallow person you're describing over and over implying that's how all wealthy people are, which is also bullshit.
"smartphones did not replace anything that previously existed"
Are you actually fucking serious? You're on a web site devoted to technology news and you weren't aware that dumphones and semi-smart phones and PDAs existed before smartphones and were what smartphones replaced? I guess at this point I should bow out of the conversation, you shouldn't even be on this site, it's not for you.
"You still have no evidence that people who bought expensive watches for jewellery reasons will stop doing so."
I have a far better understanding of these people than you at least, is that evidence? no, but knowing this people gives me a far better understanding of the types of things they enjoy than your nonsense stereotyping which you're basing on absolutely nothing other than personal jealousy, bitterness, and petty class warfare type arguments.
"There will need to be some kind of revolution in what can be done usefully with a screen of that size."
Again, you're on a tech site and you're apparently completely devoid of understanding of the difference between the new smartwatch focussed version of Android and crap like the galaxy smartwatch? Why do you bother frequenting a tech site when you apparently have no interest in tech news given your complete ignorance of it?
Try Googling them and you might have a better idea as to why people will be attracted to them. Right now you're just spouting opinion based on not a shred of personal knowledge about the people, the watches, the move to smartphones, or anything in the discussion at all really.
And what will those marines do exactly if the malware was already present when it was put down there in the first place?
Unless you can be sure the software and hardware was free from existing vulnerability in the first place, and that no marines or other people allowed near have introduced anything since then the marines simply do not mean jack shit.
According to the video... great, well, I just updated and tried it. Turns out my tabs now have a dark grey background with black text which is completely and utterly unreadable. I managed to get my title and menu bar back, but my status bar appears to have permanently fucked off. I'd like to imagine given that we have a great big ad here on Slashdot about how awesomely customisable it is that I can do something about the horrendously shit dark grey background that is too close to the black of the tab text, but I'll be damned if I can see any option whatsoever to actually do that.
But here's a better question, why rather than a browser update working for me, making things better, does it instead mean I have to dick around figuring out how to make it work like it's always worked and like I want it to work? Why do I have to fear updates wondering what the fuck they've broken now, or what the hell I'm going to have to get used to this time?
"Then why do the exceptionally wealthy choose mechanical and hand made watches instead of quartz ones that are more accurate?"
Because they're not sufficiently more interesting, in fact, on the face of it most people couldn't even tell one apart. You can't say the same of a smart watch, it's a distinctly different wrist piece with distinctly different features.
"The snob value issue, is not so much about having just what their friends have, as having what no-one in the lower orders could possibly have."
Right but in saying this you're showing that you don't understand the mindset of the ultra wealthy. When you're in the hundreds of millions or billions bracket then all insecurity about needing to show off your wealth goes out the window. It's the sort of nonsense that insecure not-quite-millionaires, or just-about-millionaires engage in.
"You seem to be claiming that for some reason the category of thing on your wrist will change from this is where I show my good taste and breeding"
This stereotype is so comically far off base that you're just further illustrating what an ignorant fantasy view you have of most of these people. I get it I really do - your understanding of the average high end millionaire or billionaire is watching the outlier ditzy tart like Paris Hilton on TV or whatever. I'll give you a hint - most of them are absolutely nothing like that.
All you're doing is illustrating a complete ignorance of the ultra wealthy whilst showing a not particular subtle jealousy towards them by telling yourself they're defective self-obsessed human beings as if you want to believe you're glad you don't have that much money and you're not like that.
Mostly they only even hang around together in circles comprised of other ultra-wealthy people because it's the only way to socialise without having someone less wealthy and extremely jealous like you trying to lick their arse in the hope that it'll net you financial gain. They hang around together precisely because they prefer the company of people who are wealthy enough to not care about how wealthy they are.
Don't confuse the spoilt attention whore brat child of the ultra-wealthy with all of the ultra-wealthy. Most of them are, on a personality level, no different to you or I, and enjoy the latest gadgets just like you or I do.
You're missing the point. What if they've already been compromised with a timed exploit when they were originally set up at the facility? what if the hardware already had a timed exploit before it even reached the facility?
Guards can sit their with their guns all they want, it's still going to be going off behind them and there wouldn't be shit they could do. They probably wouldn't even know until it was too late.
I don't think that's true, how long would it take you to ensure no backdoor had been slipped into even the Windows 95 binaries you're installing on the machine compared to auditing the source code and compilation process of even say an early version of DOS? let alone something even more simplistic again.
The fact is more code = more chance of missing malicious code. Older hardware and software almost always means smaller codebases, more simplicity, and less scope for malicious code.
Actually I'd argue that's not entirely true. It's far easier to verify there's no back door in vastly simpler hardware and software from back then than there is in the vastly more complex hardware and operating systems of today.
That was a time before I believe we even had computers automatically attempting to optimise circuitry - it was all hand done and the reasons for designs were entirely understandable and known by humans.
Back then processors did exactly what you told them to, nothing more, and nothing less, with none of that fancy optimisation shit!
I think there's a lot to be said for that by way of security, it's far harder to slip something subtle and subversive in when there's far less complexity.
What you describe is similar to the issue we had in the UK. In the UK we had the problem that BT was previously publicly owned and ran the whole UK telephone network before being privatised. That meant we had a single telco with a monopoly on all the copper and fibre in the country. To a large extent this is still somewhat the same (though there are actual infrastructure competitors now in some areas) but it's not too much of a problem because our competition overseer enforced the following:
- Forced BT to run their ISP as a separate company to their infrastructure business, and force BT to treat their ISP business no different to any other ISP business
- Forced BT's infrastructure business to open up it's cabinets and backbone to 3rd party companies so that they could install their own equipment on BT's network whilst also setting a maximum price BT could charge for said access and use of their network
We've still got a long way to go in the UK but we have such a plurality of ISPs all operating on an identical network that the ISPs have to compete on their merits and this alone eliminates some of the issues I've seen described here by Americans. You've touched upon many similar ideas.
"The moment the government starts owning significant pieces, they will be subject to lobbying by special interest groups and start passing laws to regulate and control usage of it or insert web filtering to protect the children."
FWIW this happened in the UK even with complete private ownership and broader plurality of ISPs than the US has. If this happens it'll happen regardless of whether your telcos/ISPs are private or publicly owned so that's a false argument really. Private ownership doesn't magically stop government from legislating for such stupid ideas.
An easier solution might be to try and setup a national organisation for technology workers and arrange strikes.
The government and business folks will sit up and take notice when no one turns up for work to keep their computers and networks running one day.
The economic impact would be too much for them to accept.
How many starting combinations are there and how long would it take a computer to randomly generate all of them on average?
What? 99% of people never use mathematics in their adult life?
How do people manage their money? how do people buy things? how do people do DIY? how do people do their tax returns? how do people understand who won the latest election?
I'm pretty sure that near enough 100% of people use mathematics in their adult life.
FWIW pretty much all your arguments can also be applied to people who use cars. Do you also advocate that everyone should become a fully qualified auto-mechanic by the time they leave school? Similarly, we can make the same argument about training everyone to be a doctor, a plumber, a builder, a lawyer, and so on.
Fact is there isn't enough time to teach everyone everything, we learn what we can or what we want and we pay others who have learnt the rest to do the rest so we can focus on what we're interested in and/or skilled at.
They didn't sell them to the UK, they sold them to Iraq. The guy was from the UK.
MS does do a lot of research, there's no doubt about that, but it's not fruitful, or at least, they often have no idea how to put it in a real actual product.
The difference seems to be that Google finds difficult problems and tries to solve them, whilst Microsoft just researches whatever the researchers feel like researching and hopes it'll somehow be useful.
I don't think the Microsoft way is useless or without merit, but I think Google's approach is more fruitful in moving towards new products. Google is working on solutions for real actual problems, Microsoft is working on solutions in search of a problem.
"My evidence that they will choose "jewellery" and "tradition" and "timeless quality" is that this is what they do already."
That's not evidence, there is no mature smart item to replace any existing jewellery out there. It's a whole different ball game when smart watches are mature enough to be cool (like the recently advertised, but not yet available batch of Android smartwatches). Evidence is the fact they preferred flashy but relatively cheap interface iPhones over the various gold plated diamond encrusted dumb phones that were available from a number of companies. If these people were wholly about just showing off their wealth and had no interest in the gadget factor then they would go for those ultra-expensive dumb phones.
I think you overestimate the importance of what you call "snob value" to these people, as I say, above all else they're just big kids. To them a £8,000 watch (actually that's way to cheap compared to what they wear) is just something they've always had but really quite boring - everyone else in their social circle wears these things anyway so there isn't really snob value, these guys don't really play keeping up with the Joneses in the way you're implying - when they play that game they do it by buying mega-yachts and islands.
It's because it's all relative. Because of their large wealth, a £50,000 or more timepiece to a billionaire is little different to a £50 one to your average middle income earner - decent, but not something you overly think of as showing off how awesome you are.
You're making assumptions about these people, but have clearly had no interaction with them as what you say is merely theoretical stereotype than actual fact.
Your theory is slightly more applicable to the low end millionaires, especially those fresh to their wealth (i.e. recent lottery winners), and the odd ultra-vain celebrity (probably like Miley Cyrus) but that's about it.
Well that wasn't really the crux of the point, the point was that there's no disputing these kind of guys absolutely fucking love their digital toys. I think they're probably quite content enough to let their tailored Savile row suits and Bentley's say enough about their wealth to let the old watch go in exchange for another toy on their wrist. Again, you really can't understate how much these guys fucking love such gadgets and how competitive they are with each other about having the latest and greatest.
Most people wearing the most fancy watches where the real profit is are business types, and in my experience the high end business types are some of the quickest to be drawn by fads.
I saw it with iPhones. Just wait until one guy who wants to be ahead of his business mates turns up at a quarterly investor briefing in London with a smartwatch and starts showing off it's flashy features. The rest of them will ditch their Rolexs as quick as they dumped their Blackberrys when the same guy turned up with an iPhone back in 2008.
I speak from experience of being dragged along to such a meeting to show off a new system I was working on to investors (and potential investors) shortly after the iPhone came out.
Honestly, it's hard to understate how much high end executives actually resemble big kids over gadgety shit like this, getting hardons over the sort of things the average geeks would roll their eyes at and say "That's so last year.". Stick a bunch of CEOs in a room with the latest and greatest gadgets and you'll think you've stumbled into a bunch of kids let loose in a sweet shop. They'll all buy them and all tradition about having a solid gold diamond encrusted Rolex will go out the window for OMG MY WATCH TELLS ME I HAVE AN EMAIL. No respectable CEO is going to be the only one in the room whose watch doesn't tell them they have an e-mail. Yes. Really. It's exactly like school all over again.
Mark my words, if they want to retain the most wealthy people in the world as their watch wearers, the likes of Rolex are going to have to produce a high end smartwatch, and if they don't, someone else will and will steal their most wealthy clientÃle.
"She was his girlfriend and spent millions of Google's money to justify her existence, then she hired her own PR team to get her a new bigger job...she didn't do *shit*...her title was "main page designer"...are you laughing? do you remember google.com's main page for about a decade? yeah just a logo, search field and two buttons"
Yet she's the first CEO at Yahoo in about a decade that actually seems to be turning the company around and raising it's share price.
"3. Glass, Google+, Google Wave, and maps redesign...it's clear now that Google has no idea how to make new products people want to use"
Except glass, maps and such are the most used products in their category because they still blow the competition out the water.
"why??? b/c of...idk...it's the most egregious copyright violation in computing...."
Because you don't know? because you can't see how making the entire history of human knowledge searchable might be a useful thing? The problem here definitely seems to be you. I think to most people it's quite obvious why that might be a good and useful thing. Sure it's a violation of copyright, but the implication of that statement is that we should not do something that would be a massive advancement for human knowledge because of copyright. How retardedly stupid. Copyright needs to die in it's present form for precisely this reason, good on Google for flagrantly violating it in this way for the sake of trying to do something far more important.
"Page is a good engineer...Brin is an airhead....they stopped sticking to the knitting long, long ago"
Yes, you're right, they're currently the only tech company actually demonstrating that they're getting somewhere producing anything new and interesting right now, from glass, to a decent OS for smartwatches, to self-driving vehicles, to robotics research, to AI research. Fact is, no other tech companies are doing so much varied and fruitful research at the moment. Or what, you think all tech companies should be like Microsoft? has-beens that rarely actually do anything new anymore? You seem to think it's a bad thing that a tech company diversify away from one thing, Search, it's not. On the contrary, that's how you grow a business - by diversifying into other markets, possibly even creating new markets. You probably think Apple shouldn't have made the iPod, iPad and iPhone too and should've just stuck to desktop computers right?
I can't talk for the NSA, but certainly jobs for GCHQ are far from lucrative. £40k a year to live in a part of the country where nothing ever happens and where there's nothing to do? The max they pay for developers, mathematicians, and architects alike is £46k at the top end. There are exceptions for the best of the best, but even then why bother pratting around fighting their red tape for a higher salary when you can just go into private sector in a more interesting part of the country (London, Cambridge, etc.) and get paid double that without question?
In the UK, for GCHQ, the only reason you do it in the first place is because you want to.
They're just not competitive on salary and benefits for the quality of person they want. I suspect this is why we end up with mass surveillance in the first place, rather than intelligent targetted surveillance systems that are actually useful - because mass surveillance is the only thing the dregs they end up with are capable of implementing.
So I suspect this guy's cry will fall on deaf ears in the UK. The only people doing it are already stupid enough to believe they're doing the right thing, or desperate enough to take the job because they've got no other options so wont be swayed by his argument regardless. Everyone else is just taking the private sector option which is better in just about every way anyway.