Yes, because it would've been a lot better if you'd have been left to file for bankruptcy or be taken over by an even more predatory buyer wouldn't it?
If you're working for a failing company you should be grateful that anyone fucking bought you and at least prolonged your jobs for a few more years if nothing else. It's not exactly their fault that you guys were running the company into the ground in the first place is it? The other guys at Google don't work hard to stay competitive just to subsidise your existence when you're just burning money.
Or maybe he just doesn't live in a country so retarded that you have to pay for insurance to make sure your family is protected from shit like that?
Here in the UK the only insurance you really need to have is car insurance if you have a car and this is mandated by law, and home insurance if you have a mortgage that forces it upon you.
I don't think I've ever worked a job that hasn't come with a death in service allowance (so that my partner would get something like 3 to 5 years of my salary) if I died, it's basically standard here, and of course she'd receive transfer of my pension pot. If I died early she'd be fine.
The only times I do ever visit insurance sites are for car and home insurance, and I'm not even convinced home insurance is worth it once the mortgage is paid. Anything else really is a complete waste of money riddled with get out clauses so on the 1 in a million chance you need to make a claim you can't anyway. Life insurance is one of the biggest scams going, health insurance is unnecessary when you have a good public healthcare system, and pet insurance is an even bigger scam than health insurance.
I agree, but my point is where is the support outside of Google? They've tried to get support and been told "Oh that's a Google technology, like fuck we're implementing that!" and it's such an unhelpful attitude. The real response should be "Okay, good idea, how can we help and make sure this is something that isn't controlled by any one company?".
"The "proper" (i.e. the one that benefits everyone most) way to handle this would be to extend the standard, but to not throw out parts of it."
I would've agreed at one time, but since the great fuckup that is HTML5 that was basically a pot into which Ian Hickson threw lots of random shit that he felt like but that was badly implemented and a stupid idea I don't think HTML is salvageable unless we roll back a version and try again ignoring HTML5. It's not that some of the ideas behind it are bad, but the implementation is just terrible, written by someone who seems to have not the slightest bit of experience actually developing decent size web applications or even good software engineering practice in general. His complete lack of understanding of key software engineering principles like separation of concerns is borderline disturbing.
Note that I'm not arguing with you about this particular case as such, I don't know enough about it and you've obviously followed the original threads whilst I haven't, but whilst Google may be wrong in this case I think it still steps on a fundamental issue with the current direction of the web and as such I can understand how these sorts of bad things happen - why developers might be driven to make them.
The problem is since the great WHATWG hijack of web standards the standards of the web have been entirely in the hands of browser vendors, who are no doubt important, but far from the only people who should have a say on the future of the web, especially as they're only interested in fighting with each other rather than working together to provide a service that serves people who actually build web applications and so forth.
The W3C was always slow but at least it was representative of browser vendors, developers, and device manufacturers alike. I'd rather a slow but sure democracy than an incompetent dictatorship like WHATWG, because what we're seeing in this article is the end result - rebellion and instability that hurts everyone as it becomes a bitter free for all once again.
"If it is the right thing to do, people will run with it."
They are running with it that's the point, they've all tried alternatives at one point, IE has XBAPs for example, Google has Dart/Native Client - they're all doing it, they're just not doing it together because they all want control and wont work with each other, so it's certainly not doing the wrong thing, they all recognise the need.
"This is the answer to people who want application platforms, use something designed from the ground up to be an application platform rather than a platform that was designed as a hypermedia implementation with goodies for application development grafted on."
Exactly, but we need a cross platform way of doing that, and that requires cooperation which is my fundamental point. The web has been mangled into doing it because it's the only cross platform option (most apps out there are just wrapped up HTML etc.) that they all have no choice but to implement currently, hence why they're all fighting to break it their own way whilst missing the point that they're all just trying to achieve the same thing at the end of the day.
In the fact that they are, because the differences between Office 2010 and say OpenOffice are far greater than Office 2010 and Office 2013.
OpenOffice isn't even close to being just a slot in replacement either in terms of existing compatibility, existing features, or existing user interface compared to the level of differences across office versions. As I say the only real time this wasn't true was 2003 to 2007 where the UI and document formats all changed as well as drastic feature changes and differences.
As I say competent skilled technical users will be able to jump between any of them but the same isn't true of your average public sector office worker - a few will find the jump fine, but the majority will struggle far more with a jump to OO than a newer MSO version.
I find this write up both encouraging and sad. Encouraging because at least one major vendor out there recognises that the current platform, standards and proposals just aren't fit for long term evolution of web applications and so something drastic needs doing. Sad because Google are going down this route, possibly because they feel they have to as each time they try and do something completely new (i.e. Dart) they get shot down by the opposition who refuse to support something produced by Google even if it's just outright better.
What are they to do though? If they create something completely new and fresh as a new protocol handler and possibly even server designed specifically for web applications they'll be accused of trying to replace the web with an evil proprietary Google controlled monster. If they try and make drastic changes to what's already there to improve it for the sake of web applications they get told off for hijacking the web.
Something needs to change, the current set of HTML standards and technologies are just outright insufficient for web applications moving forward, but if a big vendor tries to push something new no one supports it, and if they try to modify drastically what's already there it becomes a case of bitchiness about them "defying standards" and whatever else. Don't get me wrong, I'm not saying Google is the only victim here, each time MS, Apple, or anyone else has tried to do something drastic they've been told off in the exact same manner.
So the problem carries on, we just get hacks from every direction, all trying to make the current technologies slightly less bad for web application development, but all ultimately contributing to an ever greater clusterfuck of different ideas and inconsistencies.
I just wish they'd all grow the fuck up and admit that something has to change and that means working together, or would just hand all control back to something like the W3C and accept it's rulings and demands even if that means accepting things like a bigger role for things like XML.
It's bad functionality they're leaving out too because it completely ignores the necessity of separation of concerns for producing good software.
This said I don't entirely disagree with the premise of the GP but I don't think it's just Google trying to take over the web.
It's pretty obvious with all the wrangling that went on over HTML5 features like a standardised format for the video tag that everyone wanted control still - Apple, Mozilla, Google, Microsoft.
Which is why the web is shit and nothing good ever gets done.
Really, the only way we'll see a better web is when someone starts from scratch throwing away all the poor decisions made over the years and building a protocol and server set designed to cope with the idea of web applications in mind from the outset. This constant hacking of what is merely a set of markup for displaying content and not interactive applications is a joke and languages like Javascript just aren't sufficient for large scale application design needed to push web apps forward.
I think this'll happen, the question is who and when? If any of the major players do it they'll just be doing it to try and regain full control. Building a completely neutral team to build something like this whilst having the budget and skills is a difficult task. Even the W3C when they tried to go for a more modular spec with XHTML were thwarted by infighting and a refusal of browser vendors to implement something that would end their ability to fight for control of the web once and for all.
"They provide middling accessibility support, because it isn't something most people need.
On the contrary, this very move improves accessibility because it makes it easier for accessibility focussed user agents to interpret the content and express it to the user in the way they require it to be expressed. By separating out display from content they're making the content more easily interpreted whatever method you use to browse the web.
Regions is being dropped because it's a shit bit of functionality that goes against everything we've learnt not to do in the last 20 years, namely, ensuring separation of concerns.
Are you confusing versions? The retraining cost between 2007 and 2010 should be roughly about zero. The retraining cost between 2003 and 2007 was much larger but it's expenditure that's already been done so is irrelevant going forward unless Microsoft plan another massive UI change as they did when they moved Office to ribbons.
The differences between Office and OpenOffice are far more drastic than between office versions now, and honestly, the problem is only amplified when you throw the level of incompetence seen amongst a non-negligible portion of public sector workers into the mix. I worked in public sector here in the UK once, and saw things like "Why isn't there any left handed computers in this room", where by left handed computers, she meant computers where someone had picked up the mouse and mouse mat and put it on the other side of the keyboard for her. Other gems include "Can you come and fix my printer, it's got an orange light, no paper in it and it's just not printing". Yes, you read that right. It was uncomfortably common to see this level of ineptitude. Work would stop for days for them to have a whinge about the fact their new base unit was bigger than the old one, let alone sticking such a large change as Office to OpenOffice in front of them and god only knows you'll never hear the end of it when they receive a.doc via e-mail and OpenOffice fails to render it properly.
There are a lot of hard working public sector workers, but they're propping up the rest who not only provide literally no benefit, but actively get in the way of everyone else. Until you find a government that's willing to make the argument that those wastes of space would cost society less being on unemployment benefit forever than being paid an actual full time salary on the tax payers coin for doing absolutely nothing, actively causing problems for the ones that actually do do work there then you'll never get the training costs of the move from Office to OpenOffice down to the levels of moving between Office versions, which is already high enough. You wont even get close.
Honestly I agree proprietary software costs are a massive problem, god only knows I've been annoyed at the fact my council spent £3 million upgrading everyone from Office 2007 to Office 2010 whilst cutting useful services crying "Blame the government", "Austerity, it's not our fault!" when the upgrade provided literally not the single slightest bit of benefit to the council tax payers they serve. But I think you're naive to believe government workers are consistently technically competent enough to cope with a move from Office to OpenOffice as well as they are Office to Office.
It's also possible they just wanted to prevent Moto ending up in the hands of someone non-Android friendly, like say, Microsoft as Nokia has ended up.
By buying them they remove that threat and then have the freedom to spend time finding someone who they can sell to that is willing to commit to working with Android and who isn't likely to themselves sell it on again any time soon.
So would contacting the police or companies involved who could have gotten Twitter and GoDaddy to freeze all account access until identity was verified and access handed back to him but apparently he wasn't smart enough to do that either..
"In the real universe, the phone service rep is a minimum-wage worker in a foreign country, whose top priority is keeping down their time-per-call-resolution metric."
Right, but backing up this thread to the previous point that still makes it PayPal's fault for not ensuring security comes before other arbitrary metrics. That excuses the call centre worker, that is why social engineering happens as you say, but none of it is a viable excuse for PayPal as a company allowing the data to be handed over.
But they were being investigated for what they did, that's the point.
You can't get into Syria legally without being an aid worker, a diplomat or similar. The people being investigated could only have got there in the first place by smuggling themselves across because it's not those crossing legitimately that are being investigated.
It's not like Syria has a tourist visa programme right now. You still seem to miss the obvious though, you cite Israel as an example saying they go purely on behaviour, tell me, how do they deduce people's behavior if according to you they're not allowed to do any kind of investigation such as asking people near them if they have witnessed suspicious behavior? That's exactly what's happening here, it's absolutely no different.
I think you've been suckered by the sensationalist headline and have completely missed this for what it is, because it's no different to what you're saying is okay, hence why your arguments make zero sense. You're saying something is ok when Israel does it but not Britain.
They're not profiling on where these people have come from, there profiling on whether they've been reported by bordering nations like Turkey as having been caught crossing into or out of Syria illegally. If they were profiling on where someone had been they'd be examining reporters, aid workers, diplomats and OPCW inspectors. They're doing no such thing, and that's why you are wrong to suggest this has anything to do with simply where people have been.
It's probably more that they realised the only thing anyone uses OneDrive for is uploading XBox One videos direct from their console, so it makes sense to capitalise on that only real popular use for it.
What the fuck are you on about? I had BF4 on the 360 and used the £10 trade in deal for the One and there's a massive difference both graphically (it runs higher resolution and higher FPS for starters, but also has higher res textures, more particle effects, better lighting etc.) and in terms of the number of players in multiplayer and so forth.
I think you need your eyes and brain testing if you can't see these things and understand that 64 > 24.
BF4 has the same bugs across all platforms, it's just badly developed, but that says nothing about the relative merits of the PS4, 360, PS3, PC, X1. By your logic the PC is a shit platform because if you turn the graphics down it looks worse than the 360 and has the same bugs, but that's not exactly a rational argument is it?
Right, so why did you then jump on to the conclusion about it being dictatorial and police state like if you accept that when something people do matters in terms of needing investigation that it's chased up?
It's that bit of your post that didn't make sense relative to your realisation that it's okay for authorities to investigate people if they do something that is suspect like illegally cross a border into a warzone?
Given that China has the second largest output for research papers nowadays I'd imagine there's quite a lot for the US to learn from them even if they are stereotyped as a backwater state which the US could learn nothing of value from.
Regarding China, the most useful information probably relates to contract negotiation. Stemming the tide of Chinese corporate purchases and Chinese oil company investment in Africa and so forth, but also allowing companies like Apple to better negotiate terms with their manufacturers.
But in general there have been a lot of military deals that European firms for example were set to win because they'd put in the best bid (objectively so) only for the deal to be cancelled last minute, sometimes after being signed citing "corruption" only for American firms to be handed the deal on a platter without restarting the tender process (which is what would happen if corruption was a real concern).
If during take over and purchase negotiations and so forth America is able to get e-mails saying things like "We'll take $250,000 for the company but let's push for $500,000" then the American firms know they can hold out until that minimum and not risk losing the deal giving them an artificial advantage in negotiations.
There are many examples, and I don't pretend it is just America doing it, I think the UK and France at minimum do a lot of it too, but it's not really a good idea long term as you're just legitimising the practice and it's simply then just a race of who does it best, until someone loses, then when someone loses a race that shouldn't even have been happening in the first place they'll get angry, and get their own back another way.
It's just not a good idea building global distrust like this.
There were many American firms too. There were also many American firms that helped Iran, it's whole air forces is still equipped with the likes of Tomcats and Phantoms to this day. There were also Russian firms involved too, and Chinese firms.
I'm not really sure what your point is though exactly. That companies are free to do trade with nations not deemed to be under embargo? Why yes! you're right, and all of them do.
What? carrying out HumInt on people with extremist Islamic beliefs who have just been overseas training and where they're likely to see increased radicalisation and where they are likely to get their first taste of real actual blood is precisely the sort of thing internal security services should be doing.
There's nothing dictatorial about it whatsoever. Dictatorial is NSA/GCHQ style spying of entire populations regardless of risk, THAT is dictatorial. What MI5 are doing in this case is exactly what they're there for, exactly the sort of thing all internal security services should limit themselves to in fact.
The worst part is it's like you even actually get it but are blowing it up as something it isn't regardless. You say it's what they do there that matters. Well guess what? they're not spying on people working for the Red Cross/Crescent, they're not spying on chemical weapons inspectors, they're spying on people whom they have intelligence that have crossed the Turkish border or whatever into Syria without being part of any group. This is standard security procedure for any nation, just as someone heading to Russia during the cold war without a reason such as business would be checked out as a possible spy, someone smuggling themselves illegally across the Syrian border without being there as part of a charity or whatever will be checked out for being an extremist threat.
There's no guilt by association, because there's no accusation of guilt, there is however suspicion, so unless you completely fail to grasp the justice system in most of the Western world then you'll understand that police and security services can have suspicions based on evidence of individuals without them declaring they're guilty. If there was accusation of guilt, or punishment as if guilty then that would be dictatorial, but that's not even close to what's happening here.
The bulk of America's dirty operations like assassinations, coups, and insurgencies were in South America. Why would Europe have given a fuck about that?
It was entirely because America was shit scared of having communism gain a foothold on the same strip of land on this Earth that America sits on. Why would that have been Europe's problem? It was entirely about American paranoia of communism and self-preservation.
Well that depends, if you got a situation where America is artificially taking work away from other nations by simply stealing their knowledge, product designs and so forth then that might mean those nations become less stable and more likely to want to hurt America when they find out the only reason they're poor and unemployed is because America stole from them.
Not to mention the harm this does for it's ability to partake in international politics, how silly will it look telling China off for manipulating it's currency to it's benefit when America has similarly been artificially propping it's economy up simply by stealing from everyone else? It's a dangerous game as if America wants to get in a race to the bottom it's going to lose hard because countries like India and China will be able to cope with reduced living standards far more than Americans will be able to without rising up and rioting. Those countries also have far less scruples about stealing from the US. You think China will now have any reservations about hacking US companies? It was supposedly doing so before but now it doesn't even need to care if it gets caught as it can just say it's fair play whilst America if it wants to be taken seriously still needs to retain some semblance of decency.
Or in other words, engaging in this sort of subversive manner against foreign states might be exactly the sort of thing that starts World War 3 creating such instability and such threat to the US in the first place.
Slashdot Mirror
Yes, because it would've been a lot better if you'd have been left to file for bankruptcy or be taken over by an even more predatory buyer wouldn't it?
If you're working for a failing company you should be grateful that anyone fucking bought you and at least prolonged your jobs for a few more years if nothing else. It's not exactly their fault that you guys were running the company into the ground in the first place is it? The other guys at Google don't work hard to stay competitive just to subsidise your existence when you're just burning money.
Or maybe he just doesn't live in a country so retarded that you have to pay for insurance to make sure your family is protected from shit like that?
Here in the UK the only insurance you really need to have is car insurance if you have a car and this is mandated by law, and home insurance if you have a mortgage that forces it upon you.
I don't think I've ever worked a job that hasn't come with a death in service allowance (so that my partner would get something like 3 to 5 years of my salary) if I died, it's basically standard here, and of course she'd receive transfer of my pension pot. If I died early she'd be fine.
The only times I do ever visit insurance sites are for car and home insurance, and I'm not even convinced home insurance is worth it once the mortgage is paid. Anything else really is a complete waste of money riddled with get out clauses so on the 1 in a million chance you need to make a claim you can't anyway. Life insurance is one of the biggest scams going, health insurance is unnecessary when you have a good public healthcare system, and pet insurance is an even bigger scam than health insurance.
"Look at Dart and Native Client for an example."
I agree, but my point is where is the support outside of Google? They've tried to get support and been told "Oh that's a Google technology, like fuck we're implementing that!" and it's such an unhelpful attitude. The real response should be "Okay, good idea, how can we help and make sure this is something that isn't controlled by any one company?".
"The "proper" (i.e. the one that benefits everyone most) way to handle this would be to extend the standard, but to not throw out parts of it."
I would've agreed at one time, but since the great fuckup that is HTML5 that was basically a pot into which Ian Hickson threw lots of random shit that he felt like but that was badly implemented and a stupid idea I don't think HTML is salvageable unless we roll back a version and try again ignoring HTML5. It's not that some of the ideas behind it are bad, but the implementation is just terrible, written by someone who seems to have not the slightest bit of experience actually developing decent size web applications or even good software engineering practice in general. His complete lack of understanding of key software engineering principles like separation of concerns is borderline disturbing.
Note that I'm not arguing with you about this particular case as such, I don't know enough about it and you've obviously followed the original threads whilst I haven't, but whilst Google may be wrong in this case I think it still steps on a fundamental issue with the current direction of the web and as such I can understand how these sorts of bad things happen - why developers might be driven to make them.
The problem is since the great WHATWG hijack of web standards the standards of the web have been entirely in the hands of browser vendors, who are no doubt important, but far from the only people who should have a say on the future of the web, especially as they're only interested in fighting with each other rather than working together to provide a service that serves people who actually build web applications and so forth.
The W3C was always slow but at least it was representative of browser vendors, developers, and device manufacturers alike. I'd rather a slow but sure democracy than an incompetent dictatorship like WHATWG, because what we're seeing in this article is the end result - rebellion and instability that hurts everyone as it becomes a bitter free for all once again.
"If it is the right thing to do, people will run with it."
They are running with it that's the point, they've all tried alternatives at one point, IE has XBAPs for example, Google has Dart/Native Client - they're all doing it, they're just not doing it together because they all want control and wont work with each other, so it's certainly not doing the wrong thing, they all recognise the need.
"This is the answer to people who want application platforms, use something designed from the ground up to be an application platform rather than a platform that was designed as a hypermedia implementation with goodies for application development grafted on."
Exactly, but we need a cross platform way of doing that, and that requires cooperation which is my fundamental point. The web has been mangled into doing it because it's the only cross platform option (most apps out there are just wrapped up HTML etc.) that they all have no choice but to implement currently, hence why they're all fighting to break it their own way whilst missing the point that they're all just trying to achieve the same thing at the end of the day.
In the fact that they are, because the differences between Office 2010 and say OpenOffice are far greater than Office 2010 and Office 2013.
OpenOffice isn't even close to being just a slot in replacement either in terms of existing compatibility, existing features, or existing user interface compared to the level of differences across office versions. As I say the only real time this wasn't true was 2003 to 2007 where the UI and document formats all changed as well as drastic feature changes and differences.
As I say competent skilled technical users will be able to jump between any of them but the same isn't true of your average public sector office worker - a few will find the jump fine, but the majority will struggle far more with a jump to OO than a newer MSO version.
I find this write up both encouraging and sad. Encouraging because at least one major vendor out there recognises that the current platform, standards and proposals just aren't fit for long term evolution of web applications and so something drastic needs doing. Sad because Google are going down this route, possibly because they feel they have to as each time they try and do something completely new (i.e. Dart) they get shot down by the opposition who refuse to support something produced by Google even if it's just outright better.
What are they to do though? If they create something completely new and fresh as a new protocol handler and possibly even server designed specifically for web applications they'll be accused of trying to replace the web with an evil proprietary Google controlled monster. If they try and make drastic changes to what's already there to improve it for the sake of web applications they get told off for hijacking the web.
Something needs to change, the current set of HTML standards and technologies are just outright insufficient for web applications moving forward, but if a big vendor tries to push something new no one supports it, and if they try to modify drastically what's already there it becomes a case of bitchiness about them "defying standards" and whatever else. Don't get me wrong, I'm not saying Google is the only victim here, each time MS, Apple, or anyone else has tried to do something drastic they've been told off in the exact same manner.
So the problem carries on, we just get hacks from every direction, all trying to make the current technologies slightly less bad for web application development, but all ultimately contributing to an ever greater clusterfuck of different ideas and inconsistencies.
I just wish they'd all grow the fuck up and admit that something has to change and that means working together, or would just hand all control back to something like the W3C and accept it's rulings and demands even if that means accepting things like a bigger role for things like XML.
It's bad functionality they're leaving out too because it completely ignores the necessity of separation of concerns for producing good software.
This said I don't entirely disagree with the premise of the GP but I don't think it's just Google trying to take over the web.
It's pretty obvious with all the wrangling that went on over HTML5 features like a standardised format for the video tag that everyone wanted control still - Apple, Mozilla, Google, Microsoft.
Which is why the web is shit and nothing good ever gets done.
Really, the only way we'll see a better web is when someone starts from scratch throwing away all the poor decisions made over the years and building a protocol and server set designed to cope with the idea of web applications in mind from the outset. This constant hacking of what is merely a set of markup for displaying content and not interactive applications is a joke and languages like Javascript just aren't sufficient for large scale application design needed to push web apps forward.
I think this'll happen, the question is who and when? If any of the major players do it they'll just be doing it to try and regain full control. Building a completely neutral team to build something like this whilst having the budget and skills is a difficult task. Even the W3C when they tried to go for a more modular spec with XHTML were thwarted by infighting and a refusal of browser vendors to implement something that would end their ability to fight for control of the web once and for all.
"They provide middling accessibility support, because it isn't something most people need.
On the contrary, this very move improves accessibility because it makes it easier for accessibility focussed user agents to interpret the content and express it to the user in the way they require it to be expressed. By separating out display from content they're making the content more easily interpreted whatever method you use to browse the web.
Regions is being dropped because it's a shit bit of functionality that goes against everything we've learnt not to do in the last 20 years, namely, ensuring separation of concerns.
Are you confusing versions? The retraining cost between 2007 and 2010 should be roughly about zero. The retraining cost between 2003 and 2007 was much larger but it's expenditure that's already been done so is irrelevant going forward unless Microsoft plan another massive UI change as they did when they moved Office to ribbons.
The differences between Office and OpenOffice are far more drastic than between office versions now, and honestly, the problem is only amplified when you throw the level of incompetence seen amongst a non-negligible portion of public sector workers into the mix. I worked in public sector here in the UK once, and saw things like "Why isn't there any left handed computers in this room", where by left handed computers, she meant computers where someone had picked up the mouse and mouse mat and put it on the other side of the keyboard for her. Other gems include "Can you come and fix my printer, it's got an orange light, no paper in it and it's just not printing". Yes, you read that right. It was uncomfortably common to see this level of ineptitude. Work would stop for days for them to have a whinge about the fact their new base unit was bigger than the old one, let alone sticking such a large change as Office to OpenOffice in front of them and god only knows you'll never hear the end of it when they receive a .doc via e-mail and OpenOffice fails to render it properly.
There are a lot of hard working public sector workers, but they're propping up the rest who not only provide literally no benefit, but actively get in the way of everyone else. Until you find a government that's willing to make the argument that those wastes of space would cost society less being on unemployment benefit forever than being paid an actual full time salary on the tax payers coin for doing absolutely nothing, actively causing problems for the ones that actually do do work there then you'll never get the training costs of the move from Office to OpenOffice down to the levels of moving between Office versions, which is already high enough. You wont even get close.
Honestly I agree proprietary software costs are a massive problem, god only knows I've been annoyed at the fact my council spent £3 million upgrading everyone from Office 2007 to Office 2010 whilst cutting useful services crying "Blame the government", "Austerity, it's not our fault!" when the upgrade provided literally not the single slightest bit of benefit to the council tax payers they serve. But I think you're naive to believe government workers are consistently technically competent enough to cope with a move from Office to OpenOffice as well as they are Office to Office.
It's also possible they just wanted to prevent Moto ending up in the hands of someone non-Android friendly, like say, Microsoft as Nokia has ended up.
By buying them they remove that threat and then have the freedom to spend time finding someone who they can sell to that is willing to commit to working with Android and who isn't likely to themselves sell it on again any time soon.
So would contacting the police or companies involved who could have gotten Twitter and GoDaddy to freeze all account access until identity was verified and access handed back to him but apparently he wasn't smart enough to do that either..
"In the real universe, the phone service rep is a minimum-wage worker in a foreign country, whose top priority is keeping down their time-per-call-resolution metric."
Right, but backing up this thread to the previous point that still makes it PayPal's fault for not ensuring security comes before other arbitrary metrics. That excuses the call centre worker, that is why social engineering happens as you say, but none of it is a viable excuse for PayPal as a company allowing the data to be handed over.
But they were being investigated for what they did, that's the point.
You can't get into Syria legally without being an aid worker, a diplomat or similar. The people being investigated could only have got there in the first place by smuggling themselves across because it's not those crossing legitimately that are being investigated.
It's not like Syria has a tourist visa programme right now. You still seem to miss the obvious though, you cite Israel as an example saying they go purely on behaviour, tell me, how do they deduce people's behavior if according to you they're not allowed to do any kind of investigation such as asking people near them if they have witnessed suspicious behavior? That's exactly what's happening here, it's absolutely no different.
I think you've been suckered by the sensationalist headline and have completely missed this for what it is, because it's no different to what you're saying is okay, hence why your arguments make zero sense. You're saying something is ok when Israel does it but not Britain.
They're not profiling on where these people have come from, there profiling on whether they've been reported by bordering nations like Turkey as having been caught crossing into or out of Syria illegally. If they were profiling on where someone had been they'd be examining reporters, aid workers, diplomats and OPCW inspectors. They're doing no such thing, and that's why you are wrong to suggest this has anything to do with simply where people have been.
It's probably more that they realised the only thing anyone uses OneDrive for is uploading XBox One videos direct from their console, so it makes sense to capitalise on that only real popular use for it.
Except I'm not American.
What the fuck are you on about? I had BF4 on the 360 and used the £10 trade in deal for the One and there's a massive difference both graphically (it runs higher resolution and higher FPS for starters, but also has higher res textures, more particle effects, better lighting etc.) and in terms of the number of players in multiplayer and so forth.
I think you need your eyes and brain testing if you can't see these things and understand that 64 > 24.
BF4 has the same bugs across all platforms, it's just badly developed, but that says nothing about the relative merits of the PS4, 360, PS3, PC, X1. By your logic the PC is a shit platform because if you turn the graphics down it looks worse than the 360 and has the same bugs, but that's not exactly a rational argument is it?
Right, so why did you then jump on to the conclusion about it being dictatorial and police state like if you accept that when something people do matters in terms of needing investigation that it's chased up?
It's that bit of your post that didn't make sense relative to your realisation that it's okay for authorities to investigate people if they do something that is suspect like illegally cross a border into a warzone?
That's a hell of a lot of text for what amounts to "I had a mental breakdown and lost the plot".
"What have we done to China so far?"
http://www.wired.com/wiredente...
http://www.forbes.com/sites/ke...
Given that China has the second largest output for research papers nowadays I'd imagine there's quite a lot for the US to learn from them even if they are stereotyped as a backwater state which the US could learn nothing of value from.
"The difference being the American armaments were received before the revolution, and when it was legal."
But that's what you're talking about now? You talked about Siemens selling to them once sanctions are lifted. There's no difference.
"The point being that intelligence agencies can have a legitimate interest in commercial activity besides theft of trade secrets."
Of course they can, but that's not what espionage is, and espionage is the accusation here.
Regarding China, the most useful information probably relates to contract negotiation. Stemming the tide of Chinese corporate purchases and Chinese oil company investment in Africa and so forth, but also allowing companies like Apple to better negotiate terms with their manufacturers.
But in general there have been a lot of military deals that European firms for example were set to win because they'd put in the best bid (objectively so) only for the deal to be cancelled last minute, sometimes after being signed citing "corruption" only for American firms to be handed the deal on a platter without restarting the tender process (which is what would happen if corruption was a real concern).
If during take over and purchase negotiations and so forth America is able to get e-mails saying things like "We'll take $250,000 for the company but let's push for $500,000" then the American firms know they can hold out until that minimum and not risk losing the deal giving them an artificial advantage in negotiations.
There are many examples, and I don't pretend it is just America doing it, I think the UK and France at minimum do a lot of it too, but it's not really a good idea long term as you're just legitimising the practice and it's simply then just a race of who does it best, until someone loses, then when someone loses a race that shouldn't even have been happening in the first place they'll get angry, and get their own back another way.
It's just not a good idea building global distrust like this.
There were many American firms too. There were also many American firms that helped Iran, it's whole air forces is still equipped with the likes of Tomcats and Phantoms to this day. There were also Russian firms involved too, and Chinese firms.
I'm not really sure what your point is though exactly. That companies are free to do trade with nations not deemed to be under embargo? Why yes! you're right, and all of them do.
What? carrying out HumInt on people with extremist Islamic beliefs who have just been overseas training and where they're likely to see increased radicalisation and where they are likely to get their first taste of real actual blood is precisely the sort of thing internal security services should be doing.
There's nothing dictatorial about it whatsoever. Dictatorial is NSA/GCHQ style spying of entire populations regardless of risk, THAT is dictatorial. What MI5 are doing in this case is exactly what they're there for, exactly the sort of thing all internal security services should limit themselves to in fact.
The worst part is it's like you even actually get it but are blowing it up as something it isn't regardless. You say it's what they do there that matters. Well guess what? they're not spying on people working for the Red Cross/Crescent, they're not spying on chemical weapons inspectors, they're spying on people whom they have intelligence that have crossed the Turkish border or whatever into Syria without being part of any group. This is standard security procedure for any nation, just as someone heading to Russia during the cold war without a reason such as business would be checked out as a possible spy, someone smuggling themselves illegally across the Syrian border without being there as part of a charity or whatever will be checked out for being an extremist threat.
There's no guilt by association, because there's no accusation of guilt, there is however suspicion, so unless you completely fail to grasp the justice system in most of the Western world then you'll understand that police and security services can have suspicions based on evidence of individuals without them declaring they're guilty. If there was accusation of guilt, or punishment as if guilty then that would be dictatorial, but that's not even close to what's happening here.
The bulk of America's dirty operations like assassinations, coups, and insurgencies were in South America. Why would Europe have given a fuck about that?
It was entirely because America was shit scared of having communism gain a foothold on the same strip of land on this Earth that America sits on. Why would that have been Europe's problem? It was entirely about American paranoia of communism and self-preservation.
Well that depends, if you got a situation where America is artificially taking work away from other nations by simply stealing their knowledge, product designs and so forth then that might mean those nations become less stable and more likely to want to hurt America when they find out the only reason they're poor and unemployed is because America stole from them.
Not to mention the harm this does for it's ability to partake in international politics, how silly will it look telling China off for manipulating it's currency to it's benefit when America has similarly been artificially propping it's economy up simply by stealing from everyone else? It's a dangerous game as if America wants to get in a race to the bottom it's going to lose hard because countries like India and China will be able to cope with reduced living standards far more than Americans will be able to without rising up and rioting. Those countries also have far less scruples about stealing from the US. You think China will now have any reservations about hacking US companies? It was supposedly doing so before but now it doesn't even need to care if it gets caught as it can just say it's fair play whilst America if it wants to be taken seriously still needs to retain some semblance of decency.
Or in other words, engaging in this sort of subversive manner against foreign states might be exactly the sort of thing that starts World War 3 creating such instability and such threat to the US in the first place.